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A Glorious Vintage Broadway Wedding in Preston

By Claire

A beau­ti­ful sen­ti­ment from a lovely cou­ple — and one I’d reit­er­ate with every blog post if I thought for a sec­ond you didn’t know it already! But of course, this being a wed­ding blog there are as many gor­geous details as there are mag­i­cal moments. Katey wears Jenny Pack­ham, Richard looks amaz­ing in Duchamp. Their vin­tage broad­way wed­ding theme included the most amaz­ing tick­ets as escort cards and — oh, yes — a red Cadil­lac to take Katey to church.

The fab­u­lous images of Katey and Richard’s wed­ding are by Chris Mil­ner Pho­tog­ra­phy, and the words below are by Richard and Katey. This is such a cool wed­ding — full of ideas and absolutely burst­ing with love and romance. Enjoy the blog post

Katey wears Eden by Jenny Pack­ham with a beau­ti­ful vin­tage hair acces­sory from Queens and Bowl (links below)

Jenny Pack­ham: www.JennyPackham.com
and Queens & Bowl: www.QueensandBowl.com

What did you wear?

The Bride wore the Eden dress by Jenny Pack­ham and was unique as it was plat­inum and ivory, a com­bi­na­tion not nor­mally used for that dress, and her shoes were also Jenny Pack­ham. The head­piece was called Charleston and was hand­made by Made­line Isaac-James

The groom wore a tuxedo by my favorite menswear designer Duchamp Lon­don, my bow tie, shirt and pocket hanky (pochette) were also Duchamp Lon­don. My socks were pink Paul Smith and my shoes were sil­ver Kurt Geiger. I also had a dress cane from ebay!




Who pro­posed, and how?

I (Rick) pro­posed in Malta in June 2010. I drove us across the island in our hire car to a church we could see at the top of the hill. When we got there it was dark and because the church was cel­e­brat­ing its 400th birth­day it and the sur­round­ing streets were dec­o­rated with white lights. After walk­ing around the church I dropped to one knee and proposed.

Wed­ding venue: We got mar­ried at St Mary’s Fer­ny­halgh RC church in Pre­ston, it’s a beau­ti­ful yet under­stated church. The priest is called Father Tom. Our recep­tion was at Fer­raris coun­try house in Lon­gridge, Pre­ston. It’s a fan­tas­tic place.

Wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher: The very tal­ented Chris Mil­ner

How would you describe your wed­ding style? We decided upon a vin­tage Broad­way theme quite early on. We kept touches of the UK in there though; the flow­ers were cream roses and pale hydrangea. We had a superb ticket sys­tem as our seat­ing plan, once you found your ticket with your name on it, it admit­ted you to the table you were to be sat at. Our good friend and brides­maid Kate Bel­lamy designed and cre­ated our invi­ta­tions, seat­ing plan and ticket idea and our menus.








Which read­ings did you choose?

Katey’s step brother Chris­t­ian read from Corinthi­ans 13:1, it’s an often used read­ing. We also had our nieces and nephews (Poppy 10, Harry 8, Annabel 7 and Oliver 5) read a ver­sion of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Love Changes Every­thing between them. It was a lovely touch and they received a well-deserved round of applause.



A vin­tage broad­way wed­ding recep­tion: Fer­raris Coun­try House

Wed­ding venue styling and details: We had a com­pany called Dance­floor Cou­ture light the room with uplights and down­lights, they lit the top table swag­ging and we had a lit back­drop as well. The table cen­tre pieces were 5 can­de­labras dec­o­rated with pale pink and cream flow­ers, the chair cov­ers were white with a cream sash. The favours were small pots of Wilkin and Sons Straw­berry and cham­pagne jam – again a very Eng­lish detail. We also used vin­tage leather suit­cases and trunks for our card and gift box.

What were your wed­ding highlights?

We loved the whole day from start to fin­ish but par­tic­u­lar high­lights were get­ting to kiss the bride, we danced into our wed­ding break­fast to a Rihanna song called ‘Who’s that chick?’ which was superb. The speeches were all bril­liant, for­tu­nately there are just too many high­lights to men­tion, the whole day was a high­light!








Wed­ding music and entertainment:

The music at the cer­e­mony was pro­vided by an excel­lent string quar­tet from Music Stu­dents For Hire. We had Canon in D for the bride’s entrance, whilst sign­ing the reg­is­ter we had One Day Like This by Elbow and Par­adise by Cold­play. And we had Cold­play Viva la Vida as our exit song. Our hymns were Jerusalem and Give me Joy (in my heart).

At the recep­tion Robin Ker­shaw from Dance­floor Cou­ture MC’d and played broad­way musi­cal and show tunes through­out the wed­ding break­fast. Once the room was turned around for the evening recep­tion Robin was also our DJ. We also had a pho­to­booth from Pic­ture This Photo Booth, that was an excel­lent idea, every­one got involved in the fancy dress and had a great time in the booth. The pho­tos in the guest book are hilarious!

Mem­o­rable wed­ding day moments:

The day as a whole was so mem­o­rable. The speeches were so touch­ing and funny, our wed­ding break­fast entrance was great fun, I’ll never for­get our first dance, we danced to Is This Love? By Bob Mar­ley. The day ran per­fectly.





Wed­ding day advice from Richard and Katey:

  • Before the wed­ding I would say all the extra effort plan­ning and sav­ing so we could have every­thing as we wanted was so so worth it. The com­pli­ments we received were much appreciated.
  • On the day I would say don’t worry about the weather, the bad weather worked out very well for us as it kept the guests together in the build­ing, we had quite a large wed­ding, 164 at the wed­ding break­fast and over 200 at the evening recep­tion and every­one min­gled and got on so well.
  • I would also say try and remem­ber it, the day goes quickly so try tak­ing some time out to reflect slightly with your new hubby/wife through­out the day, just 5 mins here and there.
  • Be your­selves as you can’t please every­body. We don’t really like wed­ding cake so instead we had a large selec­tion of dif­fer­ent cakes, choco­late cake, car­rot cake, lemon meringue pie, lemon driz­zle cake, fruit cake etc. Also, I really don’t like the tails look so the grooms­men and myself were all in black tie, an Amer­i­can tra­di­tion I think should be embraced more.
  • And most impor­tantly, the day should be about the mar­riage, not just the fuss after­wards, remem­ber why you are mak­ing the com­mit­ment to begin with and embrace it.


Richard and Katey’s rec­om­mended wed­ding suppliers