Real Weddings

Emma Beaumont for a Stylish Wedding at Lartington Hall – Emma & David

Sarah Symonds

The exclusive and magical Lartington Hall plays host to Emma and David’s captivatingly colourful celebration on the Brides Up North blog today.

Fun, modern and packed with colour sums up today’s real wedding. Expect personal touches galore; from the rings to the bespoke shoes, the readings and the stationary, from the guestlist of the couple’s nearest and dearest, right down to the cheese ‘cake’. And let’s just take a moment for those amazing neon table numbers! We love!

If you haven’t found The Dress yet, don’t worry. Maybe bespoke is the answer! We hear about how Emma went for a dress designed just for her by the incredible and inimitable Emma Beaumont. The approach allowed her to have a big princess skirt which was detachable, essentially giving her two dresses in one! Bucks Fizz, eat your heart out.

With photography by UNVEILED Network Member Melissa Beattie Photography

Proposal

Emma says: We were in Ibiza with friends for my 30th birthday. It was just David and me for the last few days and we had a table booked at Café Mambo the night before my birthday. David had planned to propose there but someone beat him to it and proposed to their partner right next to us, so he thought better of it!

We had a reservation at a beautiful beach club called Amante the next day. We chilled on the loungers, a little fragile from the night before, and had some drinks and nibbles and David slept all day in recovery! Needless to say I was not impressed. When David decided to wake up, he had to coax me into going for a walk along the beach. He then stopped to pretend to get a picture of us both and rested his phone on a rock. As he did it, he was on one knee so when he turned around, he proposed! He had also pressed record on his phone and got the whole thing on film, which I am so pleased he did as it’s been so lovely being able to watch it back.

Setting

We tied the knot on the 14th of September 2019 at Lartington Hall. David officially asked me to ‘start seeing him’ 11 years ago, on the 2nd of September, and asked me to marry him on the 28th, so it seemed only fitting to get married in September too.

We found it hard finding a venue quickly as we live in London, but were set on a wedding up North, where we are both from. I had also vetoed all the Newcastle venues as I wanted to get married somewhere different.

We really wanted to get married in a place with exclusive hire availability, where we could have a weekend of celebrations and where the wedding was all in one place. After lots of online research we picked two venues to book to visit and Lartington was actually the back-up option!

As soon as we drove past the sheep, up the path towards the venue, we had butterflies. It was absolutely perfect! The owners and the team there are incredible, the food options were right up our street, and the number of rooms allowed us to have our closest family and friends stay with us. It is designed so beautifully, there are so many rooms to choose from for your ceremony and reception, and the grounds were perfectly looked after by Toby.

Theme

There wasn’t an official theme, we knew we wanted colour and style – the venue is so stylish and beyond beautiful, we wanted to stay in keeping with that and reflect a bit of us too! We wanted it to be bright and happy! The confetti photographs came out amazing and the flowers just looked incredible.

Dress

After many dress shops and pinterest searches, I decided I wanted to design my own dress, as I just couldn’t find ‘the one’. During some Instagram stalking I came across Emma Beaumont and I loved nearly every dress on her social media. She is AMAZING. I came prepared with an idea in my head and she brought it to life. I had a one shoulder, beaded, fitted dress, with a half overskirt for the day. I took this off in the evening.

The entire process was absolutely great, and we always had fun at our meetings. Though Emma is based up North, she comes to London monthly so it made it really easy for me to meet her when needed, and I travelled up to her shop in the beautiful Knutsford for a couple of fittings. Having a dress made for me, that I helped design, was truly special.

My shoes were made by Solely Original. I LOVE unusual shoes but have problems with my feet that restrict my options. They provide a service where they scan your feet and make your shoes to order! I didn’t even need to break them in! I wanted tiffany blue suede shoes and I got them! What Katy Did Next made my arm cuff and shoe clips.

Groomsmen

David wore a suit from Master Debonair. He knew he wanted blue and had a Peaky Blinders style in his head. The lads all got to go to the showroom and get fitted, have a couple of beers and make a day of it. In the end, David opted for a different waistcoat to the groomsmen. He wore his hat and had a pocket watch to finish off the look, and he looked perfect. His shoes and matching belt were from Barker Shoes.

We hired a fantastic cottage 10 minutes from Lartington for the groomsmen and their partners for the weekend and David stayed there the night before – the owners are wonderful and so is the cottage! Jacobs Lodge.

Bridesmaids

All of my bridesmaids have such different styles, and it was really important to me that they were all super happy and comfortable, so I wanted them to pick their dresses themselves. I had a running theme of tulle and beads to match my dress and I wanted them all in different colours. I did get a bit worried but they all looked stunning and the dresses looked lush together.

Beauty

My friend and hairdresser, Emma Toner, travelled up from London and did my hair as a wedding gift. I didn’t fancy a typical wedding ‘do’ for the bridesmaids and, in keeping with them all having their own style for the day, the girls did each other’s hair how they wanted it.

As there were so many of us I had two makeup artists. One of my bridesmaids was going to do my makeup but I decided I wanted her to not have the worry on the day. She surprised me on the morning of the wedding and had bought all my make up for my wedding day, after researching the best products for the style I was looking for.

The makeup artists were both unreal and I would recommend them both highly. Kate Howard and Urszulamakeup. Urszula did my make up as a bridesmaid at a friend’s wedding and I found Kate online after looking for an MUA local to the venue.

Photographer

David is into his photography so I asked him to take the lead on this. After having a chat with Melissa Beattie, we felt comfortable with her straight away and we didn’t even arrange any calls with anyone else! I really wanted natural shots and not to spend my day posing. We love the colours and tones she uses, and the photographs came out incredible. I would recommend her to everyone looking for a photographer.

Styling

Originally we had Pip & Hatty Bloom booked for the wedding as we loved her style! Unfortunately she had a bereavement ahead of our wedding, and her lovely friend Jenni from Ruffled Flowers offered to help out. She was wonderful and the flowers were even more amazing than I had hoped. I asked for lots of colourful British flowers and I got that in spades! I didn’t want a set centrepiece on each table so we had different styles on each of the tables. Jenni now has a lovely shop and I can’t wait to find an excuse to order more flowers from her.

We provided some of our own table decorations, polaroid photos from the night before the wedding in colourful frames and light up table numbers. Signworld did our wedding signs, which were done in the same style as our invitations. David actually designed those and all the artwork for the wedding.

There were quite a few special touches as we wanted to try and make it as personal as possible. My wedding ring was actually my great grandmother’s wedding ring. One of my best friends, Heather, and her husband played me down the aisle and Heather’s mum officiated our wedding. It was so lovely knowing the person marrying us! Then our niece had written a poem about me and read it out during the ceremony and our goddaughter played one of our favourite songs on the piano for us at the reception.

Favours

We had personalised Love Heart sweets which also doubled up as the place settings.

Cake

I am obsessed with cheese, and had seen a cheese ‘cake’ at a wedding fair and that was it decided! (Though David did take some persuading!) The venue made the cake for me and it was incredible!

Dining

For wine we went with all the pinot, rather than bottles of each colour, but it was so hard to choose food for 140 people, especially when the options were all amazing. We didn’t make a decision until a few weeks before the wedding! In the end we went for the beef and a vegetarian risotto. We opted for a pizza party for the evening grub. It got devoured and they even had to put more out for everyone!

Entertainment

One of our best friends plays in a band who we used to go and see play every month in London. The music they play is perfect for a wedding, and they were fantastic. I don’t think I left the dancefloor for the whole set!

As we only had an hour or so left after the band finished playing, we decided to do our own playlist of our favourite songs.

Thanks to

We would 100% recommend Lartington, without a doubt. I mean, they even made me a cheese wedding cake!

The team there are outstanding and having the majority of the details taken care of by the venue made it so much easier than I had thought it was going to be to plan a wedding. The location, the venue, the food, the staff – everything was perfect. I loved that you could have it exclusively for the whole weekend and so many people have told us it was the best wedding food they have ever had.

Best bit

Though the whole day was my favourite part, I did absolutely love the ceremony. It was so personal and special and filled with love. I am a VERY emotional person and I had been so worried in the run up that I was going to cry through it but Heather’s Mum, Sue, was excellent, making us giggle and smile.

Honeymoon

I’ve wanted to go to Thailand forever, and David had already been when he was in his uni days and suggested that if we go, we need to go for at least 3 weeks. So we decided to go for a month over Christmas and New Year when it was easier for me to take that much time off and not worry about work. I am so glad we waited a few months after the wedding to go, as having four weeks on holiday with my best friend really was the holiday of a lifetime. After getting quotations from specialist travel companies, we decided to book it ourselves and saved thousands, We travelled to five different parts of Thailand. spending four or five days at each place. I can’t wait to go back.

Advice

My advice would be to try not to worry! On the day I decided I was going to have the best day ever and was the calmest I think I’ve been in a long time (the venue team had a lot to do with this!). A couple of minor issues on the day went over my head and I had the best day of my life.

I would also say be prepared for the guestlist nightmare! Try your best not to fall out over it, and really think about whether you need to invite everyone on the list. We decided we weren’t having lots of guests bring partners we’d never met, or distant relatives we never see and I am so pleased we stuck to our guns.

I used the Brides Up North site a lot to research any of my potential suppliers and venue, and also attended a Brides Up North Wedding Show. It was really useful to have lots of information in one place and read real feedback from brides.

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