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One gorgeous Real Wedding on a wet and windy Monday deserves another!  At least that’s my philosophy.  And this afternoon’s delight is an absolute corker. 

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I just love the abundance of flowers, greenery, owl motifs and personal touches in Lucy and John’s stunning woodland wedding in the North East, with rockin’ images by Angel Fish Photographic.

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If you go down to the woods today, you’re in for a big surprise…

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Lucy says:  We got engaged on New Years 2010-2011 at a friends party, we were both quite tipsy so cannot remember the finer details! We then went ring shopping together.

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We were married on Saturday 4th August 2012 at St Mary and St Thomas Aquinas Roman Catholic Church at Ryton, and then the reception was in Brockwell Woods. 

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Whilst we are not practicing Catholics ourselves, our families are, so we wanted a Church wedding. The Church is near our lovely miners cottage in Stargate, and not too far from the woods. We loved the church itself, the architecture is really stunning and it was nice and light for the photography. We also got on well with the Priest who was to conduct our ceremony.

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The reception venue was chosen as we are a very outdoorsy couple. Our worst nightmare would have been a hotel reception. As you cannot get married outdoors in the UK holding the reception outside was the next best thing. The woods we chose hold special memories for us as some of our best weekends as a couple have been spent camping at that very spot, just us, the stars, snuggled up with a good bottle of wine and the campfire. We asked the farmer who owns the woods and he agreed to rent us the whole woods for the week at a very reasonable price!

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Our invites asked our guests to come to our “Midnight Woodland Soiree”.

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Green featured heavily with the whole woodland theme – our invites showed two owls cuddling up in a very leafy tree. Our chair-sashes were green, the bridal car green, the mens’ kilts were green. There was also a bit of magenta for contrast – magenta in my flowers and headpiece, in the lighting, and in the place settings.

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I originally ordered what I thought to be a beautiful dress from a Chinese online shop, it looked amazing and was around the £100 mark. Do not make this mistake! When it arrived I was devastated, it looked nothing at all like the picture advertised. My photographer recently got her own wedding dress from “I Do” at Bill Quay, Gateshead, and she recommended I try there. I did and they were amazing. Six weeks before the wedding and they managed to sort me out with an amazing oyster colour a-line corset dress embellished with roses.

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Eleanor’s Floral Creations in Jarrow did our flowers. I had a posey and also a wreath for my hair. They included ferns and ivy for the foliage, and amnesia roses added a bit of colour.

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My adult bridesmaid was John’s sister Lucy, who wore a short magenta prom style dress from Next. My two flowergirls wore dresses from Monsoon. The boys all wore Highland wear to honour John’s Scottish family blood. This was hired from Slaters in Newcastle and we used Hunting Stewart tartan.

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Everything was sourced and made by us. We like to be self sufficient and I believe in being quite “green”. Our tables were decorated with hand-picked wild flowers in jam jars, our favours were slices of tree trunk which had owls lasered into them by our own fair hands. Also the campfire was a central focus and communal point for people during the day and kept us warm long into the night!

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For our wedding cake, we bought rounds of cheese from Marks and Spencer and just put it together and decorated ourselves with fruit and berries. Were more savoury than sweet people and we like cheese!

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We had a jazz band called The Tenth Avenue, and then also a friend of ours Mick Rolfe who is in several bands, did an acoustic set of covers and his own material. Another friend of ours DJ’ed for us.

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John’s Dad kindly volunteered the use of his old Land Rover which fitted into the whole outdoors theme. We fitted it with ribbons and had Johns brother Tom drive us to and from the venues. It also helped shuttled people across the fields to and from the party clearing.

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Logistics are important for a woodland wedding! Our food was absolutely delicious and supplied by Epicurus. Our clearing was fully lit on the night, with equipment supplied by RnB and Nitelites. In case of rain we had shelter from Waltons Marquees (we didn’t need it though it was lovely sunshine all afternoon and night!), drinks were from Bar 4 Hire. Some of our best spent money was with Loos 4 Hire who supplied us with a trailer containing toilets that made you feel like you were in a posh hotel and JS Hunt supplied our generator which kept us partying all night.

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Late in the night we cracked out marshmallows and everybody came together toasting them around the campfire. It was amazing to see our guests, people who maybe thought a wedding in the woods wouldn’t work, put aside their reservations, chill out in their wellies and just get on with having a jolly good time!

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After the wedding, we went glamping in Andalucía in a yurt. Our honeymoon was rudely interrupted by a swarm of wasps and then huge spiders too so we ended up relocating to Marbella for the second half of our time away.

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My top tip for other Brides Up North is that it’s true what they say the day goes SO fast! Make you sure take five minutes every hour or so to reconnect with each other and steal yourselves away from the party if possible. In the planning of the wedding, plan plan plan. We are a very laidback couple but learning from experience I’d advise to fully discuss budgets with both parties well in advance to prevent any last-minute problems.

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Congratulations Lucy and John!

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Contact me to see your own Real Wedding on these pages!

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Brides Up North UK Wedding Blog – Images © 2012 Angel Fish Photographic

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