Laughter, Tears, Beautiful Photography and a Red Wedding Dress

I hon­estly don’t know where to begin — the sun­light flood­ing through the win­dows of Broadoaks Coun­try House Hotel near Con­is­ton will take your breath away. Emma’s red wed­ding dress from Coast is sim­ply stun­ning (I knew I recog­nised it… it got a men­tion at the end of this blog post from Feb­ru­ary where I claimed this dress as Mine! Revis­it­ing this blog post made me smile).

But more than any­thing else, Paul and Emma’s wed­ding report will stir the romance in every sin­gle one of you. It did for me: a cou­ple so much in love they spent their day hold­ing back happy tears, whose advice for you all is to:

“Do it your way, don’t feel pres­sured to have cer­tain ele­ments because you (or oth­ers) think you should, most of those thing won’t mat­ter on the day, it’s about peo­ple, not things.”

Paul and Emma’s inti­mate, beau­ti­ful Cum­bria wedding

Who pro­posed, and how?

I pro­posed to Emma on her birth­day. I knew we wouldn’t be happy with an ‘off the shelf’ ring, and thought it bet­ter for Emma to be involved in the process, so used a pro­posal ring, engraved with the words ‘Marry me?’, and had arranged an appoint­ment that day to see a jew­eller to dis­cuss bespoke designs. So Emma sketched some ideas on the back of an paper bag(!), and that formed the basis of the final design, a white and rose gold ring with a pear shaped dia­mond and blue moon­stone.

Wed­ding venue: Broadoaks Coun­try House Hotel, Trout­beck, Cumbria.

We were only plan­ning a small wed­ding (27 guests), intended to have the cer­e­mony out­side and only had a lim­ited bud­get. How­ever not many venues offered wed­dings out­side, and most were more focused on larger num­bers. Luck­ily Emma’s sis­ter Sarah (one of our brides­maids) came across Broadoaks, a lovely coun­try house in the Lake Dis­trict, out­door cer­e­monies an option, and the only venue we’d seen that was avail­able for exclu­sive use for a wed­ding of our size, within our bud­get if we booked a date no more than 4 months in advance. On our first visit it felt per­fect for us, we booked and had 16 weeks to plan and arrange… everything!

Wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher: Anurag Sharma, Shut­ter­leaf Pho­tog­ra­phy.

We met Anurag at a wed­ding fair, about a year before we even found a venue, and as soon as we saw his work knew that he was going to be our pho­tog­ra­pher. While many pho­tog­ra­phers offer documentary/reportage style pack­ages, very few have Anurag’s artis­tic eye and cre­ative skill, his work was so much more strik­ing than any­thing else we’d seen. He also offered a ‘pre-wedding’ photo shoot, which we thought was a really good idea to enable us to get used to being pho­tographed, and this proved to be the case.

What did you wear?

Bride: ‘Kelly Maxi’ dress by Coast, black lace shrug from Next, ‘Wind­sor’ red shoes by Irreg­u­lar Choice.

Groom: A slate gray Hugo Boss suit (and watch-a wed­ding day present from Emma), flo­ral red tie by Robert Charles, but­ton­hole hand­crafted by the bride!

How would you describe your wed­ding style?

The red and black color theme came from Emma’s strik­ing wed­ding dress, com­ple­mented by the sim­ple and styl­ish brides­maids’ dresses. Also, it was a very ‘hand­made’ wed­ding, with many ele­ments cre­ated by Emma.

The wed­ding ceremony:

Which read­ings did you choose? “Touched By An Angel” by Maya Angelou, read by Emma’s best friend and brides­maid Ellie, “I Will Be Here” by Steven Cur­tis Chap­man, read by Paul’s sis­ter Julia (also a brides­maid), and we read “I Promise” by Dorothy R. Col­gan (tak­ing alter­nate lines) as addi­tional vows.

Wed­ding day advice:

When look­ing for sup­pli­ers, don’t stick to spe­cific wedding-related retail­ers, you can achieve a more unique effect (and save money) by look­ing else­where and adapt­ing items not nec­es­sar­ily intended for wed­dings. Some of our table dec­o­ra­tions were adapted orna­ments from Next, oth­ers were our own wine glasses with a sim­ple flo­ral arrange­ment inside. Our out­fits were from the high-street.

We found only hav­ing a lim­ited time to plan and arrange the wed­ding focused our minds, we had to make real­is­tic choices as to what we wanted, and what we could achieve. This often resulted in us going for a hand­made or adapted option, which was more per­sonal, it was ‘our’ day.

Do it your way, don’t feel pres­sured to have cer­tain ele­ments because you (or oth­ers) think you should, most of those thing won’t mat­ter on the day, it’s about peo­ple, not things.

We had such a lovely, mem­o­rable day, planned in a frac­tion of the time many peo­ple have, on a much smaller bud­get. It can be done, be cre­ative!

What were your wed­ding highlights?

The Lake Dis­trict weather had no regard for our plans for an out­door ser­vice, and the inter­mit­tent rain through the morn­ing meant that by mid­day it was clear that we would be mar­ried inside. How­ever, the Music Room at Broadoaks was a per­fect alter­na­tive, we don’t think we would have found a venue with a bet­ter indoor option, and the ser­vice was exactly what we wanted, inti­mate and emotional.

The wed­ding break­fast was deli­cious (as was the meal we enjoyed on the pre­vi­ous night after we arrived at the hotel). All in all we couldn’t fault the venue, the staff were very accom­mo­dat­ing, the wed­ding coor­di­na­tor Jo made sure every­thing was dec­o­rated and arranged how we’d envis­aged it, and the over­all atmos­phere ensured we had a relaxed and stress-free day.

Wed­ding venue styling and details:

The wed­ding was mainly ‘hand­made’, Emma made all of the sta­tionery (invi­ta­tions, place cards, guest book), most of the dec­o­ra­tive ele­ments (paper pom-poms, paper flow­ers, but­ton flower posies), the favours, and also the beau­ti­ful but­ton bou­quets and buttonholes.

We asked our par­ents for any old but­tons they had (all moth­ers have a tin of old but­tons), many of which were incor­po­rated. These included some that had orig­i­nally come from our grand­moth­ers, mean­ing that 3 gen­er­a­tions were rep­re­sented in the bouquets.

Emma’s mother cre­ated the flo­ral arrange­ments, and a friend made the wed­ding cake, topped with hand­made Bat­man and Won­der Woman peg dolls (our house is home to a roost of bats) from Etsy (Amer­i­can, ‘Not On The High Street’-type web­site). All of this made our day unique and per­sonal, a fam­ily, hand-crafted affair.

Mem­o­rable wed­ding day moments:

Emma: walk­ing down the aisle with my son, Joe (10), hold­ing back tears, the speeches given by Joe and Paul (again, hold­ing back tears) and our first dance… again, hold­ing back tears… gen­er­ally try­ing to hold back tears for most of the day!

Paul: see­ing my beau­ti­ful bride for the first time (hold­ing back tears… there’s a theme devel­op­ing here), Joe’s speech (we had no idea what he was going to say, and it exceeded both of our expec­ta­tions, he was great), get­ting through my own speech with laugh­ter and tears at the appro­pri­ate parts!

Wed­ding music and entertainment:

We pro­vided all of the music with our iPods. For the cer­e­mony we spent many hours choos­ing string quar­tet ver­sions of songs from an eclec­tic selec­tion of our favorite bands (from Michael Jack­son to Muse) by the Vit­a­min String Quar­tet… they really amused us, and had the desired effect as we watched peo­ple slowly twig what they were hearing.

For the evening we had a dance floor, allow­ing us to play the expected wed­ding disco favourites, after our first dance to Flo­rence + The Machine’s ver­sion of ‘Halo’ (a song that always makes Emma cry), while in the Music Room Paul’s father hosted a wed­ding themed quiz, arous­ing some com­pet­i­tive spirit between the var­i­ous par­tic­i­pat­ing teams.

Paul and Emma’s rec­om­mended wed­ding suppliers:

We found it hard to find a venue and sup­pli­ers pre­pared to cater to a small wed­ding party. As a result most aspects we cre­ated our­selves, but thanks and rec­om­men­da­tions to the following:

Broadoaks Coun­try House Hotel

A lovely venue with a warm, wel­com­ing, fam­ily atmos­phere. http://www.broadoakscountryhouse.co.uk/

Anurag Sharma, Shut­ter­leaf Photography.

His work speaks for itself, but along­side this he is also a lovely guy, and he worked so hard for us on the day, while never being intru­sive. An absolute star. [I couldn’t agree more! Anurag is fan­tas­tic. Claire] http://www.shutterleaf.co.uk/