A Crazy Beautiful Purple Dress for a Wentbridge House UK Wedding

Rhi­an­non and Chris’s wed­ding is out of this world. They’re a great cou­ple and a per­fect match. As a bride and groom they look incred­i­ble, and Rhi­an­non in her bespoke, pur­ple, lay­ered, gothic-inspired wed­ding dress is breath­tak­ingly beautiful.

I won’t spoil this wed­ding blog with too many words in the intro­duc­tion. Just — enjoy. The images are by HBA Pho­tog­ra­phy, and Rhi­an­non and Chris have writ­ten a wed­ding report for you which I’ve popped at the end of the fea­ture. Claire x

I loved read­ing Rhiannon’s favorite mem­ory of the wed­ding day:

“I’ll never for­get the doors to the room open­ing and my lovely song play­ing, every­one smil­ing and me grin­ning like an idiot with Chris wait­ing for me at the end of the aisle. It was perfect”

Rhi­an­non and Chris: a Went­bridge House UK wedding

The bride and groom: Rhi­an­non and Chris­t­ian Sheppard

Wed­ding venue: Went­bridge House Hotel

Wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher: HBA Photography

How would you describe your wed­ding style?

Indi­vid­ual, cre­ative, unique (lots of hand­made details spe­cific to us), a bit gothic-y

We wanted to keep the wed­ding cer­e­mony short and sweet but it was lovely, I was so happy that look­ing back on it now, it’s a bit of a blur!

We had Soul­mates by Emily Matthews as a read­ing – My sis­ter read this as I thought it per­fectly described what Chris and I had been to each other for years.

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

We wanted a lot of pur­ple and black and sil­ver as we loved those colours but also lots of lit­tle details to make it our own. I love mak­ing stuff and so does my best friend so we went a bit crazy and made most of the dec­o­ra­tions (I had fish­bowls, orchids, rib­bon balls and tiny jars stacked in my liv­ing room for months before the wedding).

We also had a few octopi scat­tered around the place which had been hand­made in our colours by some lovely peo­ple in Amer­ica (I love octopi). There were a few Alice in Won­der­land details that I sneaked in as well.

The flow­ers were made by my florist friend and they were absolutely won­der­ful, they matched every­thing per­fectly.

The wed­ding invi­ta­tions and recep­tion stationery:

My best friend (and brides­maid) made the invi­ta­tions as part of her gift to us, she is amaz­ing at card craft and she did a won­der­ful job with them, we got so many com­pli­ments say­ing how beau­ti­ful they were.

Each one had a big pur­ple satin rib­bon tied in a bow with a lit­tle mush­room charm hang­ing off them. The table cards, table plan and pro­grams were a joint effort between Chris and I, my mom and my brides­maids and they all turned out fabulous

Wed­ding music and entertainment:

Music is very impor­tant to both of us and it was a mas­sive effort to find songs that were both mean­ing­ful to us but also suit­able for a wed­ding as we are both fans of Metal and Rock music.

Choos­ing songs was prob­a­bly one of the hard­est things about the wed­ding but we man­aged it in the end with a lot of instru­men­tals! The song I walked into was from Star Wars (Across the Stars) — the first time I ever heard it, I knew I wanted it in my wed­ding. Chris was wor­ried that peo­ple would think we were Star Wars nerds but only a hand­ful of peo­ple recog­nised it so that was okay!

What did you wear?

(Rhi­an­non) I wore a cus­tom made dress that I bought online from Amer­ica about a year before the wed­ding. I wanted some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent and it took ages to find some­thing but I fell in love with it straight away.

I felt like a princess wear­ing it (not your typ­i­cal princess though). My new Mother in Law made my pur­ple veil to match my wrap and the Brides­maids’ dresses, it was absolutely beau­ti­ful. The shoes I loved as any­thing glit­tery is good in my book and I was able to match my brides­maids as well.

Chris wore a lovely black bro­cade jacket with sil­ver and pur­ple acces­sories; we didn’t want him to look all nor­mal and bor­ing either. We all matched beau­ti­fully which was great.

Mem­o­rable wed­ding day moments:

I’ll never for­get the doors to the room open­ing and my lovely song play­ing, every­one smil­ing and me grin­ning like an idiot with Chris wait­ing for me at the end of the aisle. It was per­fect and I didn’t trip over which was a big fear. I’ll never for­get my sister’s speech either, it was heart­felt and made me cry a lit­tle (the only actual tears of the day).

Wed­ding day advice:

I tried to plan for every­thing and still things got out of my hands on the day and I got a bit pan­icky so I would say to relax and accept that things are going to go wrong on the day.

Rec­om­mended wed­ding suppliers:

But­ter­flies and Angels – They were awe­some to us, very encour­ag­ing of our (slightly odd) design, so nice about every­thing and the cake was deli­cious, every­one loved it.

HBA Pho­tog­ra­phy – Really amaz­ing peo­ple, they made us feel very relaxed even though both of us hate hav­ing our pho­tographs taken with a pas­sion, they were never intru­sive, always just hap­pily snap­ping away in the back­ground, plus Han­nah helped in a moment of panic to find my sis­ters shoes which had wan­dered away, very help­ful! The pic­tures came out lovely as well; I can’t wait to look back on them in a few years time ?

Wed­ding Daze – Such a lovely lady, she sorted out the venue (along with the amaz­ing Went­bridge Wed­ding Co-ordinator Tony) so I had noth­ing to worry over and it looked beau­ti­ful when she was done.