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Over the festive period I’ll be recapping some of my very favourite Real Weddings from the last 12 months on the wedding blog. It’s been a tough choice! In true Brides Up North style, each wedding featured on these pages is unique, beautiful and gorgeously personal. It’s been an exceptionally fabulous year! Enjoy…
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Today’s Real Wedding, sent to me by bride Marianna of Smink Makeup is an absolute stunner! This bright and colourful outdoor Summer wedding in the heart of the Dales countryside has lots of DIY touches and is a real reminder about all that is great and good about Yorkshire after a long drab Winter.
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I especially love Marianna’s confidence in choosing a dress (or two) in defiance of tradition. Overall, this wedding is a true celebration of the couple’s personalities – from Norwegian flags to vintage couture to fairy wings.
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Marianna says: We got engaged on a glorious hot day in July 2009 underneath Tower Bridge. Matt pulled out a diamond from a piece of paper and popped the question (then we designed the rings together).
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We had two “weddings”: the legal one on the 23rd July 2011 (at Yorebridge House, Yorkshire dales) and then the next weekend 30th July, we had an outside blessing written by One Life Ceremonies and a village hall party at The Priests House, Barden on the Bolton Abbey Estate and afterwards at Cracoe Village Hall.
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The first date was chosen because this was Matt’s parents 51st wedding anniversary and we thought we would continue the family tradition.
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As we had recently moved up to Yorkshire from the South and fallen in love with the area, we wanted to showcase beautiful part of the world to our guests. The Priests House has a lovely feel, super views and a true sense of history (it was one of Henry VII’s hunting lodges) and Cracoe Village Hall was a fun informal venue we could transform into our own space (and it was cheap to hire… about £350 for the weekend).
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I travelled to the blessing in a brand spanking new Land rover – courtesy of some friends who work for them, and we then bussed all of our guests to the village hall in a vintage red Routemaster. Because of the roads in the Dales, the double decker wouldn’t quite make it to The Priests house, so we had to get a single decker 1950s bus as well. It was quite a sight coming into Burnsall on the small bus seeing the Routemaster waiting for us in the valley. I think we caused chaos along the Dales roads that day though!
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We wanted the wedding to represent “us” and as I have worked at so many weddings (I am a makeup artist) I knew that we wanted something, bright, and less formal and above all fun! We chose a colour scheme of hot pink and orange. We had miles of homemade bunting and tablecloths made by our mums, with ribbons in the same colours everywhere! We had lots of church candles in storm lanterns, wrapped in ivy, little silver glass tea light holders and butterflies all over the place.
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I was very spoilt and had two dresses!
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Up until a couple of weeks before the wedding I was going to wear my vintage dress for both days, but as we got closer I realised that I actually wanted to surprise Matt on both days… so I remember dashing off to Boundary Mills and finding the perfect floral dress (it looked like a watercolour painting) there so I ended up wearing this for the legal day and for the blessing I found a vintage 1970’s dress at the Corn Exchange in Leeds which I had it altered to fit me.
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It was a dress by Alfred Shaheen, a Hawaiian designer who is credited with inventing the Hawaiian shirt, so it had quite a graphic hand printed design with gold flowers and silver butterflies on a cream base. The dress was tea dress length. I also pushed the boat out and had a handmade corset made in corresponding colours – a bit of an extravagance but it gave me for the first (and possibly the last time) a 24 inch waist for the day.
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For the legal wedding a very sweet bouquet based of roses, freesias and rosemary and for the blessing we went bold – I love dahlias so we has lots of these and gerbera bold colours. The flower girls got little versions and the best men (all three of them|) had large gerbera buttonholes. My flowers were by Sally at Serendipity and Leafy Couture.
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I had 3 little flower girls who wore grey and silver dresses from M&S, and because of the informal country vibe, we wanted individuality so my adult bridesmaids wore their own dresses in grey and orange. I coordinated them in with some lovely necklaces with pearls and ribbons from another etsy store.
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The butterflies on my dress sort of flew through the whole wedding on our invites, table plans, thank you cards – you name it! I even found some sugar paper butterflies online and these got stuck to our meringues on the dessert table.
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We had a fingerprint tree made where people popped their prints on as leaves and wrote their names – we are getting it framed and I much preferred this idea to a normal wedding book.
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My grandfather’s wife made the cake – she took inspiration from our ideas, so we ended up with little drunken sheep, figures of us, and the words “ all you need is love” in M&Ms written down the cake – it was really sweet and very us! I love chocolate so we had a chocolaty fruit base with lots of cherries running through.
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As I am Norwegian, my godmother made a Norwegian “Tower” Cake which is like a chewy almond cake base pressed into rings then laid on top of each other getting smaller towards the top. This was decorated with traditional Norwegian flags and icing sugar piping.
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Our surname is Easter, so we got Green and Blacks golden eggs for the favours.
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My favourite part of the day was seeing the whole thing come together. As a bride you work really hard on all the nitty gritty bits and it is amazing to see that play out in front of your eyes. Also it was quite overwhelming to have all of our friends and family in one place as that doesn’t usually happen and I felt very blessed and loved. It was just a perfect day and we were blessed with the weather too.
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We had a great guitarist at the blessing – Ramon de Juan (Ilkley) and to kick off the party after dinner at the village hall we had Kabuki from Leeds. An ah –ma –zing big band with a strong vocalist. They did a great set for us and honestly absolutely everyone danced!
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In the evening we also had a photo booth run by our photographer, Barnaby, and boy do we have some fun pictures from the end of the night!
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Just after the wedding we went off for a couple of days “spamoon” as Matt couldn’t take any time off because of work commitments so we went to Rockliffe Hall near Darlington – complete bliss and relaxation. Later in the Autumn we then hopped around Malaysia and ate loads of delicious Asian food.
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My top tip for other Brides Up North would be to do it your way – be true to yourself and on the day be willing to let it flow. Make sure that what you want and do will stand the test of time whether this be makeup, theme or photography style.
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Congratulations Marianna & Matt! 
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Newlywed or newly engaged? Contact me to share your Real Wedding memories.
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Brides Up North UK Wedding Blog – Images © 2012 Barnaby Aldrick
Smink Makeup 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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