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A Contemporary but Classic Peckforton Castle Wedding

By Claire

It warms my heart to read about Kelly’s favorite wed­ding day moments. After talk­ing about the incred­i­ble effort her dad made to pre­pare an amaz­ing speech, she says,

“I loved watch­ing all of our friends and fam­ily enjoy­ing them­selves. You really can’t put a price on cre­at­ing those mem­o­ries.”

The gor­geous wed­ding pho­tographs are all by York­shire wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher Mark Tier­ney, of Tier­ney Pho­tog­ra­phy. Please leave a com­ment at the end of the blog post if you can — I’d love to hear from you and I know Kelly and Ian will too! Enjoy. Claire xxx

A con­tem­po­rary but clas­sic UK wed­ding blog: Peck­for­ton Castle































Wed­ding report: Kelly and Ian Broomhead

Wed­ding venue: Peck­for­ton Cas­tle, Cheshire
Wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher: Mark Tier­ney, Tier­ney Photography

How would you describe your wed­ding style?

We wanted to keep the day as relaxed as pos­si­ble, but we also couldn’t ignore the fact that we were in this stun­ning set­ting, so any sta­tionery or décor we added needed to let the venue speak for itself.

We tried to keep every­thing very con­tem­po­rary but clas­sic. For the flow­ers we used sim­ple white hydrangeas, which had such an amaz­ing effect and were stunning.

As I walked down the aisle, I was blown away by how amaz­ing the arch­way within the Min­strels Gallery looked. The florist really did exceed our expectations.

The wed­ding ceremony

The civil cer­e­mony was rel­a­tively infor­mal. My dad walked me down the aisle to ‘Kiss­ing You’ by Des’ree (a lit­tle too fast for my mum’s lik­ing), and it was extremely nerve-racking!

My brides­maids Lucy and Rebecca went first and were fan­tas­tic right from the moment when Ian proposed.

I did stum­ble over my vows but we got there in the end.

Our wed­ding read­ings were ‘On Your Wed­ding Day’ and ‘What is Love’. Our close friends who did an amaz­ing job did the readings.

Wed­ding venue styling and details:

We had a few sim­ple touches such as can­dles, framed pho­tos and a few hand­made touches. As a wed­ding guest book we used the plates from our let­ter­press invi­ta­tions and asked guests to sign the mount board around them, which is now on our wall at home.

We hand­made some gift boxes for the chil­dren too so that they could be enter­tained dur­ing the wed­ding break­fast which went down well!

Invi­ta­tions and recep­tion stationery:

My col­league and friend Amelia Che­ung, who’s based in New York, designed all of our invi­ta­tions and recep­tion sta­tionery. She did such an amaz­ing job and really cap­tured the theme of our day. She made it really easy for us to take the design across other ele­ments we wanted.

Wed­ding music and entertainment:

Our string quar­tet was fan­tas­tic! We’d spec­i­fied some clas­si­cal pieces for before the cer­e­mony, but then after that they played a lot of cur­rent pop music. As we signed the reg­is­ter they played Elbow One Day Like This and Ali­cia Keyes Empire State of Mind, as Ian pro­posed in New York.

Ian’s God­fa­ther, Joe McN­abb played ‘Let’s Face the Music and Dance’ dur­ing the pro­ces­sional on his sax­o­phone. We’d kept it a sur­prise from friends and fam­ily and the cas­tle allowed him to play from the Min­strels Gallery in the Great Hall.

For the recep­tion, we booked the band Groovy Rev­o­lu­tion to play along­side a DJ, and they played our first dance cho­sen by Ian, which was ‘Eng­lish Rose’ by Paul Weller.

What did you wear?

My dress was from San Patrick – beau­ti­ful lace and tulle. I knew from the out­set that I wanted lace and straps, but found it dif­fi­cult to find some­thing that didn’t make me look too old. The tulle straps were a per­fect solu­tion, and Whitelace and Promises in Hud­der­s­field got the mea­sure­ments spot on!

Ian’s suit was hired. He knew that he wanted to wear tails and chose his own waistcoat/suit com­bi­na­tion. The final color scheme was also in his hands!

My shoes were designed and made by one of my closet friends Cleo Cousins. She’s a shoe designer based in Lon­don, and again sent me one sketch and I was sold straight away. The glit­tery heels added that bit of bling to the out­fit and they were so com­fort­able I kept them on until the very end.

I wore my late Nan’s wed­ding ring through­out the day on my right hand as my some­thing old and bor­rowed. I chose not to wear a veil but my tiara was from Amanda Wyatt.

Mem­o­rable wed­ding day moments:

My dad’s speech was incred­i­ble. The amount of prepa­ra­tion that went into it was astound­ing. His speech included pho­tos and ref­er­ences from both Ian’s and my childhood.

He’d also pre­pared and printed copies of a mag­a­zine called ‘Cheshire Wife’. He’d inter­viewed friends and fam­ily and cre­ated a siz­able mag­a­zine for all of our guests to read.

I loved watch­ing all of our friends and fam­ily enjoy­ing them­selves. You really can’t put a price on cre­at­ing those memories.

Ian’s favorite moment was our first dance.

Wed­ding day advice:

  • Cre­ate your bud­get spread­sheet from day dot and make sure you include any­thing and every­thing that you could ever imag­ine, from dress alter­ations to twine for invites, to postage and thank you gifts and be pre­pared for when your future hus­band wants to buy glow sticks for the reception!
  • Also don’t feel afraid to nego­ti­ate with every­one! Every pound goes towards an extra cock­tail on your honeymoon.
  • Ian’s advice to grooms is to relax on the day and leave your­self plenty of time to get to your venue! Ian arrived with 30 min­utes to spare and still had to change, as there was an event in the area so traf­fic was heav­ier than usual.
  • Don’t worry about your speech, or what time things are sup­posed to happen.
  • Enjoy your­self!

Rec­om­mended wed­ding suppliers: