Victoria & Mike

There are just way too many incredible details from Victoria & Mike's wedding to mention in this intro...so I'm just going to let the images from Cassandra Lane to the talking. All I'm saying is if you want to make a yurt look pretty - THIS is how to do it ;) Oh and how gorgeous does Victoria look in Halfpenny London? An absolute shimmering vision of loveliness, adoring her accessories too.

Our Wedding

Victoria the Bride: From the moment we got engaged, we knew that we wanted our wedding to be a laid back and fun-filled affair surrounded by family and friends. Something more relaxed suited our personalities much more.

The Venue

I’d always envisaged having a summer wedding so with that in mind we set about finding our dream venue. I’d visited Gawsworth Hall in Macclesfield a couple of years earlier and fell in love with it. It’s a beautiful Grade 1 listed Tudor Manor that was once home to Mary Fitton, the Dark Lady of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. I took Mike to see it and he too fell in love. We’d only visited one other venue but knew this was ‘the one’ so didn’t waste time looking elsewhere. As we only hired the grounds we had to find a suitable marquee. It turned out to be quite a challenge to find something we liked. We visited a number of marquee companies but none felt right. I stumbled upon Yorkshire Yurts online and spotted they had an open day coming up. As soon as we saw the Yurt in the flesh I was blown away, it was perfect!

The Bride

I loved choosing my dress, it was one of the most exciting parts of the whole process for me. It was made a little trickier, however by the fact that I was four months pregnant at the time. With this in mind I wanted something I was going to feel comfortable in on the day. I visited three boutiques and at my last appointment I found a beautiful blush colour Halfpenny London dress called ‘Lydia’ from Jean Jackson Couture in Manchester’s Northern Quarter. I bought a cathedral-length veil from Britten and a gorgeous beaded floral headpiece from Emmy London. It took me ages to pick my shoes, I didn’t want to go for the traditional type of bridal shoe, I wanted something more modern. I eventually chose a gorgeous pair of silver sequin heels from Kate Spade New York. My jewellery was from Swarovski. My hair was styled by Vicky from Vicky M Hair and my make-up was done by Maxine from Maxine Smith Make-up. Both ladies were amazing and made me feel so beautiful on the big day.

The Groom

Like most men Mike has a very limited attention span when it comes to choosing clothes. He decided to go down the bespoke route as that took a lot of the leg work out of it for him. We found a fantastic tailors in Wilmslow called Whitfield & Ward where he and the Best Man had beautiful three pieces suits made. I also bought some pink Liberty print silk fabric and had ties made for the groom and best man and pocket squares for the Ushers and Father of Bride and Groom. The fabric complemented the colour of the suits perfectly.

The Wedding Party

My three sisters were Bridesmaids. They all looked stunning in blush pink No.1 Jenny Packham gowns. The flower girls wore Monsoon and the groomsmen wore their own suits plus pink ties to complement their Liberty print pocket squares.

The Décor

I didn’t have a specific colour scheme in mind but I knew I wanted soft pastel colours such as blush pink and soft green. I spent many an evening pouring over Pinterest for ideas and inspiration and showed these to my florist, the super talented Kerry at Zuzu Petals. She really understood my vision from the word go, it was a definite meeting of minds. We went for banquet style tables and filled them with gorgeous glass vases in different shapes and sizes. We also had an amazing hanging floral display in the centre of the dancefloor and beautiful tassel balloons scattered around the grounds of the hall.

The DIY

I didn’t take on a huge amount of DIY because I was so busy looking after our son; Plus the fact that we didn’t go for a package deal meant there were so many elements to pull together and organise. We did throw in a few DIY touches however, such as a hand drawn map of the hall and church on our invites (courtesy of my talented Sister-in-Law Lucy) and I also collected vintage crockery from charity shops and used some décor pieces from my own home to create a more personal feel.

The Ceremony

Our ceremony took place in the beautiful medieval church of St James the Great, Gawsworth. We went for the full monty and had the choir, organist and bells! Two of our friends did readings, which were really beautiful.

The Food & Drink

For our meal we wanted to stick with the relaxed vibe and opted for tapas from the fantastic Olive Tree Catering. It went down a storm with our guests. We had delicious canapes with our welcome drinks and served Prosecco Ice Pops for something a bit different. In the evening we had fish and chips. We also had an amazing pallet bar from Those Four mobile bar company. It was a real talking point, as were the Mr & Mrs Cocktails they created and the locally brewed beers.

The Entertainment

We had two bands; one during the day and one at night. The daytime band was a fantastic mariachi band called Mariachi Margarita who did a wonderful job of serenading our guests during dinner. The evening band was called A Few Good Men. They were brilliant and got everyone up and boogying on the dancefloor by the end of the night. We also had a vintage-style caravan with a photo booth inside from Penny Lane Vintage.

The Photography

I knew early on that I wanted to work with Cass from Cassandra Lane Photography after seeing her work online. She did an amazing job of capturing not only the beauty of the venue but also the decorative detail and of course all of our guests. The results were amazing and blew me away.

Advice

If I have any advice to give I would say decide early on what kind of wedding you want and how involved you want to be in the detail. We chose not to go for a package as that wasn’t right for us but it meant that we had to be heavily involved in every little detail. We got exactly what we wanted but it was pretty stressful in the run up. If you do choose to do a lot of the planning yourself, I would highly recommend hiring an on the day coordinator in order to allow you to enjoy your wedding day without having to worry about anything. A friend of ours put us in contact with a fantastic company called Touch the Sky Events who were just brilliant and took so much stress out of it for us. Victoria from Touch the Sky had such an eye for detail and was a very calming influence during a stressful time. It was definitely money well spent.