Gosh, I don’t even know where to start with this post. I feel like you may need to grab yourself a cup of tea/coffee/glass of wine/squash/(how many drinks options can I list before I stop?) as this will probably be a long post.
Right, where to start?
So, on Sunday May 27th 2018, I got married, a day that myself and Henry had been planning for over two years ( we booked the venue back in April 2016!) finally arrived, and to be honest, it still seems surreal that it happened. I feel like it was a dream (did any other brides feel like this?)
We got married at Lemore Manor which is in Herefordshire, I fell in love with our venue on a wedding blog, and told Henry we had to go visit ASAP! It was being renovated when we visited, but I saw the plans for a marble floor in the Orangery and knew we had to get married there (yes the total basic blogger in me came out haha)
But it wasn’t just the marble floor that made us choose Lemore (I promise!) we fell in love with the whole venue, we loved that we could stay there the night of the wedding, we loved that there were so many rooms so if the weather was rubbish, there was lots for people to do (there was a cinema room, two games room with air hockey, and pool, as well as a few reception rooms) and we liked that we could have the whole day there.
So we booked it in April 2016 for May 2018, a day which seemed about a million years away, but trust me, those two years did whizz by pretty quickly!
I arrived at the venue at 9am with my Mum, sister Hayley and Henry’s sister Tash who were my bridesmaids, to start getting ready at Lemore’s Hen House ( a little building which is set up for getting ready in the morning- it was gorgeous!) We met my hairdresser Doria and Kate who did our make up, and started to get ready.
Whilst being pampered and getting ready, the heavens opened, and suddenly there was this torrential downpour of rain. I’d been frantically checking the Met Office weather app for the past two weeks, the weather kept changing and threatening thunderstorms and it seemed that the app was right when we could hear the rain hammering on the roof.
I had a little panic and then was like ‘okay well I can’t change the weather, so it is, what it is’
My sister bless her, kept turning up the music when the rain was really loud!
After having our hair and make up done, we made a quick run under umbrella’s to the main house to get changed. The staff at Lemore cleared all the guests out-of-the-way (I felt like The Queen or something) and we made our way to the bridal suite to get changed.
Meanwhile, Henry was downstairs eating doughnuts haha!
I got changed, and the registrar’s came in to talk quickly about the service. I will admit that I was running late (the rain threw us off okay 😉 ) and then it was time to go and get married.
Honestly, I didn’t really feel nervous, I was surprisingly chilled the whole morning ( i even surprised myself!) I just wanted to see Henry and enjoy the day!
I walked down the stairs to my Dad, little brother and sisters, and Henry’s sister Tash. My sister Hayley was crying and before I knew it, I was crying too.
Weird as I normally only cry at things to do with dogs or Richard Curtis films.
But then it was time to get married, my Dad was telling me how I used to always say I wanted to get married when I was like 4, and now here he was walking me down the aisle. In all the pictures, I look like I’m laughing at a proper funny joke, so god knows why I found that so funny.
We had a string trio for the ceremony, because during the wedding planning process, myself and Henry became a bit extra (am I too old to say that?) anyways- I am so glad we did, because it added so much more atmosphere to the room. We had a choice of songs played, and went for the traditional Canon for me walking in, then we had McFly and Taylor Swift (yes really) whilst signing the register.
The actual service was lovely, we were a little worried that it may be very in-personal and over super quickly, but our registrar’s told us little snippets of advice about marriage during the service and it was really, really lovely.
I did do a Ross from Friends though, and called Henry by his middle name during the vows. But hey at least it wasn’t totally the wrong name right? That’s what I’ll keep telling myself though…
Following the ceremony, we had a little reception, the weather was still a bit iffy, so most people were in the Orangery having Pimms and canapés (I’ll forever be sad that I didn’t have time to have any!)
Then we had lots of photos, our photographer was Emma, who was amazing. I found her through Love My Dress, and I knew instantly that she was the photographer for us. Her dreamy, airy photos were exactly what I wanted and she was lovely too! She photographed the day with her assistant Paige who was also lovely. Both of them snapped most of the day, but you never felt like you had the paparazzi on you, they were very subtle and even during the couple shots, they just gave us some simple directions, so nothing felt too posed!
For the meal, we had a three course menu, consisting of Tomato & Red Pepper soup with an assortment of breads, for the main we had Burgers and chips with bacon, cheese and pickles in the middle of the table with an assortment of sauces, then for pudding we went for our fave Sticky Toffee Pudding.
It was honestly amazing and I know that I’m definitely bias saying this cause it was my wedding but it seriously good food. The food was a big thing for us, cause is there nothing worse than going to a wedding with rubbish food right? So we were so happy that the food was out of this world, it was all anyone could talk about!
Little sneak peek at our table decorations!
For the evening we had fish and chip boxes, I didn’t have any in the end, but everyone said they were really good.
We had the traditional speeches, my Dad’s and Henry’s speeches were lovely, as was Henry’s Uncle Tom’s speech, who set the whole room off in tears.
Then there was a bit of chill time, the weather by this point was really warm and sunny, so people were able to sit outside with their drinks, we sneaked off to have some more pictures, and mingled with everyone which was really nice.
It was a really nice way to spend a couple of hours, some people went for a little nap in their room, or had a wander round the grounds, it was really nice and chilled.
Our evening part of the wedding started at about 8pm where we kicked off things by cutting the ‘cake.’
We had a doughnut tower from Krispy Kreme for our wedding cake, which we’d talked about having from about day 1 of wedding planning. Neither me or Henry are that fussed about cake, and don’t really like traditional wedding cake. Henry didn’t want any of those pretty wedding cakes (rolls eyes) but we did both love the idea of having doughnuts. We’ve loved Krispy Kreme doughnuts for years, and something that Henry used to do a lot when we lived in Southampton (and had metabolisms that meant we could eat rubbish all the time without working out) was bring home a box of Krispy Kreme’s for us to share. So having a Krispy Kreme tower felt more personal to us.
I didn’t count how many boxes we had, but I think there was about 200 doughnuts, which were assembled onto a tower, well not all 200 of them but you get my drift. They went down so well with everyone! Everyone just went and helped themselves, and then we had boxes out too that everyone could get one from. We had the assorted tower which had a mixture of doughnuts flavours which meant there was one to suit everyone which was great!
We even ended up with donuts left over the next morning, so a few lucky guests (and ourselves) got to take a box home! I’d 100% recommend getting one though if you want something a little different for your wedding cake, they got delivered on the morning and were freshly baked that morning which is so good! You can also get wedding favours too, which I think is the coolest thing ever.
After the little cutting cake ceremony thing, we had our first dance.
In a very unlike us move, Henry and I had dance lessons for our first dance prior to the wedding, we decided to have tightrope from The Greatest Showman as our first dance because we loved the film, and tbh really struggled choosing a song! We had 3 dance lessons in the run up to the wedding, and didn’t tell a soul. So it was quite a surprise we broke out into a dance, which everyone found hilarious (Henry kept saying ‘it’s not supposed to be funny!’ haha)
Then we had the disco, and the party began. We danced all night to our favourite songs, and it was just so much fun. I don’t think I stopped smiling or dancing all night.
We ended the evening with The Greatest Show from The Greatest Showman which the DJ chose for out last song, I think I must have been drunker than I thought, cause sober me definitely wouldn’t have danced with a big circle around me normally haha.
We then moved the after party to one of the games rooms with our friends, and it was just so nice chilling looking at photos and being able to catch up with everyone.
The next day we all headed down to breakfast very bleary eyed, before making our way home.
Then that was it, all over!
We couldn’t believe how fast the day went, it really is true what everyone says about how the day just whizzes by, and we honestly had the best day.
I’ve made it no secret that I didn’t enjoy wedding planning, but two years of stress, was worth it.
I was a little sad it was over, but mostly quite relieved (lol) but also just really happy with how the day went. We have memories that we’ll always cherish and the wedding has made us appreciate our family and friends so much. I feel like having a wedding shows you who the important people are in your life, and we both feel incredibly grateful to have the people in the lives who we do, who made such an effort to make our day so special.
I also just want to say a little thank you to all of our amazing suppliers, who worked so hard to make our day perfect. Lemore Manor really is the most beautiful venue, and the staff are incredible who couldn’t do enough for us on the day. I could honestly write essays about how brilliant all our suppliers were.
I have lots more wedding posts to come this week, including all the details about my dress, make up, hair and the Bridesmaids outfits, how to style your wedding venue (and where all our decorations were from) and a few more posts too!
But I hope you enjoyed hearing more about our day, and thank you for all your lovely comments and messages.
But for now, I will go, I’ll see you tomorrow with my next wedding post- we’re going to be talking about my dress, and some tips for finding the dress of your dreams <3
Photographs taken by Emma Pilkington
Our Suppliers :
Venue – Lemore Manor – Room Styling – Couture Events – Photographer – Emma Pilkington – Videographer- Ellipsis Weddings– Cake – Krispy Kreme – String Trio – Taliesin String Trio – DJ- Pete Stead – Flowers – Long Barn Flowers– My Dress – Enozani – Henry’s Suit – Moss Bros – Bridesmaids Dress – TFNC at ASOS – Hair – Hair By Doria– Make Up – Kate Lambie
