If you’re craving some pretty on this Monday morning then you’ve come to the right place, as today we’re sharing Hayley and Ross’ gorgeous celebration, complete with pastel wedding colours and handpicked style blooms.
As well as the setting being stunning, so too are the bride and groom with Ross opting for a slightly unusual bottle green suit and Hayley wearing a slim-line vintage style gown with exquisite detailing.
Above all we love that the day is
beautifully styled
but has a very chilled out vibe to it too – well until the reception that is when it appears some rather competitive moves went down on the dancefloor!With images by Knot Just Pics.
hayley says
: We had been together for eight years and were travelling around Australia and New Zealand visiting family and friends when we got engaged. Ross’ mum lives in New Zealand and she planned a big trip for Ross, myself, her and her husband around the South Island. We stayed in lots of small out of the way places, one of which was called ‘Barb’s Bach’ in the Marlborough Sounds (A bach is a holiday cottage). It was a fair drive from anywhere so really peaceful and remote. Ross and I were sleeping in a ‘sleep out’ which is essentially a spare bedroom down a walkway in the garden. Ross is not an early riser so I was getting suspicious of him getting up so early to make coffee in the mornings. Little did I know that these were failed attempts to get the ring from his mother’s handbag where it was safely hidden! Eventually he got down on one knee next to the bed and proposed. It was a total shock, having been together for so long, I just did not see it coming!
Our wedding date was slap bang in the middle of the school summer holidays as I am a primary school teacher. I needed both time to sort things out and then time to go on a honeymoon before school started again.
Ross is from South Africa, I’m from Shropshire and we live in London, so no matter where we got married, people would have to travel from somewhere! In the end, we decided on Shropshire as it was the most affordable option for people having to travel. It is also one of the most beautiful, unspoilt places in the UK (although I may be a little biased!). Our venue was somewhere that I had often been to with my family for special occasion dinners although it took us ages to think of it as a wedding venue. We had been looking for places with accommodation and had no luck. During a family Sunday lunch we had a quick look around The Mytton and Mermaid Hotel and it was pretty perfect! Coincidentally my grandfather had booked my parents a room there on their wedding night but there was a mix up with the booking and they didn’t stay. Thankfully my parents were able to get over it – 36 years later!
We didn’t intend to go for a particular theme for our wedding but we both have a fondness for vintage and I love the countryside. With our venue being a Grade II listed building surrounded by beautiful countryside, we needed to do very little to create the look that we wanted.
Our colour scheme was country garden vintage pastels which was great for the time of year and the venue.
When it came to my dress, I tried on various designs and knew pretty early on that I didn’t want one with a corset. I wanted a relaxed vintage style and most of all I wanted to be comfortable! After a very bad experience in a vintage bridal shop I decided to go to the British high street. I chose a perfect dress from Phase Eight. It looked exactly right and I was very comfortable!
Ross is a model and works for Paul Smith regularly. I’d spotted the bottle green suit he ended up wearing in the shop and Ross was initially not impressed. After trying it on he came around to the idea and I think that it suited our vintage look really well.
My bridesmaids were my sister and my niece. My poor sister must have tried on more dresses than my niece and I combined. We just could not find the right one! In the end we found a beautiful dress from Debenhams and my mum chose my niece’s outfit, also from Debenhams.
The groomsmen all wore their own navy suits and we bought them all a matching tie and shirt. The shirts were my favourite part of their outfits as they had tiny hearts and arrows all over them. The shirts were Paul Smith and the ties were Jaeger.
My uncle owns two gorgeous classic cars that he knows I love, so he offered to lend us one to use as the wedding car. It was a two seater Sunbeam Alpine and my father drove it. It was such a lovely day, driving along with the top down along the country lanes; it is a really special memory to have with my dad on my wedding day (and lots of fun!).
The photographers that we asked to capture our day (because they are awesome and happen to be our very good friends) were Andy and Szerdi of Knot Just Pics. They take beautiful pictures and make everyone feel so at ease. So we were really excited when they said that they would come over from South Africa for our wedding. Not only would they be there but they would be our photographers too! We were over the moon.
They are a husband and wife team so they work really well together. They met with us beforehand to ask us what shots we would like. Szerdi came to the house where I was getting ready and took the pics of the girls and Andy was with the boys. They are really unobtrusive and polite, even though they were our guests, I feel like they would integrate with any wedding well. I couldn’t recommend them more highly: they are professional, positive and a great addition to the wedding day.
Mine and my bridesmaids’ flowers were all by Lipstick and Gin in Shrewsbury. Loraine is very easy to work with and meeting with her to discuss the flowers was a lovely experience. She is very easy going and perfectly understood the look that I was going for. I had a spray and the bridesmaids had hand tied bouquets. They were supposed to look like I had picked them from the garden, they were perfect!
For the reception flowers I knew that I wanted cut glass vases and again, I wanted them to look like they had come from the garden. I scoured charity shops for the vases (which were surprisingly easy to come by) and the day before the wedding mum, dad, Ross and I went to all the local supermarkets and bought our flowers. It was a bit of a gamble but it certainly paid off! Both Ross and I love flowers and were able to choose the specific look we wanted. We also added in a spectacular bunch picked from my sister’s garden. I would love to have arranged them myself too but my mum would hear none of it as the hotel had said that they would put them in to vases for us. Kim at the Mytton and Mermaid started to work as soon as we dropped them off on Friday afternoon.
We named out tables after places that we had travelled to together and hence where some of our friends had travelled from to be there. It was a nice way for them to see how special those places are to us.
We decided on ‘vintage’ hankies as our favour because we wanted something that people could use on the day and take away with them afterwards. We found the ladies ones on eBay and the gents ones at the local Sunday market. We tied the names on with brown package labels to give it that extra vintage feel. The children each had a plastic African animal in homage to Ross’ South African heritage.
Neither Ross nor I are fans of iced fruit cake so we went for a ‘naked’ wedding cake instead. It was a lemon sponge cake decorated with lots of lovely summer berries. It was really yummy and went down very well! It was made by a lady called Vicki Katz, who I never actually met. I found her through word of mouth and we communicated through email – sounds strange but it was actually very easy and straightforward!
For the wedding breakfast we decided on a traditional English pub fayre menu. As we were dragging people from all over the world we wanted to show them some good English food (I’m fully aware that our food does not have a great reputation with the rest of the world so I set out to prove them wrong!). We had goats cheese and beetroot tart for starter, roast Shropshire Beef with all the trimmings for main, followed by sticky toffee pudding (naturally). The Mytton and Mermaid do great food, devised by their own chefs using local ingredients and it is superb.
For our entertainment we wanted live music so we looked online at Alive Network. We found a band from the Midlands called Fraudio (get it? They do covers!). We watched some of their videos and they seemed good so we went for it. They called us a couple of times before the big day to check in and have a quick chat. Then we emailed some set ideas and our first dance. They sounded amazing, were very low maintenance (in fact, I barely spoke to them) and they kept everyone very entertained.
We also had a ‘paper moon’ photo booth that my father and brother in law made for us. It was based on an old American set up where people went to have their pictures taken sitting on what looks like a paper moon. Ours was a homemade version but it really fun to see people taking their own pictures and getting themselves into their own groups.
The Mytton and Mermaid were in charge from the word go and we would highly recommend them to other couples. They seem very laid back but it’s because they are so very experienced. I left everything with them on the Friday afternoon knowing that it would all look exactly right when I arrived. It was completely stress-free. Kim, the events manager, is very friendly, easy going and helpful. In fact, all of the staff were! I could not fault them. When I think of all the stress other friends have had setting up and taking it all back down again, I count myself lucky! I would add that our budget wasn’t huge but that the service that we got in return was impeccable.
My favourite part of the wedding was sitting at the sweetheart table with Ross and looking out at all our friends and family having a wonderful time. It was just a dream to be able to bring everyone together like that; best day ever!
My top tip for other Brides Up North would be to have a countdown check list (lots of bridal magazines have them in), as they are very handy. I just plodded along with one of those doing little and often and it seemed to work quite well. Also, delegate – people love weddings and love feeling like they are part of the big day so delegate, delegate, delegate!
