Real Weddings

Charlie Brear for an Autumn Wedding at Sandon Hall – Rebecca & Jake

Sarah Symonds

A palette of vibrant burnt oranges and deep green lends an automatic autumnal vibe to today’s gorgeous real wedding. It’s all the inspo you seasonal brides and grooms have been hunting for, with a whole lot of personality and a relaxed approach.

When you can involve so many friends and relatives in the supplier list for your big day it really adds a whole new element to the process. For Becky and Jake this has totally been reflected in the happy faces we see taking centre stage in the bright and energetic snaps from their wedding. The evident emotion written across the faces of our couple and their guests is tangible, and Sandon Hall in Staffordshire is the perfect backdrop.

We caught up with blushing bride Becky to hear all about the pretty bridal details, from her customised Charlie Brear gown (with a little ASOS twist!), to saying “I do” in sparkly Choo…

With photography by Teddy Pig Photography

Proposal

It was Christmas Eve 2020, very late morning, and I was lazing around in my pjs, unbrushed hair, just chilling with my puppy Baz. Jake walks in and asks me to close my eyes. Then as I do, he walks over and says “hold out your hands” and dumps a big box in my hands.

He then said “Becky, I think you’re really sexy, do you fancy marrying me?” obviously I said yes and in a box filled with love hearts (which is a running joke as he hates them) was a ring.

As we went to have a kiss, our jealous dog jumped in between us, and licked our faces.

Setting

We married on the 6th of November 2021. It had taken us nine years to get engaged, so after the awful year 2020 was panning out to be, I wanted to get married in 2021 to have a massive party for everyone to get together after not seeing each other in so long.

The wedding was at Sandon Hall. It is a fabulous venue and still the home of the Harrowby family. The conservatory is stunning and for us this was the main selling feature.

Also we had a fairly big wedding with 100+ guests and with having an autumnal wedding, we needed somewhere that had a lot of rooms in case the weather was drizzly (which it was).

Theme

No real theme but our colour scheme was green and burnt orange. Mainly because it’s autumnal but also because dark green is flattering.

Dress

I originally saw a dress on ASOS which had a feathered skirt and looked amazing although the top would need a lot of work as I’m very different sizes on my bust and my waist.

My mum convinced me to go dress shopping and I found an amazing shop that specialises in boho type styles, Cicily Bridal. Turns out you basically customise Charlie Brear dresses to make them completely unique.

I fell in love with my silhouette in the Haliton dress, which had some 1930s style buttons on the front, and after showing the owners the ASOS dress, they were happy to get their seamstress to have a look at getting it made into a skirt to fit over the dress in the evening! It was absolutely perfect! I couldn’t fault the shop as they had so many fittings to make sure the dress looked perfect and Rachel worked some absolute magic in making the skirt hook on in the evening!

Groomsmen

The men wore Cavani suits from Gents Menswear.

Bridesmaids

My bridesmaids wore a mix of dark green velvet dresses from Shein and Silk Fred.

Beauty

Hair and makeup were by HairbyFranki and Sarah Broadgate.

Photographer

Our photographer was Teddy Pig Photography. This was the one area I was getting stressed about as I wanted bright, colourful, relaxed photos. After jumping around Instagram, I came across Kerry’s page and absolutely fell in love with a wedding she did in Brighton, with sequins and a glitter bar… That was it.

After a super quick response to my enquiry, we immediately hit it off and the relaxed but stunning, romantic photos were perfect.

Videographer

Michael Cartner was our videographer. It was quite last minute after a friend said how much she watched her videos back.

My friend recommended Michael and again, I couldn’t fault Michael on the day and our wedding video is perfect to look back on the day.

Styling

Flowers by Charlotte, Jake’s fabulous Auntie. I said I wanted some big flower displays with maybe branches formed into a tripod, but in the end Charlotte exceeded all expectations, from the amazing flowers she sourced, to hand-dying my favourite silk flowers (they were out of season) to match my colour scheme.

Other decorations were done by J.A.G.G. After seeing an old friend from school going into event decoration and equipment hire with her mum, I saw disco balls in displays and decided yep, I want some of that!

They did an amazing job, they made a huge copper wedding arch with loads of pampas and some wedding signs, and just took all the stress out of the set up on the day. On the day I was running around like a kid in a sweet shop looking at all the displays that Julie, Grace and Charlotte set up.

Our photobooth was from BoothCo and our glitter bar was from RubyLemon.

Favours

We decided to do geo chocolate brownie cake things instead of having a wedding cake.

A friend said, when I was chatting about favours, “don’t bother doing anything that has to be taken away after the day, because you will find them all lying on the tables after the evening finishes”. All the cakes went though!

The cake favours were done by Cake My Day and were super tasty, with name tags attached rather than having place cards.

Dining

Sandon have preferred suppliers for this so the catering was done by Vanilla in All Seasons. We went with a bespoke menu of an antipasti sharing platter with all the tasty things onm then pie and chips for main. There was a ‘his and hers’ choice where a table of 10 would get 5 steak and ale pies (hers) and 5 chicken and ham pies (his), everyone would then need to discuss which pie they would like as a bit of an ice breaker for the tables.

The bar was done by The Estate Boys who again we couldn’t fault!

Entertainment

We wanted an 80/90s tribute band, as we wanted to create a Reflex nightclub vibe in Sandon Hall.

Thanks to

Melissa at Sandon could not do enough for us, with fizz the morning of the wedding, endless tea and coffee and being on board for any crazy ideas we had.

Best bit

The couple’s portrait bit. Kerry stole us for the photos and this was amazing, just to get some time to breathe and go “WOW we are married!”. The day goes by so quickly and this was just an amazing moment where we got a few seconds to take it in.

The other best bit was that the morning was super chilled. Me, my bridesmaids, my mum and Jake’s mum had a few hours where we got to drink and chat and be really relaxed the morning of the day.

The ceremony was filled with so many smiles and laughs as I got my words wrong and the registrar again made us feel so relaxed.

Honeymoon

Still TBC as we wanted to wait until Covid restrictions were over for overseas travel!

Advice

My advice would be to do what you want. There is always lots of pressure that you need to do this and that… screw the rules. Structure the day how you want.

Also the Brides Up North real weddings were really useful for inspo and ideas!

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