The only thing I was a little bothered about was the fact that as it was a winter wedding the guests were inside for a long period of time so I needed some sort of entertainment. We looked into Photo booth hire, but the travel costs were more than the hire cost! Then I happened across the RMW blog again and low and behold the Photo frame game was staring back at me! Genius! We slightly adapted it to a Photo Prop box and followed Adams instructions on the blog to create Christmas themed captions- it was nothing short of brilliant! It kept the guests entertained for hours and the photos are brilliant! Thank you RMW x

Finally- I love sweets!!!! We were serving bacon sandwiches and the wedding cake at our evening reception, but thought it might be fun to have a sweetie table too. I think it was one of our funnest planning moments running up and down the aisles of the wholesalers picking sweets! We tried to get as many retro sweets as possible- wham bars, highland toffee bars etc and we ended up with a great mix! They went down SO well!!!! I would totally recommend this to anyone thinking of it especially if you are not having a full buffet in the evening- I think it cost us £60 in total and was worth every penny.

I really wanted candles for our table centres for two reasons- firstly they create a lovely cosy atmosphere- perfect for Christmas and secondly- it cuts costs on flowers! After trawling the internet I found some amazing spiral tea light holders from a wholesale website- they were perfect- shaped like Christmas trees! I got gold ones to match the venue decor and 2 silver ones for the church. Next, I bought some rustic snowflakes and tied them to the middle of the spiral with twine so they would hang down. To finish off I bought charger plates and put pine cones and a sprinkling of Christmas spiced potpourri so they would smell yummy and festive!

Next we thought about seating plans and table names- I thought we could have some fun with this! David and I both love films so much. When it comes to Christmas films it’s even better because not only are they fun but there is a lot of childhood nostalgia involved which complemented our theme nicely, so we made a list of our favourite films and then I placed them on the tables according to who was sitting there. To finish off, on the back of everyone’s place setting tag we put a little bit of silly trivia about that particular film for people to read.

These DIY touches went down SO well and everyone commented on them and our efforts in making the wedding a very personal, memorable day.

That leads me to my little bit of advice! Try not to take things too seriously, just enjoy the experience that unfolds because it will be a memory that will stay with you forever. I think with the weather conditions we were tested to the extreme! Guests stranded across the Pennines the night before the wedding, Mum having to go to A&E the night before the wedding, a totally chaotic little cottage full to bursting on the morning of the wedding, My sister getting the car stuck when trying to get to Whitley hall on the morning of the wedding, the wedding cars getting stuck, ushers having to come to our rescue to get us to the Church, David spilling Champagne all down my dress in the wedding car!!! I could go on…

Through it all we kept smiling. Nothing will ever go to plan but because of all this adversity I think everyone had an even better time than we expected- I was thrilled because more than one guest used the word magical- you can’t ask for more than that! x