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relaxed romance. ronald joyce for an elegant wedding at doddington hall – natalie & jon

Rachel Hirst

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Us Brides Up North girls just love a classic wedding and so this afternoon’s nuptials are right up our street.

Marrying at the beautiful Doddington Hall, Jon and Natalie’s big day is both elegant and stylish with a pretty pale pink colour scheme, delicate blooms and dreamy attire. We adore the flower girl’s super sweet look too!

With images by Emily & Katy Photography.

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natalie says:

We got engaged in September 2014 and set the date of the wedding for 21st July 2016.

Our chosen venue was Doddington Hall in Lincolnshire. We fell in love with it because it has everything you need on site. The ceremony is held in the Long Gallery in the hall, and the reception is held in their Coach House and it has a beautiful walled garden and accommodation for guests too.

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We didn’t have a set theme for the wedding, we just wanted to keep it simple, pretty and colourful. We kept the decorations to mainly florals, sticking with a pink and cream colour scheme to tie in with my dress and the bridesmaids’ dresses. We decorated the outside walled garden area with bunting and paper lanterns, which lit up in the evening.

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One of the first things I did when we decided to get married was buy a wedding dress, but I later changed my mind about it and so travelled to Lula Ann Bridal, Birmingham, who is a premier stockist of Ronald Joyce, to choose another dress I liked last minute. I had a lot of alterations done on the dress, changing the neckline and removing lots of beading. I loved the lace on the dress and matched it with a long, plain veil.

My wedding day makeup was done by a lovely makeup artist called Jenni Hughes, while mine and the bridesmaids’ hair was taken care of by Natalie Bartram at Bridal Hair Specialists.

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Jon chose to wear a blue suit with a waistcoat from Next. His best man and groomsmen wore the same with matching tan shoes.

My lovely bridesmaids Emily, Lucy, Tor and Lizzie wore TFNC dresses from ASOS. We ordered several options and maternity dresses for my sister, who was seven months pregnant, but was able to have them all matching in the end.

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On the day of the wedding my best friend Tor drove me and my bridesmaids to the venue in her cream vintage VW Beatle convertible, which was brilliant fun!

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Our day was captured by Emily & Katy Photography. Both Emily and Katy are very talented and passionate photographers. We first met Emily and Katy for our engagement shoot, where they instantly made us feel comfortable and at ease with having our photo taken. The girls are so much fun and we laughed the entire time.

At the wedding the girls were so patient and polite with arranging all of our guests and took the time to get the most perfect photos after our ceremony. All of our guests commented on how great Emily and Katy were. The girls even sent us a sneak peek gallery with 50 photos from the wedding just the next day to view with our friends and family, which was amazing to be able to look through so soon after the wedding! We would highly recommend the lovely Emily and Katy to other brides and grooms.

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Petal & Stalk based in Navenby, Lincolnshire, took care of all our floral arrangements. Myself and the bridesmaids all had matching bouquets and our flower girl Lily, had a smaller version.

Our florist Abigail was so much help when it came to choosing our centrepieces. I sent a few photos for ideas and Abigail designed some beautiful arrangements for the day. We added extra flowers right up to the last day and Abigail was so enthusiastic about every idea I had.

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As favours we gave guests little handmade boxes with boiled sweets inside.

Our wedding cake was a Marks & Spencer chocolate cake with white chocolate ring detailing. It was the nicest cake I have ever eaten and we were still eating tiers of it on our honeymoon!

Further treats for our guests included a sweetie table and a gelato ice cream cart, which was positioned in the garden for all to enjoy.

When it came to the wedding breakfast we gave our guests a choice of hot oak smoked trout or galette of chicken and spinach to start, mains of blade of Doddington herd Lincoln red beef or duo of pork and dessert options of lemon custard and butter shortcake or raspberry and vanilla cheesecake.

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The wedding entertainment started at the ceremony with pianist Hilary Waterfall. We got to choose our favourite music to walk down the aisle and leave to. Hilary also played during the wedding reception. We then had the lovely Joel Berger to sing throughout the afternoon and evening. He even sang our first dance song, which was amazing! Doddington’s house DJ then took over for the rest of the evening.

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I would highly recommend Doddington Hall to other couples as a wedding venue as our wedding coordinators Justine Shakespeare and Andrew Lowley, were so helpful and encouraging with every idea we had. The ease of having everything on site made our day very relaxed and enjoyable. Their beautiful gardens made for very good photos too.

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Looking back I couldn’t pick just one part of the day as my favourite because I loved it all. The two moments that stood out most though would be walking down the aisle with my sister Emily and seeing Jon for the first time. Also, Jon had arranged a surprise for me as part of his speech. He finished by saying how much I would have liked our two dogs Honey and Lola to have been at the wedding, and they then ran into the room – I had no idea they were coming!

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When booking our honeymoon we decided to split it in two. We took our dogs to Norfolk for the weekend first and stayed at The Hoste at Burnham Market in Norfolk. It was sunny all weekend and the dogs really enjoyed the beach. We then went to a spa hotel in Majorca for a week before having to go back to work.

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My top tip for other Brides Up North would be to take a moment out of your day to spend some time alone with your new husband before the night ends – the wedding day goes by so quickly!

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