This morning on the blog we’re trading the North of the UK for the North of France to bring you Karen and Simon’s
beautifully styled
destination wedding.Not only is this one brimming with lots of big day inspiration, but bride Karen is also sharing lots of helpful tips for those who fancy crossing the channel to exchange their vows too.
As a wedding stylist dealing in décor and flowers, Karen felt a little pressured to impress her guests but she need not have feared for her gorgeous bouquet and pretty styling with the use of paper pom poms and lanterns was nothing short of stunning!
With images by Lily Rose Lane Photography.
karen says:
Simon had originally planned to propose in Harrogate when we went for the day to see the first stage of the Tour de France but he didn’t get the chance because the trains were so horribly delayed the end of the day was stressful and we missed our dinner reservation. He waited a bit longer and proposed when we were away for the weekend in Hamsterly Forest, although it took a couple of drinks for him to pluck up the courage.Our wedding was on Saturday 5th September 2015. We got married in Neufchatel en Bray in Normandy, France. Neufchatel actually translates to Newcastle, which we thought was quite poignant as that’s where we live.
We were looking for something in northern France that would be easy for our guests to get to and found Cellier du Val Boury – a gorgeous 17th century farmhouse that has previously been used as a wine cellar in the middle of a lovely traditional French town. I found out after we’d booked it that I actually used to stop there for breakfast on our way to the south of France on family holidays as a child.
We didn’t have a theme really but chose decor that suited both our styles. I knew we would have to transport everything ourselves in the car to France so we had to be clever about what we used.
I also knew that as a wedding stylist there was a lot of pressure to dress the venue well as everyone was expecting something spectacular! I wanted to make a statement without spending a fortune and so we went for lots of ribbons, paper lanterns and pom poms that we could easily pack down to transport.
Simon also made some great signs and an order or the day out of old palettes and fence panels which he painted and wrote on at home then assembled on site.
For the colour scheme I knew I wanted to use grey as the main colour but didn’t want a monochrome look so I introduced peach and mint green as well, which gave a really fresh colour palette.
My dress was called Harlem by Blue by Enzoani and it came from Kathryn Trueman in Morpeth. I found wedding dress shopping quite overwhelming really. I thought I wanted a tea length dress but being petite I just couldn’t pull them off. I can’t praise the team at Kathryn Trueman enough, they were absolutely fantastic and after a couple of bad experiences elsewhere I felt really well looked after by them. I narrowed it down to two dresses in the end. One was very flamboyant and a real show stopper but ultimately I felt like I was playing dress up and so I chose the one that made me feel like a really good version of myself.
I had my hair done locally on the day of the wedding at Salon Julie Coiffure, who included a hair trial as part of the package. They were great, I’d definitely recommend them to others.
Simon wore a blue three piece suit from Jaeger. It’s so well cut and the colour really suited him.
My bridesmaids wore a gorgeous dress and matching capelet from Monsoon. The dresses had beautiful embellishments around the neckline and also lovely cut out detail on the back so when they took their capelets off they looked like a different dress.
Our photographer, Jerome from Lily Rose Lane Photography, was amazing. I spent hours searching online for French photographers and looking through websites. I little tip is to search in French rather than English. E.g. ‘photographe normandie’ rather than Normandy photographer. You get so many more results. We loved Jerome’s style of a few posed, arty shots of the couple and everything else had a really informal reportage feel where moments were captured without interrupting the day too much. We had a Skype meeting and got on with him really well, we followed up with a meeting on site when we visited eight months before the wedding.
I would absolutely recommend Jerome to anyone. He has lived in London so his English in fantastic. He’s a really sweet natured man who did an amazing job for us. He was happy for me to give him a brief of what I wanted and I left the rest up to him. One guest commented that you almost didn’t know he was there – in a good way!
I had the most amazing bouquet which was my own design. I offer a floral design service as part of my business Ruby’s Tea Party, so again there were high expectations! My mum is an acclaimed flower arranger and speaker for National Association of Flower Arrangement Societies (NAFAS) so together we mocked up what I wanted at home in the UK and then she put all the flowers together for me the day before in France.
I ordered them from a wholesaler in Rungis market in Paris which is world famous market. I ordered via email in broken French and they delivered to the venue for a really small fee. It was a bit of a risk ordering flowers in another language from a supplier I know nothing about but the risk totally paid off. The quality of the flowers was superb and everyone commented how beautiful my bouquet was. I attached my late grandmother’s engagement ring to the bouquet as well. Our wedding date was actually the anniversary of her passing away so it was nice to mark the day with a happy occasion and feel like we had included her.
I kept the floral centrepieces for the guest tables really simple and we has a vase of loosely arranged flowers on each table surrounded by succulents in mini grey buckets. We also had loads of jars that we sprayed grey, mint and peach and filled with flowers that we used to line the aisle for the ceremony then moved to dress the top table afterwards. I hung clear plastic baubles filled with fresh flower heads on the beams in the ceremony space to add an extra detail. The gardens at the venue were a stunning backdrop which didn’t need that much dressing and the borders were full of lavender so I included this in our bouquets and button holes. Simon works as a gardener so he harvested lots of rosemary and lavender from some gardens he looks after and we took them with us to France to add into our arrangements.
As our favour we gave out local heart-shaped Neufchatel cheeses. We both love cheese so we went for a cake of cheese instead of a traditional wedding cake too. It was five tiers and our caterer served it with bread and grapes. We had this in the evening along with macarons, French patisserie and little chocolates.
Food is really important to both of us and it’s one of the reasons we chose France for our wedding. Our venue were amazing at helping us with recommendations for other suppliers and they recommended our caterer Saveur Nature, to us. We had a tasting session when we visited in January before the wedding and took out parents along with us. Neither of us eat fish or shellfish but being near the French coast most of the caterer’s menus featured fish or foie gras which we wanted to avoid as it can be controversial. We worked together with our caterer to come up with a menu that was actually very simple but full of flavour and it was seriously well cooked. We ate a starter of fresh salad with crispy chicken, chicory and herbs, main course was a fillet of beef with a potato gallete, Madeira sauce and seasonal vegetables and dessert was an assiette with five different mini desserts. It was absolutely delicious and lots of our guests commented how impressed they were.
We supplied our own alcohol and this was a great way of saving money for us. We are members of The Wine Society which is a wine club offering wholesale prices to its members and they happen to have a distribution warehouse in France. We sampled lots of different wines at home in the UK then ordered what we wanted to be collected from the French distribution centre where the prices are even cheaper. I would definitely recommend The Wine Society to anyone who is providing their own wine for their wedding as they have some fantastic wines at amazing prices.
Sourcing our entertainment was a challenge and we had to think laterally! We knew a live band was out of our budget and we would never have agreed on one anyway, as we have totally different tastes in music, so from the start we were looking for a decent (non-cheesy) DJ. We searched online for local wedding DJs in the area and found that there was a bit of a clash of cultures. All the local DJs we could find were very ‘europop/eurotrash’ style, seemed to play until about 5am and were actually quite pricey in comparison to British DJs so we had to think again. We found the Wedding Party DJs based in Brighton who were exactly what we were looking for and would happily travel to our venue. Even with their normal fee and travelling expenses for a weekend the price was less than a French DJ or a live band. The guys were lovely to work with and did a great job of playing music that suited our combined tastes but they also responded to the crowd and ‘managed’ the play list to make sure the dance floor was packed all night. Considering we only had 40 guests in total this was a real achievement.
As a little entertainment at the tables during the meal we had a game called wedding guest bingo. Each table had to match a list of interesting facts to their fellow guests which encouraged them to mingle with anyone they didn’t already know. We also had a set of boules for the guests to play and we had some little props on sticks like moustaches and glasses along with selfie sticks, to keep them busy.
Overall our wedding was a real DIY affair and we asked lots of our guests to contribute right from the start. A friend designed our invites, a family friend of Simon’s performed the ceremony for us, my brother was the master of ceremonies, someone filmed the ceremony for us using a GoPro, a whole load of our friends helped us set up and dress the venue the day before and we asked for help with lots of little jobs like lighting candles and giving out the favours on the day. Our guests loved being able to contribute and most of them took their jobs really seriously!
Our venue was amazing and I think it was the perfect place to get married in Northern France. The buildings have so much character and history and there are so many different options of how to use the space.
As a DIY venue they are getting it so right. The owners Valerie and Xavier are genuinely lovely people and helped me so much throughout the planning it made it really easy. They live on site and so they were around to help with things like organising taxis to take our guests home, lending us ladders to hang the decorations and so on but otherwise they left us alone. They literally handed the keys over a few days before the wedding and we handed them back when we left after the wedding weekend.
There is B&B accommodation on site for up to around 30 people so lots of our guests could stay there all weekend too. We invited everyone back the following day and hosted a barbecue, which was a really nice way of spending more time with our guests and we had glorious sunshine after the rain the day before.
The venue couldn’t be easier to travel to. It’s 2.5 hours’ drive from Paris, 40 minutes’ drive from the ferry at Dieppe and less than 2 hours’ drive from the Euro Tunnel at Calais.
On reflection, the ceremony was absolutely the best part of the day. It was outside on a covered terrace in the gardens of the venue. I absolutely loved walking in, it had just started to rain and it felt really special to walk through the rain down the aisle. We had already had a civil ceremony in the registry office at home in the UK to make everything legal and so our ceremony in France was completely personal and we wrote the whole thing ourselves. It was led by one of our guests who did an amazing job for us and my two bridesmaids both spoke prompting lots of happy tears.
We haven’t been on our honeymoon just yet but have a ski holiday booked for January 2016. We met on a skiing holiday in France and so a honeymoon in the mountains was the only thing we considered!
My top tips for other Brides Up North would be don’t be afraid to delegate tasks to people who care about you. People love being able to make a positive contribution and really want the best for you on the day. Also, don’t sweat the small stuff, it really doesn’t matter once you’re standing at the end of that aisle. Finally, try to make sure you get at least ten minutes on your own with your new spouse just to take it all in.
Because we got married abroad there were quite a few people who are really important to us that sadly couldn’t join us. Eventually we realised that our wedding wasn’t about anyone else but us and that all that was important was that we were getting married.
