A Wedding Film to Make You Cry…

Sarah and Derek’s High­lights from Love Gets Sweeter on Vimeo.

Sarah has been so gen­er­ous with her wed­ding report for the blog as well — from the pro­posal (and once again, Derek you Rock!) to the wed­ding day and this lovely couple’s wed­ding sup­plier rec­om­men­da­tions — this is fan­tas­tic. Over to Sarah and Derek…

Who pro­posed, and how?

Derek pro­posed on Christ­mas day 2010! After open­ing all our presents Derek offered me a final present explain­ing that he had a ques­tion to ask me before I could open this one. He then pro­ceeded to ask “will you marry me?” and pre­sented me with a very sparkly dia­mond ring!

Despite being child­hood sweet­hearts and being together for over 10 years at this point, it came as a com­plete sur­prise! I responded “yes” imme­di­ately! Christ­mas day was a great day to get engaged on as we were see­ing all our fam­i­lies on that day any­way so we quickly went to our par­ents houses to share our good news! The pro­posal had been eagerly antic­i­pated by all our fam­ily and friends and they were absolutely delighted for us!!!

Wed­ding venue: Thorn­ton Manor

Wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher: Chap­ter Photography

How would you describe your wed­ding style?

Tra­di­tional with a vin­tage twist — Lots of lace and pearls!

I wore a tulle dress and lace top both made to mea­sure from Stew­art Parvin (Anna Karen­ina and Akira). Derek hired a Morn­ing Suit from Moss Bros.

The wed­ding cer­e­mony: a reli­gious cer­e­mony at St Georges Church, Thorn­ton Hough. We chose 1 Corinthi­ans 13: 1 — 13 and a poem ‘The One’ as our wed­ding readings

The wed­ding recep­tion: highlights

We have the most amaz­ing friends and fam­ily and hav­ing them all together to cel­e­brate with us cre­ated a great atmos­phere through­out the day. Every­one was in high spir­its from the start.When we left church the chauf­feur of our wed­ding car com­mented that he could hear the singing and the cheer­ing from out­side the church!

Wed­ding venue styling and details:

The inte­rior of Thorn­ton Manor is very opu­lent and as a result we didn’t need to pro­vide a lot of dec­o­ra­tion! In keep­ing with the neu­tral color scheme we had white cream and blush flow­ers around the house. In the main func­tion room we had can­de­labras dec­o­rated with flow­ers and stings of pearls. As favours we con­tin­ued the vin­tage theme and female guests got dia­mante and pearl brooches.

Music and entertainment:

In church Tim Walker played the Organ and he was accom­pa­nied by a local choir called Accord. Pro­ces­sional music was the Bridal Cho­rus, Wag­ner and reces­sional was the Wed­ding March, Mendelssohn. For the Thorn­ton Manor recep­tion we had a lot of enter­tain­ment! Pachebel String Trio played through­out the cham­pagne recep­tion. The Three Wait­ers sur­prised all of our guests dur­ing the wed­ding break­fast. This was fol­lowed by our evening recep­tion where we had Richie Dews — an acoustic gui­tarist — and the Cool­ers, a 5 piece band, accom­pa­nied by Jenny Saw­don. They did our first dance and pro­vided music through­out the rest of the evening!

Mem­o­rable moments:

• The Three Wait­ers! They were a sur­prise from Derek and they were sen­sa­tional, we ended up doing the conga before we ate desert!
• All the cheer­ing and applause we received when the min­is­ter pro­nounced us man and wife!
• The look on Derek’s face when he received his wed­ding present – A new Mer­cedes SLK!

Wed­ding day advice: Choose rec­om­mended sup­pli­ers, all our sup­pli­ers went up and above what we expected of them and they han­dled every­thing for us so we could just relax and enjoy the day!

Try to relax dur­ing the weeks before the big day, I was so ner­vous and there was absolutely no need to be as the day exceeded our expec­ta­tions and couldn’t have been any better!

Rec­om­mended wed­ding suppliers:…

• Love gets sweeter mov­ing images – Char­lene spent time get­ting to know us before the wed­ding which really paid off on the wed­ding day as it made us feel much more relaxed. I have friends that didn’t get their wed­ding filmed and they really regret it as there’s lots that hap­pens that you don’t see on the day. A film is a bril­liant way of cap­tur­ing all the details and reliv­ing the day over and over again.
• Chap­ter pho­tog­ra­phy – Evie and Jamie took us for an engage­ment shoot ahead of the wed­ding to get us used to hav­ing our pho­to­graph taken to ensure that we felt com­fort­able on the day. They both min­gled with guests on the day and because we had met with them on a few ear­lier occa­sions they felt like friends. They are great peo­ple and their prices are very rea­son­able for the qual­ity of their service.
• William & Ben­jamin florist – Jamie pro­vided us with an excep­tional ser­vice, not only did he pro­vide us with beau­ti­ful flow­ers he also trans­ported them between venues so we could reuse all the flow­ers we had in church at the Manor House which saved us a con­sid­er­able amount of money!
• Bar­retts Cater­ers – Barrett’s do excep­tional food but they are so much more than cater­ers! They gave us ideas for lots of other aspects of the day and co-ordinated our sup­pli­ers and the day’s events.
• Phillips UK (Wed­ding sta­tionery)- Phillips did all of our invi­ta­tions, orders of ser­vice, favours, table set­tings, table plan and per­son­alised dress­ing gowns for the bridal party. They co-ordinated every­thing with the same color schemes and details mak­ing sure all the fin­ish­ing touches were taken care of. They acted upon requests for cer­tain items just days before the wed­ding day and ensured they were ready for the big day.
• Make Up by Lara (Hair & make-up artist)- Lara and her team did the hair and make-up of each mem­ber of the bridal party (10 peo­ple in total!). They were close by at the church and Thorn­ton Manor for touch up’s for pho­tographs and they then stayed until late in the evening. As well as being there for the bridal party they were on hand to do hair and make up for any guest that wanted their assis­tance! This was a great perk which all our guests com­mented on and really appreciated.
• Aphrodite Bridal, Knutsford & Stew­art Parvin – Terri at Aphrodite was a great help when choos­ing my dress, I was also lucky enough to be able to get an appoint­ment on one of her designer days with Stew­art Parvin. I love Stewart’s style so I tried lots of his dresses on and fol­low­ing his advice and my heart I finally chose mine! Stew­art then did a sketch of me in the dress which I was able to take as a keep­sake – this was totally unex­pected but made the expe­ri­ence even more special!

Images of Sarah and Derek’s big day are here: http://www.chapterphotographyblog.com/thornton-manor-wedding-sarah-and-derek/