Well would you look at that - it’s only bloomin’ Friday! We are all go here at Brides Up North HQ preparing for another absolutely stunning wedding exhibition at The Mansion on Sunday 6th October, and are looking forward to seeing lots of our Leeds based readers there. Do take the time to seek me out and introduce yourself if you plan on popping in! Click here to pre-register for your VIP Goody Bag and speedy entry.
For now though, there’s more Real Wedding inspiration to be had, as we join Hannah and Richard for their beautiful big day in Northumberland. This happy couple may have had lots of rain on their big day, but it didn’t squash their sparkle. Not one bit.
With images by Brides Up North Featured Supplier Jamie Penfold Photography, be inspired!
Hannah says: We got engaged on Valentine’s day in February 2013 on the beach in Buzios, Brazil after going to the Rio-de-Janeiro Carnival. We decided to take a few days to recover from the craziness of the Carnival and after spending an amazing Valentine’s day we went for a romantic walk on the beach where Ricky proposed. We then went out to celebrate in a cocktail bar with a live band and samba dancers! It was an amazing day.
We got married on 24th August 2013 at Eshott Hall, Morpeth, Northumberland.
There were a lot of reasons that we chose the venue, the main one being that we could rent the Hall exclusively out for the whole weekend which included a dinner party of 32 on the Friday night so we could have all our close family and bridal party together. This worked really well because then everyone got to know each other before the big day. We also chose it because it was stunningly beautiful, the entrance hall has an amazing stained glass window and the ballroom was very elegant, light and airy. There were also a number of locations for holding the civil ceremony and out of all the places we viewed it was the only one that ticked all the boxes – beautiful location, options for the whole weekend, a beautiful place to hold the ceremony and a nice place for the wedding breakfast and evening reception.
We didn’t have a theme. After we looked around Eshott Hall and decided it was the perfect place we found that all the dates for the spring/summer for the following year (when we had originally planned on getting married) where fully booked; however, they did have a cancellation for three months’ time. So we decided to go for it. I chose all my favourite things and hoped for that they all went well together on the day!
I had originally wanted champagne gold to tie in with colourful summery flowers but the only bridesmaid dresses I found were a light dusty pink colour so my colour scheme ended up being dusty pink with a touch of champagne gold with soft but summery flowers adding a nice touch of colour.
I chose the Indiana dress by Victoria Jane from Rosina Brown Bridal. It’s very different to what I thought I’d go for, it has a beautiful cowl front and a gorgeous low dropped back with cross details to hold it all together and gently floats out towards the bottom and has delicate sequins on the main body. One of my favourite parts (apart from the back detail) was that it has a piece of fabric draped from the shoulder that could either be attached to one shoulder floating down to the floor or it could be hooked on to the other shoulder to create a soft cowl at the back or taken off all together which gave it a bit of variety throughout the day.
Our bridesmaids wore dresses from Karen Millen in a dusty pink satin fabric and our groomsmen wore suits bought from Next. Our flower girls and page boy all wore clothes from Monsoon.
I carried a bouquet of Roses, Dahlias, Hydrangeas, Crespedia, Llizianthus, and Freesia by Secret Garden in Jesmond. I think there were some small blue ones in there too but I don’t know what they’re called!
The button holes were a mix of all the different types of the flowers and it was lovely to see each unique button hole perfectly matching everything else.
I loved the entire day but I think the part that really sticks out was when we came out of the ceremony and I was just so happy to be married, it felt surreal to have been so busy planning the day and we had finally done it! I woke up the next day and I wanted to do the whole thing over again.
Jamie Penfold Photography was our photographer. His package included a pre-wedding shoot so it was really great to get used to having our photo taken. I’m not great with photos but Jamie is so relaxed and organised (a rare combination) that I hardly noticed having photos taken. Then he was very quick to put the photos online for us and it was so exciting to look back at the day and love every single photo.
We used The Finishing Touch Company for our chair backs and other decorations. I didn’t even see them, they just arrived, set everything up perfectly and then removed them all again the day after – it was brilliant! Our beautiful wedding cake was by Dreamworld Cakes. We were very indulgent and chose different flavours and ended up having one milk chocolate, one lemon and one white chocolate tier. The main detail on the cake was the piping but Bernadette also made some amazing icing flowers. I used Pinterest a lot to gather ideas because I didn’t have a lot of time to organise everything and I ended up sending Bernadette my favourite pictures of cake decorations. I was so happy with the end result.
I hand wrote all the table name places and used stamps to decorate the card and got little trivia packs to put on the tables to help break the ice for any guests that didn’t know many people.
The table numbers were actually polaroid photos of myself and Richard at different places we’d been to and my sister very kindly made the table plan for us.
We decided to link our guest book to a homemade photo booth so we bought a wedding photo booth props pack, set up a camera with a mini printer and placed all of this next to the guest book with instructions hanging next to the ‘frame’ that guests stood behind to take photos. They then dressed up, took a photo, printed it and stuck it in the guest book and signed their names next to it (luckily the photos came with sticky backs) it was also really fun because we got to keep all the digital copies too.
We had Alexander Lomas welcoming guests to the drinks reception with classic swing songs. This worked out really well as it gave a focal point to the drinks reception and we actually had a good bit of dancing going on! I think all the champagne and Pimms helped there!
We used Livewire from AMV Live Music for our evening reception entertainment. I would definitely recommend this band, they had our guests complaining because they couldn’t leave the dance floor because so many good songs kept coming on.
Our best Man DJ’s in his spare time and he very kindly put together a playlist for us for the evening.
We went on a mini-moon to Venice and did all the usual romantic things, we got a private speed boat over from the airport with an amazing thunder storm in the background, we got a gondola ride and were serenaded the whole way around, we went to see a classical music concert that we just happened to be walking past one evening and enjoyed the local prosecco, spritz and bellinis! We are planning on going to Costa Rica in January for our mega-moon but we’re having break from planning this month!
My top tip for other Brides Up North is that it’s so difficult, but if you can get everything completely out of the way a week before the wedding date then do it so you can spend the week coming up to the wedding relaxing rather than panicking. Also don’t feel bad if you find yourself focusing on you and your husband/wife on your wedding day – that’s what you’re supposed to do so don’t feel bad if you don’t get to speak to absolutely everyone there.
Congratulations Hannah & Richard!
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Brides Up North UK Wedding Blog – Images © 2013 Jamie Penfold Photography
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