“In the End, It Did Actually Blow Off.” Veil Adventures!

Wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher Kirsten Mavric sub­mit­ted the wed­ding for the blog. She sent me so many gor­geous pics I’m going to drag this one out… and trust me, you’ll adore me for it.

Part one is the wed­ding day: from the bridal prepa­ra­tions in the morn­ing to nerves, smiles, chuck­les and kisses in church… I’ll hand over to Nicola to tell you more. Enjoy!

Nicola and Bertie’s beau­ti­ful Der­byshire wedding

We got engaged in Decem­ber and were mar­ry­ing in July so there wasn’t too much time to dress shop. I basi­cally went to look one day in Jan­u­ary and nar­rowed it down to two and then reeled in my Mum to help with the final selec­tion. Before I tried any on, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted — only that it wasn’t some­thing strap­less — but as soon as I put the “Milla” on in Sassi Hol­ford (it’s also called Daisy on their web­site), I absolutely loved it.

It was prac­ti­cally the first one I tried on and it sounds like a cliche, but it just felt right. I did look in a cou­ple of other places but really, I had already fallen in love with it. When my Mum saw it for the first time, she agreed it was def­i­nitely the one. It was quite sim­ple in design and not too meringue-y. Just a clas­sic col­umn but made out of intri­cate French lace.

My shoes were some cream, open toed mid-height heels with a slight frill on the front that I bought for £50 from Deben­hams by Roland Cartier. Pretty unex­cit­ing but I wasn’t too both­ered about Louboutins or Jimmy Choos given that you would barely see them.

The dress had a corset inside and but­tons all the way up the back, which were a bit tricky for my brides­maids on the day but it felt fan­tas­tic when I was in it. I did have a moment a few weeks before­hand when I was wor­ried about it being a bit too safe a choice and that I didn’t feel really spe­cial in it. But when it came to the day, I was 100% happy and had so many lovely com­pli­ments from guests. It also helped shape the feel of the whole wed­ding — or at least what I was try­ing to achieve which was a vin­tage, Eng­lish coun­try touch to a tra­di­tional bash.

I chose a match­ing cap-sleeve shrug which could be built in so that it wasn’t strap­less, which cre­ated a really lovely shape and made it slightly dif­fer­ent. You can see the dia­mond shape at the back on one of Kirsten’s close-up pho­tos. I also had the neck­line slightly dipped to make it a bit less boxy, which worked well.

I had a full length veil from Sassi Hol­ford as well, which was just very sim­ple and light. I felt it made me that bit more bridal — although on the day it proved a night­mare in the wind. There are some hilar­i­ous pho­tos of it tak­ing on a life of its own as I come out of the church and in the end it did actu­ally blow off.

The show­stop­per was a neck­lace that had belonged to my husband’s late aunt, Gill, who he was very close to. We had been to stay with her wid­ower a few months before the wed­ding and he invited me to look through her jew­ellery col­lec­tion to see if there was any­thing that would work for the wed­ding. I picked out the neck­lace although I wasn’t sure it would work, but when I took it to my next dress fit­ting, it really set off my whole out­fit and was another vin­tage touch. Again, so many peo­ple com­pli­mented me on it on the day and it meant a lot to also be wear­ing some­thing from Bertie’s side of the family.

Bertie wore his own morn­ing suit, which was made by his father’s tai­lor in Birm­ing­ham, John Sal­is­bury. He and his brother had them made to match their father’s, with white fac­ing on the waist­coats. He wore a light blue shirt from Gieves & Hawkes and a pur­ple Turn­bull & Asser tie with small white spots to match the pur­ple of the brides­maids. He also had a pur­ple pat­terned pocket hand­ker­chief. All the ush­ers had plain pur­ple ties to go with the over­all theme. I had ini­tially wanted corn­flower blue as the color run­ning through every­thing, but it was too dif­fi­cult to find brides­maid dresses to match so I switched to my back-up plan of pur­ple. We lucked out with LK Ben­nett Flute dresses in lilac for just £60 and went from there.

I was born and raised in a vil­lage in Der­byshire where my par­ents still live and where Bertie has very strong con­nec­tions so it was always the plan to have it all based there. The church is less than a mile from my par­ents’ house so made it all very easy. We mar­ried there at 3pm and the recep­tion was in a mar­quee in a field next to my par­ents’ house.

In terms of jew­ellery, I wore a gold bracelet watch that belonged to my late grand­mother on my father’s side. My Mum dug it out of her jew­ellery box and mirac­u­lously it still worked when you wound it up. I also wore the same grandmother’s ring, a cross over gold band with two tiny dia­monds, on my right hand, and a pearl-style bracelet on the right wrist.

It is hard to sum up your own wed­ding briefly. I could write pages with all my rec­ol­lec­tions of the day — and actu­ally have as a memento for the future. For us, the aim of the game was just to have all the friends and fam­ily we wanted with us and for it to be a great party.

We had a tra­di­tional church ser­vice and guests headed straight back for Pros­ecco and canapes while some for­mal pho­tographs were taken out­side the church.

…and that’s where I’ll leave you for today, folks! There’s so much more to Nicola and Bertie’s gor­geous wed­ding that I have to share lots more beau­ti­ful pho­tos by Kirsten Mavric as well as Nicola and Bertie’s best bits in a sep­a­rate blog post.

See you back here tomor­row, 11am as always, for more.

Have a bril­liant day!

Claire xxx