Vintage English and French Country Chic Wedding

Ben and Amina mar­ried at Mid­dle­ton Lodge in York­shire (which they hired for the week­end). Their spe­cial touches are fab­u­lous: from the flow­ers to the beau­ti­ful hand-torn recep­tion stationery.

But what I love most of all is the antic­i­pa­tion run­ning up to the cer­e­mony — Ben’s expec­tant glance upstairs to see his bride, and the romance in the por­trait pho­tos and dur­ing the first dance. This one’s an absolute cracker! You will love it. Enjoy the wed­ding report from Amina and pho­tos by San­som Pho­tog­ra­phy!

Ben and Amina’s vin­tage Eng­lish & French coun­try chic wedding

Who pro­posed, and how?

We were doing a long dis­tance rela­tion­ship at that time, Ben lived in Leeds and I lived in Lon­don so our week­ends were pre­cious. On one of our week­ends in Lon­don just over a year ago Ben pro­posed at the top of the Oxo Tower.

The venue:

Mid­dle­ton Lodge, Rich­mond, North York­shire– a beau­ti­ful pri­vate coun­try man­sion that we hired for the whole week­end. It was only the sec­ond place we viewed and fell in love with it instantly. We had close friends and fam­ily over for a BBQ the night before the wed­ding, with more friends arriv­ing on the day. It really felt like a home from home and made a very relax­ing and spe­cial weekend.

The pho­tog­ra­pher:

San­som Pho­tog­ra­phy (Chris San­som and Ver­ity Woolf). These guys come as a pair which was bril­liant because it meant we had so many pho­tos to choose from. We also had an engage­ment shoot a few weeks before the wed­ding which was really use­ful to get us both relaxed in front of the camera.

How would you describe your wed­ding style?

Vin­tage English/French coun­try chic

What did you wear?

Bride: Enzoani Dakota dress in Ivory with Enzoani Diana belt. Shoes from Dune. Jew­ellery from Swarovski. Hair comb from Deben­hams.

Groom: Bespoke suit by James Michels­berg Tai­lor­ing in Leeds. Shoes from Jef­fery West.

We chose a civil cer­e­mony as both our fam­i­lies come from dif­fer­ent reli­gious backgrounds.

Which read­ings did you choose?

One of my clos­est friends from med­ical school read a beau­ti­ful excerpt from Jane Eyre.

What were your wed­ding highlights?

It’s so dif­fi­cult to pick a spe­cific high­light of the day as the whole week­end was so relaxed and seemed to go with­out a hitch! Even the weather held up for long enough for us to fin­ish our pho­tographs outside.

It was lovely to see both our fam­i­lies, most of who were meet­ing each other for the first time at our wed­ding (!) and some who had trav­elled over from Africa get­ting along so well, by the end of the week­end it was like they had known each other for years.

Wed­ding venue styling and details:

Although there wasn’t a color scheme for this wed­ding as such, we loosely based things around laven­der. The favours were dif­fer­ent coloured French mac­arons– hand made by Ben’s mother, they were pre­sented in an ivory box tied with laven­der organza ribbon.

The bou­quets were made on the morn­ing of the wed­ding by the bridal party. The flow­ers, which were pink peonies, roses, gyp­sophila and a small pur­ple flower sim­i­lar to laven­der were pur­chased from RG Flow­ers, a flower whole­saler in Bradford.

The table cen­tre­pieces were a wed­ding gift from Ben’s aunt and were from The Wil­low gar­den in Heb­den Bridge, York­shire. The cen­tre­pieces were beau­ti­ful wreaths con­tain­ing amne­sia roses, hydrangea and laven­der with a cen­tral can­dle in a hur­ri­cane vase.We also used laven­der and rose­mary tucked into the menus at each place setting.

In the run up to the wed­ding I col­lected as many photo frames as I could, and placed them around the house dur­ing the week­end with pho­tos of Ben and I dur­ing our engage­ment shoot as well as some baby and fam­ily pho­tos of us both. It was a lit­tle touch to make the place feel even more like our own home for the weekend.

Mem­o­rable wed­ding day moments:

All of the speeches were extremely enter­tain­ing– the father of the bride didn’t leave a dry eye in the mar­quee after his touch­ing words, Ben’s speech was sharp and very witty, and the best mans speech had just the right bal­ance of humour, embar­rass­ing sto­ries and even more embar­rass­ing photographs!

Wed­ding day advice:

Savour every moment because the day goes past so quickly! Don’t fret over the small things….. too much. A bit of atten­tion to detail is never a bad thing though.

Wed­ding music and entertainment:

Before the cer­e­mony we played music by Ludovico Ein­audi, I walked down the aisle to a beau­ti­ful roman­tic piano ver­sion of the wed­ding march by Miranda Wong. A friend played the piano dur­ing the sign­ing of the reg­is­ter and through part of the drinks reception.

After another friend’s band had to pull out at the last minute, we luck­ily found an amaz­ing 5 piece soul band called Out Of The Blues, based in Leeds. In addi­tion to their two sets dur­ing the recep­tion, they also did a won­der­ful mel­low jazz set dur­ing the wed­ding break­fast which went down a storm.

Our first dance was “At Last” by Etta James. The recep­tion car­ried on until late into the night and after the tra­di­tional party was over at mid­night, we moved into the cel­lar bar at the venue for a late night ses­sion until 2am which was DJ’d by a friend.

Rec­om­mended suppliers:

• We were lucky enough to have most of the big stuff taken care of by Mid­dle­ton Lodge as part of their wed­ding pack­age includ­ing food, drinks, wed­ding coor­di­na­tion, mar­quee and every­thing inside it. So I would def­i­nitely rec­om­mend Mid­dle­ton lodge as a venue not only for the beauty of the place but for the excel­lent staff who made us all feel so spe­cial that week­end and who made sure that every­thing went with­out a hitch. www.middletonlodge.co.uk
• For flow­ers I would rec­om­mend RG Flow­ers whole­saler in Brad­ford. I had to get up at 5 in the morn­ing to get my flow­ers but any­body who can source the elu­sive peony at the end of August is a genius in my book!
• The band we used was Out Of The Blues and they are based in Leeds. www.starnow.co.uk/bands/4260-Out-of-the-Blues
• Gift bou­quets for the bride’s mother and groom’s mother and aunt were from Anas­ta­sia Flow­ers in Leeds.
• Table cen­tre­pieces were from The Wil­low Gar­den florist in Heb­den Bridge.
• And of course San­som Pho­tog­ra­phy, based in Leeds. They did an absolutely bril­liant job of cap­tur­ing every aspect of our day so vividly. www.sansomphotography.co.uk

More? Read http://sansomphotography.wordpress.com/2012/09/15/ben-and-aminas-wedding-sneak-peek/