Zoe and Mark’s Wedding at Styal Lodge, Cheshire

Before we begin — did you see yesterday’s com­pe­ti­tion to win your wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phy? Don’t miss that one! It’s a fan­tas­tic prize and the competition’s open to cou­ples any­where in the UK.

But now for today’s main fea­ture with Zoe and Mark. You’ll have seen their wed­ding film on the blog yes­ter­day, along with a few of my favorite images… now we have the full wed­ding report from Zoe and images from the lovely Jonny Draper Pho­tog­ra­phy to share with you. For any­one who missed the wed­ding film, I’ve shared it once again at the end of the blog post — with thanks to Craig from Unfor­get­table Mem­o­ries for shar­ing it with us!

A beau­ti­ful Cheshire wed­ding: Zoe and Mark

Zoe’s wed­ding report

Mark and I had the most incred­i­ble wed­ding – things could not have gone more to plan and we loved every sin­gle sec­ond of it. It rained every day before the wed­ding and the day after but on the day itself there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. All our guests have com­mented on what a fab­u­lous day it was and every­body seemed to gen­uinely enjoy them­selves and have fun which was one of the most impor­tant things for us.

We think this was because we made some wise choices – firstly our venue, Styal Lodge was stun­ning and the peo­ple who run it know exactly what they were doing and made every­thing run so smoothly.

We chose Jonny Draper to do the pho­tog­ra­phy and Craig at Unfor­get­table Mem­o­ries as the video­g­ra­pher and both were out­stand­ing and we couldn’t rec­om­mend them more highly. We were unsure about book­ing a video­g­ra­pher at first but I’m so glad we did as the day goes so fast your head is in a spin and it all seems a bit of a blur! There are also bits you don’t get to see, such as the guests arriv­ing so it’s nice to sit and watch the film after­wards and see all those lit­tle things you wouldn’t oth­er­wise have been able to.

Craig even dashed off from film­ing me and the brides­maids, to see Mark at the hotel to give him his wed­ding present from me – an Omega watch that he had wanted for years. He filmed him open­ing it which was great as although I wasn’t there I still got to see his reaction.

For food we chose Barrett’s who were incred­i­ble. They took care of the canapés, wed­ding break­fast and the evening food. The food looked and tasted deli­cious and the staff that served it looked smart, were polite and ensured every­one got their food at the same time. Emma Cas­son from Spe­cial Days made the room look beau­ti­ful with under­stated white chair cov­ers with white sparkly bows, flow­ers and tea lights on the table and organza and fairy lights dec­o­rat­ing the beams. We debated on whether to have a DJ or a band but in the end we chose to have both with the band Under the Cov­ers. They couldn’t have been more fab­u­lous – every­one was up danc­ing and we had so many com­ments on how great they were.

Another rea­son we think the day went so well was because we kept things fairly relaxed. We didn’t have a receiv­ing line and instead between courses the two of us went to all the tables together to make sure that we got to speak to all of our guests. We would def­i­nitely advise other cou­ples to do the same – it was a lovely way to see every­one with­out the for­mal­ity of a receiv­ing line. We also decided against an evening buf­fet and instead opted for bacon sand­wiches and cones of chips. They were again deli­cious and so well received after every­one had had one or two drinks. The staff walked around the guests with sil­ver trays brim­ming with the chips and bacon sand­wiches which meant no one had to queue up a buf­fet and peo­ple even car­ried out danc­ing whilst they were handed some­thing to eat!

Another tip is to be as organ­ised as pos­si­ble! The cou­ple of weeks before the wed­ding are hec­tic even if you have every­thing organ­ised – there’s final dress fit­tings, things to pick up, final pay­ments due, fam­ily com­ing to stay etc so it was good to have every­thing else done so that we could enjoy the run up to the wed­ding and get excited about the big day! We booked the venue in April 2011 set­ting the date for 22nd Sep­tem­ber 2012. This meant we had 17 months to plan the day. This sounds like a long time but it soon goes quickly. We found a happy bal­ance between tak­ing our time and book­ing things such as the video­g­ra­pher as we know they get booked up very quickly.

Hav­ing a decent amount of time also meant that we could take our time with choos­ing exactly what we wanted – I had a great time try­ing on wed­ding dresses and tried on over 60 before mak­ing my final choice! But I couldn’t have loved the dress more – it was a stun­ning lace and tulle ivory tra­di­tional dress by Enzoani which I added a dia­mante ivory sash rib­bon belt to so that it was unique to me and added that bit of sparkle. For me I would always advise brides to have a veil. I just loved wear­ing it and even wore it the day after the wed­ding with jeans and a jumper when we had close friends and fam­ily to my mom and dads house to rem­i­nisce about the day.

Peo­ple casu­ally dropped by for a glass of cham­pagne shar­ing sto­ries and mem­o­ries from the day before. My mom and I also went to loads of wed­ding fayres which was a great way to meet sup­pli­ers but also such a fun thing to do together and we’d always team it with lunch and fizz!

Although we had a healthy bud­get we also had a large guest list with 125 guests dur­ing the day and an extra 60 for the evening. This meant that a lot of our bud­get went on food and drink which we were more than happy to do as the most impor­tant thing for us was hav­ing all our friends and fam­ily there.

We there­fore saved money on other aspects – we made our wed­ding favours and name cards together which not only saved money but was a lovely activ­ity to do together and get excited about the day. We bought white favour card­board boxes on ebay and dec­o­rated them with royal blue rib­bon to match the brides­maid dresses and some dia­mantes to add sparkle. We did the same theme for the name cards, again bought on ebay for a bar­gain £5 for 125 cards. We then got hand­made choco­lates from Simon Dunn’s in Wilm­slow who for no extra cost dec­o­rated the choco­lates with our ini­tials. We also didn’t spend a for­tune on the invites. We had them made by Mil­ly­mango and kept them very sim­ple. They were classy with­out cost­ing a fortune.

For the three adult brides­maid dresses we looked at lots of dif­fer­ent types of dresses, includ­ing made to order ones from bridal shops but in the end we got them from Coast. The color was stun­ning and exactly what I wanted and all three brides­maids loved them. We also had three flower girls and we found their dresses from Mon­soon which were again sim­ple but stun­ning. This meant all six dresses came in at around £500 which I think is a bit of a bar­gain! We also utilised the bridesmaid’s bou­quets as part of the top table dec­o­ra­tion. This also saved money and meant that the brides­maids didn’t have to have their flow­ers tak­ing up space on their table. I’d advise brides to pick their wed­ding shoes care­fully. When I’m going out I love wear­ing sky high stilet­tos but I was more sen­si­ble when choos­ing my wed­ding shoes as I didn’t want to be uncom­fort­able. I got a lovely lace pair of ivory wed­ding shoes from Mon­soon which had a high enough heel for me to not feel short but they were com­fort­able. You are on your feet all day and the last thing you want is to be wear­ing a crip­pling pair of shoes – and no one really sees them anyway!

When we chose our wed­ding cars we picked a 1960s Jaguar for my dad and I and a Daim­ler for the brides­maids. It was only after choos­ing the Jaguar that we found out it was actu­ally an old police car which was very fit­ting see­ing as we are both police offi­cers! When we told Andrea from Grand Car­riages she informed us she could dress the car up as a police car. So it took my dad and I to the cer­e­mony with the royal blue and ivory rib­bon but after the cer­e­mony we came out to the car where it now had a blue flash­ing light on the top, black and white checked rib­bon and POLICE on the side in large let­ters – it was such a lovely touch and made some great pho­tographs. We also went for a short drive in it together after the cer­e­mony. We wanted to make sure we had a bit of time on our own so this was a lovely way to do it and reflect on the day so far.

I loved plan­ning our wed­ding and met so many lovely peo­ple; if I could I would become a wed­ding plan­ner, it’s such a fab­u­lous and excit­ing time!

Zoe and Mark from Unfor­get­table Mem­o­ries on Vimeo.