The title of this post says it all.
Louisa and Richard’s wedding has Autumn completely wrapped up. An orange colour scheme, fur, hessian, yurts and classic glam. One of my favourite elements? The chairs. So very, very pretty.
Louisa is such an elegant bride and watch out for the last picture in the post…she looks like some sort of princess/hollywood star/goddess.
Amazing.
Louisa The Bride: Neither of us had a perfect wedding venue in mind but Dewsall felt like the place we had been waiting for. Until recently it was a private family home and from the moment you walk in the door you are passed a cup of tea, plonked down in the kitchen and treated like an old friend. The house is beautiful and filled with quirky antiques, huge open log fires, a beautiful conservatory and (to our guests’ delight the night before the wedding) a hidden games den with an antique pin-ball machine! It is a gloriously romantic house and the views over the black mountains and the Duchy of Cornwall estate are stunning.
We loved getting excited with the Dewsall team about our wedding weekend. Despite the fact our wedding was in November, we didn’t think to bring our wellies with us. On the morning of the wedding Jemma left two little pairs waiting for us as a gift. We didn’t need them in the end, but Samantha, Jemma and Amanda were always prepared to go the extra mile.
Satisfying My Inner Princess
The wonderful Hilary Bufton from Hilary’s Wedlocks did my hair and makeup. She set my hair in heated rollers before pinning it up with a wave – I loved the big curls from the heated rollers so much I bought some for myself for Christmas! My earrings were little art deco crystal drops from the Jenny Packham Accessories Boudoir in London and were a 30th birthday present from my mum. Every girl wanting to satisfy her inner princess needs to visit this shop! The surfaces are laden with tiaras, lace, sparkle and pearls… I think I tried on every headpiece going. I picked up a pretty brushed-silver bracelet of daisies by Belle & Flo from a shop in Harrogate called Bijouled. My perfume was Jo Malone White Jasmine and Mint . I had my nails done at a local salon in Harrogate using bio-sculpture gels – brilliant because they’re rock hard and last for ages. Despite decorating a yurt, they still looked fresh on the wedding day.
A Simple Satin Gown
My dress was a 1940s style satin gown from Angelica bridal in Camden passage one of their own designs. It had a cowl neck and dropped back with a little satin boater. Other than knowing I didn’t want a poofy dress, I had absolutely no idea what sort of dress to go for. I thought I would want some lace, but when I tried it on I felt glamorous and elegant and it somehow made me hold myself differently.
The dress was quite a simple style, without any lace or embellishment, so I chose a floor length veil edged in Spanish lace from Pronovias (No. v2716) to add a bit of detail. I loved the way the lace fell over my arms but you could still see the open back of the dress through the veil.
Richard had a bespoke suit tailored by Rhodes Wood in Harrogate, the service was excellent, he really enjoyed the experience and I was so proud to have him by my side. The suit is beautifully made so it will last him a lifetime and he’ll be able to wear it again on special occasions.
Textures And Style
Being a November wedding, I needed something warm for outside and some of the wedding looks I loved the most were those in which the bride had mixed different textures and styles. I found an amazing fake-fur coat from River Island with beautiful brown and yellow tones and lots of luscious fur. It was pretty realistic – my friends thought it was an antique heirloom passed down through the family. For something old I wore my mum’s sapphire ring and had a beautiful handmade lace garter from Attelier Rousseau.
My two bridesmaids were my best friend Jess and Richard’s sister Elizabeth. They wore midnight blue maxi-dresses from Phase Eight, with white fur wraps knocked up by Jess’s mum Marie. They were a constant source of fun and support and helped calm my nerves on the day.
Eclectic
We are extremely lucky to have a number of hugely talented friends and family who all pitched in to make our wedding special. It was a bit eclectic in the end – we wanted it to be warm, fun and to make people smile, which I think it did. My friend Charlie suggested using the orange Penguin book covers for our invitations and the ideas just rolled from there.
I wanted to go for romantic autumnal colours and spent a few weeks in haberdashery shops surrounded by spools of ribbon, bringing the colours together. They weren’t traditional–marigold, sage, pale grey, blackcurrant and gold, but I loved them.
Dewsall House is beautiful but we needed something a bit larger to accommodate all our guests for the ceremony and reception. Samantha had the ingenious idea of having a couple of Yurts on the lawn by the side of the house. We’d never set foot inside a Yurt, so it felt quite adventurous but they were beautifully hand cleaved by her brother and a friend and provided exactly the informal, laid back atmosphere we had been hoping for. We joined two together – an enormous 36ft yurt for the reception dinner and evening drinks and a slightly smaller 30ft one for the ceremony and dancing in the evening. We were very conscious that we didn’t want our guests to get cold in yurts in November so we made sure there was plenty of heating and we hung festoon lighting around the trellis and little fairy lights up into the rafters to make it extra cosy. The yurts had wooden floors as well and we had flaming torches and matting leading the way from the house to the yurt.
It Was Magical
We actually had two wedding ceremonies. The legal ceremony was conducted in the house in front of our closest family and friends and then we went straight out into the yurt with our registrar for a ceremony in front of everyone else. Our registrar made both ceremonies feel special and important and as the bride I got to have two entrances. My Dad is rather creative and handy with a bit of DIY, so we asked him to make an archway underneath which we could get married. It was a true labour of love. He used fresh green bamboo, which he drove from London to Herefordshire a few days before the wedding to keep it green and then somehow managed to make a wooden structure to slot the bamboo into, which made an arch. The floor had some fake grass and on the morning of the wedding he went out and collected beautiful red maple leaves to scatter on the ground. He wound little fairy lights through the leaves which twinkled away. One sensation I remember from the ceremony was standing under the bamboo and feeling utterly peaceful listening to the swish of air through the bamboo leaves, surrounded by loved ones. It was magical.
Baby Boo
We wanted to create an informal and inclusive atmosphere, so we had trestle tables and benches in a circle formation, with us on a round table in the middle. The benches were covered with sheepskin rugs and we got a local upholsterer to make some hessian runners for the tables. I spent a few weeks before the wedding tying strips of coloured ribbon in the wedding colours onto rope to tie on the back of chairs at the top table. On the tables we had mini white pumpkins called “baby boos”. Amazingly our florist managed to source them for us in the middle of the UK’s worst pumpkin crisis for decades. I made little flags for the place names out of brown Kraft paper and toothpicks and wrote people’s names on them. The pumpkins were a huge hit – people took them home as favours and told us they mashed them, roasted them and had pumpkin soup, pumpkin stew… all sorts! Richard made larger flags with the table numbers on them. We began to feel that there was a bit of a circus theme emerging, so we went with it by making a suitably theatrical table plan! Etsy was my also my friend. I ordered all sorts of bits and pieces from it, including a beautiful paper garland to hang round the chalkboard wedding menu.
Love And Hard Work
For the guest book, we bought a cheap photo album from Boots and covered it with some New York wrapping paper. We got engaged in New York and celebrated at Coney Island, so I ordered reproduction vintage postcards of Coney Island online. We left the postcards out with a few pens and asked people to write us a message and slip them in the album. I collected some vintage books for the table display and painted letters with our initials.
My mum, my bridesmaid Jess and her wonderfully talented mother Marie each made a tier of our wedding cake (chocolate of course!) and decorated it with orange flowers to match my bouquet, and some very smart ribbon. The penguin theme was carried onto the cake, with two little emperor penguins made entirely from sugar by another friend of the family. It looked better than anything I could have imagined. I was thrilled with it on the day and so touched at all the hard work and love that went into making it.
Exceeding Expectations
Our flowers were put together by the creative genius Emma Lynch at Love Lily. I showed her some samples of the coloured ribbons I was using for the other decorations and gave her a general theme, but she exceeded my expectations in every way. I was keen on textured foliage with dashes of bright colour and nothing too structured. We had little glass votives and jars down the centre of the trestle tables, with berries, grasses and beautiful orange, white and purple blooms. She made a stunning feature in a tall glass vase for the centre table and the bouquets were simply gorgeous. We were so grateful to have her.
Conga Lines
Our band was called the New York Brass Band. We first saw them busking in Leeds several years ago and just after we got engaged we saw them play again at the Spiegeltent in Harrogate. They’re an eight-piece brass band with a massive sousaphone and play a mix of New Orleans style funk and pop classic covers. We got them to march into the house and play a set in the lounge before leading all our guests in a conga line into the Yurt for the evening entertainment. We had a full dance floor for the entire evening, which was fantastic.
Starfish
We didn’t really have a first dance, but one of our favourite songs is a Prince song called Starfish and Coffee. I tied in little starfish references where I could. The favours were mini starfish biscuits made by a lovely woman called Charlotte at Sugar Therapy in Harrogate. We had a stamp made which said “For your coffee” and stamped it onto Kraft card, which we stapled to the biscuit bags. A few people got the reference – everyone else probably thought we had a thing about sealife.
My amazing friend Charlie designed our wedding invitations in the form of little Penguin books. We made little wedding programmes for the ceremony in green Penguin books. There was a bit of to-ing and fro-ing inbetween the house and the yurts throughout the day, so I asked Charlie to design bookmarks for inside the wedding programme with the timings of the day so people roughly knew when things were happening (and most importantly, when the pies were coming out!). We got the invites and the wedding programmes printed at a local printer in Harrogate for a very reasonable price and the quality was superb. Top tip: we sent all our invites out by second class post – they all got there in 1 or 2 days and saved us a tidy bit.
Click here & view all images from this wedding
Venue – Dewsall House
Hair – Hilary’s Wedlocks
Boutique – Angelica Bridal
Groom – Rhodeswood
Flowers – Love Lily
Band – New York Brass Band
Caterers – a2zest
Photographer – Laura Babb Photography
How much do you love the layout of the wedding breakfast? Trestle tables around a circular centre table? Absolute perfection.
Are any of you having 2 ceremonies? I love the thought of two entrances…nothing like making the most of the one day you get to do those things.
This wedding also goes to show that it doesn’t need to be winter for you to have a penguin theme. Fact.
I’m off to decorate my dining room chairs with ribbon.
Becky
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