A Classic English Wedding in Yorkshire

Cat and Tom’s wed­ding shows you don’t need to make your own bunting to have a beau­ti­ful and per­sonal wed­ding day which is filled with char­ac­ter. Their York­shire wed­ding is ele­gant and clas­si­cally sim­ple, with beauty to be found in Cat’s dress and wed­ding style (they really are a gorgeous-looking cou­ple!), and in the mag­nif­i­cent wed­ding venue.

Cat and Tom were mar­ried at Yorkshire’s Cas­tle Howard, in The Tem­ple of the Four Winds. It’s stun­ning. This is how mem­o­ries are made — and with gor­geous wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phy by Mark Tier­ney along with Cat’s wed­ding report, I’m sure you’ll enjoy tak­ing inspi­ra­tion from their Eng­lish wed­ding blog!

A clas­sic Eng­lish wed­ding: Cas­tle Howard, Yorkshire

The bride and groom:

Cat Allen and Tom Open­shaw (now both Openshaw)

Who pro­posed, and how?

Tom pro­posed on Christ­mas Day in the Lake Dis­trict, we were on hol­i­day with my fam­ily in a hotel in a lit­tle vil­lage that got snowed in and we were tak­ing an evening walk. We were sit­ting in a church yard over­look­ing the vil­lage below when he popped the question.

Wed­ding venue: Cas­tle Howard, The Tem­ple of the Four Winds

Wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher: Sheffield wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher Mark Tierney

How would you describe your wed­ding style? Clas­si­cally simple

Which wed­ding read­ings did you choose?

My elder sis­ter read ‘Fidelity’ by D.H Lawrence and my best friend wrote her own read­ing for us called ‘The Eter­nal Con­ver­sa­tion’

What did you wear?

I had two dresses as I could not bus­tle my main wed­ding dress.

1st dress – one shoul­der, fit and flare dress with a long train, I also wore a veil.

2nd dress – short, sweet­heart neck­line, net­ted dress.

Tom wore a sil­ver suit with white shirt and blue tie (matched the bridesmaid’s dresses)

Mem­o­rable moments:

My dad walk­ing me down the aisle (he had a brain tumour 2 years ago, the surgery left him with bal­ance dif­fi­cul­ties, which means walk­ing is a dif­fi­cult task – when we first got engaged I didn’t think that he would be able to)

Emily’s read­ing, it was a sur­prise for us – a beau­ti­ful reading!

The look on Tom’s face when he saw me walk down the aisle, and when I changed into my sec­ond dress!

A con­tem­po­rary Eng­lish wed­ding reception:

What were your high­lights? We had already said all of the speeches at the wed­ding cer­e­mony venue so when we got to the evening venue (after a 40 minute ride back in a 1929 clas­sic car!!) we could just chill out with our friends – we were intro­duced into the din­ing area, but then just milled around speak­ing to friends and fam­ily that could not make it to the wed­ding (day — 40 peo­ple, evening – 150 people )

The Ceilidh was lots of fun – get­ting every­one on the dance floor was very easy!!

Hav­ing all of our friends together was our biggest high­light – there are some peo­ple who we have not seen in years (we both went trav­el­ling for 3 years and met peo­ple there, Tom was in the air force for 8 years, I went to uni­ver­sity, we have both had a few jobs since com­ing back to the UK, – we have met so many friends in our life­times, but they are spread all over the country/world that it gets hard to meet up with them – our wed­ding was a great excuse!!)

Wed­ding venue styling and details:

The Mer­chant Adven­tur­ers’ Hall in York, we left the build­ing as it was due to its amaz­ing wooden beams and all the his­tory within, we wanted to leave it untouched so the guests could look around.

For the tables we had cream table cloths, with a few can­dle lanterns and small sil­ver hearts dot­ted around – sim­ple! (The guests could take these if they wanted as we did not have spe­cific favours) For the meal we had a hog roast!!!

Music and enter­tain­ment: We hired a ceilidh band – AMAZING!!

Wed­ding day advice:

Once the day has arrived, just let go and let every­thing hap­pen – your wed­ding party can sort any­thing out behind the scenes for you if necessary.

When plan­ning the wed­ding, keep it sim­ple and take your time mak­ing decisions

Rec­om­mended Eng­lish wed­ding suppliers:

We had a local band called ‘Blackbeard’s Tea Party’ which I found play­ing on a street cor­ner in York – they are a young group but amaz­ing, they are pas­sion­ate about their music which is the most you can want from a folk band! They play in all the local fes­ti­vals etc. and are very ded­i­cated. http://www.blackbeardsteaparty.com/ and on face­book https://www.facebook.com/blackbeardsteaparty (Very folky, love them! Claire)

Our food for the venue was sup­plied by Poppy Cater­ers; they were one of 5 that we could choose from as the venue had very spe­cific needs due to the nature of the build­ing. They were very pro­fes­sional and the food/service was excep­tional. http://www.poppymarquees.co.uk/

My wed­ding dress came from an amaz­ing shop in Pen­rith – KoKoa Brides. They are a fam­ily busi­ness and were very very help­ful, friendly, accom­mo­dat­ing and such a won­der­ful envi­ron­ment to pick your dress in. They have 3 floors of dresses for your spe­cific price range and are very hon­est which is refresh­ing!! The alterations/tailoring were very well priced too. http://www.kokoabride.co.uk

Mark Tier­ney is a great wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher – we did not want too many posed pho­tographs and wanted to cap­ture the day with true emo­tions – Mark is per­fect for this and there are so many amaz­ing pho­tos it’s been really hard to limit our­selves in choos­ing for our album. We had a free engage­ment photo shoot so that we could get to know each other before the big day which was fan­tas­tic as we knew what to expect on the day. He has a great eye for artis­tic shots and we are so very grate­ful for him record­ing our spe­cial day! http://www.tierneyphotography.co.uk/

There is more from Cat and Tom’s wed­ding on Mark Tierney’s wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phy blog (I couldn’t fit all the images here, but rec­om­mend you go and see more!) www.tierneyphotography.co.uk/blog/castle-howard-merchant-adventurers-hall-wedding-photography-temple-four-win/