Love is the New Black! A Rookery Hall, Cheshire Wedding

There’s more! Karen is a designer, and the wed­ding sta­tionery is all her own work. The typog­ra­phy is gor­geous; the art deco feel of her designs is ele­gant and fash­ion­able, and I love a wed­ding where let­ter­ing and type are a key fea­ture of the decor and styling.

Karen and Rick take cen­tre stage as today’s bride and groom, with Karen look­ing stun­ning in her bespoke David Fielden wed­ding dress and Rick so very hand­some in his mil­i­tary uni­form. You will love these two — with an out­stand­ing col­lec­tion of wed­ding pho­tographs and a fan­tas­tic wed­ding report to enjoy — this is one of the very best. Enjoy!

Who pro­posed, and how?

(Rick) I pro­posed in Rome at the Trevi Foun­tain. After some research I dis­cov­ered a story that said throw­ing one coin into the foun­tain meant a return to Rome, a sec­ond coin leads to a new romance, and a third coin leads to marriage.

I arranged for a fan­tas­tic Ital­ian meal with wine at a local rus­tic Roman restau­rant, fol­lowed by limon­cello for some dutch courage. We then walked to the Foun­tain, it was dark by now and beau­ti­fully lit, I handed Karen three coins and asked her to throw them in over her left shoul­der, one by one.

As she threw them in I explained the mean­ing of each coin and as the third fell into the water I explained its mean­ing towards mar­riage and pro­duced a black and white dia­mond ring and asked her to marry me. After the ini­tial shock she even­tu­ally said YES! How­ever, this ring was only for me to pro­pose with as I knew Karen wanted to design her own engage­ment ring. Lucky for her she got 2 rings!

How would you describe your wed­ding style?

Ele­gantly clas­sic with art deco accents jux­ta­posed with a con­tem­po­rary mod­ern edge.

The wed­ding ceremony: …

Reli­gious or civil? … Civil

Which read­ings did you choose? … ‘The One’ read by one of our friends.

Wed­ding venue: Rook­ery Hall, Nantwich

We looked at sev­eral venues, some city cen­tre and bou­tique hotels but as soon as we drove up the drive to the main entrance at Rook­ery we just knew we had found our wed­ding venue. It didn’t feel cor­po­rate at all, and we felt in good hands, even the cute bun­nies hop­ping across the grounds made all the dif­fer­ence! The wed­ding co-ordinator Lind­say and toast­mas­ter Jane were like a dream team which really helped the day run smoothly.

Wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher: Chris Han­ley Photography

Chris and Claire really did cap­ture our day beau­ti­fully. The pho­tos are breath­tak­ing and we are over the moon with them. From the moment you meet them they offer lots of tips and advice for your day and are incred­i­bly friendly and help­ful. The engage­ment shoot was great fun too and put us both at ease in front of the lens in prepa­ra­tion for the day. http://chrishanleyphotography.com/

The wed­ding dress and groom’s outfit

I wore the most beau­ti­ful David Fielden Sposa gown. I was hav­ing no luck in find­ing some­thing dif­fer­ent near home. Every­thing seemed to be the same tra­di­tional strap­less shape and I knew I didn’t want the typ­i­cal bridey look.

I went down to his shop in Lon­don with my mom after instantly swoon­ing over his style of a gown I saw in a bridal mag­a­zine. I fell in love with one dress but adored another part of a dif­fer­ent dress so asked if I could mix the two.

It was all very excit­ing as I got to actu­ally meet David Fielden to see if he could cre­ate the bespoke dress I wanted and he agreed with what I pro­posed to do and said it would look well on me. I was over the moon!

I wore a soft silk tulle full length sin­gle tier veil and bor­rowed a pearl hair comb. My ear­rings were by Jenny Pack­ham, an art deco inspired design called Lula (the name of my beloved British Blue/Cream Short Hair cat which I just had to get).

I had a stun­ning beaded crys­tal cuff (lined in blue espe­cially for my some­thing blue) and match­ing bag by St Eras­mus. My gor­geous shoes were a pair of mir­rored peep toe sling backs by the divine Jimmy Choo. They were the last pair in my size in Europe and I man­aged to locate them at the Traf­ford Cen­tre – it must have been fate!

Rick looked dash­ing in his mil­i­tary dress uni­form and medals. We both designed our own wed­ding bands which were made by the same tal­ented jew­eller who made my engage­ment ring.

My page­boys (two nephews) wore mini ver­sions of Rick’s mil­i­tary uni­form com­plete with a mini­ture Dia­mond Jubilee Medal which they thought had come from the Queen!

The nude brides­maids dresses were a bril­liant find on ASOS, I cus­tomised them by hav­ing the skirt made into a tulip shape by a seam­stress and then I attached a brooch to each dress. They wore black patent peep toe courts and sim­ple pearl jew­ellery to com­pli­ment the wed­ding style.

The wed­ding reception:

What were your highlights?

Good­ness so many to choose from…The rush of adren­a­line I got as the doors opened just before I walked down the aisle with my Dad, it was like being on a roller­coaster ride. I loved the steel band and hav­ing the oppor­tu­nity to play with them again after 10 years! The piper pip­ing us out as Mr & Mrs was a real high­light too.

(Rick) The whole day was a high­light, just brilliant.

Wed­ding venue styling and details:

I came up with the con­cept of ‘Love Is The New Black’ and every­thing evolved from that. Lots of black with accents of white, shiny mir­rored sur­faces, pearls and sparkly brooches which I sourced myself.

I wanted to cre­ate some­thing dif­fer­ent with a WOW fac­tor. I knew I didn’t want the same old white wed­ding styling and vin­tage feel that every­one has jumped on the band­wagon with.

We had a loose Ital­ian vibe run­ning through with all the places we vis­ited in Rome for our table names, olive trees with fairy lights, pros­ecco, and gelato served from a con­verted VW camper­van which Rick loves. The ice cream was to die for too! We asked the ice cream girls to pro­vide Union Jack bunting to get into the spirit of the Queen’s Dia­mond Jubilee which hap­pened to fall on the same weekend.

It all worked really well together with the black and espe­cially with the mil­i­tary uni­form. All linen was black on black with lots of can­dle light and storm lanterns to set the mood. I worked with the florist to cre­ate a mix­ture of tall can­de­labra draped in pearls and low mir­rored boudoir dis­plays with white peonies, my favorite flower. I had a gor­geous Shirley Tem­ple del­i­cate blush peony bou­quet bound with pearls.

I’m a free­lance graphic designer and designed and made all our sta­tionery from the invites, order of ser­vice and menus to framed prints and con­fetti bags, all car­ry­ing the same design. It was all very clean and slick, noth­ing twee.

I sourced love quotes for each guest to reflect their per­son­al­ity on the reverse of their place names tied with black gros­grain rib­bon around the stem of each wine glass. We had fun ques­tion cards on each table to help break the ice which gave us a gig­gle read­ing through them the day after.

Favours were pin badges for Help the Heroes and Can­cer Research, both close to our hearts of which we made a dona­tion on behalf of our guests. I even designed the art­work for the ice cream wafers used by the ice cream VW van to carry the styling through. The devil is in the detail!

I also designed our fab­u­lous cake, tall and white with Chanel inspired quilt­ing and edi­ble pearls topped with a sin­gle peony which I wanted to stand out against the black. I didn’t want to cut into it but all 4 flavours tasted amaz­ing!

Mem­o­rable wed­ding day moments:

Rick lift­ing me up on the dance floor at the end of our first dance, ‘At Last’ by Etta James, I was not expect­ing it at all.

(Rick) Finally see­ing Karen in her much antic­i­pated dress, she looked stun­ning. My Groom’s Sur­vival Kit that Karen made for me, this con­sisted of a pair of new socks to stop me get­ting cold feet, a small bot­tle of alco­hol to calm my nerves, and some mints for the first kiss, all put together in a neat black box along with a note in the same style as the wed­ding stationery.

Wed­ding day advice:

Savour every sec­ond as it really does go so fast. Try and stick together as much as you can through­out the day and sneak off at some point for 10 min­utes for some alone time to soak it all up.

Rick put together a table plan and room set up guides for the whole day along with tim­ings and other use­ful infor­ma­tion, this proved invalu­able to the staff set­ting up the rooms etc, they were able to fol­low the instruc­tions and get the rooms as we wanted with­out hav­ing to ask for advice. The more help you can give them the bet­ter. This is where Rick’s mil­i­tary organ­i­sa­tional skills came in handy!

Wed­ding music and entertainment:

Our friend piped us back down the aisle and into the wed­ding break­fast as Mr & Mrs. We had a steel band to enter­tain guests after the wed­ding break­fast of which I made a spe­cial guest appear­ance! I used to be in the band some 10 years ago so it was a nice sur­prise and went down well with the guests. I didn’t want to stop playing!

We had Dave Haslam (for­mer Haçienda) DJ for the evening recep­tion. We both knew we didn’t want your aver­age cheesy wed­ding DJ in the cor­ner of the room and wanted a proper party so I got in touch with Dave to see if he did wed­dings and to our delight he did!

Rec­om­mended wed­ding suppliers:

• Chris Han­ley Pho­tog­ra­phy chrishanleyphotos@mac.com www.chrishanleyphotography.com (See also an inter­view with Chris Han­ley)
• Lind­say Ogden, wed­ding co-ordinator, Rook­ery Hall LOgden@handpicked.co.uk www.handpickedhotels.co.uk/hotels/rookery-hall
• Cre­ative them­ing for wed­dings and bespoke lux­ury sta­tionery by Karen Shep­herd (Me) hello@designbyshepherd.co.uk www.designbyshepherd.co.uk
• Deli­cious ice cream and sor­bet by the girls at Ice Cream Dub thegirls@ice-creamdub.co.uk www.ice-creamdub.co.uk
• Beau­ti­ful flow­ers by Laura at Green Earth Flow­ers laura@greenearthflowers.com www.greenearthflowers.co.uk (See also Green Earth Flow­ers show­case on Eng­lish Wed­ding Blog)
• Fab­u­lous cake by Diva Designer Cakes lisa@divacakes.co.uk www.divacakes.co.uk
• Flaw­less skin by Katie Aldridge makeup artist info@katiealdridge.com www.katiealdridge.com
• Beau­ti­ful waves by Nic Wood­house at Hair-Raising Designs nic@hair-raisingdesigns.co.uk www.hair-raisingdesigns.co.uk
• Engage­ment ring and wed­ding bands forged by the tal­ented Chris Ran­dall chris@thediamondshop.co.uk www.thediamondshop.co.uk The Dia­mond Shop, Hat­ton Gar­den, London
• Bag­pipes pro­vided by Tim Bur­rows timburrows8473@hotmail.com
• The sounds of steel by Pan­fire Steel Band panfire_steelband@yahoo.co.uk www.facebook.com/PanFire
• Party tunes by Dave Haslam DJ dave@davehaslam.com www.davehaslam.com

I’m always on the look­out for new wed­dings, engage­ment pho­tog­ra­phy and inspi­ra­tion shoots to fea­ture on Eng­lish Wed­ding Blog. If you’re a wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher based in Eng­land or the UK I’d love to hear from you. Click on Sub­mit in the top menu for more infor­ma­tion or email me: info@english-wedding.com with a link to your blog post.

I’ve delib­er­ately posted this wed­ding blog fea­ture on a Fri­day — it means you get to keep it all week­end! There’ll be a quick ‘wed­ding plan­ning or work’ this after­noon — but as this wed­ding is so very spe­cial I wanted to keep it on the blog home page until Mon­day and then a lit­tle longer so more of you will spot it! I do hope you love it as much as I do, and I’d love to read your com­ments on Karen and Rick’s day.