Derbyshire Wedding

happy ever after. mori lee for a fairytale wedding at chatsworth house – stephanie & nick

Emma Davis

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Today’s bride Stephanie made her childhood wedding dreams come true with a rustic wedding set in the delightful surroundings of the Chatsworth estate, in Derbyshire.

The carefully planned and personal big day featured lots of highlights, including a horse drawn carriage, homemade décor, fabulous florals and a show-stopping cake, but to name a few!

Images by Shoot Photography.

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stephanie says:

We got engaged on 3rd July 2014. Nick took me on a surprise day out to Chatsworth House, in Bakewell, Derbyshire, as he knows it is my favourite place. We spent the morning looking around the beautiful house and in the afternoon we went into the gardens, where we started off by walking along the lawn next to the Emperor Fountain. Nick had been quiet all day so to try and make conversation I stepped closer to the fountain and started looking around for something to talk about, I then turned around and Nick was down on one knee with a ring box in his hand!

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Our wedding day was on the 29th June 2016. We wanted a summer wedding, and decided to marry on a weekday. We picked the end of June to try and have the best chance of a warm and sunny day, and picked Wednesday 29th thanks to an old folk rhyme:

Marry on Monday for health, Tuesday for wealth, Wednesday the best day of all, Thursday for crosses, Friday for losses, and Saturday for no luck at all.

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Our chosen venue was, of course, Chatsworth House. We live in the West Midlands but my parents took me to visit Chatsworth as a little girl, and from then on I wanted to live there, or at the very least get married there! Nick knew this when he decided to take me there to propose; he had also enquired with their wedding team as an extra surprise!

The theme for our wedding was mostly taken from the Chatsworth Estate. The stables are filled with beautiful original features including panelling from the stable blocks and hay wracks on the walls. To tie in with these features I wanted the flowers and table settings to have a ‘rustic’ feel to them, so we used lots of natural materials including hessian, bark and wooden lanterns; and neutral colours, such as ivory and brown craft paper. Some of our decorations featured stags and antlers, as a tribute and symbol of the Chatsworth estate; and other décor included paper roses and confetti made out of book pages, as a reflection of my love of Jane Austen and her novel Pride and Prejudice.

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My wedding gown was a Mori Lee Voyage dress from Brides of Solihull. I wanted a dress that was elegant with flow, plus a little bit of lace and a touch of sparkle – I think my chosen wedding dress fit all of these requirements, with the added bonus of the chiffon cowl that draped across the back, which myself and my mum fell in love with, and that was really what sold the dress to us!

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Lauren of Bridal Creative did both mine and my mum’s makeup for the day, and did a truly beautiful job! Not only did Lauren make me feel the most gorgeous I have ever felt, she also made me feel calm, and excited, all at the same time! My mum also looked beautiful, and not only was our makeup flawless, but I could not believe how well it stayed put, even through all the tears, and there were a few!

My mum meanwhile was the bridal party’s hairdresser! She did a beautiful job of mine and all of my bridesmaids’ hair, and despite all of the wind, humidity, dancing, and Nick and I even got caught in a massive downpour, our hair stayed perfectly in place all day and night, flawless!

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Nick and the groomsmen hired matching three-piece Cameron Ross suits in grey from Platinum Brides, a bridal shop local to where we live. Nick also wore a handmade yellow and white polka-dot bow tie from the online store Mrs Bow Tie. As Nick wasn’t going to keep his suit, he treated himself to a beautiful pair of Christian Louboutin shoes!

The groomsmen wore an assortment of ties with their suits, featuring shades of lemon, greys and ivory in different prints, except the three best men who all wore paisley patterned ties in the different shades.

As a little special touch to the day, we had bought a pair of bright yellow socks and sunglasses for each of the groom, groomsmen and page boy, so we have some awesome pictures of boys being boys, posing and showing off!

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Our adult bridesmaids wore pale lemon multi-way dresses from Etsy, which they all tied a different way on top. Our flower girls wore blush pink dresses and matching shoes from BHS to complement the pinks and peaches in my bouquet.

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To get to the ceremony, I was swept up to Chatsworth House from the Golden Gate in a horse drawn carriage with my dad. We hired the carriage from the fantastic Horse and Carriage Company, and it really did prove to be one of the most memorable moments of our day. Nick and I also enjoyed having time together in the carriage after the ceremony, it gave us time to just be together and have a chance to catch our breath!

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Jo and Simon of Shoot Photography were our wedding photographers, and we really couldn’t have picked anyone better or recommend them enough! Every single one of our photographs is absolutely stunning, and were with us in record time with flawless customer service. They captured the joy, fun and real rollercoaster of a day that we had, they blended in amongst our guests effortlessly, and we both really feel that they left in the evening as two extra friends that had joined us for the day.

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Kerry and the team from Tineke Floral Designs provided my stunning bridal bouquet that included gypsophila, daisies, blush pink peonies, peach David Austin Juliet roses, lemon stocks, craspedia and greenery, including fountain grass and trailing asparagus fern.

I also carried charms on my bouquet throughout the whole day, this included a lucky charm given to me by my Mum on the morning of the wedding, this was my ‘something old’ as it had a silver sixpence hanging from it. I attached two photo frames to by bouquet, one which had a picture of my great grandad, who passed away six years ago, and another frame holding a picture of my grandma, who died just a month before our wedding day. I also pinned a brooch to my bouquet which had belonged to my grandma, and was left to my mum, so this became my ‘something borrowed’.

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The Tineke Floral Designs team provided rustic gypsophila rings that were used as our table centrepieces with my own wooden lanterns in the middle to complement the original stable surroundings of the rooms at Chatsworth. They also decorated the hay wracks in both our ceremony and reception rooms by hanging gypsophila around them.

Another key feature were the handmade patchwork deer heads that were hung from the hay wracks, made by the lovely Laura of The Pink Blossom Tree. The deer heads were made bespoke for us, with two of them designed to resemble Nick and I – Nick’s even had a little bow tie and glasses!

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I was a real DIY bride, and made or bought most of the decorations for the wedding myself, including the table plan, dressing up box, all of the stationery (place cards, favours, invitations), and left all of our décor with the amazing Chatsworth wedding team the day before the wedding, to arrive on the day to the rooms decorated and arranged meticulously and exactly how we’d asked them to – I couldn’t have done it better myself!

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As favours I made little ‘good luck’ cards for guests with a scratch card and penny attached – unfortunately the biggest winner was £11! We also had a shabby-chic style sweet cart that our guests could help themselves to throughout the day.

Our wedding cake was by far the most gorgeous cake we’ve ever seen. It was made by Rose at The Pink Cake Box and needless to say it tasted delicious! Our cake was a tier of Madagascan vanilla cake infused with raspberries, blueberries, redcurrants and blackcurrants, filled with vanilla pod butter cream; and a tier of chocolate caramel sponge cake layered with dulce de leche caramel and vanilla pod butter cream, all wrapped in Belgian white chocolate ganache and decorated in ivory royal icing. Rose adapted a design I had found on the internet, adorning the bottom tier with edible lace and edible silver leaf sequins that complemented the top of my dress, and then scattered with ivory 3D sugar flowers.

Rose also helped me to create a very special surprise for Nick, a set of six groom’s cupcakes! They were a lemon and lime sponge, topped with lemon butter cream and individually decorated with six different things that represent Nick.

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The food at Chatsworth was absolutely stunning! Our wedding breakfast menu was a starter of salmon served on crushed peas, dressed with a oregano vinaigrette, the intermediate was a champagne and mint sorbet, which was lovely to cleanse the palate, our main was Chatsworth estate roast sirloin of English beef served with potato dauphinoise, truffle, bacon and shallot cabbage, and a red wine sauce, and to finish our dessert was an apple parcel served with butterscotch sauce and clotted cream.

We had a selection of Chatsworth’s own red, white and rose wine on the tables during dinner, and sampled Chatsworth’s own champagne after the ceremony and for the speeches and toasts.

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As entertainment during the day we had the fantastic Simple Strings Trio, who played as guests arrived, during my entrance, throughout the ceremony, and during the drinks reception. It was their music that started me crying as I entered the venue, and I sobbed the whole way up the aisle to Nick!

For the evening we hired Bliss Wedding DJ, and we couldn’t have asked for a more professional yet fun-filled DJ set! The team set up the room with mood lighting and a dance floor which changed the whole feel for the evening – it screamed party time! The DJ played the music we loved and had requested which felt incredibly personal, and the team also took photographs throughout the evening meaning we have a full set of memories from the start of the day until the very end.

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Following our wedding we would definitely recommend our choice of venue to others. Chatsworth House really is the dream fairy-tale setting! We have visited countless times and still get that special feeling when we drive up into the grounds and the house comes into view, and thanks to the sublime service they provided on our wedding day, it will always be just a little bit more magical to us now. It was certainly a blessing to have Kay Rotchford from Chatsworth help us throughout the planning of our wedding, she really went above and beyond what we ever expected.

On reflection it’s so hard to pick my favourite part of the day because I loved every second! But stand out moments include the horse drawn carriage trips with my dad and then with Nick. Also my sobbing as I walked up the aisle, our personalised ring promises and first dance, my father-daughter dance with my dad and the dance I dedicated to my mum.

We honeymooned in Sorrento, Italy. We spent a lot of time on the beach and swimming in the sea, but visited the historical ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and toured the Amalfi coast, stopping at beautiful traditional Italian towns that we truly fell in love with.

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My top tip to other Brides Up North would be to soak up as much of your wedding day as possible! A wedding takes so much time, effort, money and planning – ours felt like it was a lifetime away and was never going to happen, and then all of a sudden it was the week before and it really started to hit home! It really is the best day of your life and I would say just to enjoy every minute and do and have whatever it is you as a couple want, it’s your day so do it your way!

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