A Groom’s Tale… of an Alice-inspired Wedding in Lancashire

The other thing I love is when a groom shares his wed­ding story. Rob’s wed­ding report begins with a roman­tic pro­posal story which brought a tear to my eye — and he tells the story of his wed­ding to Jayne so beau­ti­fully — so this wed­ding blog­ger is now hand­ing over to a bet­ter writer, just for one day! Rob…

Enjoy!

An Alice-inspired wed­ding in Lan­cashire: Rob & Jayne

Who pro­posed, and how?

(Rob) I pro­posed on a frosty Christ­mas day night. I had obvi­ously bought the ring a few days ear­lier and had been psych­ing all day to ask. We’d been together for 5 years at this point so I never doubted her answer, how­ever this didn’t help the nerves, and as I took her for a Christ­mas night walk I was basi­cally walk­ing direction-less.

The sound of crunch­ing snow under­foot per­vad­ing the oth­er­wise silent night. try­ing to stom­ach the ‘ask­ing’. When the moment finally arrived it was any­thing but roman­tic as I blurted out some­thing like “Well…I’ve got this ring…and I’d like to ask you to marry me”!

I like to think my lack of com­po­sure was made up for by the fact she knew me so well that any kind of grand ges­ture or bend­ing of one’s knee would come across as insin­cere.

Jayne wore the most incred­i­ble fig­ure hug­ging fish­tail dress from Dan Kerr Brides in Pre­ston, and a killer pair of bright red heels! I wore a black frock-coat and top hat with a very loud red & white retro-style polka dot shirt. Ringo Starr would be proud!

How would you describe your wed­ding style? … Quirky & fun with Alice in Won­der­land as the loose theme, but still retain­ing a tra­di­tional element.

The wed­ding ceremony:

Reli­gious or civil? … Reli­gious, St Peter’s Church, Scor­ton, Lancashire

Which read­ings did you choose?

A brief poem I had writ­ten for Jayne the day I met her. We also had the Bea­t­les’ ‘And I love her’ as a Hymn and The Bea­t­les’ ‘Real Love’ & ‘Across the Uni­verse’ played while we signed the reg­is­ter, before walk­ing out to one of Jayne’s favorite songs ‘Every­day’ by Buddy Holly.

What were your wed­ding day highlights?

Pick­ing out high­lights is dif­fi­cult because with­out sound­ing clichéd we loved it all! How­ever, that split sec­ond I turned my head and saw Jayne walk­ing up the aisle in that stun­ning dress for the first time! You know that WOW! moment in my own head before my brain has even had time to respond with a smile. I will remem­ber that moment forever.

Also, get­ting out of the wed­ding car at the recep­tion like two giddy 10 year olds on Christ­mas morning.

My final really fond mem­ory is of my 3 year old nephew Zachary pick­ing up the micro­phone for an impromptu speech of his own fol­low­ing the ‘proper speeches’ “Thank you for com­ing Robert, thank you for com­ing Jayne” it began. Cute just doesn’t cut it!

We had the ser­vice at St. Peter’s Church in Scor­ton, Lan­cashire. It’s a beau­ti­ful old coun­try vil­lage church close to our homes, and the recep­tion was at Chip­ping & Dis­trict Memo­r­ial Hall, a fan­tas­tic mod­ern vil­lage hall with great facil­i­ties! The hall is a fair way from any­where, in the heart of the pic­turesque Rib­ble val­ley. The jour­ney from the church was around 25 min­utes of wind­ing, twist­ing lanes.

Wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher: Jonathan Bean (Beanphoto)

Jayne and I found Jonathan on the inter­net after lots of search­ing, he has a mod­ern vin­tage kind of style and his pic­tures always look like every­one is hav­ing a lot of fun! Jayne met with Jonathan and knew straight away he was the right guy for the job. Unfor­tu­nately, due to work, I was unable to meet with Jonathan before the wed­ding day itself, so I was still a tad wor­ried. After all, pho­tos are a very impor­tant part of the day and let’s face it every­body else at your wed­ding is a famil­iar face so for some­one to attempt to blend in with­out being noticed rep­re­sents a chal­lenge of the high­est order. Johnny was great from the out­set and imme­di­ately put me at ease. Once I was at the altar I was (a lit­tle) ner­vous Johnny quickly reas­sured me with a smile & a joke. And the result­ing pho­tos were amaz­ing. We could not have been hap­pier! I joked to Jayne when we saw just how many great pho­tos we had that “We are going to need a big­ger wall!“

Wed­ding venue styling and details:

As I men­tioned above the venue is quite ‘out there’ in terms of geog­ra­phy and with the guests all expe­ri­enc­ing some sort of mag­i­cal mys­tery tour to get there we very much made it our aim to cre­ate a sim­i­lar fantasy/wonderland ele­ment inside.

We kept to the loose Alice in Won­der­land theme by hav­ing a sweet & exotic soft drinks table, and Tim Burton-esque for­est style table cen­tre­pieces. The tables them­selves were dec­o­rated spo­rad­i­cally with vin­tage play­ing cards, quotes from ‘Alice’ and favour boxes each dec­o­rated with a small tag inscribed ‘Open me’ and some fan­tas­ti­cally refresh­ing wine by ‘Some Young Punks’ which also just hap­pen to have the coolest labels on the planet! Our guests loved them.

Music and entertainment:

For our music we couldn’t decide on a DJ or band so we did both! The band we chose are friends with Jayne’s brother, called ‘The Everly Beats’ they are a 50’s/60’s trib­ute band whom also play some of their own music too.

We also had a DJ from whom we specif­i­cally requested no rub­bish or cheesy num­bers, and which he duly deliv­ered on. Our first dance was ‘Then I kissed her’ by the Beach Boys, one we both love and has sen­ti­men­tal mean­ing to us.

Mem­o­rable wed­ding day moments:

My younger brother (& best man) Lewis doing this leg­endary Michael Jack­son danc­ing sur­rounded by a crowd of clap­ping (and bemused) guests a la David Brent, and the moment when Johnny (the pho­tog­ra­pher) asked Jayne to ‘drop the bou­quet a lit­tle’ and Jayne just dropped it to the floor!

Wed­ding day advice:

If any grooms-to-be out there decide to go for a wed­ding morn­ing pint to set­tle the nerves, my advice would be to remem­ber to use the lit­tle boys room after! Get­ting mar­ried, pos­ing for pic­tures & talk­ing to lots of well wish­ers whilst des­per­ate for the loo is not good! Nor, in fact, is ask­ing the wed­ding car to stop at your Mother’s house en-route to the recep­tion to go!

Rec­om­mended wed­ding suppliers:

• “The Wine­yard & Deli” Ful­wood, Preston
• Flow­ers from “Another Bou­quet”, Ful­wood, Preston:
• “Pipers Restau­rant”, Garstang (Best wed­ding meal I’ve ever had!)
• “Jonathan Bean Pho­tog­ra­phy”, Lan­caster
• “Broughton wed­ding cars”, Pre­ston:
• Jayne’s dress from “Dan Kerr Brides”, Pre­ston
• “Cre­ative Cakes”, Lan­caster
• “Philipa White­side Ceram­ics” for name settings