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 9th January 2017 but in the meantime watch out for recaps of some of our favourite Real Weddings from 2016.
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.
Today’s real wedding is nothing short of stunning and we’re struggling to peel ourselves away from it – be warned, you too may face the same problem.
In a wedding that celebrates both love and the city of Manchester, we are bowled over by all elements: from the natural blooms and cute honeybee touches to the stunning attire and décor. Oh, and that cake – seriously, that cake #toobeautiful
With images by Melissa Beattie Photography.
chorcha says:
We got engaged while celebrating my birthday with friends at an urban picnic in Downtown Dubai. Quite a few of those who were there were in on it – so we have some wonderful video footage of the moment. Our engagement was typically us – in front of our dearest friends (who have become like family as we are ex-pats) and loud!Our wedding took place on 3rd April. Spring and Easter time in England is typically bright and crisp. We figured if we picked a date around this time we would be safe from the grey Manchester skies – and boy, were we lucky!
Manchester Town Hall was our chosen ceremony venue. Glen and I met in Manchester 12 years ago, and then met again in Dubai three years ago. We are both originally from Manchester and both moved to Dubai for work (not at the same time). Living away from such a great city really does strengthen your appreciation and love for the place. Whenever we get time for a holiday, all we want to do is go back home to Manchester! Don’t get me wrong, Dubai is great – but it doesn’t beat cobbles, rain, gravy with your chippy and that wonderful Manc spirit!
The city’s town hall is such a beautiful building – a real icon of Manchester. It was a simple decision for us, why pay a fortune for a country manor when this gorgeous piece of the city’s heritage is everything you need and more!
Our reception was held at Mr Cooper’s House & Garden at The Midland Hotel. The restaurant is by Michelin star chef, Simon Rogan, therefore the food was absolutely outstanding! The venue itself being in Manchester’s oldest hotel is steeped in heritage with gorgeous original features and that typical Manchester quirkiness. Both venues are only a one-minute walk from each other, which meant our guests could walk between the two!
The theme for the wedding was ‘city chic’. It fitted the venues we had chosen, and above all it was relaxed! So many people have commented that I was the most laid-back bride they had ever witnessed – I think a lot of that had to do with the style of wedding we chose. I let the city itself and the striking venues do all the talking.
We chose a colour scheme of ‘marble & metallics’. There were some beautiful carrara marble tables in the reception venue – so it all started from there. The cake was marble and the invitations and other wedding stationary were marble with gold foil accents. Metallics were also present in the attire and décor.
My dress was style number 2702 by Mori Lee. I had spent time trying on much more expensive dresses in various upmarket boutiques, my heart was set on an Enzoani dress. However, I would have had to spent serious time doing pilates class after pilates class to tone up for the dress! I have a tendency to be a bit lazy so there was a worry in the back of my mind that I would not feel my best on the wedding day which would ruin it for me. I went to one further shop to see if there was anything that would “hold me in” a bit better. It was The Confetti Box in Eccles, a simple family-run business of 20 plus years. I picked several dresses, but it was Jade who presented me with my wedding dress. As soon as I put it on it held me in perfectly, and then I glanced down and noticed it had the hibiscus flower adorned on the lace. My name means hibiscus flower in Thai – so it was clearly fate and being half the price of the original dress didn’t hurt either!
On the wedding day Samantha at The Glam Box took care of my makeup. She had done my make-up quite a few times over the years and I have always loved it. When planning a wedding from abroad it can often take a weight off your mind by using suppliers that you may have worked with before. You know what to expect that way!
Glen had a suit made Ascot & Chapels, a local tailoring company in Dubai. Ironically, they focus on traditional English tailoring using materials from England.
My bridesmaids wore ASOS cocktail dresses. I wanted them to look like they were off for champagne and dancing rather than tripping over the same old multiway dresses that they will never wear again! They looked beautiful! And no-one could believe they were from ASOS.
When it came to the wedding transport I was very lucky as my friend surprised me with a Rolls Royce Phantom. The hotel where we were getting ready was literally only a two-minute walk from the wedding venue, and I was convinced walking would be a great idea! But the car really did add that special touch – and it was nice to have my emotional nervous breakdown in the comfort of the car rather than on the street!
Melissa Beattie captured our day. We met at first Melissa when Glen and I did a shoot in Abu Dhabi for a local wedding blog in the UAE. We had just got engaged and thought it would be a super nice way to mark the engagement – so we volunteered to be the models! From meeting Melissa I felt like I had known her for a while – we both felt so comfortable around her. Her style was effortlessly natural and the fact she was northern too was a real treat! She told us she was moving back to the UK and would carry on with wedding photography there – we didn’t even look at another photographer. In fact, Melissa was the first thing that was decided about our wedding – before the date and the venue!
We also had our wedding filmed by videographers Reel Wedding Films based in Cheadle. They were absolutely amazing! You can check out the video here.
James from Citi Blooms provided our fabulous flowers. My brief was olive leaves, white flowers and lots and lots of green! My bridesmaids had a simple bunch of olive leaves each.
Again for the reception we had lots of green, olive leaves and only white flowers. We also had candles in antique style gold and silver holders, pear branch and succulents adorned the tables.
There was a running theme of the Manchester Bee (which also touches on my childhood nickname of Honeybee), and as well as having a gold bee on our wedding stationary and the mosaic bees on the town hall floor, our florist surprised us with little honey bees on our signing table and our on sweetheart table.
As favours we gave our guests “Mrs Harper’s Honey Granola” – my mum’s recipe. We packaged it up with pretty little marble tags emblazoned with a gold bee.
Bloomsbury Wedding Cakes in Altrincham, made our cake. It had marble effect icing and was three tiers of lemon, white chocolate & strawberry and salted caramel. The cake was adorned with olive leaves and a sparkly gold “LOVE” cake topper.
For our wedding breakfast we chose a traditional roast dinner with huge Yorkshire puddings and all the trimmings – because we were in Manchester and it was a Sunday! For starters we had an amazing Kale soup (honestly it was amazing) and for dessert we had Manchester Tarts and English Cheese Boards. We served our starter and main course sat down at the table, and then the dessert as a buffet in the bar/dance-floor area. I think guests appreciated not being stuck at a table for too long.
In terms of drink we had a whiskey room with Glen’s favourite, and very expensive, whiskies. It was a nice interactive experience with an expert telling guests about the different blends, offering tastings and creating whisky cocktails. I think this was really well received by quite a few of the guys!
We also had a bride’s cocktail and a groom’s cocktail – the latter being named after our pug Geoffrey, with a little picture of him pegged to the glass. He was back in Dubai, so it was nice to have a little part of him there on the day!
Our entertainment was Audio Fountain – a local band who haven’t really played too many weddings. However, they had played Mr Cooper’s numerous times so were familiar with the set up and the staff. I didn’t even need to meet them before or organise any site visits for them, which was a real weight off my mind! They played a real mix from My Boy Lollipop and Chan Chan to Crazy In Love.
We also had the Didsbury String Quartet to play for my entrance and during the signing. They added real emotion to the day before I had even walked down the aisle. Guests were crying before I came in – I think without them the atmosphere could have been a bit flat and people would certainly have been bored.
We would absolutely recommend our venues to other brides and grooms. They were easy to work with and are places that we can visit whenever we like for years to come.
My favourite part of the wedding has to be walking down the aisle – I don’t think I will ever get butterflies like that again! And – Glen cried! Now that’s a first.
For our honeymoon we went to Bali – it was beautiful. We had a real adventure; from naughty monkeys, to sea snakes, rice paddies and coral reefs. We visited Seminyak, Ubud and Uluwatu. Karma Kandara in Uluwatu was a favourite destination of mine – epic sunsets here (the type that will make you shed a tear).
My top tip to other Brides Up North would be to plan in stages – get the big stuff out of the way first, like the venue and suppliers. Chose things like flowers and the cake flavours etc. as you go along. It’s nice to spread things out and make the run up last longer – and 100% you will only change your mind on something decided too early on anyway.
Also, if you are going to have an open bar consider limiting the menu. We removed shots and crazy cocktails and hugely expensive spirits from ours. This helped keep the costs manageable.
And seriously, have something prepared for after the wedding – I wasn’t an obsessive bride to be at all, but after the wedding was over I seriously felt a huge Pinterest wedding board hole in my life. So at the moment, I am channeling my energies into recipes and pinning the life out of Paleo.
