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An Elegant Gothic Wedding Inspiration Shoot from Browsholme Hall

By Claire

Laura from Per­fect Choice Plan­ning sub­mit­ted this moody gothic wed­ding inspi­ra­tion shoot for Eng­lish Wed­ding Blog — along with words to intro­duce you to some fab­u­lous wed­ding sup­pli­ers (sev­eral already great friends of the blog!) so I’ll hand over the reins to her now. Enjoy — and I hope this gives you some ideas for your own gothic inspired wedding!


The sup­pli­ers for this shoot, and their links (in no par­tic­u­lar order) are:



When Joanne from Sim­ply Bows & Chair Cov­ers Lan­cashire con­tacted me ear­lier this year and asked me to do a pho­to­shoot to launch the new black flock design, I was so excited. When she told me the vision she wanted to achieve to pro­mote this launch, it just sealed the deal!

Together we decided the best way to launch this beau­ti­ful flock design was a mono­chrome gothic theme with deep, strong reds to enhance the images con­jured by the black flock, but keep it with a clas­sic edge to give it a strong dark feel­ing with­out over­do­ing the dark colours.

Joanne says: “The idea for the shoot was inspired by some gor­geous black and cham­pagne hand­made flock organza I found and decided to get cre­ative and make them in to fab­u­lous sashes and elab­o­rate chair veils. I often get brides who come to Sim­ply Bows and Chair Cov­ers as they want some­thing a bit dif­fer­ent so I wanted to show brides how they can put the wow fac­tor into their big day by using dif­fer­ent fab­rics, putting colours together and using alter­na­tive styles.”

We both had sup­pli­ers we wanted to work with, but both com­pletely agreed that Alex Davies Pho­tog­ra­phy would cap­ture the per­fect images that would pro­mote all prod­ucts within the shoot. I’d per­son­ally wanted to work with Alex for ages after meet­ing her a busi­ness net­work last year – and she most def­i­nitely didn’t dis­ap­point! Alex is such a lovely, tal­ented per­son and an incred­i­bly hard worker who pro­duced the per­fect images for this shoot

As we were pro­mot­ing the chair cov­ers and table run­ners in the shoot, we needed a table set up with gor­geous prod­ucts to com­plete it. Cakes By Beth have an amaz­ing Gothic Bird­cage cake in their 2012 col­lec­tion and new that it would be per­fect for the shoot. Beth has an amaz­ing tal­ent for tak­ing your idea and cre­at­ing the per­fect, deli­cious cake to go bet­ter than you even imag­ined. In addi­tion, she cre­ated her take on the black for­est gateau mini cakes with figs, bis­cuits that matched the detail on the stun­ning bird­cage cake, and won­der­ful cake pops – we couldn’t have asked for more.

Joanne men­tions, “Ok, so the gothic style may be a bit uncon­ven­tional, but brides can still relate to it and they get to see a dif­fer­ent edge to wed­ding sup­pli­ers that they wouldn’t nor­mally see. For exam­ple, Beth from Cakes by Beth made indi­vid­ual mini black for­est gateau’s filled with jam and topped with figs, that not only tasted deli­cious and fit­ted the shoot to a tee but could also be used as an alter­na­tive to cup­cakes and wed­ding cakes.”

The beau­ti­ful heir­loom bou­quets, but­ton­holes and amaz­ing cen­ter­pieces were cre­ated by the incred­i­ble Mat at Red Flo­ral Archi­tec­ture and, again, fit­ted per­fectly with the theme. Whether it was the tow­er­ing table cen­ter­piece, glit­ter­ing bou­quet or impres­sive fire­place dis­play, the flow­ers and prod­ucts only added to the over­all impact of the shoot.



In addi­tion to the sweet and flo­ral table dec­o­ra­tions, Deb­o­rah from Grafted & Crafted cre­ated fab­u­lous sta­tionery that per­fectly reflected the theme and matched the black flock of the linen. Dis­play­ing a bril­liant range from dif­fer­ent table num­bers and favours, to place names and a table plan idea, Grafted & Crafted met all the require­ments and did a per­fect job cap­tur­ing the theme in her products.

Our beau­ti­ful real-life cou­ple mod­els, Sam and Katie were dressed in stun­ning dresses and sharp suits from Brides Gallery in Eccle­ston, Lan­cashire. With such a wide vari­ety and exten­sive range of dresses and suits, includ­ing cra­vats and waist­coats, Joanne and I spent hours short­list­ing and choos­ing the per­fect dresses to suit the theme and the venue, which I hope you agree we did.

Brow­sholme Hall was the superb venue and back­drop for our gothic themed shoot. With the cer­e­mony room, tithe barn and gor­geous sur­round­ing land­scape, we were spoilt for choice on the num­ber of scenes and images we could cap­ture and def­i­nitely ran out of time, even though we were shoot­ing for the whole day. The beau­ti­ful venue was very accom­mo­dat­ing, allow­ing us to roam around the estate and loca­tions through­out the day; it was just a shame it rained on and off all day, lim­it­ing the out­door expo­sure in images.

The tal­ented hair & make-up artist was Nita from Silk Make Up, who came highly rec­om­mended and cer­tainly didn’t dis­ap­point! After many emails, ideas and chats about how to fit the style & theme together, Nita got to work on the day and effort­lessly trans­formed our mod­els with each dress, almost cre­at­ing a new per­son with each dress. Her work speaks for itself, as I’m sure you will all agree!

Finally, all the fab­u­lous head­piece cre­ations, includ­ing the gor­geous wired masks and del­i­cate bird­cage veils were the hand­i­work of the ever-talented Lau­rel Wed­dings. I have worked with Laura from Lau­rel Wed­dings on a cou­ple of my pre­vi­ous shoots and, after she lent her cre­ations to one par­tic­u­lar shoot, I knew imme­di­ately that her acces­sories would enhance the feel and style of the shoot.

I couldn’t have been hap­pier with the sup­pli­ers, model and venue used on this shoot but here’s what Joanne had to say: “Hav­ing wit­nessed Laura’s work first hand before, I knew instantly that I wanted her involved with the shoot due to her long list of amaz­ing con­tacts and her strong organ­i­sa­tional skills. She man­aged to round a rowdy bunch of local sup­pli­ers up to be in the same place at one time and put together a shoot straight out of my imag­i­na­tion with results that were beyond my wildest dreams.”

Every­one worked really well together, all the prod­ucts were stun­ning and per­fect for the theme, not for­get­ting to men­tion those sup­pli­ers who stayed for the whole day to dress the mod­els, style the mod­els, pose, touch up and as gen­eral help­ing hands. Just a per­sonal thank you to my lovely other half, who sac­ri­ficed his Bank Hol­i­day Mon­day being the per­fect right hand man that I needed.

Finally, I would like to say thank you to every­one who helped out on the day, all the won­der­ful sup­pli­ers and venue who pro­duced the fab­u­lous prod­ucts you see in these images, Alex Davies Pho­tog­ra­phy for mak­ing it pos­si­ble to share it with you, and finally Joanne from Sim­ply Bows & Chair Cov­ers Lan­cashire for the oppor­tu­nity to style this bril­liant shoot.






























Laura asked me to men­tion that she is always look­ing for col­lab­o­ra­tors for pho­to­shoots so if any­one is inter­ested, or has a great idea for shoot then she would be more than happy to have them con­tact her! Get­ting involved with col­lab­o­ra­tive shoots is a fab­u­lous way to launch a new busi­ness, net­work with local wed­ding sup­pli­ers and get gor­geous lifestyle images of your prod­ucts for your web­site and blog. Don’t miss this oppor­tu­nity if you’re in the Cheshire area — you can see from this shoot that Laura is a great per­son to work with!