An English Rose and a Ukrainian Sunflower

Man­ches­ter based Vick­er­staff Pho­tog­ra­phy sub­mit­ted the wed­ding for our lovely lit­tle blog, and I was delighted to see a glo­ri­ous day unfold through one fab­u­lous image after another. There are some amaz­ing shots here which I know you’ll love to bits. I do — these guys are really special.

When Ivanka sent me her wed­ding report explain­ing all the Ukrain­ian wed­ding tra­di­tions included in her day — well it was more than the icing on the cake. This is a very spe­cial wed­ding and I’m sure you’ll love it — and learn some­thing too*

*I almost called it ‘101 things you didn’t know about weddings’.

Hope you love this one as much as I did. Over to beau­ti­ful bride Ivanka to tell you more.

“We had a few themes through­out our wed­ding. I’m eth­ni­cally Ukrain­ian and grew up going to Ukrain­ian Catholic Church so there was no ques­tion that we would get mar­ried any­where else! There are also plenty of Ukrain­ian tra­di­tions that I have seen going to other Ukrain­ian wed­dings (mostly in the UK and one in Ukraine) that I wanted to follow.

The recep­tion venue was one of 95 I con­sid­ered before I whit­tled it down to 15 pos­si­bles to go see in a whirl­wind week 18 months before the day. With the orig­i­nal brief of a cas­tle — the only one I could find was Peck­for­ton, which was more than an hour drive from the church. So manor houses and great views were in the frame. My wild card was The Place because I really like the upper (cham­pagne) bar from where you could look down on the main room. Ash­ley loved it so much that although it was 9th on the list, his mind was made up pretty quickly. The fact that it was orig­i­nally called the “Lon­don Ware­house” just cemented the idea further.

In some parts of Ukraine it is cus­tom­ary for the groom to pick up the bride from her par­ents house and receive a bless­ing. Fol­low­ing this they would go (usu­ally on foot) to the groom’s par­ents’ house. How­ever, Ashley’s par­ents’ house is in Lon­don and they are not Ukrain­ian so we left the sec­ond part out. So Ash­ley arrived with our friend Teddy and his best man James in a vin­tage Rover that Teddy had kindly vol­un­teered for our trans­port. Ash­ley made it through the house and actu­ally out the other side where I was sat in a pic­turesque scene on a bench under a tree. We had our bless­ing from my par­ents and then were on our way.

Mean­while, the remain­ing grooms­men were pick­ing up guests from The Place Hotel as it is 5 mins from Pic­cadilly train sta­tion where many of our Lon­doner guests were arriv­ing. We hired a routemas­ter for their trans­port and pro­vided a guide so every­one would under­stand what was going on!

So Ash­ley and I arrived at the church together (as equals so the tra­di­tion says), the jour­ney to church had been really fun, so we weren’t too ner­vous when we arrived. We walked into the church to the begin­ning of Mendelssohn’s Wed­ding March, but it was only the first 40 sec­onds as the priests met us at the back of the church.

We had two priests as one was born in Eng­land (hence could speak Eng­lish with an Eng­lish accent) and my parish priest (who was born in Ukraine) who had been in charge of the parish for the last decade or so. After con­firm­ing we were free to marry each other, the priest led us up the aisle to start things properly.

There were so many great moments!

I really enjoyed the moment we did our vows because we had to kneel and there were two priests either side of us so we were quite enclosed (and cosy) and it felt like it was almost just us. Also my brother singing his read­ing (Let­ter from Paul to the Corinthi­ans) was really awe­some too.

There is a lot of visual sym­bol­ism in the Ukrain­ian ser­vice. The usual rings and can­dles were present, but we also have embroi­dered cloths, crowns of myr­tle and walk­ing around a small altar (for our first mar­i­tal steps).

Fol­low­ing the cer­e­mony, we signed the reg­is­ter with mine and Ashley’s sis­ters being the wit­nesses. The reces­sional was “Autumn” from Vivaldi’s Four Sea­sons which seemed to fit well.

After church, we had some group shots out­side and were really for­tu­nate with the weather, which was warm but gray. We then headed on to The Place. The guests were hav­ing canapés and drinks in the atrium lis­ten­ing to the string quar­tet when we arrived and we walked the length of the atrium to the sound of “The arrival of the Queen of Sheba”.

Lon­don was the sec­ond under­ly­ing theme of the wed­ding. Although I grew up in Man­ches­ter, I have now been in Lon­don for over 10 years — since I started uni­ver­sity at Impe­r­ial Col­lege Lon­don where we met. We met dur­ing an out­ing of the Royal Col­lege of Sci­ence Motor Club which main­tains a 1916 Den­nis ‘N’ Type Fire Engine called Jezebel. Jezebel had a bit of a rough year in 2010–2011, she ran her bear­ing not just once, or twice, but three times. How­ever, in true motor club style they man­aged to get her ready and up to Man­ches­ter in time! We also have to say a big thank you again to the Greater Man­ches­ter Fire Museum for putting Jez up for a cou­ple of nights. Although she wasn’t our main trans­port as I was wor­ried about get­ting black smudges on my ivory dress (very greasy lady!), we did have a quick ride around the block after church to make her feel part of the proceedings.

The table plan had been placed in the atrium to give plenty of time for the guests to fig­ure out what table they were on. Ash­ley had styled up a table plan to look like the Lon­don Under­ground Map with guests’ names as sta­tions on the var­i­ous lines. We were Lon­don Over­ground stick­ing to the orange theme.

In addi­tion to orange, we had the theme of an Eng­lish rose and a Ukrain­ian sun­flower. It was like our logo. It was found on our save the date cards and video, on the invi­ta­tions and then on the order of ser­vice and even our favours were a red rose and a yel­low sun­flower with an orange bow.

So in Ukrain­ian wed­dings the guests get seated and the par­ents of the bride and groom as well as the Ukrain­ian toast­mas­ters (care­fully cho­sen friends of the bride’s par­ents) all greet the bridal party at the door. There is a small cer­e­mony to wel­come us into the com­mu­nity. We were greeted with gifts of bread, honey, salt and vodka. Bread rep­re­sents nature’s bounty, salt is seen a neces­sity of life, and honey and vodka are for pros­per­ity. Basi­cally we rip off a bit of bread, dip it into the honey and salt and take a bite (sep­a­rately!) and then take a sip of vodka. The rest gets thrown over our shoul­ders for luck.

My mother binds our together with an embroi­dered cloth and, with Ashley’s mother, leads us to the top table. This sig­ni­fies that like the cou­ple the two fam­i­lies are joined together. As we go, we have to walk under the Ukrain­ian bread cake “korovai”.

The “korovai” is an elab­o­rately dec­o­rated tra­di­tional Ukrain­ian wed­ding bread that sym­bol­izes com­mu­nity. It is tra­di­tion­ally baked by many hap­pily mar­ried women from the bride’s vil­lage as an expres­sion of sup­port and approval for new­ly­weds. The “korovai” is adorned with orna­ments of baked dough: two doves to rep­re­sent the cou­ple, and other birds to rep­re­sent fam­ily and friends. In the cen­tre of the korovai is a “hiltse”, or tree of life, sig­ni­fy­ing life, fer­til­ity and the build­ing of a new nest. The entire arrange­ment is sur­rounded with a wreath of peri­win­kle, a sym­bol of love and purity. Flow­ers tra­di­tion­ally found in Ukraine, we had pop­pies, corn­flow­ers and sun­flow­ers, also colour­ful rib­bons and ears of wheat.

We also had a tra­di­tional white Eng­lish wed­ding cake. It was Lon­don themed, with black ‘sil­hou­ettes’ of famous Lon­don build­ings on it and a token bit of orange on a zebra cross­ing. It also had an amaz­ingly accu­rate top­per. We had to send lots of pho­tos to the lady who made it so the lit­tle clay fig­ures had the same out­fits as us to amaz­ing detail. Best of all it’s now dis­played proudly in my front room and a beau­ti­ful reminder.

My wed­ding dress Essense of Aus­tralia (D1053). My neck­lace is from Ayedo, my shoes from BHS (bar­gain!), I wore pearl ear­rings from my mom (bor­rowed and old). My some­thing blue was the ‘I Do’ dia­mante stick­ers on the bot­tom of my shoes.

Dur­ing the meal, a Ukrain­ian tra­di­tion goes that should you find that your wine just isn’t sweet enough, you must hit your wine glass with your cut­lery and shout bit­ter or “heer-ke” in Ukrain­ian. At this point, Ash­ley and I were oblig­ated to sweeten the wine by kiss­ing each other. I feel we prob­a­bly should have warned the string quar­tet about this as the first time it hap­pened they were most surprised!

Fol­low­ing the meal, we had the three Eng­lish tra­di­tional speeches. My dad warmed up the crowd and even did a dual lan­guage speech. Ash­ley (an accom­plished speaker who has spo­ken in the Royal Albert Hall and even spo­ken before Boris John­son) did a fab­u­lous job and gave me a very wob­bly lip! But I sur­vived and the best man did his utmost to make me blush with his beau­ti­ful words. (He ended up putting up his copy of the speech on his blog - http://jamesrobinson.me.uk/2011/09/09/something-unremittingly-happy/ )

Ash­ley wore mid gray morn­ing tails from Best Man Hire (www.bestmanhire.com) – who were very lovely — and Greater Man­ches­ter Fire Ser­vice cufflinks!

Fol­low­ing the speeches, we had a Ukrain­ian receiv­ing line. It is tra­di­tion­ally the chance for all the guests to give their best wishes, con­grat­u­la­tions and any presents to the bride and groom. Every­one files past clinks their glasses in toast and kisses almost every per­son in the bridal party. To add to the mer­ri­ment of the process, the top table was actu­ally really wide which meant that both guest and wed­ding party had to lean along way over in an act of fear­less­ness hop­ing that the other will lean in toward them!

Every­one relaxed for a bit then, apart from the groom, who was get­ting con­cerned about his danc­ing debut. Our first dance was to “Can’t take my eyes off you” as per­formed by Muse and we did a chore­o­graphed fox­trot. It didn’t really go to plan. Ash­ley stood on a table dec­o­ra­tion and was con­vinced he was stand­ing on my dress and started pan­ick­ing. I was hav­ing trou­ble tak­ing steps back­wards as I had a lot of net­ting in my dress all bushelled up and was wor­ried that I might stand on my own dress and fall over. How­ever, no one noticed a jot! We did some spins and some prom­e­nades, but the big crowd pleaser was def­i­nitely the dip when every­one cheered.

The next bit of excite­ment in the pro­ceed­ings was a cabaret by “Podilya”, a Ukrain­ian dance group in which I danced long ago. Bright cos­tumes and impres­sive moves wowed and enter­tained us and all the guests.

The moment that stands out for Ash­ley was at the end of the evening – at 1.30am, when all the sur­vivors encir­cled us as we danced. He really enjoyed hav­ing all our friends around us at the end.

Imme­di­ately fol­low­ing the danc­ing we had the chang­ing of the veil ‘cer­e­mony’. In Ukraine, girls used to wear flow­ers and rib­bons in their hair when they went out, as a sig­nal that they were not taken. Mar­ried ladies wear head­scarves. So the groom’s mother removes the bride’s veil and replaces it with a head­scarf to show that the bride is now “a wife” and that she accepts her into their fam­ily. This hap­pens whilst I sit on the groom’s knee. Mean­while, the female guests form a large cir­cle around us and sing amus­ing Ukrain­ian songs. I had fun trans­lat­ing the words to Ash­ley who speaks very few words in Ukrain­ian. Fol­low­ing a few songs, the bride dances with all the sin­gle girls and puts her veil in their hair. To save time, I danced with my brides­maids and my sis­ter and Ashley’s sister.

The guests grad­u­ally dis­persed leav­ing the remain­ing tear­ing up the dance floor. The music played until 1.30pm. Ash­ley did a lit­tle impromptu thank you speech and we then ascended up the glass ele­va­tor to our pent­house apart­ment after a thor­oughly full and amaz­ing day.

Ivanka’s wed­ding day advice

Get some con­fetti can­nons – they’re amaz­ing!! I got some cus­tom coloured ones to fit our red, yel­low and orange theme from http://www.confettimaster.com/.

Also we decided to min­gle with our guests between courses of the wed­ding break­fast. We were nat­u­rally served first which meant we had cleaned our plates before all of the guests had received their food. Whilst we ate I chat­ted to my dad and Ash­ley and Ash­ley chat­ted to my mum, but as soon as we fin­ished we scooted over to a few tables to say hello and see how every­one was doing. It was really great to have a quick unin­ter­rupted chat with so many of our guests.

Ok so maybe I can’t stick to just one bit of advice – but some­thing that I can also rec­om­mend it to get so toast­ing glasses that are extra spe­cial for the bride and groom. We will be using ours (hope­fully!) for our many anniver­saries, so they really quickly con­jure up great mem­o­ries of the speeches and toast­ing one and all.

Rec­om­mended wed­ding sup­pli­ers (Manchester)

Cheshire wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phers Vick­er­staff Pho­tog­ra­phy — Jamie and Tory are great pho­tog­ra­phers, great peo­ple and a fan­tas­tic team. See their full blog post of Ivanka and Ashley’s wed­ding day.

Chris Darby – DJ

Oksana Leshko – flow­ers www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001947193797

Stre­litzia – string quar­tet www.strelitziamusic.co.uk (even com­mis­sioned Sweet Home Alabama which was awesome)

Silk Wed­ding Videos – video­g­ra­pher www.silkweddingvideos.co.uk — see Stacy and David’s wed­ding video right here on Eng­lish Wed­ding blog http://english-wedding.com/2011/11/romance-tears-kilts-and-sunsets/

Con­fetti Mas­ter – con­fetti can­nons! http://www.confettimaster.com/

Best Man Hire – Men’s Out­fits http://www.bestmanhire.com/

Richard’s cakes – (absolutely amaz­ing taster box of cake!! With the most deli­cious fruit cake imag­in­able – even for those who don’t like fruit cake!) http://www.richardscakes.co.uk/

Art­locke Designs – cake top­per http://www.artlockedesigns.co.uk/

Strictly Fun Danc­ing — http://www.strictlyfundancing.co.uk/

Greater Man­ches­ter Fire Museum http://www.manchesterfire.gov.uk/

More? Oh go on then… there’s a gor­geous wed­ding inspi­ra­tion board on face­book for you.

Claire xx