Emily and Tom invited their friends and family to enjoy a relaxed wedding in the Yorkshire Dales, specifically not wanting to make the weekend “all about them”. Well, their wedding day was all about them – and in the best possible of ways: friendly, fun and full of special,
meaningful details
.Exactly the way it should be.
With images by Johnboy Wilson.
emily says:
We got engaged in September 2012, on The Isle of Skye. It was my 30th Birthday and Tom proposed to me at the top of the Quirraing. It was a very special place to us from a previous adventure together. We spent the rest of the week in a cottage on the Isle of Lewis on a secluded beach.We were married on 31st May 2014 as it is around our anniversary of when we met – we thought six years together should be celebrated!
We chose Taitlands near Settle in the Yorkshire Dales. We both love walking and the Dales is one of our favourite places in the world. We actually only looked at Taitlands as a venue, we knew the area was right and as soon as we met Emma (the owner of Taitlands) we knew she would help us organise a relaxed wedding set to the backdrop of the hills.
We wanted a relaxed wedding and encouraged guests to stay in the local area for the weekend so they could go walking or have a meal down at the local pub before/after the wedding day. We didn’t want the weekend to be all about us!
The day was a mixture of themes to reflect the things we really love in the world. We chose natural materials such as wood and wicker and the decor and flowers were inspired by the Hebrides, but we decided to go more elegant for the ceremony itself.
As we love camping and walking I wouldn’t say I was overly girlie so I thought why not go for it on your own wedding day – we chose pale pink and cream theme for the ceremony and wedding breakfast and we teamed this scheme up with dark blue to balance it out.
I looked at lots of dresses online as starting point. I then realised that I was putting off going to a shop to try on actual dresses – the idea made me feel very uncomfortable. I then found online a small independent shop in Pudsey called Scarlett Poppy. The shop makes bespoke dresses and I loved the fact that they are independent.
The ladies at Scarlett Poppy put me at ease and really listened to my ideas. The draft drawings were really helpful to envisage the dress and the process of designing something from scratch was amazing.
I went for a classic figure hugging dress as I love the art deco era and my Mum choose the beaded lace pattern for the back of the dress – a very special moment.
Tom wore a blue suit from TM Lewin, his best man got married 9 months before and they agreed to where the same suits for both weddings.
I wanted to get dresses that the bridesmaids would feel comfortable in and potentially wear again. I went for Karen Millen dresses in pale pink.
Emma at Taitlands is also a florist which made the organising of flowers easy. Emma has fantastic taste and we gave her the colour scheme and a few details and she provided the rest – the flowers were elegant and suited the ceremony perfectly.
Emma provided flowers for the entrance, button holes and bouquets.
Johnboy Wilson was our photographer. I would recommend Johnboy as a photographer; he strikes the balance between being friendly yet professional. We gave a brief to him that we only wanted a few formal photographs of the day and we would rather have more natural pictures of our friends and family having fun – he really did capture the atmosphere of the day and respected our request. I think the pictures speak for themselves.
I would highly recommend Victoria Edwards as a makeup artist, Victoria travelled to the venue making getting ready on the morning of the wedding a fun and girlie time. My Mum and bridesmaids looked fantastic and Victoria listened to each person to find out what style they wanted and gave some great suggestions. Getting ready together was a fun experience.
Our hairdresser was Hannah from Verve in Ilkley, again Hannah travelled to the venue and really transformed my hair into the vintage style I was looking for.
Our families helped the table decor and the marquee – it was a real team effort. We decorated the main rooms ourselves, especially the marquee, where we had lanterns and pompoms. We even added beer mats from New York and Canada which is where we went on honeymoon.
Taitlands has a wonderful chef that cooks traditional yet beautiful food. The guests commented on how fantastic the food was. As Taitlands is independently owned we were able to organise our own wine and Champagne for a corkage fee. The charge was very reasonable and it meant we could buy good quality wine.
Tom and I love cheese and we new pretty early on that we wanted a cheese tower rather than a traditional wedding cake. On our trips to the Dales we would stop off at The Courtyard on the A64. The Courtyard has an independent cheese shop which we love called The Courtyard Dairy. We knew we would have to buy our cheese from there as the selection and knowledge of the owner, Andy, was fantastic.
Whether we should give favours seem one of the things we debated the most! We decided give favours in the end and went for quite a simple idea. We bought a favours kit from Hobbycraft and filled the small wine glasses with a mixture of five sweets including some sugared almonds to be traditional
The best part of the day was walking round the lawn after the ceremony with my new Husband chatting with the people we love.
We had a selection of lawn games, which we arranged ourselves and we even made little signs. Taitlands supplied the Croquet.
One of Tom’s best friends, Simon is a wedding DJ and he did last performance in the UK as he has since moved to Dubai! The company was called BigBigLove. Tom and Simon worked together and use to DJ together at parties in Leeds.
We had a short break in the Yorkshire Dales after the ceremony to just relax and remember the day, then three months later we went to New York and Canada, taking in the Niagara Falls, Victoria, the Canadian Rockies and Vancouver.
A tip that was given to us and that I’ll pass on to other Brides Up North was to take the time with your Husband/Wife to just stand back and take in the moments on the day. It really made it special for us.
