Vintage Literary Love — a Real Lake District Wedding Blog from Grange Over Sands

The pho­tog­ra­phy is by top UK wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher the very lovely Chris Han­ley. His web­site is http://chrishanleyphotography.com and his blog is (to fit with today’s wed­ding blog theme!) — rec­om­mended reading!

Con­grat­u­la­tions to Kate and Adam, and thank you for shar­ing your roman­tic story with all of us today. You two are a dream come true (and I love how pretty my wed­ding blog looks with you on it!) — and huge thanks to my friend Chris of Chris Han­ley Pho­tog­ra­phy. Every­one — enjoy! Claire x

Kate and Adam — Vin­tage Lit­er­ary Love — a Lake Dis­trict wed­ding blog

Wed­ding venue

Rip­ley St Thomas Church of Eng­land Acad­emy & The Grange Hotel, Grange over Sands

Wed­ding photographer

Chris Han­ley Photography

Invi­ta­tions and recep­tion stationery

We made our invi­ta­tions and sta­tionery our­selves; we used a design based on the Pen­guin Book cov­ers to invite guests to either ‘The Wed­ding Day’ or ‘An Evening Reception’.

The place­cards were made by us and had a quiz on the back to pro­voke con­ver­sa­tion between guests who did not know each other, with the win­ner receiv­ing a bot­tle of champagne.

The table names were also made by us, they had the sig­na­ture of our favorite authors, along­side a love quote from one of their works.

Our favours were bought from Confetti.co.uk; when we saw the Pen­guin Book design we couldn’t resist adding them to our wedding.

What did you wear?

My dress was by Ronald Joyce, design ‘Paola’; the Head­dress was by Ari­anna Tiaras and my shoes were from Light in the Box.

The men hired their suits from 1860 suit hire, as the grooms­men were based across the coun­try being able to get mea­sured at sites across the UK was useful.

Tell us a lit­tle about your wed­ding venue styling and details

Our wed­ding had a lit­er­ary theme, so we used books to dec­o­rate the tables with a sin­gle white Avalanche rose. We utilised the can­de­labras at The Grange Hotel and acces­sorized them with pearl beads to echo the details of my dress.

We bought a receiv­ing box in the shape of a book from Con­fetti for guests to leave their cards and also a vin­tage type­writer from ebay as a fin­ish­ing touch.

Wed­ding music and entertainment

For the evening enter­tain­ment, we hired a local DJ – Gary Mills to pro­vide the music. He had been DJ at a num­ber of fam­ily par­ties and was used to our requests. I chore­o­graphed a first dance for us both to Nat King Cole’s L.O.V.E. We also had a casino in the evening for the guests, which com­prised a roulette table and a poker table. Again, we offered a bot­tle of cham­pagne to the guest who won the most.

Our wed­ding day:

Adam and I met a num­ber of years ago and became ‘book bud­dies’. We would take turns to pick a book and read it, then dis­cuss it together. Fast for­ward a few event­ful years and we were a cou­ple newly engaged. We had a four year engage­ment, the wed­ding took a back seat to mov­ing house and chang­ing jobs, until finally we were both in a posi­tion to start plan­ning our wed­ding. Fol­low­ing many trips to wed­ding fairs and perus­ing mag­a­zines, we found an invite based on a Pen­guin Book Cover. Once we saw that, we knew we had our theme.

We got mar­ried on 6th April 2013, Adam mum’s birth­day. That was not planned, it just hap­pened to be the first Sat­ur­day after Easter. We did decide on an early cer­e­mony to elon­gate the day. The day for the bridal party started early, approx 6.30 to be ready for the hair­dresser at 7am and the make up artist at 8am. The grooms­men had a much eas­ier time and, in con­trast, a lie in.

The wed­ding ceremony

The cer­e­mony took place at Rip­ley St Thomas School Chapel; this is where I went to school with one of my brides­maids. We picked Rip­ley Chapel because it was spe­cial to me, a gor­geously unique venue (only for­mer pupils or peo­ple with an asso­ci­a­tion to the School can get mar­ried there, fol­low­ing appli­ca­tion to the Arch­bishop of Can­ter­bury) and very pri­vate. It also meant that our close fam­ily friend and vicar was able to marry us.

The walk down the aisle appeared to be a blur as does most of the cer­e­mony. How­ever, one of the key mem­o­ries is that moment when you meet each other at the front of the Church. We chose one read­ing as we were con­scious that we did not want a long cer­e­mony, espe­cially due to the dis­tance between the Chapel and The Grange Hotel.

We hired a vin­tage Rolls Royce to fit in with the vin­tage theme to take us to The Grange. Due to the unbe­liev­able good weather, we were able to have drinks and canapés on the ter­race prior to the wed­ding break­fast. It also gave us our first oppor­tu­nity to talk to our guests.

The wed­ding recep­tion at The Grange Hotel

A con­scious deci­sion was made to have our speeches prior to the meal to pre­vent nerves of those unac­cus­tomed to pub­lic speak­ing. Each of the speeches was fan­tas­tic and we took the oppor­tu­nity to thank all of our guests for com­ing and some unsung heroes of the day.

The food served by The Grange was amaz­ing. Guests were offered a choice of Lake­land Turkey, Pasta or Red Mul­let fin­ished off with Prof­iteroles or Sticky Tof­fee Pud­ding (true to the Lake­land roots!)

Table dec­o­ra­tions — vin­tage lit­er­ary theme

The tables were dec­o­rated with can­de­labras from the hotel, which had pearl strands draped on them. Each table had a cen­tre­piece of three antique books, tied with a rib­bon and acces­sorised with a white rose.

The table names were our favorite authors; we cre­ated an image using their sig­na­ture and a love quote from one of their works. The favours were small note­books based on the Pen­guin theme from Confetti.com and each of the chil­dren were given a small sto­ry­book instead of a notepad and also some bubbles.

To ensure the chil­dren were enter­tained, there was a table at the back of the room with print outs, crayons, pens and bub­bles for the chil­dren. These items also enter­tained some of the grown up guests!

We had a com­pe­ti­tion on the back of our name cards to see who knew Adam and Kate best. We felt that this was an ice breaker for peo­ple who don’t know each other.

The cake was a stack of books tied together with a blue rib­bon. We each chose three of our favorite books to make the cake, which com­prised three tiers – Lemon Sponge, Choco­late Cake and Vic­to­ria Sponge. The ladies at Black­berry Cot­tage Bak­ery excelled them­selves with the chal­lenge we pre­sented them with and we loved the final result.

Our evening enter­tain­ment com­prised a DJ and also a casino. The casino was a late addi­tion as we had won money off from a local wed­ding fair. That was great fun and cer­tainly showed which of our guests had a com­pet­i­tive streak.

We did our first dance to LOVE by Nat King Cole; I always wanted a first dance which wasn’t the usual shuf­fle and Adam rose to the challenge.

Over­all we had the most fan­tas­tic day and feel very blessed. Each of the sup­pli­ers we used pro­vided ser­vice of the high­est stan­dard, espe­cially The Grange Hotel who could not do enough for us.

The most mem­o­rable moments for our wed­ding day include

• Get­ting ready with all brides­maids; the excite­ment in the build up to the main event
• That ‘first look’ when you both see each other for the first time that day
• Our trip to The Grange Hotel, as it was a 40 minute drive it gave us the oppor­tu­nity to be alone and talk to each other

Wed­ding day advice:

• Enjoy your day (obvi­ous one)
• Don’t be afraid of hav­ing an early wed­ding; although it means an early start it gives you more time to spend with friends and fam­ily — it goes so quickly!
• Make sure you fac­tor in some time to be alone, as it can be dif­fi­cult to steal a few moments alone together
• Have con­tin­gency plans We were lucky enough to have clear blue skies on our day, but should it rain (we live in Britain after all!) you might need a venue with lots of space.
• Also con­sider a wed­ding video, we were not sure but were so glad we did. We’ve already watched it 4 times!
• Have a wed­ding web­site – that enabled us to allow peo­ple to RSVP and put their menu choices online
• Ensure that your wed­ding encap­su­lates both your per­son­al­i­ties, things that you both love
• Do the speeches before the meal – this way the men can relax and enjoy their meal
• For­get other peo­ple, this is a day for you both – don’t spend time fret­ting over others
• Be organ­ised – we cre­ated sep­a­rate table plans and boxes for each table to make it eas­ier for the venue
• Have a good pho­tog­ra­pher to catch ele­ments of your day you wish to remember.

Rec­om­mended wed­ding suppliers:

• Chris Han­ley Pho­tog­ra­phy to cap­ture the moments of your day http://www.chrishanleyphotography.com/
• Deb­o­rah Jane Bridal based in More­cambe http://www.deborahjanebridal.co.uk/
• The Grange Hotel – the staff were so accom­mo­dat­ing and thought­ful to your every need http://www.grange-hotel.co.uk/
• Rebecca Cain Make up http://rcmakeup.co.uk/
• Black­berry Cot­tage Bak­ery for our amaz­ing cake http://www.blackberrycottagebakery.co.uk/