All Our Favourite Things.

Laura and Mark married on the 6th October 2012 at the Ten Square Hotel in Belfast. It was all about their favourite things, mainly each other…and cocktails…and saxophones. Wait until you see the saxophone.

It’s a city wedding with a Jenny Packham dress and a lot of laughter. Oh and the car that Mark arrives in is insane!

Here’s Laura to tell you more…

Laura The Bride: My dress was by Jenny Packham and I purchased it in Castle Couture in Ballymena – it’s the most beautiful bridal shop and they really make it a special experience. I actually wasn’t sure about it at first as it was very different but I couldn’t get it out of my head so I knew it was the one! I felt amazing in it, which is the most important thing!

Granny’s Gold

I wore a Jenny Packham headpiece and bracelet that matched my dress perfectly! My Mum bought me earrings as a gift from Castle Couture, which were by Helen Fitzpatrick. My Dad gave me my Granny’s engagement ring years ago so I decided early on that I was going to wear it on my right hand. I had sparkly skyscraper peep toes by Jimmy Choo!! My very kind husband bought them for me as a wedding gift and I felt like a million dollars in them! I wanted a pair that I could wear again.

Showing Off

Sarah Martin at Cameo and Colin Ellison at Ellison’s Hairdressing made us all beautiful! I wanted to look like me on the day and Sarah did a fantastic job by keeping it quite natural but glam to match my dress. I knew I wanted my hair up as I wanted to show off the detail on the shoulders of my dress and Colin didn’t stop until we found a style I loved.

Floating

Victoria Gault in Belfast supplied us with the most beautiful flowers and centrepieces. My bouquet was made up of ivory roses, ranunculus and hydrangea. I decided to go with wrist corsages for the bridesmaids which were set on a really pretty bracelet. I felt they fitted in better with our city wedding and I got the girls a silver clutch bag to hold while walking down the aisle. Mark decided he didn’t want a buttonhole. Victoria also supplied fish bowls for our centrepieces with beautiful flowers floating in water.

Hitched

We decided just to have a Best Man and we hired his suit along with Marks. The Bridesmaids dresses were purchased in Coast and I went for Navy as its one of my favourite colours, the girls all liked it and I thought it would be nice for an autumn wedding. We didn’t bring the navy in to our colour scheme elsewhere as the hotel is quite contemporary so we went with a black and white theme for our cake etc.

Mark wanted something simple and went for a tux with a black tie – he doesn’t really do suits! He loves converse trainers so he had some custom made for him and the Best Man! Marks had ‘hitched’ stitched on them! He also had custom made cufflinks with my name on one and the wedding date on the other.

Picture Perfect

Our photographers were This Modern Love who were fantastic from start to finish! The style of Tim’s photos really caught our eye and we hit it off with him and his lovely wife Claire the minute we met them. Tim totally got us and understood that we didn’t want too many posed photos. He had some great ideas for pictures in and around the city centre, which was important to us.

Cats & Cake Toppers

We were very lucky as my Dad’s Cousin is a baker and agreed to make us a cake as a gift. Mark and I actually met when I was working in his bakery! We had three tiers – madeira, mint chocolate and carrot cake. We also had a cake topper made of us with our cat Nino by Kylie at Cakemates.

Magical

We had a pianist before and during the ceremony and during the drinks reception. Ten Square have a baby grand piano so it was the perfect choice. I played the saxophone in school and Mark bought me one for our first anniversary so I surprised him and our guests by playing Summertime along with Sara Jane as he had never heard me play. During dinner we played CD’s of our favourite music. After dinner we had a band and DJ (Back to Vegas) who had our guests up boogying all night! We also had a magician while our evening guests were arriving – this was one of Marks great ideas and he went down a storm!

Our first dance was to Waverley Steps by Roddy Womble who is the lead singer of our favourite band from Scotland called Idlewild. Mark introduced me to their album on our first date so it had to be something relating to them!

Meaningful Favours

We gave our guests daffodil bulbs wrapped in tissue paper in an organza bag. The reason we chose these was because we wanted to remember my Granny in some way and I have done a lot of fundraising for Marie Curie Cancer Care in her memory and their logo is a daffodil.

A Venue That Dressed Itself

We had the pillars in the ceremony and reception rooms decorated with draping and fairly lights and an LED dance floor for the evening (all supplied by Melanie at Mood Event Decoration). The hotel was fantastic and provided black chair covers and lots of candles which helped set the mood. We love the hotel inside so we felt we didn’t have to do too much to dress up the room.

Our day was really special to us as we did things that are important and fun to us…we had our favourite cocktails at the drinks reception, Mark wore his converse, I played the saxophone and we used our favourite game Jenga as a guest book. My advice to any brides to be…make the day about you and don’t feel you always have to stick to tradition.

You don’t need to blow the budget to make your day unique – we did small things like advice cards on our tables asking our guests for suggestions such as places to visit and marriage advice. Our guests loved them and they were cheap to make! Enjoy every minute!!

Click here & view all images from this wedding

Venue: Ten Square
Brides Dress: jenny Packham
Boutique: Castle Couture
Shoes: Jimmy Choo
Make Up: Cameo
Florist: Victoria Gault
Maids: Coast
Photography: This Modern Love
Cake Topper: Cakemates

How lovely was that for a Friday afternoon? I adored the chandeliers in the ceremony room and am in love with Laura’s hair. Simple but really stunning.

There were some really gorgeous personal touches to this wedding. The highlights for me were the saxophone (and Laura played one of my all time favourite songs) and the nostalgic touches relating to Lauras’ Granny.

Also, I’d love to see more magicians at weddings. We have discussed it before here on RMW and it’s great to see people being brave with their entertainment!

There are some more cracking saxophone and city shots in the gallery so be sure to have a look.

Fantastic wedding. Massive congratulations to you both. O and how funny are Mark and his best man!

Becky
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