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Morning Brides Up North!  How was your weekend? 

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I spent the weekend working on some special behind the scenes wedding blog projects and some new material for blog posts that will be appearing on your screen shortly.  Before running the Brides Up North blog, events and brand I couldn’t have imagined enjoying a fully working weekend, but they are now becoming the norm – and I wouldn’t change things for the world.  The need to put in even more extra hours stems from all the bridal freelance work that I have been taking on recently alongside developing the business on home turf.  Working hard to spread the Northern Revolution’s message beyond the pages of this site is definitely worth it. 

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This post was one of my very favourite to work on (somewhere between the early hours and brunch on Saturday morning), and certainly got my weekend off to a great start.  Sent to me by real Bride Anna and the fabulous Sheffield wedding photographer India Hobson Weddings – who also shot the official photographs for the Brides Up North Tweet Up Yorkshire this year – this pretty and personal Sheffield wedding at the Botanic Gardens is bloomin’ beautiful.  Happy Monday!

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India says:  I loved shooting Anna & Matt’s wedding.  The weather held out for us, and the glasshouses gave such stunning light that it was actually a pleasure when it did start to drizzle a little! I love how relaxed Anna & Matt were, not only at the wedding but when I met with them before – they trusted me completely and I knew that Anna (a graphic designer) would love for me to be creative with the images.

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I had endless conversations with their guests and every single one started with them saying "It’s such a perfect day isn’t it?" there was so much love for these two and it made me all warm and fuzzy inside!
I loved the cake, and I wanted to eat the flowers because they looked so good.

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Our bride Anna says: We got engaged on 2^nd March 2012. It was a really short engagement for us – which is what we wanted. We got engaged whilst sitting at home on the sofa. Matt had the ring tucked into his cardigan pocket.

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We got married on 14th July 2012 at The Botanical Gardens in Sheffield with our reception at The Chimney House, Kelham Island.

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We chose the Botanical Gardens because we had spent some time there before and thought it was really pretty. When we went to look around it was a beautiful sunny day, and it just seemed perfect. We had been looking for somewhere that we had both enjoyed visiting previously; that was quite informal but was still very special.  We fell in love with Chimney House before we even looked around. We knew that was where we wanted to have our reception instantly as Matt used to live near there and we love the area so such. Inside was even better than we could have hoped and everything just fit in perfectly with our idea of how we wanted the day to be.

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We didn’t really have a theme, we just wanted it to be fun and relaxed. Our colours started as mustard and grey but ended up having some pale blue and pale pink thrown in for good measure! I found it hard to stick to a particular scheme because I kept changing my mind!

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I definitely knew that I wanted a short dress. This proved quite hard to come by and many shops didn’t have many in stock. As we planned a short engagement, this also limited the kind of dress I could get in time.

I ended up going to The Bridal Rooms in Chesterfield and they had ‘the dress’- which was actually a bridesmaids dress made in ivory! It was perfect- very swirly and 50’s in its style.

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We never planned to have the bridesmaids in the same dress, we thought we would just stick to a certain colour scheme. However when we went shopping, we saw a beautiful grey dress in Noa Noa and both of my bridesmaids loved it! It suited the colour scheme, it was so pretty and not too ‘bridesmaidy’ which none of us

wanted! The dresses were perfect and looked amazing on the day!

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Matt bought his suit from Jigsaw and had shoes by Clarks Originals.

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Where possible we wanted to choose very local suppliers. Our rings – and my engagement ring- were by Jennie Gill a jeweller working in Sheffield at Persistence Works. Her work is amazing and I knew I wanted a Jennie Gill ring way before we got engaged! Luckily Matt knew this and asked Jennie to design a ring especially for our engagement.

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We got all of the wedding flowers from Fresh Ideas in Chesterfield. My mum had used this florist for years and they always did really beautiful flowers.  I really wanted quite a wild looking freshly picked bouquet. I wanted to bring in the yellows of my colour scheme. The result was such a delicate pretty bouquet with craspedia, spray roses and other little flowers.

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We decided to have a wedding bus to take all of our guests to the botanical gardens and back to the Chimney House. We hired a London Routemaster from Vintage Vehicle Hire in Doncaster. This was such a success and the guests loved it!

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It took the guests to the botanical gardens, then returning to the Leopold Hotel to collect myself and the bridesmaids.  After the ceremony it took us on a scenic tour of the Rivelin Valley around Sheffield. It was an excellent way to keep all of the guests together and keep in the party spirit!

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There are too many favourite parts of the day – and some that I didn’t even remember until I saw the photos! Just having the opportunity to spend time with all of our friends and family in such a beautiful venue.

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We didn’t want to splash out on a huge cake as it wasn’t something that we felt was very important to us. We ordered a two tier cake from M&S that I decorated myself with pom pom trimmings and little ceramic birds.  Matt’s mum also kindly made us a yummy chocolate cake and buns that went down a storm.

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My bridesmaid Helen and I hand embroidered pin badges for all of the guests with tiny hearts and moustaches on!

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We love soul music so we hired a local soul DJ – Debbie Soul – to play some tunes later in the evening to get people dancing.  We were also so lucky to have my bridesmaid’s brother Colin Taylor to play guitar throughout the meal. He sounded amazing! Such lovely background music that really made the evening.

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We honeymooned in Basilicata, Southern Italy.

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My top tip for other Brides Up North would be that you can totally arrange a wedding in less than 6 months!

Make sure that you think about what is important to you and what kind of wedding you want. Our wedding was exactly how we wanted it and everyone said the whole day was unique to us. This made it even more special.

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Congratulations Anna & Matt!

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Brides Up North UK Wedding Blog – Images © 2012 India Hobson Weddings 

India Hobson Weddings is a Brides Up North Featured Supplier, but this is not a sponsored post

Contact Brides Up North to submit your business as a Featured Supplier

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