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A Romantic and Classic Lumley Castle Wedding (Durham)

By Claire

Lum­ley Cas­tle is a fairy­tale wed­ding venue — a grand and impres­sive Grade I listed build­ing near the city of Durham (and believed to be one of the most haunted build­ings in the area!) Its rich his­tory makes it a sump­tu­ous wed­ding venue — and today’s wed­ding blog will show you the very best side of Lum­ley Castle.

With beau­ti­ful images by Durham wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher Simon Hud­speth, Nina and Lee’s wed­ding story unfolds in pic­tures and with words by the lovely Nina.

Nina and Lee’s Lum­ley Cas­tle UK wed­ding blog


The bride and groom: Nina and Lee

Who pro­posed, and how?

Lee pro­posed. We went on a week­end trip to Copen­hagen and he had many weeks ear­lier booked the best table in one of the most charm­ing restau­rants in the city.

Between the main course and the dessert he brought out an old mem­ory book that some friends and I used to write silly things in. I was flick­ing through it and on one of the last pages he had writ­ten “Will you marry me?”…! It was very romantic.

He must have told the staff in advance because you could hear a cham­pagne bot­tle pop­ping in the bar behind us!

Wed­ding venue:

Lum­ley Cas­tle, County Durham, a grade 1 listed cas­tle from the 14th cen­tury www.lumleycastle.com/weddings/

Wed­ding photographer:

Simon and Ali­son Hud­speth www.simonhudspeth.co.uk

How would you describe your wed­ding style?

Roman­tic and clas­sic. The color scheme was deep red/burgundy. The dress was, how­ever, greek inspired chif­fon.








The wed­ding ceremony:

Reli­gious or civil? Civil

Which wed­ding read­ings did you choose?

Nina’s mom read an excerpt (called “About Friend­ship”) from Khalil Gibran’s book “The Prophet” (1923).






The wed­ding reception:

What were your wed­ding highlights?

The speeches. They were very per­sonal but also quite funny.

Also the dessert; we had sticky tof­fee pud­ding with lots of but­ter­scotch sauce. It was the biggest sticky tof­fee pud­ding por­tions we had ever seen!

The main thing I remem­ber though is just how fun the day was.

Wed­ding venue styling and details:

Very classy. We did not dress the venue in too many flow­ers etc. as the venue is, as writ­ten above, a cas­tle and has beau­ti­ful orna­ments on the wall and we felt that it had enough char­ac­ter already.

We dec­o­rated the round tables with ivy on the can­de­labra. We felt that went well with the Greek inspired dress!

Wed­ding music and entertainment:

We had a pianist play dur­ing the cer­e­mony and while the bride and the father of the bride walked up the aisle.

A friend of ours (also a pro­fes­sional singer) sang “Take It With Me” by Tom Waits.

We had a disco in the evening and a pro­fes­sional DJ play his own playlists, how­ever, we added a few Scan­di­na­vian songs to add some per­son­al­ity to it as Nina is Nor­we­gian and we live in Nor­way. Dur­ing the disco Nina’s mom and aunt sang a tra­di­tional Nor­we­gian song.












What did you wear?

Lee wore a classy dark black Ben Sher­man suit with a deep red tie and brown shoes.

Nina wore a Greek inspired chif­fon dress by Ben­jamin Roberts which she bought in Oslo, a long veil with details along the edges and some details scat­tered across the veil and flow­ers in her hair.  Her jew­ellery was from Snö of Swe­den and shoes were from Rain­bow Club.

Mem­o­rable wed­ding day moments

The prepa­ra­tions for the cer­e­mony. We had two brides­maids (nieces, 5 and 7) who had prac­ticed walk­ing up the aisle throw­ing rose petals before the bride entered. When it was time to walk into the room they got so flus­tered by all the onlook­ers that they for­got to throw the petals! They were, how­ever, allowed to throw them on the way out to make up for it.

Wed­ding day advice:

Remem­ber to enjoy every moment of it. It is easy to wish some of it away because you’re ner­vous, but time flies by so quickly that before you know it the day is over.

Also, don’t spend any energy or time on focus­ing on small details that went slightly wrong, because the day is what you make of it and you want to remem­ber your wed­ding day for the rest of your lives as a fan­tas­tic day!



Rec­om­mended wed­ding suppliers:

The pho­tog­ra­phers. Simon and Ali­son were very pro­fes­sional and easy to work with. And as you can see, they are tal­ented pho­tog­ra­phers, we are very happy with their work.

  • Durham wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phy by Simon Hud­speth: http://www.simonhudspeth.co.uk

They man­aged to cap­ture the atmos­phere and emo­tions very well. (Simon Hud­speth Pho­tog­ra­phy has been nom­i­nated for a 2013 wed­ding indus­try award)

All the peo­ple involved in the wed­ding were very good and we were very pleased with how every­thing came out. Lee’s sis­ter made the wed­ding cake with three dif­fer­ent flavours; lemon, gin­ger and choco­late, which we enjoyed eat­ing for days after­wards!

Bonus wed­ding blog links!