Old, New, Borrowed and Blue for Claire and Richard’s Wedding

When she told me about her wed­ding day Claire men­tioned how she’d always looked for­ward to the tra­di­tion of some­thing old, some­thing new, some­thing bor­rowed and some­thing blue — so I chose the title for this wed­ding blog post too. Claire and Richard were mar­ried at Mal­lory Court in August. There are some really spe­cial lit­tle touches in Claire’s wed­ding report: I love how she kept the dress a shared secret with just her mum, for exam­ple — and what a gor­geous dress.

Claire is a stun­ning bride. Richard looks fan­tas­tic in his kilt — this is just a fab­u­lous wed­ding day with real style and a nice tra­di­tional touch. The wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phy is by Rob and Sarah Gille­spie; I’ll leave you with their pic­tures to tell the story of the day along­side Claire’s own wed­ding story.

Enjoy! x

The wed­ding dress — Sassi Hol­ford, London

I bought my made dress from Sassi Holford’s Lon­don Bou­tique. I knew as soon as I saw Sassi’s dresses that I would get mar­ried in one of her designs and chose a made to mea­sure ‘Saman­tha’ dress and jacket as I felt it had the tra­di­tional feel I was look­ing for. I had expected to favour an elbow length veil, but the bou­tique man­ager April, helped me try a num­ber of lengths and design options and I set­tled on a 3 tiered full length veil to com­plete the look.

Only my mom had seen the dress before the wed­ding day, with even the brides­maids being kept in the dark! This meant that we had a num­ber of great girly trips down to Lon­don for shop­ping trips, mea­sure­ments and toile fit­tings along with a lovely sense of shar­ing in a spe­cial secret together.

Bridal acces­sories and bridesmaids

I bought a sim­ple hair band from Ivory & Co. Tiaras at their stand at the NEC wed­ding fair, and the brides­maids chose com­ple­men­tary hair slides from the same range. They had sim­ple, tra­di­tional designs which com­ple­mented the dresses with­out over­pow­er­ing them, and our fan­tas­tic hair­dresser Natalie Bartrum then worked the hair acces­sories into the indi­vid­ual styles we all wanted.

The brides­maids, my mom and I all had shoes from the ‘Pink’ range at Brides of Shirley. The girls and mom had theirs dyed to match their out­fits and chose a range of dif­fer­ent styles that they felt would be most com­fort­able for them, and they choose com­pli­men­tary hand­bags too.

All of the girls had their make up done by Ali Gunn and she found an indi­vid­ual style for each of us. It was a won­der­fully relax­ing way to start the day and Ali ensure that it stayed pic­ture per­fect all day.

The bridesmaid’s dresses came from the won­der­ful ‘Plat­inum brides’ in Hall Green, Birm­ing­ham. Our maid of hon­our chose a one shoul­dered design and the 2 brides­maids, a com­ple­men­tary strap­less design each with match­ing shrugs for inside the Church. Xan­thi and Joan at Plat­inum could not have been more help­ful and made every­one feel to calm through­out the process.

For our lit­tle Flower girl, I choose a sim­ple Ivory dress with but­ter­fly detail from Next and she chose a range of acces­sories from Deben­hams – her favorite being a fluffy ivory shrug intended for the evening but which she wore all day!

Richard and the wed­ding party wore tra­di­tional Scot­tish dress incor­po­rat­ing the ‘Grant Mod­ern’ tar­tan which comes from Claire’s side of the fam­ily. All the out­fits come from Vankil­ter in Soli­hull and the boys all had fun try­ing some­thing new for the big day.

The choice of tar­tan then informed the color scheme for the rest of the day with a the brides­maids dresses, flow­ers and even in the cars fol­low­ing the indigo color picked out from the kilts.

Grow­ing up I most looked for­ward to the tra­di­tion of “Some­thing old, new, bor­rowed and blue”. For my some­thing old I wore the first piece of jew­ellery Richard bought me – an eter­nity ring that me bought while we were a uni­ver­si­ties 300 miles apart, for new I chose my shoes, for bor­rowed, I wore my mum’s dia­mond ear­rings and then I wore a blue garter which was a gift to my mom on her wed­ding day from her mother and was now being passed onto me.

The wed­ding day

When we got engaged we knew we wanted a tra­di­tional Catholic wed­ding with a strong fam­ily feel. Hav­ing put in the plan­ning a long time in advance we both found the morn­ing very calm and peace­ful and we had a great time get­ting ready with our friends and fam­ily in the morn­ing. Richard was joined by Rob from Rob and Sarah Gille­spie pho­tog­ra­phy and they were superb at cap­tur­ing every moment while also guid­ing us through the day.

We were mar­ried at Olton Fri­ary in Soli­hull dur­ing a nup­tial Mass. We wanted a real sense of cel­e­bra­tion to per­me­ate the ser­vice so we opted for a Gospel Choir and hymns that either had strong per­sonal sig­nif­i­cance or that lots of peo­ple could join in on.

Fol­low­ing the ser­vice we went on to Mal­lory Court in Leam­ing­ton Spa for the recep­tion. Natalie our wed­ding co-ordinator was superb through­out our engage­ment and put us at com­plete ease on the day itself. There we enjoyed drinks and canapés in the gar­dens as the weather was per­fect, while a sax­o­phon­ist and piano duo played on the terrace.

This gave us the oppor­tu­nity to have pho­tos taken while our guests enjoyed the sur­round­ings. Rob and Sarah are the ulti­mate pro­fes­sion­als and put every­one at ease — we have been amazed by how many gor­geous shots they got with­out us even notic­ing and our fam­i­lies have been really pleased with the group shots.

The chef at Mal­lory court is Miche­lin starred and pro­duces amaz­ing food which was a big con­tribut­ing fac­tor for us book­ing. He put together a fan­tas­tic wed­ding break­fast menu which peo­ple still talk about! You hear about peo­ple not eat­ing at their own wed­dings but that was cer­tainly not the case for us!

We rounded the day with a tra­di­tional Scot­tish ceilidh fol­lowed by a disco. This gave up the oppor­tu­nity to please all the guests and a ceilidh always gets peo­ple up danc­ing straight away.

Mem­o­rable wed­ding day moments

One of our favorite moments actu­ally occurred the morn­ing after the wed­ding. We arranged for our par­ents, grand­par­ents and our wed­ding party to have brunch together, and Mal­lory made it a really inti­mate affair. Fol­low­ing this we were waved off on our hon­ey­moon by the peo­ple who really are those clos­est to us which was the per­fect com­ple­tion to our per­fect day!

Claire’s Wed­ding day advice:

This is a piece of advice that I was given and would cer­tainly pass on… Dur­ing the day take a cou­ple of oppor­tu­ni­ties to take a step back as a cou­ple, alone, to absorb the day and its events – it goes by so fast that you will really value those stolen moments.

Mal­lory Court wed­ding suppliers

• Wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher – Rob Gille­spie www.robandsarahgillespie.co.uk
• Venue – Mal­lory Court (www.mallory.co.uk )
• Dress – Sassi Hol­ford (www.sassiholford.com)
• Brides­maid – Plat­inum brides, Hall green, Birmingham
• (www.platinumbrides.co.uk)
• Flow­ers – Pas­sion for flow­ers (www.passionforflowers.net)
• Kilts – Vankil­ter (www.vankilter.co.uk)
• Hair – Natalie Bar­tram (www.bridalhairspecialist.co.uk)
• Make up – Ali Gunn (www.makeupbyali.co.uk)
• Bus – Routemas­ter Ltd (www.routemasterbuses.co.uk)
• Cars – Bar­rie James Cars (www.barriejames.co.uk)
• Video – Crae­fully crafted media (www.carefullycraftedmedia.co.uk)
• Choir – Audrey Mat­tis Chorale (www.amc-chorale.com)
• Recep­tion music – Round Mid­night (www.roundmidnightmusic.co.uk)

Read the full story of Claire and Richard’s War­wick­shire wed­ding on their pho­tog­ra­phers’ own blog: http://robandsarahgillespie.co.uk/2011/09/claire-richard-olton-friary-and-mallory-court-hotel-warwickshire/