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Happy Valentine’s Day my lovelies!  I’ve obviously written this post in advance, as I anticipated that I’d be far too tied up clearing the hallway of all those love notes landing on my welcome mat…

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In reality though, there’s only one man for me, so Happy Valentine’s Day to my lovely husband Alan – our last as a family of two! 

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I’ll let you into a secret – I absolutely LOVE Valentine’s Day.  Commercial racket yes, but so is Christmas (my other favourite holiday)!  Let’s just say I’m a marketer’s dream!  I think it harks back to the excitement of my school days: seeing if my of-the-moment crush liked me enough to pay a visit to Clinton Cards.  Generally not.  But hey!  I may never really have got any cards to write home about (except the ones from you, thanks Mum), but it was all about the anticipation!

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Today, we celebrate by meeting a couple full of anticipation for their wedding day, having all but given up on finding long term love before connecting online.  So dip something sweet in your cuppa and enjoy their love story, with images by Ashton Photography. 

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Chriss says:  We had booked a mini break trip to the beautiful city of Verona and had planned to visit all of the usual landmarks. I hadn’t been too bothered about going to visit the “Casa di Giulietta”, but Ritch really wanted to go, so reluctantly, I braved the hoards of French and Italian kids on Shakespearean educationals and we bought our two tickets into the house. Once inside and touring the various rooms it was thankfully quite peaceful as most of the crowds were gathering in the courtyard, staring up at the balcony or otherwise trying to encourage eternal luck and love by rubbing Juliet’s right breast! As we entered the room and waited for a group to leave the balcony, Ritch was hanging back and, with hindsight, I suppose seemed to be a little preoccupied. He encouraged me to go out onto the balcony; I looked down on the school kids in the courtyard… they looked back up at me.  I turned around to go back inside and Ritch was down on his knee beside me, with that little box in his hand: “Will you marry me?”

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Of course I said “Yes”! All very romantic and, for me, the perfect proposal…the boy done good!

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As soon as we announced our engagement one of my best friends offered to host our special day in their beautiful home in West Lancashire – a truly unique venue. We planned it for October 6^th 2012 and can’t wait to share our wedding photographs with Brides Up North soon!

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After years in the relationship wilderness, we have both said that we had all but given up.  Our first date was “last chance saloon” for the on-line dating game!  Good job that evening in June 2010 was successful!

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We arranged to meet half way between where we both lived and our first date was at a riverside hotel bar where we sat outside and laughed about each others’ online dating experiences – always and good ice breaker!  There was definitely a mutual attraction at first sight, love, however, took a little longer…

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I knew Ritch was the one for me when I received my first pair of shoes from him – what girl couldn’t fall for a bloke that buys her shoes?

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We’ve waited a long time to get lucky in love, so our biggest wish for married life is to stay happy and for it to get better and better.

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We didn’t have any decent photographs of us together and neither of us felt very comfortable in front of the camera, so the option to have an engagement shoot was a great addition to the wedding package and a chance to get a bit of practice in. Steph of Ashton Photography gave us a few tips on how to get the best photos – but she did all of the hard work. 

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We had a great day out with Steph. We live in Blackpool and spend a lot of time with our dog Jack, on the beach and prom.  Ritch is also a hard core cyclist who clocks up many a mile up and down the sea front on his two wheels; this was the natural place for us to use as a backdrop for our pre-wedding shoot.

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Even for someone that works within wedding industry and who knows what to expect, planning your own wedding can still be very daunting! The thousands of pages in the (very expensive!) glossies and limitless web coverage available to brides and grooms is overwhelming. I’ve found Brides Up North to be an invaluable place to get real ideas and real information from real people relative to the area that we live in… great weddings happen Up North – fact!

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Congratulations Chriss & Ritch!

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Get in touch to share your love story with Brides Up North!  Here’s how.

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Brides Up North UK Wedding Blog – Images © 2013 Ashton Photography

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