Today’s real wedding made everyone here at Brides Up North go weak at the knees. First, there was the romantic New York proposal story. Then we got a glimpse of the stunning blush, gold and ivory detailing. And then we saw the photographs of Louise’s backless fishtail Berta Bridal gown.
So. Insanely. Beautiful.
With images by Jonny Draper Photography.
louise says:
Glen and I got engaged in New York in December 2013. We’d just enjoyed a horse and cart ride around Central Park before we were due to go for a meal at the Rockerfeller Centre. After the horse and cart ride had finished Glen got down on one knee and proposed. I think it’s safe to say that neither of us will forget that day!Our wedding date was Sunday 29th May 2016. We chose the date as it was the bank holiday weekend and May is usually a really sunny month – and fortunately for us, it was!
Our venue was Styal Lodge in Cheshire. We chose our venue as it was local, but it’s also one of the most beautiful venues in Cheshire. Lucky us!
There was no theme to the wedding as such, but we did choose to name our tables after our favourite Manchester United and Liverpool players. Glen is from Liverpool and I’m from Manchester and it added a fun touch to the day.
We chose blush, ivory and gold for our colour scheme. We thought it looked simple, but beautiful and elegant.
My wedding dress was the real star of the show. It was by designer Berta Bridal and purchased from The Wedding Club in Knightsbridge, London. It was a backless, fishtail style with lace detail. It was truly exquisite. It even sparkled in the sunlight!
Glen wore a navy blue and black tuxedo with black velvet bow tie from Moss Bros.
The bridesmaids wore long, dusky pink dresses by Kelsey Rose to tie in with our colour scheme and the best men and groomsmen all wore blue dinner suits and black bow ties by Ted Baker from Moss Bros.
Our photographer was the wonderful Jonny Draper. We couldn’t have picked a better guy. He was cool, calm and fun. He made us feel totally relaxed on the day and kept everything informal, which was exactly what we wanted. We would recommend him 100%.
We chose to hire a videographer as well as we wanted to catch every second of the wedding. We chose Marry Me Films to capture our big day and, along with choosing our photographer Jonny Draper, it was one of the best decisions we made. We couldn’t fault either of them.
The bouquets were simple, but very beautiful, all-rose bouquets in a mixture of ivory and blush to go with our colour scheme. The flowers were provided by Jill Normal from JN Flowers.
Once again, going with our chosen colour scheme we had pink and ivory flowers throughout the venue styling. We had large round flower centrepieces of roses and peonies and then alternate centrepieces of three long cylinder vases with a submerged rose and floating candle. Special Days Events did all of our venue dressing alongside JN flowers, who did all of the flowers.
We chose to give our guests Love Heart bottle openers as favours.
Our cake was a four-tier rose gold cake with chocolate, sponge and lemon flavoured layers. We also had rose gold cupcakes to match. The cake was by the wonderful Cheshire Cat Cake Company.
We served canapés at our drinks reception and for the wedding breakfast we chose to give our guests an option for both the starter and the main course. The choices were antipasti salad or goats cheese rosti for a starter, and then seabass on a bed of seafood paella or chicken wrapped in bacon with crushed new potatoes, for the main. For dessert we had an apple and sticky toffee pudding. Our evening food was freshly baked pizza, which went down a treat!
In terms of entertainment, we hired harpist Eleanor Hudson, to play during the ceremony and drinks reception. Gillan Edgar then kept the guests entertained throughout the wedding breakfast and came back and blew the roof off with his band at the evening do.
The Word is Love provided all of our light up letters including the ‘love’ and the ‘Mr & Mrs Sanders’ sign. They also provided us with our light up mirror, which we used as our table plan.
Instead of a regular photo booth we hired a Magic Talking Selfie Mirror for the reception, which our guests absolutely loved. We found it was a lot more fun than a traditional photo booth as big groups could get in the photos and you could write on the mirror and sign your name. It was extremely cool.
We also used an old-school Polaroid camera alongside our guest book. Guests took a Polaroid of themselves, stuck it in the book and wrote us a message.
Overall our wedding venue was just perfect. We loved the fact that everything was under one roof so there was no messing about with guests travelling to different venues. We also loved the fact that it‘s basically a big blank canvas and we could completely make it our own. We were lucky enough to have the most beautiful weather on the day which made our pictures by the lake even more stunning.
Our favourite part of the day had to be the ceremony. Seeing each other for the first time after all the months of planning and everything coming together perfectly with all of our friends and family there was absolutely magical – something we’ll never forget.
For our honeymoon, we chose to go back to our favourite place – New York – for two weeks. We’d never been during the summer (we usually go over Christmas) so we decided to stay in Soho and Tribeca as it’s less touristy and there’s a great bar and party scene down there. It’s safe to say we had a lot of fun!
My top tip for other Brides Up North would be not to be swayed by other people’s opinions. Always go with your gut instincts; do what you want to do and not what other people want you to do!
