Pronovias for an Autumn Wedding at Le Petit Chateau – Louise & Neil

Proposal

We got engaged in our front room on New Year’s Eve 2021. After spending Christmas with family up north, we’d arrived back at our home in London to spend Christmas by ourselves and open presents for one another.  

I was handed a Christmas card with a long message inside, that ended with ‘I have one question to ask…’ – when I looked up, Neil was on one knee with the most beautiful ring in his hand! 

It was massively unexpected and the most wonderful surprise. I ended up spending the rest of the evening crying with shock and happiness. A NYE to remember. At least we’ll never forget the date it happened!

Setting

We got married on the 14th October 2022. We wanted an Autumn wedding and it just so happened that our venue had that date available. 

They had initially offered us the 25th October but as our birthdays fall on the 26th and 27th, it felt a bit much! At least the 14th helps to spread out celebrations a little, however it looks like October will be a big month for us for the foreseeable future!

We got married at Le Petit Chateau in Northumberland.

We met in London and live in London but both being from ‘The North’ we both felt quite strongly about getting married there. We’d booked to see lots of venues across the North East and Yorkshire within a one-week period while visiting family, Le Petit Chateau was the first we saw and we just fell in love!

It ticked all of our boxes. The styling is quirky and different, the gardens look fresh off a Mediterranean postcard, and it’s a pink chateau in the middle of a small Northumberland village – so unexpected!  

From a practical point of view, we loved that the chapel was connected to the ballroom and that there were hotel rooms at the venue for our guests to use, but also in and around the village. It felt like a family and friend takeover in Otterburn! We also had a pre-wedding dinner at the connected William de Percy pub the night before which was a lovely touch and great opportunity for everyone to meet each other before the big day. 

Theme

It was important for the day to feel like ‘us’.  

We’re both really into music so we spent a lot of time picking the perfect band and organising our own playlists for the aisle and background music. 

We love to travel so we named our tables after places we’d been and shared bespoke place cards with pictures of us featured. We also wrote our own vows which was really special. 

We chose a colour scheme of browns, peaches, pinks – very autumnal!  

I love dried flowers and tended to gravitate towards those colours when creating my Pinterest boards. The colours work beautifully with dried arrangements, plus it was Autumn so it was a lovely nod to the season. 

Dried also means they last! Friends and family took away some of the arrangements and I got to keep my bridal bouquet which is now a lovely feature in our living room. 

Dress

I wanted sleeves and I wanted it to be simple and elegant. I’d sought out the dresses I wanted to try and found all of them stocked at Dotty Bridal in Holmfirth. Della by Pronovias was the first I tried and it was ‘the one’! 

It’s always hard to envisage how it looks when it’s pulled in with clips but after a long and painful wait, I knew I’d made the right choice when I saw it again.  

I wore Bowie heels with a lovely bow around the ankle from Harriet Wilde. 

Groom

Neil wore a three piece suit in charcoal grey. 

We bought his suit from Suit Supply on Saville Row in London after multiple recommendations from friends. Shout out to his personal tailor, Jorge who did a great job of making sure it fit like a glove!  His shoes were from Loake.

The groomsmen wore a lighter grey, two-piece suit so they looked different to Neil. We were advised that the groom should wear a different colour to stand out and it looked great! Their suits were also from Suit Supply in London.   

Neil and his best man, Jonno also wore Vivienne Westwood tie clips that were worn and gifted at Jonno’s wedding in Vegas a few years ago.

Bridesmaids

I had two bridesmaids, my sister Charlotte and my cousin Lucy. 

They wore gorgeous gold sequin dresses from Never Fully Dressed. The colour looked beautiful with the colour of the flowers and gave everything a glam feel.

Hair & Beauty

Our hair was done by the lovely Karly Cowan and makeup was done by Stephanie Worral of Blade & Blush based in Durham. 

Photography

Our photographer was the lovely Hannah Brooke. We can’t recommend her enough. 

We picked Hannah as she immediately came across as personable and friendly, which is what we wanted. Someone who would make us feel at ease, blend into the crowd and capture the fun of the day. We got exactly that. 

We met for a pre-wedding shoot a few months before the wedding and any nerves that we had went away really quickly. Everyone at the wedding noted how lovely and friendly she was and every moment we wanted was captured beautifully!  

Book Hannah. You won’t regret it. 

Flowers & Styling

We’d never really discussed a wedding and what it would look like, nor had I ever particularly thought about it! So when Neil popped the question, we pretty much had a blank slate. Brides Up North, Pinterest etc were really helpful to help build a picture and really helped us to envisage what we wanted.

I carried a beautiful mixed dry and fresh flower bouquet, tied with silk ribbon by the brilliant Bees & Butterflies based in Durham. I cried when Sarah brought them to me in the morning. They were so stunning. 

All our daytime flowers were created and designed by Sarah at Bees & Butterflies. We had a gorgeous, elaborate arrangement on the fireplace in the chapel which was repurposed and used on the top table for the reception. 

We also had lovely simple bud vases on the guests tables. 

The entrance to the chapel featured a fab heart shaped light feature by Coco Luminaire, we also repurposed this for the evening reception and hired one of their neon ‘love’ lights to feature behind the cake table.

Cake

We had a three tier, marbled cake made by the brilliant Wendy Harrison, who seems to have made quite a name for herself as the finest cake maker in the North East! We’re very fortunate that Wendy is also Neil’s cousin, therefore we were gifted the cake as a wedding present. It was delicious and kept everyone on a sugar high for at least a week after the wedding! 

Entertainment

We chose a Glasgow based band called The Plectrums. They were amazing! Everyone raved about how good they were and they kept the dancefloor full all evening.

Music is a big love of ours therefore it was important we got this right. We viewed lots of videos online via Coast Entertainments and settled on The Plectrums due to their broad variety of hits and genres on their setlist. We wanted music that would work for everyone across all ages, while also weaving in a bit of alternative/rock hits that meant a lot to us.

They also learnt two songs especially for us – Everlong by The Foo Fighters and Friday I’m in Love by The Cure. They absolutely nailed both of them and the saxophone wowed everyone with a few Ibiza classics renditions, the sax was a huge selling point for me, it added something a bit different to the evening and our guests absolutely loved it.

Thanks to

What’s great about Le Petit Chateau is that they cater for all budgets and it has everything you need in one beautiful building. The chapel, the ballroom, the gardens, guest bedrooms, a bar, a pub next door. Why spend money on two places, plus the transport to get between them?! The attention to detail is meticulous, every room is beautifully decorated, therefore you don’t need to spend a fortune on decorations. It’s already stunning as a blank canvas. 

The staff are fantastic and I felt at ease knowing they were on top of everything. From leading the florists to my room in the morning, to taking my dress to the bridal suite, moving all of our bags and guiding me down to the chapel, they are professional and know exactly what’s happening when. Exactly what you need when you’re nervous/excited/overwhelmed and delirious from a lack of sleep, all at the same time!

Every single one of our suppliers was brilliant and I truly felt every single one went above and beyond for us. I’d highly recommend any of them, however a special little shout out to the following… 

Sarah from Bees & Butterflies; she listened to everything we wanted and delivered beyond what I could have ever imagined. 

Our photographer, Hannah Brooke; an absolute joy to be around and made us feel at ease. She blended into the background like a member of our wedding party and stayed way longer into the evening than I’m sure we’d booked her for! Our little pic sneak previews were so lovely and the entire album makes us smile from ear to ear. 

Best Bit

Saying I do! We’d written our own vows and chosen our own aisle music, a song that really means a lot to us. So walking down the aisle to our favourite song and hearing our vows to each other for the first time was beautiful.

Honeymoon

We went on a mini-moon to the Lake District for a couple of days, then spent a couple of days in the Cotswolds as we made our way back to London.  

A few weeks later we headed on, what I like to call the ’mega-moon’, for a six week trip around south-east asia. We started in Vietnam, then onto Cambodia, Thailand, India for a friend’s wedding, finally ending the trip in The Maldives. It was bliss. 

Advice

Don’t think about anyone else but yourself and what you want as a couple. Also, don’t stress.  

I’ve met so many brides and grooms that are all so worried about what their guests will think about things, or they’re worried about things going wrong.  

Nothing will go wrong. You’ve hired professionals and quite frankly, your guests won’t care about your flower arrangements or your place cards, nor will they remember! And if they don’t like them, why does it matter? It’s what you like and that’s all that matters at the end of the day.