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A Cheshire Wedding Blog — Karen and Simon at Arley Hall

By Claire

I love this quote from the happy couple:

“Try to leave your­selves as much time as pos­si­ble between all the day’s activ­i­ties to spend with fam­ily and friends, after the day those will be the moments you cher­ish the most.”

Karen wears a fab­u­lous dress by Sassi Hol­ford and the day has a pur­ple theme because it’s the rib­bon color for pancreaticcancer.org.uk — a cause very close to the hearts of the bride and groom. This is all explained in the wed­ding report which Karen and Simon have shared with us today, and you’ll see some really beau­ti­ful images from Cheshire wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher Mar­tin Ham­ble­ton — with unex­pected and won­der­ful moments cap­tured as well as some mag­i­cal por­traits. I know you’ll love this! Grab a Crunchie (after all, as Wendy always tells me, we should cel­e­brate Fri­days in style!!)

Karen and Simon at Arley Hall — a Cheshire wed­ding blog















Wed­ding venue:

St Michaels Church, Aughton & Arley Hall and Gardens

Wed­ding photographer:

Mar­tin Ham­ble­ton — www.hambletonweddingphotography.co.uk

How would you describe your wed­ding style?

Clas­sic

A lit­tle about the wed­ding ceremony:

The cer­e­mony was at Karen’s fam­ily church where her Mum & Dad got mar­ried in 1979. Rev Canon Michael Smout con­ducted their cer­e­mony (it was his first at his new church) and kindly agreed to come back to con­duct ours as well! It made it extra spe­cial as he is a friend of the fam­ily too as are many of the peo­ple at the church includ­ing Chris­tine who helped us put together the order of ser­vice and made sure every­thing ran smoothly on the day.

Which read­ings did you choose?

We had Colos­sians 3 v 12–17 which was read by Simon’s brother Paul and a spe­cial read­ing which my cousin Jen­nifer found in my favorite book Cross Stitch by Diana Gabal­don. It was a beau­ti­ful excerpt from a very mov­ing part of the book and it meant so much to us that she took the time to find it.

Tell us a lit­tle about your wed­ding venue styling and details:

The pur­ple color scheme was very impor­tant to us as it is the color of the pan­cre­atic can­cer rib­bon. Unfor­tu­nately Karen lost her Dad to pan­cre­atic can­cer in 2010 so this is a char­ity that is very close to our hearts. The wed­ding favours were dona­tions to the research trial that he was a part of. www.pancreaticcancer.org.uk

For the rest of the details we tried to keep things sim­ple and ele­gant as our venues were so stun­ning they didn’t need too much decoration.

Invi­ta­tions and recep­tion stationery:

The invi­ta­tions were by Foto Fusion and used a pho­to­graph that Mar­tin kindly let us use from our engage­ment shoot. The rest of the sta­tionery was hand made by our­selves to match our color scheme in fact the table plan is actu­ally the mir­ror from above our fireplace!

Wed­ding music and entertainment:

Dur­ing the recep­tion drinks we had the amaz­ing Pachel­bel String Quar­tet who played a selec­tion of music from tra­di­tional clas­si­cal pieces to more mod­ern Bea­t­les clas­sics. In the evening we were lucky enough to have the Funky Doc­tors who every­one agreed were bril­liant! They kept every­one up on the dance floor all night and peo­ple still talk about how fan­tas­tic they were now.

What did you wear?

I wore the beau­ti­ful Sassi Hol­ford Georgie gown. I fell in love with it on a trip to Bea­cons­field but strug­gled to find a sup­plier near home. For­tu­nately I found Karen at Agape in Knutsford. She very kindly agreed to have the dress shipped up to Knutsford from Sassi Hol­ford for me to try on!

Karen was bril­liant and helped with all the alter­ations even adding a bit of bling to the dress and cus­tomis­ing my tiara to make it per­fect! My shoes were by Bourne and were a bar­gain from eBay, even though they were super high I wore them all day they were so comfortable!

My Mum bought me the most gor­geous pair of pearl ear­rings as a wed­ding present and I also wore a dia­mond bracelet that Simon had bought me a few years before.

Simon wore a clas­sic morn­ing suit hired from Moss Bros, with cra­vats to match the pur­ple color theme and a new Omega watch which Karen bought as a sur­prise present for the wed­ding day and hid in a tin of chocolates!







Mem­o­rable wed­ding day moments:

Simon – watch­ing Karen and the flower girls walk­ing down the aisle, and being chauf­feured around in a Bent­ley with champagne.

Karen – There are so many! Cry­ing the whole way through my vows and regret­ting not choos­ing water­proof mas­cara, walk­ing through a wall of con­fetti out­side the church in the glo­ri­ous sun­shine, the won­der­ful speech my Mum gave before din­ner, lis­ten­ing to my cousin Ross play­ing the piano for every­one after din­ner and get­ting to spend time with all our fam­ily and friends and danc­ing the night away.

Wed­ding day advice:

It doesn’t mat­ter how much you plan, the day will go by so quickly. Make sure you make time for just the two of you, and try to leave your­selves as much time as pos­si­ble between all the day’s activ­i­ties to spend with fam­ily and friends, after the day those will be the moments you cher­ish the most.

Rec­om­mended wed­ding suppliers:

All that we used. They were excel­lent through­out the whole wed­ding process and made every­thing so much eas­ier for us.