A Traditional English Wedding at Rushton Hall in Northamptonshire

“The way my heart raced as I walked down the aisle and greeted Austin at the front, then how I just couldn’t quite get my words out on the sec­ond part of my vows, mak­ing every­one in church cry.”

Huge con­grat­u­la­tions to such a won­der­ful cou­ple, and thank you to you both for shar­ing your day on the Eng­lish Wed­ding Blog. Thank you also to the very lovely Sarah Vivi­enne Pho­tog­ra­phy for the sub­mis­sion. Enjoy! Claire xxx

A beau­ti­fully tra­di­tional Eng­lish wed­ding — Carys and Austin at Rush­ton Hall

Wed­ding venue:

Church: St Mary’s, Pod­ing­ton, Bed­ford­shire.
Recep­tion: Rush­ton Hall, Rush­ton, Northamptonshire.

Wed­ding photographer:

Sarah Vivi­enne Pho­tog­ra­phy, Northamp­ton, Northamptonshire.

How would you describe your wed­ding style?

Clas­sic, Vin­tage, Sophis­ti­cated & Grand but with a mod­ern twist.

Invi­ta­tions and recep­tion stationery:

Wed­ding Para­pher­na­lia, Roth­well, Northamp­ton­shire.
All of our sta­tionery was themed with white pearl card and sil­ver card, white or sil­ver rib­bons, and lit­tle crys­tals.
Wed­ding Para­pher­na­lia are one of my lovely team of wed­ding blog spon­sors, spe­cial­is­ing in ele­gant and time­less wed­ding sta­tionery and acces­sories. Find out more about them and see favorite items and ideas — Ele­gant wed­ding sta­tionery by Wed­ding Paraphernalia

What did you wear?

Bride: Dress: Layla by Char­lotte Bal­bier, Tiara: Miranda Tem­ple­ton, Veil: From Char­lotte Harley Bridal Cou­ture, as was my dress & tiara, Heart of the Shires Shop­ping Vil­lage, Near Wee­don, Northamp­ton­shire. Shoes: Ella by Rain­bow Club.

Groom: Hired from War­wicks of Welling­bor­ough.

A lit­tle about the wed­ding ceremony:

Our church ser­vice started at 11am, it seemed an early wed­ding was unusual, as a lot of peo­ple com­mented, “isn’t that early”, but we had so much to get in and our recep­tion venue was a good 45 min­utes away. We had booked 3 vin­tage cars, all white ones, so we knew these would take a lit­tle longer than a stan­dard car too. We had a 1963 Rolls Royce Sil­ver Cloud, a 1973 Daim­ler 7 Seater Lim­ou­sine and a 1968 Jaguar 420, again we wanted to keep with the tra­di­tional grand white wed­ding theme. They were dec­o­rated with sil­ver and white rib­bons and bows.

I had care­fully selected our vicar, our lit­tle vil­lage church doesn’t have a full time vicar, so we have dif­fer­ent vic­ars that come and take the ser­vices on Sun­days when they are able to. So I felt this gave me a good idea of which vicar would be able to com­plete our cer­e­mony with­out mis­takes – how wrong I was with my choice!!! On the day he for­got to input 2 hymns and had to be reminded and he also for­got to say “you may now kiss the bride” so we had to do our own kiss when we could!! It’s given us all some­thing to remember!

There’s a group of ladies in the vil­lage that always do the flow­ers in church, and they asked if we would like them to do our flower dis­plays in the church, so we kindly accepted. The florist that we booked to do all of our other flow­ers placed some large organza bows on the end of the church pews. It was sim­ple, but effec­tive, we wanted the beauty of the church to be in the fore­front and not our decorations.

We had some wicker ham­pers in the porch of the church, filled with real rose petals; they were white with pink edges on. We invited our guest to take some petals on the way out of the church. Hav­ing real rose petals that would biode­grade meant we could throw the con­fetti within the church grounds – which made for a fan­tas­tic photo!

The cer­e­mony flew by us both, but we got some qual­ity time together on our car jour­ney to the recep­tion. Pod­ing­ton church only has 1 work­ing bell, so we couldn’t have a peal of bells chim­ing as we left, but we did have the one bell rang for us.

Which read­ings did you choose?

My Mum did a read­ing of a poem enti­tled ‘May your love be ever­last­ing’ by Leah. These are the words:

You put each other in a trance
And show your love in its expanse
With some­thing sim­ple as a glance
May your affec­tion be everlasting.

You keep each other safe and warm
Pro­tect each other from the storm
Love could take no truer form
May your devo­tion be everlasting

You see each other as no one can
Your jour­ney seized hand in hand
Together over sea and land
May your com­pan­ion­ship be everlasting.

Your friends have joined here today
And fam­ily have come here to say
Each in their own spe­cial way
May your love be everlasting.

Austin’s Aun­tie read the clas­sic: 1. Corinthi­ans. 13. Verses 4–13

My brother read out a prayer that the vicar gave him and our son, Rhys age 9, wrote and read out his own prayer:

Dear God, Thank you for the mar­riage of my mom and dad. They are very spe­cial peo­ple, please look after them and make sure they live hap­pily ever after. Amen.

We thought this was very sweet of him & we were so proud of him on the day, it was such a lovely touch. He was quite anx­ious dur­ing the rehearsal, but on the day you would never have know he was ner­vous! He was also our ring bearer, car­ry­ing our wed­ding rings that were tied onto a ring cush­ion, and our page­boy, walk­ing in front of me as I went down the aisle.

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

Rush­ton Hall is one of the most beau­ti­ful places we have vis­ited, it’s already styled in a gor­geous way, with old paint­ings, large chan­de­liers, vin­tage fur­ni­ture and plush car­pets, cur­tains & sofas, it’s the typ­i­cal Eng­lish stately home, full of his­tory and has been very well maintained.

The hall became our inspi­ra­tion for our wed­ding; we decided that we wanted a vintage/traditional feel, with pearls, crys­tals, rib­bons, a white & sil­ver palette, lace and the feel­ing of grandeur and for­mal­ity being at the heart of all our plans.

The tables were given names: Duke, Duchess, Lord, Lady, Earl & Count­ess and Austin & I booked our­selves into the Dukes bed­room suite for the evening – every­thing is so lux­u­ri­ous there!

We didn’t dress the draw­ing room at all, where we had our drinks recep­tion; the room is already per­fect and full of splen­dour. We had some pretty party boxes for the chil­dren, the girls had sil­ver boxes with white feath­ers and crys­tals on them and the boys had sil­ver boxes with top hats on.

The only other item placed in the room was one of the ham­pers from the church, with a few rose petals in that our guest placed gifts and cards into. This worked per­fectly, as it was easy to close and manoeu­vre both on the day and after­wards, we have kept it with all of our cards & keep sakes in from the day.

We had our wed­ding break­fast in the library, which has a lot of color in it, brown oak book­cases filled with old books, brown oak pan­elling on the walls and red & green dec­o­ra­tions on the cur­tains, car­pets and walls. Again we wanted the room to be the star of the show, so to high­light the grandeur we hired some vin­tage crys­tal can­de­labras and had our florist place roses around them, one can­de­labra on each table and we lit the can­dles dur­ing the breakfast.

On each table we scat­tered a few crys­tals, each guest had a mini sil­ver pail, filled with white heart shaped choco­lates, with a mini thank you tag on them, tied on with sil­ver rib­bon. Each guest had their own indi­vid­ual menu, which dou­bled up as place set­tings. We had a large old easel stand with our main table plan on, which again fea­tured our white pearl & sil­ver card, crys­tals and white ribbons.

We were lucky to have good weather, as our wed­ding was dur­ing the cold snap of snow & ice. Being so lucky with the weather meant we man­aged to get pho­tos both inside and out­side. The court­yard was full with sun­shine and we man­aged to get all of our guest pho­tos taken there.

Austin and I had most of our pho­tos down by the lake, as he pro­posed to me there and it’s one of the rea­sons why we wanted to have our wed­ding at Rush­ton Hall. It holds such a spe­cial place on our hearts, and it feels very roman­tic when we are there, some­thing that we wanted to share with our fam­ily & friends, and they cer­tainly were wowed by its surroundings!

Wed­ding music and entertainment:

At the church we had an organ­ist play, his name is David Gibbs and he’s the head of music at a pri­vate school. We had the clas­sic Bridal Cho­rus by Wag­ner com­ing into the church and The Wed­ding March by Mendelssohn when leav­ing. We liked 4 hymns and when we asked the vicar which ones we should have, he loved 4 of them — so we ended up hav­ing them all!

1. Love Divine (the Welsh version)
2. God In The Plan­ning And Pur­pose Of Life
3. As The Deer Pants For The Water
4. To God Be The Glory

We had a Cham­pagne & canapés drinks recep­tion in the draw­ing room at Rush­ton Hall, and we wanted to have some music that fit­ted in with our sur­round­ings & for­mal feel, there­fore we booked a string trio called Ariella Strings. We selected a reper­toire of clas­si­cal songs for them to play, which fit­ted in won­der­fully with the opu­lence of our sur­round­ings and the cel­e­bra­tory occa­sion of the day.

In the evening we wanted every­thing very relaxed, to pro­vide an oppor­tu­nity for all of our guests to talk & wind down after the hec­tic day endured. We booked the cel­lar bar at Rush­ton Hall, which is full of sofas and relaxed light­ing, to fit the relaxed feel of our evening we booked a jazz 3 piece called Cate Cody.

Our first dance was to the Etta James song ‘At Last”, we thought it was appro­pri­ate as Austin and I went to school together, and this year we have known each other for 20 years.

Mem­o­rable wed­ding day moments:

• The wind pick­ing up at one point and lift­ing my Cathe­dral length veil into the air.
• My dad pick­ing off the stick­ers from my wed­ding shoes that I mis­tak­enly had left on.
• The way my heart raced as I walked down the aisle and greeted Austin at the front, then how I just couldn’t quite get my words out on the sec­ond part of my vows, mak­ing every­one in church cry.
• Our son say­ing, “Oh Mummy, you look beau­ti­ful” when he first saw me, as he came out­side the church to lead me in.
• The car jour­ney with my Dad as we headed to the church.
• The amaz­ing food & ser­vice that we had from Rush­ton Hall & all of the com­pli­ments we had from our guests.
• The funny and touch­ing speeches given by Austin, my dad and the best man.
• My brother, and our mas­ter of cer­e­monies, intro­duc­ing us into the Library as Mr & Mrs Taylor!

Wed­ding day advice:

• Put together a com­pre­hen­sive plan for those peo­ple set­ting up your room so they can place every­thing they way you would like it.
• Make sure there is one per­son who you trust to run the day for you on the day, after all the plan­ning and prepa­ra­tion it is good to allow your­self to let go on the day and get oth­ers to worry about things. Oh and don’t wear a watch!
• Plan well ahead and get an organ­iser to write it all down in, buy one with pouches inside and you can keep all your paper­work in one place, it also makes for a won­der­ful keep­sake after the wedding.
• Book the sup­pli­ers that can only do one wed­ding a day first and do it well in advance. This ensures you get the day you really want and not hav­ing to com­pro­mise because the sup­plier you want isn’t avail­able. These include recep­tion venue, cars, pho­tog­ra­pher and hair & make up. Book all of the other sup­pli­ers after the key play­ers in the day are booked.

Rec­om­mended wed­ding suppliers:

Pho­tog­ra­pher: Sarah Vivi­enne, Northamp­ton
Florist: Julie Anna Flow­ers, Northamp­ton
Hair & Make Up: Toni Cre­ative, Northamp­ton
Can­de­labra: Wed­ding Day Hire, Sandy, Bed­ford­shire
Cars: Bridal Car­riages of Northamp­ton­shire, Thrap­ston, Northamp­ton­shire
Sta­tionery: Wed­ding Para­pher­na­lia, Roth­well, Northamp­ton­shire
Wed­ding Dress & Acces­sories: Char­lotte Harley Bridal Cou­ture, Nr. Wee­don, Northamp­ton­shire
Men’s Suit Hire: War­wicks, Welling­bor­ough, Northamp­ton­shire
Jazz Band: Cate Cody, Glouces­ter­shire
Strings: Ariella Strings, Mil­ton Keynes
Nails & Eye Lash Exten­sions: Beauty of Bedford