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Best Man Bingo and Party Bags Instead of Favours — Stephanie and Michael’s Rushton Hall Wedding

By Claire

Thanks to wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher Aaron Col­lett for shar­ing today’s gor­geous wed­ding pic­tures on the blog. Stephanie is beau­ti­ful and Michael her per­fect match — the smiles say it all (and I’m smil­ing right back while I pre­pare the blog fea­ture for you!) Con­grat­u­la­tions guys, and thanks for your amaz­ing wed­ding report. I love it!

Every­one — enjoy. This is a fab wed­ding with some great ideas. Don’t miss the wed­ding report at the end of the fea­ture. Have a bril­liant day!

Claire xxx

Stephanie and Michael’s Rush­ton Hall wed­ding — tra­di­tional with a twist!





























Wed­ding venue:

All Saints Church, Rush­ton and Rush­ton Hall, Northants (more real wed­dings from Rush­ton Hall)

Wed­ding photographer:

Aaron Col­lett Pho­tog­ra­phy (more wed­dings by Aaron Col­lett)

How would you describe your wed­ding style?

Tra­di­tional with a few twists!

A lit­tle about the wed­ding ceremony:

A church wed­ding with 120 friends and fam­ily. Michael and the grooms­men arrived on a trac­tor pulled trailer and Stephanie and Dad on a horse and car­riage. Although there were 4 best men, it was Michael’s brother who stood with him at the front of the church. We had 3 brides­maids of dif­fer­ent ages who looked gorgeous!

We each choose a hymn that was impor­tant to us (Stephanie from her child­hood and Michael from his Irish roots) and then one that was about love and mar­riage. We exchanged tra­di­tional vows and rings, and walked down the aisle to Here Comes the Bride and the Wed­ding March, but indulged in some West­life for sign­ing the register!

Which read­ings did you choose?

  • ‘On your Wed­ding Day’ for Stephanie’s sis­ter to read as it was infor­mal and the words were incred­i­bly relevant.
  • 1 Corinthi­ans because the mean­ing and bib­li­cal ref­er­ence was impor­tant to us.

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

Our flow­ers were white roses as Michael’s fam­ily are from York­shire. We used these for our but­ton holes, bou­quets, pew ends and table dec­o­ra­tions. Instead of favours, we gave each guest a goodie bag at the end of the night with water, crisps, choco­late, headache tablets and a per­sonal note writ­ten on the back of one of our pre-wedding photos!

On the table each guest had a scroll with a menu, ‘guess the first dance’ and ‘best man bingo’ game card. We tied these in rib­bon to match the brides­maids’ dresses which was impos­si­ble to track down, but com­pletely worth it to know it all matched! In the evening we used bal­loons to dec­o­ra­tive the party room!

Invi­ta­tions and recep­tion stationery:

All cre­ated by the won­der­ful Lydia of Hand Drawn Maps, we had a bespoke motif with our ini­tials (our par­ents had this put on cham­pagne glasses for the day!) and she incor­po­rated the rose theme into all the sta­tionery. She drew an amaz­ing map of the local area with some lovely per­sonal touches like the chick­ens in our back gar­den – as well as send­ing with the invites, we also had it blown up on the day. Our favorite item from her was our table names – all the places we love in Corn­wall on a bril­liant map show­ing every­thing that is spe­cial to us about those places.

Wed­ding music and entertainment:

Milo Max pro­vided the evening enter­tain­ment – a fan­tas­tic band with an amaz­ing playlist. We also had fire­works from MLE – despite the cold and rain, every­one joined us out­side for a shot of Lemon­cello and a dis­play set to Take That’s Great­est Day!

What did you both wear?

Bride (dress, shoes, acces­sories): Suzanne Neville’s Besot­ted & bespoke Kate Spence shoes. I made some pearl hair pins to match my jew­ellery from my mum’s wed­ding head­dress as my some­thing old.

Groom: A tai­lor made Jack Bun­neys suit and shirt and cuf­flinks with our motif on!

Mem­o­rable wed­ding day moments:

  • The best bit was see­ing Michael as I walked into the church – it felt perfect.
  • The speeches – funny and emo­tional, includ­ing one table heck­ling for words in order to win best man bingo!
  • Trans­port­ing the guests to the venue in trac­tors and trail­ers. It was cold and wet, but every­one got in the spirit!

Wed­ding day advice:

After the cer­e­mony, we had 20 mins to our­selves in the horse and car­riage with a bot­tle of cham­pagne. The rest of the day was so busy, it was great to get some time to our­selves.
Because the weather was so wet, we did our out­door pho­tos a few weeks after the wed­ding – not only was it great fun get­ting dressed up again, but it meant we had loads of times to socialise on the day!

Rec­om­mended wed­ding suppliers: