It’s holiday season here on the blog, and as the editorial team take a short break, we’ll be leaving you with a reduced blogging schedule so that you still get your daily dose of wedding lovely. Usual service will recommence on Monday 4th June 2018 but in the meantime watch out for recaps of some of our favourite Real Weddings from the first half of the year so far.
Drop in every day for the very prettiest, most unique wedding inspiration and – if you are a Brides Up North bride – to see if your real wedding was one of our top picks.
The gorgeous couple we’re featuring today wanted a delicate colour scheme of nudes and neutrals in keeping with their elegant North Yorkshire venue, The Orangery, hence this dreamy palette of the palest of pinks, golds and lots of brilliant, bright white.
Having studied photography, bride Jennifer knew exactly what she wanted from her pictures and keeping everything clean and natural really did make the few splashes of bold colour – her scarlet lipstick, the rich blue of their wedding bicycle – ‘pop’.
This savvy pair made a few small-spend but big-impact decisions which we’re sure Brides Up North readers will adore: firstly, the 200-candle ‘Wall of Light’, which added a warm glow to their autumnal celebration and, secondly, two £8 confetti cannons. Just take a look at those first dance pictures – we’re simply in awe.
Elegance overload heading your way…
With images by John Hope Photography.
Scott and Jenny – Highlights Trailer – The Orangery, Settrington from Papertwin Wedding Films on Vimeo.
jennifer says
: We got engaged during a late Valentine’s/birthday night away. We stayed in a cosy treehouse retreat in Yorkshire, which was lovely. Scott popped the question over a bottle of champagne in the treehouse surrounded by lots of photos of our best memories.
Our wedding was on 14th October 2017. We chose that time of the year as Scott is a professional cyclist and spends most of the year racing all over the world. October is his off season, i.e. our only opportunity to have a honeymoon without a bike in tow! Autumn is also our favourite time of the year and we were keen to have lots of autumnal colours in our photographs.
We got married at All Saints Church, Settrington, and our reception was held next door at The Orangery. We came across it while we were looking for videographers – we saw the venue on one of the films and immediately booked to go and have a look. As soon as we arrived and walked inside we knew it was the one for us! It’s set on a private estate, so we were guaranteed complete privacy and a personal service. They only hold around twelve weddings a year, which felt even more special. The Orangery is surrounded by trees and woodland which we knew would look fantastic in autumn and we liked the idea of being able to walk to the venue from the church. It really is the perfect setting!
Styling-wise, we wanted a light, modern feel to fit with The Orangery. We were after a light colour scheme without any strong colours and so we opted for white, pale pink and gold touches to complement the venue.
My dress was Dallas by Jenny Packham. I’d previously tried on lots of different dresses in a wide range of styles. I remember looking on the Jenny Packham website and seeing the Dallas gown and wanting to try it on – however, on my dress shopping weekend in London, I didn’t have the time. A few weeks passed and I’d almost confirmed an order for a Stewart Parvin at The Bridal Collection in Harrogate. I went to have a final try and they had just got the Dallas dress in stock. I tried it on and fell in love with it! It wasn’t what I’d originally imagined but I think a lot of women end up with a dress that’s different to what they thought they’d go for.
Scott wore navy blue tails with a grey waistcoat. He hired them from Youngs; there was an option to select a suit to try on at home which made the process very easy! The groomsmen also wore navy blue tails from Young’s online with a matching blue waistcoat.
I didn’t want any strong, contrasting colours for the bridesmaids so opted for the palest of pink. The bridesmaids’ dresses were Amy by Maids to Measure in the colour Cream Soda.
Jenn Edwards did mine and my bridesmaids’ hair and makeup and did a wonderful job.
John Hope was our photographer. I studied photography at university so was very particular about who would take our photos! I spent hours looking online and came across John. We wanted a timeless feel without any dramatic editing and John was great from start to finish. He worked seamlessly with us throughout the day; we really didn’t know he was there!
We chose Papertwin Weddings for our videographer. They were fantastic, and we would definitely recommend them. We weren’t originally going to have a videographer but we’re so glad we did: the memories and moments they captured are truly priceless!
In terms of flowers, mine and the bridesmaids’ bouquets were plain white with green foliage. We chose a mix of hydrangea, lisianthus, stocks, veronica, freesia, astilbe, astrantia, viburnum snowball, tulips and David Austin garden roses. Lucy MacNicholl provided our flowers and we would definitely recommend her.
We had two urn designs in the church of white flowers and foliage. These were placed on plinths and positioned either side of the top of the aisle to frame where we said our vows. We bought our own lanterns to line the aisle and a selection of different sized candles around the altar.
The Orangery has very high ceilings, so we opted for tall glass vases holding softly domed flowers and foliage to add impact. We chose a mixture of blooms including tulips, hydrangea and stocks with soft sage green eucalyptus foliage. For the top table we chose a long and low design including groupings of small posies of flowers with floating candles.
We wanted to enhance the fact that it was autumn and the warm golden feel to The Orangery’s décor by having a wall of floating candles behind us. Tamaryn’s Treasures provided us with more than 200 candles of different heights. This is one of the little things we were so glad we did as the impact it created for a relatively low cost was fantastic!
We created our own table plan using copper piping, photo frames, glass bauble tea light holders and finished it off with some foliage.
For favours we gave cake pops in various flavours provided by Juniper Cakery. They went down very well with the guests!
My mum was always going to create my wedding cake. We went through our ideas and designed the cake together. Ultimately, we went for four tiers with brush embroidery flowers on two of the cakes and delicate spots on the other two and mum created a mixture of roses and other flowers using icing. We wanted a cake table style setup, so mum also created some white and gold cupcakes to match. We were blown away by the finished result and feel so lucky that my mum could create such a beautiful thing for our wedding.
Scott cycles for a professional team who is part-sponsored by Nederburg Wines, based in South Africa. We chose a selection of their red, white and sparkling wines for the wedding.
The catering was by Tom Coe. He was very helpful through the process and helped us to put together different flavours for our menu. We had a range of canapes including mini Yorkshire puddings for the reception. For the wedding breakfast we had salmon fishcake to start, a chicken dish for main and white chocolate panna cotta for dessert. The food was amazing and lots of the guests were very complimentary about it!
Entertainment-wise, we chose Scott Rawlings to play the piano during our ceremony and reception and for the evening reception we had duo Marc and Abi – we’d seen them at a wedding showcase night in Leeds and booked them straight away. Our DJ for the evening was Henry Aspden of SUBDUCE.
As a special touch we bought some last-minute confetti cannons for £8 each and took a gamble hoping they would be reasonable. They were amazing! For such a small cost they created such a fantastic effect for our first dance.
Scott also created a ‘guestbook log’ from a piece of wood we sourced from a friend which was different from the usual guestbook – it looks great!
After our big day, we would absolutely recommend our choice of venue to others. The Orangery is truly magical and the easily the most beautiful venue we saw. Sara, Jane and Karen were wonderful throughout the process and were always available to chat. They were so flexible with accommodating our ideas and everything felt so personal.
A favourite moment? It’s so hard to choose! Probably the first dance when Scott lifted me up as the confetti canons went off – it just topped off an amazing day!
We went to Tanzania for our honeymoon. We started in the Serengeti for a safari and stayed at Serengeti Bushtops – it was out of this world! The service was fantastic and the whole safari experience was something we’ll never forget. We then travelled to Zanzibar where we spent the last few days of our honeymoon relaxing on the beach.
My top tip for other Brides Up North would be to make sure you spend as much time with your other half as possible. It’s easy to spend all day talking to guests but make sure you find time to spend together. Stop and pause for a moment and take in everything that is going on – it flies by!
