It’s holiday season here on the blog, and as the editorial team take a short break, we’ll be leaving you with a reduced blogging schedule so that you still get your daily dose of wedding lovely. Usual service will recommence on Monday 4th July 2016 but in the meantime watch out for recaps of some of our favourite Real Weddings so far this year.
Drop in every day for the very prettiest, most unique wedding inspiration and – if you are a Brides Up North bride – to see if your real wedding was one of our top picks.
Wow! is the word that we would use to sum up today’s real wedding on the blog!
We love everything about Natalie & Jamie’s big day, built around a secret-fair-garden-type theme.
Natalie’s stunning dress, bouquet and super cute daisy chain headband make her look wonderfully whimsical and elegant and we could spend an age just looking at her, though there are lots of other gorgeous elements to take note of, including the maids’ cute dresses and incredible centre pieces.
Prepare to swoon…
With images by Stella Photography.
natalie says:
We got engaged on a beautiful beach in Portugal. Jamie’s plan was to propose on a jet ski, but as I don’t like the sea, I refused to get on! His backup plan was to propose in one of the caves in the sea…again, I was awkward and refused to take part! Eventually, he gave in and proposed on the beach.Our wedding was on 23rd May 2015, at The Great Hall at Mains in Lancashire. We chose the venue as its very local to us (literally round the corner from our house). As we were only having a small wedding, it was important that all our guests would be able to make it!
We wanted to choose a theme that suited our style and that wasn’t too serious. We’re not massive fans of traditional weddings so we wanted something a little bit different. In the end we chose a whimsical theme – like a secret fairy garden.
The colour scheme was mainly pale pink and apple green. I didn’t have a scheme in mind until we went shopping for bridesmaids dresses – the dresses we found were perfect for the theme so they determined the colour scheme!
I’d initially always wanted a beaded wedding dress but when I tried them on, I just didn’t feel like a bride. I was then persuaded to try on the Enzoani Fada dress while at Lulu Browns, and I fell in love with it. It felt different to all the other dresses I’d tried and, most importantly, I felt like a bride. I wanted to add sleeves to the dress and was able to order extra fabric for this to be done by Legend Bridal Designs. I then designed my veil which was also custom made by Legend Bridal. I tried on wedding shoes, but they just weren’t for me so I went for some Prada heels in bright green with blue jewels!
Jamie wore a three piece navy check suit from Ted Baker with tan shoes from Oliver Sweeney. The groomsmen’s three piece suits were from Slaters.
My bridesmaids wore the Florida Bloom dress from French Connection, which was a lightweight mesh, fairy like dress. In their hair they had gold chains with little paper flowers – they looked like little fairies.
On the wedding day the groom, groomsmen and the bridesmaids all travelled to the venue in a VW camper van, while my dada and I travelled in a VW Beetle. The vehicles were hired from Bay Camper Weddings.
Jamie and his dad Kevin, are huge Lambretta fans so we had a convoy of Lambrettas ridden by Kevin’s friends, follow the bridal party to the venue – they then stayed until after the ceremony to pose for pictures too.
Our photographers were Seb and Zuzi from Stella Photography and we can’t recommend them enough! I met the guys from Stella Photography before we’d even booked the wedding and I knew straight away they’d be our photographers. Seb and Zuzi are brilliant – eight months after the wedding, guests are still talking about how fab they were! They were so much fun on the day and the photos they produced are just perfect!
In terms of flowers, I carried a beautiful ‘just picked’ bouquet created by Flower Design, which was made up of fresh daisies, sweet peas, forget me nots, fragrant herbs, umbrella fern, variegated ivy, white peonies and thistles. I also wore a daisy chain in my hair.
The flowers were the main focal point of the wedding decorations as they helped create the whimsical theme. We wanted each centre piece to be different – we had trees on some tables, teacups and saucers, broken garden pots, vintage books, toadstools and fairy signs. Within the flowers we had thistles, which were a nod to my grandad, who was Scottish.
We’d noticed at a lot of weddings, the favours get left behind on the tables so in lieu of traditional favours, we decided to give each guest a pin badge from Cancer Research UK in memory of my grandad, who died in 2011. The badges were floral which fitted in with the theme and everyone wore their badges on the day, which was lovely.
As well as giving favours, we made every guest a jar with their name on for the place settings. Every jar was decorated differently and was unique!
Denise, one of my bridesmaid’s mums made our wedding cake for us. I didn’t really know what I wanted so I gave her plenty of pictures and she helped me decide on a three tier sponge cake. The cake was painted to have the same print as the bridesmaid dresses and was decorated with iced flowers.
The Villa at Wrea Green catered for our wedding breakfast. We wanted something that everyone would like so we chose ham hock terrine with pineapple jelly and a quails egg to start, chicken breast stuffed with a garlic mousse, served with dauphinoise potatoes and seasonal vegetables for main and dessert was mini pavlovas and ice cream.
As entertainment during the ceremony we had the Blackpool Male Voice Choir sing All You Need is Love, no one knew we had booked them, they dressed in normal suits and blended in with the rest of the guests so it was lovely to see everyone’s reactions when they stood up to sing.
For the evening entertainment we booked a band from Cheshire called Joe 90, who sung a mix of songs from the Stone Roses to Elvis Presley.
All of our suppliers were just fabulous, we would recommend them all. We would also 100% recommend our venue. The team there were fabulous from start to finish. They set the room up exactly as I’d imagined it and they made sure everything ran smoothly on the day.
One of my favourite parts of the day was walking down the aisle with my dad and seeing all our friends and then seeing Jamie at the end of the aisle. We also loved the speeches. Jamie, my dad and Tom (the best man) were so nervous about giving their speeches but they were all fabulous! Everyone laughed and cried!
We chose to go to Thailand on our honeymoon as it is somewhere we’d always wanted to visit. We had the most amazing time and can’t wait to go back!
My top tip to other Brides Up North would be to really pay attention to all the little details – we did and it’s what made our wedding so special. And everyone says this – but just enjoy it because it really does go so fast!
comments
This is beautiful. Could anyone tell me where the kimomo type dressing gown was from, for the wedding morning?xxx