A Beautiful Sheffield Wedding and the Truth About Rodney and His Dolphins!

Dave and Davina: a beau­ti­ful Sheffield wed­ding blog

When Dave pro­posed after 5 years together I knew that we weren’t going to have a long engage­ment and eagerly got stuck into plan­ning our big day. Although we had no idea where we wanted to get mar­ried we knew that it had to be big enough for our fam­ily and friends with­out being cold and uninviting.

We wanted some­thing with a bit of char­ac­ter and that’s why when we went to look around Whit­ley Hall in Sheffield we imme­di­ately fell in love with it. The old style inte­rior gave it per­son­al­ity and the dif­fer­ent rooms avail­able meant that fam­ily mem­bers wouldn’t be restricted to the one room with the DJ in at the recep­tion. How­ever what we really loved about it was the fact that there were pea­cocks that roamed the grounds which were fan­tas­tic for photos.

The wed­ding dress

As a bride one of my favorite parts of the wed­ding plan­ning was going wed­ding dress shop­ping with my mum, I already knew that my shoes would be Jimmy Choo (a girl’s got to have stan­dards) and that I wanted to wear a bird­cage instead of a veil but the dress had to offer some­thing dif­fer­ent to the hun­dreds of wed­ding dresses that you nor­mally saw in magazines.

I was like a kid in a candy shop try­ing on all of the dresses at Blush Bridal Bou­tique in Upper­mill and I didn’t limit myself to one par­tic­u­lar type — I tried the meringues, fish­tail, lace, vin­tage but when I tried on the Ian Stu­art Miami dress I knew that was the one for me. The amaz­ing bow at the back was the icing on the cake. I can’t even explain how the dress made me feel but I’ll never for­get it and the girls that worked there made me feel like a princess on every sin­gle visit.

The morn­ing of the wedding

On the actual day, my mum, dad, two brides­maids, Rosie and Kerry and myself tucked into smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels and rose cham­pagne with hibis­cus flow­ers for break­fast before start­ing to get ready for the day. The brides­maids wore gor­geous maxi dresses from John Lewis which were set off nicely with the flow­ers from Mon­ica f Hewitt.

Prior to the day I was a bit ner­vous about being videoed and pho­tographed dur­ing the prepa­ra­tions but can hon­estly say that it didn’t even enter my head as the amaz­ing Char­lene from Love Gets Sweeter and Nicola Thomp­son put me totally at ease and I actu­ally on occa­sions for­got that they were there.

Hair and make up was done by Lau­ren Sally who I can only describe as bril­liant, from the moment we met she put me at ease, instantly get­ting the kind of look that I wanted to go for. It was an absolute hon­our hav­ing my hair and make up done by some­one who is amaz­ing at her art but is also a gen­uinely fan­tas­tic per­son and such a laugh.

One of the moments I’ll trea­sure for­ever is when my dad came in to the liv­ing room after I’d put my dress on to see me for the first time in my wed­ding dress, it was so emo­tional and I was so proud for my dad to be giv­ing me away. As a lit­tle extra I’d got­ten him some cuf­flinks that stated father of the bride on them which he put on before we set off to the venue.

The wed­ding ceremony

When we got to the venue, I was absolutely elated and whilst I was hav­ing pho­tos my dad was sup­ply­ing the brides­maid and him­self with alco­hol to get rid of the nerves as the brides­maids were ner­vous of walk­ing down the aisle before me.

Walk­ing down the aisle was sur­real and emo­tional espe­cially as Dave and I had picked the music our­selves so I knew that he would be lis­ten­ing for the part when we had agreed that I would start walk­ing down the aisle.

See­ing Dave cry­ing as he turned around to see me walk­ing towards him will stay with me for­ever. Not only that Dave was wear­ing the cuf­flinks my dad had given to his best man the night before for me, that stated ‘See You’ on one and ‘At 1.30pm’ on the other one and I was wear­ing the stun­ning sil­ver knot stud ear­rings that Dave had bought me the day before and left at my mom and dad’s house.

Dur­ing the cer­e­mony we had two amaz­ing read­ings from Rosie and Tony who did us proud despite being so ner­vous. After the cer­e­mony we were able to take a lovely ride in the wed­ding car sup­plied by Laura’s vin­tage lim­ou­sines as hus­band and wife drink­ing cham­pagne before going back to the venue for pho­tos. The cars were amaz­ing and the dri­vers were pro­fes­sional and friendly through­out the day.

Dep­site the weather being glo­ri­ous it was absolutely freez­ing so whilst hav­ing the pho­tos taken out­side we chat­ted, drank and ate canapes quickly between shoots. Whilst the rest of the wed­ding party got to go inside for warmth by the fires Dave and I spent a while out­side with both Char­lene and Nicola film­ing and pho­tograph­ing us.

Jimmy Choos were replaced by Top­shop nude pumps and I added my Top­shop faux fur coat to wear whilst walk­ing around the grounds. Dave and I had such a laugh with him hold­ing my dress up as well as the drinks whilst we both tried to avoid step­ping in pea­cock poops — hilar­i­ous!!! Dur­ing the pho­tos we were all laugh­ing at Dave’s bad jokes whilst our teeth were chat­ter­ing with the cold, even though it was freez­ing we wouldn’t have changed a thing — the day and weather was absolutely perfect.

The wed­ding reception

When we stepped into the room where we were hav­ing our meal I couldn’t believe how beau­ti­ful the room looked, the styling which was done by Ambi­ence venue styling and the cen­tre pieces which were sup­plied by Mon­ica F Hewitt were gor­geous and just what we have imag­ined them to look like.

The table plan, menus and table names which Dave and I had spent hours decid­ing on had been designed and cre­ated by Love Story Sta­tionery who were absolutely fan­tas­tic and made every­thing so per­sonal, they were so unusual and we got lots of com­ments through­out the day.

Whilst we had our wed­ding break­fast meal I gave my now hus­band a new set of cuf­flinks to wear which read ‘If found’ ‘return to wife’ which he loved and put on imme­di­ately. I also put on a ring that I had made that stated Mrs Davina Armitage on it which was a spe­cial lit­tle unique add on to the day.

Dave and I had also pro­vided favours of muslin bags with a large jelly dol­phin sweets in them with a tag stat­ing ‘love from Davina and the Dol­phin trainer’ at each place set­ting which was based on the fact that Dave had orig­i­nally told me he was a dol­phin trainer called Rod­ney when we met.

At the back of the room there was a lovely post­box, our sweet table with all the sweets sup­plied by Mr Simms Empo­rium Sweet Shop in Knutsford and a friend’s easel dis­played the white ornate pic­ture frame that sur­rounded the cork pin­board for peo­ple to pin their vin­tage style place cards once they had writ­ten a note on the back for Dave and I — an idea I had early on as I didn’t want the clas­sic guest book, but wanted some­thing that we could dis­play on our wall after the wedding.

After the meal it was time for the speeches and despite a tech­ni­cal dif­fi­culty of the micro­phone not work­ing they were all fan­tas­tic and had all the guests in stitches, espe­cially the speech by one of the best men, Dean. They were so good that they actu­ally over­ran into the night do — ooppsss!!!

The evening entertainment

The night do gave every­one the per­fect oppor­tu­nity to let their hair down after a long day and have a good old boo­gie. Prior to the first dance Dave and I cut the cake that had been made by Ania’s cup­cakes at Elsecar’s her­itage cen­tre to our spec­i­fi­ca­tion — again not fol­low­ing tra­di­tion we opted for a vanilla flavoured sponge cake dyed pur­ple inside, cov­ered with marzi­pan and white icing with lace applique.

The cake top­per was a suprise for Dave as I had ordered a spe­cial one from Amer­ica that dis­played a cyclist groom, bride and a bike which I had asked to be painted exactly as Dave’s bike.

We then hit the dance floor for the first dance ‘You and Me’ by The Wan­nadies which we loved. I think we both were on such a high that we made sure that we enjoyed every sin­gle sec­ond of our first dance together to the cheers of our friends and fam­ily. After the dance we spent the night drink­ing, chat­ting, and danc­ing to Gang­nam style, grease, Abba, The Killers and var­i­ous other music.

A par­tic­u­lar spe­cial part of the evening was when Dave and his mom danced to the song that had been played at his dad’s funeral, a request that Dave had asked for when we were plan­ning our big day. It was very emo­tional but extremely spe­cial and I know Dave was glad that he went ahead with it.

The day was the best day of both of our lives and rep­re­sented both Dave and I to a tee. We loved it so much we wanted to do it all over again the fol­low­ing day.