The Bride
Jess the Bride: The designer of my gown was one of the first things I decided on after getting engaged. I have always loved all things vintage and particularly fashion from the turn of the century. When looking at Pinterest and googling Edwardian themed weddings, I came across the designer
Anna Campbell and fell in love with her romantic, vintage inspired gowns. I had to have one! I found the nearest UK stockist to me at the wonderful
Jean Jackson Couture, a beautiful family owned boutique in the trendy Northern Quarter in Manchester. I knew what I wanted and had a list of gowns which the lovely Felicity pulled for me, also sneaking into my dressing room her favourite dress, “Giselle”. Although I loved them all, Giselle was the one for me! I didn’t want a veil as the back of the dress is so detailed and beautiful so Felicity suggested a dainty headpiece from the Anna Campbell collection which finished the Edwardian look off. Felicity was wonderful, really gets to know her brides and knows exactly what you want before you do!
I kept my jewellery simple on the day wearing of course my engagement ring (and then wedding ring!) along with a bracelet my husband bought me as a gift on the morning of my wedding and finally a ring which belonged to my friend and bridesmaid who we sadly lost the year before the wedding.
The Groom
The suits were the last thing we decided on for the wedding. After scouring every suit shop in practically the whole of the Northwest we found a lovely shop called
Groom hidden away inside the “Wedding House” in Liverpool. Ste had decided he wanted tweed quite early on and Groom had lots of option available. We also wanted him to stand out as it seems unfair that the bride always be the centre of attention! Because of this, we decided to dress the groomsmen slightly differently and mismatched all the suits. Ste wore a tweed jacket, waistcoat, navy trousers, matching spotty tie and spotty pocket square and brown brogues. The groomsmen wore the full navy suit with the tweed waistcoat, matching spotty tie and pocket square and brown brogues. We hired all the suits but bought the waistcoats as they originally came with a red silk back which I didn’t like and had theme replaced with navy in keeping with the theme. Ste wore a pocket watch on the day bought for him by myself as a wedding gift. I had the watch engraved with “See you at 3pm, don’t be late!”
The Venue
The venue is a beautiful grade 2 listed glass house built in 1896 and houses rare varieties of Palms, orchids and various other tropical plants and flowers. After buying our first house in South Liverpool, I fell in love with the area and particularly Sefton Park and its
Palm House which is only a 10 minute walk from our front door. I’d sneaked a look at many weddings here on our walks and always dreamed of getting married here myself. When Ste proposed, I went straight to the wedding fayre there 2 weeks later and put our names down! I loved that we would getting married so close to where we had decided to set up home.
The Styling
I was quite set on not having a colour scheme as such as I didn’t want the wedding to look dated in years to come. I decided on grey for the bridesmaids as felt this was a classic yet modern colour that would stand the test of time (hopefully!). The décor I really struggled with at first.
The Palm House is such a beautiful venue that I didn’t want to draw attention away from the flowers and Palms themselves with fussy décor. I settled on minimal
festoon lighting across the wedding breakfast/dance floor area with some up-lighting placed in the Palms to really accentuate them in the evening and that was it!
The Flowers
My florist was recommended to me by a friend and I jumped at the chance to meet with her when I found out she had already done other weddings at The Palm House. Again, due to the beauty of the venue, I worried about the flowers and centrepieces that they would get lost amongst the botanicals already there. I met with Yvette (
florist) and tried (poorly!) to explain the feel of the wedding. Relaxed, non-traditional and non-fussy. She knew exactly what I meant and excitedly showed me lots of Pinterest boards, magazines and images of ideas she had. As I didn’t have a colour theme, I decided on white flowers with lots of greenery. I wanted that “I’ve just gone to the nearest meadow and scooped these up” look!! Yvette was just fantastic and I needn’t have worried.
The centrepieces were all mismatched with jam jars, boxes, vases and various other bits filled with loose arrangements of mixed foliage and white flowers throughout. Each table had a tall vase with a loose arrangement of hydrangeas and delphiniums with a rustic box containing textured foliage to go with it followed with numerous smaller jam jars.
My bouquet was gathered and relaxed with lots of foliage including eucalyptus, berried eucalyptus, ivy, ruscus, stocks and senecio. White veronica and white thistle were added for texture and delphiniums, lisianthus, stocks and astilbe added for touches of white throughout finished and bound with twine for a more natural look. The bridesmaids carried smaller versions of my bouquet with smaller foliage and white lisianthus buds for buttonholes.
The Wedding Party
My bridesmaids wore grey. I wanted a neutral colour that fitted in with our relaxed feel. I let the girls pick their own dresses as I felt it was important that my best girls be comfortable and have the best day! We arranged appointments at 6 shops and my mum had a strict itinerary we had to stick to in order to get to all shops in one day. The first shop we went to was “One Fine Day Bridal”. The girls straight away picked two dresses they liked, tried them on and 15 minutes later had decided and I was paying! Claire at the store was shocked at how easy and quick we’d been (as was I!) The groomsmen as said in point 2 wore a variation of Ste’s suit.
The Ceremony
Our string quartet played all the music for our ceremony. I walked down the aisle to “Over the Rainbow” by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole. The Wizard of Oz is one of my favourite films and I heard the version by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole played during a luau on a family holiday to Hawaii and fell in love!
We signed the marriage register to Celine Dion’s “My heart will go on” (played by the string quartet). My favourite film of all time is Titanic and anyone who knows me knows how obsessed I am with it! After Ste vetoed having a full titanic themed wedding (in hindsight thank god he put his foot down) I knew I had to fit it in somewhere. It was quite nice to see the smiles on our guest’s faces when they heard the music playing!
Finally, we walked out to “We Found Love” by Rhianna, again played by the string quartet.
We had two readings during the ceremony. The first was an extract from Winnie the Pooh read by my oldest friend and bridesmaid and the second a quote by Albert Einstein read by one of Ste’s oldest friends and groomsman. We spent a lot of time choosing the readings as we wanted ones that would mean something to us and reflected us a couple. I chose the Winnie the Pooh extract as it’s one of my favourite books and loved that it focuses on friendship. Ste, as a lover of science, chose our second reading.
We decided to have a candle lighting ceremony as we liked the symbology of bringing to people and families together and it really completed our ceremony.