You may remember Rachel and Lee from their utterly beautiful railway engagement shoot back in March. And one of the things i love most about being a wedding blogger is following a couples story from beginning to wedding.

Rachel and Lee were married in April at the stunning Rookery Hall Hotel, Nantwich. They wanted their wedding to have a travel theme as they met abroad and love to travel. They filled their wedding with the cutest crafty details, including a beautiful key table plan which is super simple yet really affective.

I love everything about this wedding, from the couple’s beautiful style, to the flowers and the party in the evening. What a brilliant day.

Thanks so much to the incredible Andrea Ellison Photography for sharing her images with us today.

Names…. Rachel and Lee

Wedding Date…. 07.04.2012 (Rachel’s parents wedding anniversary – who married in the same church at the same time 33 years earlier!!!)

The Proposal…. On Lee’s birthday whilst on holiday in Rhodes. Lee took me to a secluded olive garden in the old castle walls and went down on one knee

The Vision for the day…. Mostly we wanted to share our day with friends and family and have FUN! But we also wanted something that would reflect us and our lives and as we met abroad, got engaged on holiday and have been to so many cool places in the world together…a travel theme just seemed perfect!

The Planning process…. We always knew which church we wanted to marry in, so after settling on a date we booked this along with Rookery Hall. We then sorted the next big important things – photo & video, live band. We were super organised and got these things sorted early so everything seemed to go quiet on the planning front until about 12 months to go. Once I sorted my dress everything else then just seemed to fall into place…the bridesmaid dresses informed our decisions about the flowers which complemented our ideas for the table decorations which helped us to decide on our favours! My mum (mother of the bride!) was a big driving force for us. We are both naturally pretty chilled out so we needed that someone to keep us on track with plans and timescales.

The Venue… St Mary’s Church, Sandbach, Cheshire then reception at Rookery Hall Hotel, Nantwich.

The Dress + Accessories….. Maggie Sottero – (Ellen design). A line Satin gown with corset closure, asymmetrical, crossover wrap waist with beaded embellishments across the neckline and picking up the side skirt. Pleating radiates from a knotted detail beneath the corset.

Just below shoulder length veil with crystal gems hanging off the ends, diamante flower necklace and white/silver hair slide all from the bridal dress shop! (So much easier to pick things up from the shop as they are available when you are trying the dress on at fittings!)

Finding the dress… by pure chance really! Had been to try on a few different dresses at a few different places and had signed up to go to a ‘designer dress weekend’ at another shop when I was at a wedding fayre. I wasn’t going to go to it – but then decided at the last minute we would. It was the first time I had both my mum AND bridesmaid Maria with me and after a trying a few on- I tried ‘the one’ on and we all just looked at each other and squeeled!

Groom’s attire… From a local shop in Crewe ‘Platt’s’ – Lee and the other men in the bridal party wore blue/dark grey tailcoats with grey double breasted waistcoat. We had them in Dessy (African violet colour) cravats and matching pocket squares to match the bridesmaids. Lee had a cala lilly and orchid buttonhole. The ushers and fathers had a single cala lilly.

The Readings + Music…. My brother Nick read the Song of Solomon (Chapter 2, verses 10-13; Chapter 8, verses 6&7) during the service. We had the hymns ‘Guide me O thou great redeemer, Jerusalem, and I Danced in the Morning. Our Usher Rob played the piano whilst singing ‘I don’t want to miss a thing’ during the signing of the registers.

We had a string quartet playing during the reception and wedding breakfast. Our first dance was At Last –Etta James (Beyonce version). We had a live 5 piece band playing in the evening (Highly recommend a live band as opposed to a DJ!) For the final hour and a half of the evening Nick (from Studio 1208) mixed us a custom dance party DJ set ‘Seven Four Twelve Marriage Mash Up’. They made us custom CD covers and we then gave our guests CD’s of the mix as another wedding favour! You can listen/download the mix via this link: http://www.marriageisthebomb.com/search?updated-max=2012-04-30T08:42:00%2B01:00&max-results=5&start=31&by-date=false

Beautiful bridesmaids….. Laura, Maria, Sophie and Alice – wore Dessy dresses (African Violet colour), matching nude peep toe heels. I gave them custom made clutch handbags (from Etsy.com) with their initials embroidered inside! Lee bought them each a pearl pendant necklace.

The Flowers… Turned out better than we could have ever imagined! We were pretty useless with the flowers (the poor flower lady!) So she got us flicking through some magazines for inspiration. We wanted a fun and vibrant feel to the day so went for purple and orange tulips with green orchids in the bouquet. The bridesmaids and flowers girls had the same bouquets just smaller.

The Cake… We had a three tiered cake with chocolate orange layer, a butterscotch layer and a coffee one! It was covered in white chocolate ganache and finshed off with sugar figures of me and lee sitting on a mountain of mini eggs!

Your Photographer…. The incredible and super talented Andrea Ellison with Claire Penn second shooting! Found them through a google search and they annoyingly delivered so many fantastic photographs that we cannot choose what to put in our album! Andrea did us an engagement shoot and it really helped us to get to know her shooting style so we were completely at ease on
the day!

Your Videographer… Joesph Young was our videographer and his second shooter was Matt Gillespie. Literally cannot recall seeing them at all during the day but between them they captured every moment and every detail and what Joe created after the big day is just incredible! We feel like we featured in our own movie!

The Details + Decor…. Table decorations were travel themed with suitcases on each table. Different brightly coloured flowers bought the vintage cases alive and they complemented the accessories in each case. Each case had a theme which were: London, Caribbean, Gentleman’s case, childrens case to name but a few. Tables names were based on places we have visited
together.

We didn’t have a traditional seating plan. Instead each guest had a key with a travel tag attached which told them their table name. They had to find their key which we had pinned on to a wooden screen. To fit in with the travel theme our florist put together a display with a globe and placed it in the bar area.

Instead of a traditional guest book we asked our guests to sign a leaf which after the wedding we attached to a picture of a tree!

The Honeymoon…. Two weeks in the Dominican Republic (which is where we originally met!) All inclusive…don’t need to move from your sun lounger type holiday! Perfect chill out after the pre wedding stress! Massive highlight was going scuba diving for the first time!

Memorable moments… apart from all the cliché’s…vows, first dance etc. Ripping my dress jumping off a tree stump (but totally worth it for the pictures and film!) The groom and ushers standing up and singing ‘Afternoon Delight’ in the grooms speech. Our grandad’s (both 80+)at midnight taking off their shirts (to join in with the younger guests on the dancefloor!) and busting out Micheal Jackson dance moves! #life begins at 80!

Advice for other couples… Definitely get a live band for the evening! It creates a great atmosphere – and if they are good – will get everyone up dancing! However, if you do go for a band – really consider a custom DJ mix at the end of the evening! By the time you get to 11.30 at night people are usually ready to party hard and just want to stay on the dance floor. But what we have seen at other weddings is that you tend to find people dance to a good song but then sit down for some not so great ones – with a custom wedding mix you get shorter sections of the all great party songs that people want to dance to – so the dance floor is crammed right until the last minute! It creates an incredible atmosphere!

Most importantly – HIRE A VIDEOGRAPHER! Out of everything we organised and purchased for the wedding – BY FAR the best money that we spent. It has captured incredible memories (just like the photo’s) but it captures the emotion and atmosphere that a picture doesn’t! It’s hard to explain and I don’t really think you can fully understand until after your wedding when you get your video back – but trust me – a good videographer is WELL WORTH THE MONEY!

Credit where credit is due…

Custom DJ Mix from Studio1208 http://www.studio1208.com/

Download the mix from: http://www.marriageisthebomb.com/search?updated-max=2012-04-
30T08:42:00%2B01:00&max-results=5&start=31&by-date=false

Photographer: Andea Ellison http://www.andreaellisonphotography.com/

Videographer: Joseph Young http://www.josephyoungfilm.com/

Live Band: The Funkbreakers

String Quartet: The Solo Players http://www.soloplayers.co.uk/

Cake: Crème De La Crème Cakes http://www.stunningcakes.com/

Flowers: Lotties Flowers 07742218337

Chair Covers: Faerie Godmothers http://www.stunningcakes.com/

Dress: J&J Designs, Newcastle Under Lyme https://www.facebook.com/pages/J-J-Designs/
193686834019690

Suits: Platts http://www.platts-uk.com/

Gifts: Personalised clutch handbags for bridesmaids and personalised wash bags for the
groomsmen from www.etsy.com

Thanks so so much to Rachel and Lee for sharing their beautiful wedding with us today, and such brilliant words of advice from Rachel in her report too :-) XOXO Lou

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