Glamorous Stylish Blush Pink & Gold Wedding

WWW readers Victoria and Liam tied the knot in style on Saturday 15^th September 2018 at Lartington Hall in County Durham. As you will see from these incredible shots by Hayley Baxter Photography, the venue itself is simply beautiful and doesn’t require too much fuss to make it a gorgeous setting for the day. Victoria does love her flowers however, so our pair added cascades of pink florals to really add to the atmosphere.

I’m absolutely loving their towering cake, what an impact! There are lots of other pretty pink details to take in too, from the mirror table plan to the imposing candelabras, just wonderful.

Can we take a moment to talk about the bridal fashion as well? Victoria’s Mori Lee gown is just stunning, I’m swooning over that lace train, not to mention the veil and hairpiece. Victoria and Liam’s little girl looks just darling in her flower girl outfit too. I hope you enjoy the beauty and glamour of this one WWWers!

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The Proposal

At home. Liam had planned a romantic proposal to happen on our holiday to Cyprus in August 2016, we loved going to Cyprus and I was really excited we were going back and taking our daughter with us for the first time. But Liam can’t keep secrets and asked me when I was packing for the holiday! He says to this day that he decided to do it at home so he didn’t lose the ring! To be honest the thought of a big proposal in front of people makes me feel really nervous.

The Vision

We wanted it to be stylish and glamourous. We wanted to make sure our guests would be entertained and go away saying WOW.

We also wanted to make sure that it would be everything that we are and we would also be saying WOW.

The Planning Process

Both myself and Liam are very laid back and normally leave everything to the last minute, which we did with some things for our day.

Like everyone I looked for hours and hours on Pinterest and Instagram searching for ideas and inspiration.

We booked the venue at the end of Dec 2016 and booked a few things throughout 2017 but majority of things were left right until we had no more time in 2018.

We did spend the last two weeks before the wedding just talking about and organising things for the wedding almost every hour of our days but it all worked out exactly as we wanted.

Budget

We had set a budget and put together a budget planner, but this soon was ignored and we went way over. It is so easy to get carried away the amount of wonderful ideas you have and then the things you don’t actually ever think about that quickly add up.

The Venue

Lartington Hall, Barnard Castle. We had spent many weekends’ visiting lots of different venues. We both wanted a venue where you could get married and have the reception at the same place, but they were not in the same room, so it felt like it broke the day up a little. I like the idea of getting married in a church but as we are not religious we didn’t want to do the religious ceremony.

We booked a venue that was lovely and met what we were looking for but something just didn’t feel right and I had my doubts about it. Liam was looking online one evening and Lartington Hall had a wedding fayre on. It looked amazing online so we decided to go and have a look.

When we arrived it was more amazing than in the pictures. It fit everything that we wanted, a little imitate chapel for the ceremony and an amazing grand ball room for the reception. The interior had beautiful attention to detail and you could see and the grounds around Lartington were so pretty.

We both fell in love with Lartington. But as it was so amazing I instantly thought that it would be way over our budget. At first I didn’t want to discuss with the owners the costs for hire etc as I thought I would be disappointed.

Liam persuaded me to just have a chat with them to see and we both were pleasantly surprised that it was within our budget, I couldn’t believe it!

The dates for 2018 were getting booked up very quickly so we set the date for Saturday 15^th September 2018.

Your Outfits & Accessories

I had an idea of the style of dress I wanted. I went to Ava Rose Hamilton not far from where I live and explained the style I wanted to Beckie, she was amazing. Taking me around the boutique showing me different styles and she told me to be honest in what I was thinking.

This then narrowed the dresses down and the majority of the dressed I picked out were like the style I wanted, but when I tried them on I didn’t like any. Beckie knew exactly what would suit me and what style I was looking for and she told me to go back in a few weeks when new dresses were arriving, I booked back in and when I went back and arrived in the boutique my dress was on the mannequin. It was like Beckie knew!!

The designer was Mori Lee. Thin spaghetti straps, low back, lace and a long train…..this was a must, including a long veil.

I got my shoes from the Dune wedding section. These were jewel embellished all down the heel and had a little blue jewel on the sole.

As my dress and shoes had so much going on I kept my jewellery very simple and just wore some drop earrings.

Beauty

Hair – My lovely friend Lauren has her own hair salon and I knew immediately that she would be doing my hair for me, I didn’t trust anybody else.

Lauren did a couple of trials up to the wedding which I loved, but two days before the wedding I went to have my colour done and she decided to try something else and that was my wedding hair. She was amazing doing my hair and the bridesmaids on her own before the wedding.

Make Up. I looked on Instagram for MUAs up in the area and I came across a girl called Dani. Her pictures looked exactly how I imagined I would have mine and she was available on the day so I booked her. She was lovely and I had a trial with her. She talked me through everything and explained each product she would be using.

Groomsmen

Liam had an idea of what suits he wanted for both him and the groomsman. He didn’t want to wear anything different from the groomsmen. I wanted to be part of the decision process so I went along to the suit shops to help decide.

We decided on a Cavani Navy suit with grey scooped waist coat and navy tie.

Shoes. We left shoes to the very last minute and we had to order the different sizes from different stores all over the UK, but we managed to get all the groomsmen a pair of shoes. They wore brown brogues.

The Readings & Music

Our niece Freya did a reading at the ceremony. We decided against having any readings at first but a few weeks before the wedding we had been to watch our daughter Esme and Freya in their summer show and Freya had been given a speaking part which she did a wonderful job so we decided to ask her to read a poem at the wedding and she was excited to do this for us. She did so well!

Music for the ceremony;

A Million Dreams for the guest entrance

A Thousand Years for the bridesmaids and bride entrance

How long will I love you & All of me for signing the registrar

Signed Sealed Delivered for bride and groom walking out of the chapel

During the day I had brothers Jake and Nick Keating they played acoustic and sung for our guests. They played a mixture of songs from George Ezra to Oasis and were fab.

Evening. We both had our stag and hen do in Ibiza so we wanted to have some of this as part of the wedding. Andy Usher played on sax and then we had bongos and a DJ.

Andy was amazing, he played all the Ibiza classics and the sax got everyone up dancing, this is something I always worried about that at the evening what if no one danced, but he made everyone get up and have a boogie…….including my 88 year old Grandad!

The Flowers

Flowers were a big thing for me. Liam wasn’t too fussed but I wanted them everywhere. However this is where I did have to scale back due to budget on some of my ideas and as the venue is so beautiful I could have got away not having any at all in the venue.

I met with a lady called Sarah from Vintage Essence and as soon as I told her what I wanted she started showing me lots of different flowers and colours. Nothing was too much for her at all. She created what I wanted and more.

I had an amazing bouquet of pink and flowers, with my bridesmaids and flower girls having a smaller version of mine.

I have flowers matching my bouquet as my centre pieces on tall gold candelabras.

The Details & Décor

As I mentioned the venue is so amazing beautiful and stylish that really we could have turned up and got married without having to do anything.

We chose our colour scheme to be blush pink and gold and this went really well with the venue.

We had antique gold frames for table plan, table numbers and order of the day. We had all these on blush pink with gold foiling print which was simple but so effective. This was all done by Eliza May, again something which I probably left too late to organise but she worked to what we wanted and made sure what she did was perfectly beautiful.

We had flowers on the tall gold antique candelabras. John and Shona owners of Lartington Hall helped us with the rest of the detail, their attention to detail is perfect so we showed up with what we wanted in the venue and they set it all up so we did not have to worry about anything.

I even turned up two hours late dropping all the things off before the wedding, as I got all my times mixed up and it wasn’t a problem at all for them!!

Bridesmaids

My bridesmaids wore multiway dresses made by Jordan at Wake. I wanted to make sure all my bridesmaids felt comfortable so with the multiway dresses this meant they could have the same style dress but wear it the way they felt the most comfortable.

I also had my two nieces as flower girls and they also had multiway dress like the bridesmaids. These looked lovely on them both.

My daughter Esme was a flower girl. She was three at the time of the wedding, I wanted her in something different to the other flower girls. She had a handmade dress from Little Bettys Boutique, a lace dress with a train…..so cute!

Your Photographer

We decided early on we wanted to have Hayley Baxter be our photographer. We both had been to a few weddings before ours and we loved how she captured the day. Hayley also went to the same school as both of us.

Both myself and Liam are not the biggest fans of having our pictures taken and having to pose but Hayley made us both feel so at ease. She captured lots of natural shots which I didn’t even know she was doing so looking back over the photos she captured so many moments which really helps you relive the day.

Hayley is so talented and the photos are absolutely stunning.

Your Filmmaker

Absolute Media – we had two videographers; Kathrine and Steph. We left this to the very last minute to confirm but I am now so glad we did.

They captured the day really well and I love how they got some footage of everyone up dancing at the end of the night.

You can watch the teaser video here and the full film here.

The Cake

This was one of the first things we booked after booking the venue. Everybody loves cake!

I wanted the cake to be big. We decided to add some fake tiers so it wasn’t all cake as we had loads left over but this helped make it bigger.

We chose the design with Sharon at Sadie May Cakes. Grey marble with rose gold, but I changed my colour scheme so towards the wedding we went with some tiers with a subtle pink marbling with gold detail and mine and Liam’s initials in gold with pink and white flowers cascading down the five tiers.

The Honeymoon

We decided for our honeymoon that we would also take Esme our daughter with us so we wanted something that would be fun for her but to go somewhere where we could relax and enjoy married life. We booked to go two weeks after we got married.

We all went to Dubai for a week and stayed in The Atlantis, it was fun for all us. We spent our days in the water park and took Esme to swim with the dolphins which was one of the best experiences we have done as a family.

We then travelled to Sri Lanka for two days and stayed in Colombo then we went to the Maldives and stayed at the resort Shangri-la Villingili in a water a bungalow and this was paradise.

Memorable Moments

So many, here’s some…..

Watching our daughter walk down the aisle first before all the bridesmaids and the bride. She was so confident and so pretty.

Having everyone who’s means something to us around us to share our special day.

We had a magician, Andy Larmouth and he was the talk of the wedding. He kept our guests entertained and also did an amazing magic show after the wedding breakfast and wowed everyone! I cannot recommend him enough.

Dancing the night away……I don’t think stopped, as soon as the music started we let our hair down and enjoyed the last few hours of our special day.

Advice For Other Couples

Try to be organised as you can see I did leave something things until the last minute.

Just enjoy every single moment of the day. It goes so quickly but it’s your day so you do want you want to make sure it’s the best day ever!!

Credit Where Credit Is Due

Thank you so much Victoria and Liam for sharing your glamorous day with us today. Rachel x