Today's real wedding has a lovely twist and is brimming with brilliant advice and tips from the lovely bride. Elouise ... take it away:

Firstly, where and when did you get married? 

We got married Friday 8^th July 2011 at Woodborough Hall in Nottinghamshire. We wanted somewhere intimate and private where we could hold both the ceremony and reception.

What made you decide on your venue? 

After lots and lots of research online we went to view 3 venues in Nottingham, Woodborough Hall being the last. Coming up the driveway I was already thinking how perfect this venue was. We both fell in love with the hall; it was intimate, beautiful and had gorgeous grounds with a field of horses next door and rabbits hoping over the lawn. The inside was just a gorgeous as outside and I remember on another trip (after we’d booked it) looking inside the rather large ladies bathroom (complete with chaise lounge) and thinking “Wow we’re actually getting married here!”

What was it like choosing your dress and had you always had your heart set on that style? 

I went dress shopping with my mum about 10 months before the big day and we went in every dress shop in Nottingham – I’d tried on so many dresses from pink meringues to one that looked like a nightie – I’d lost count and was getting tired and convinced I’d never find anything! Finally we arrived at Karoleanne Bridal where I tried on just one dress, the dress I ended up buying. When I got home that night I started to panic that in my tired state I’d picked it just because I hadn’t liked anything else, so I went back the next day refreshed to try it on again – and it really was THE DRESS! It was made of chiffon so still had that nice floaty quality, it had crystal detail down one side and a puddle train, which I fell in love with!

As you’ll see when reading below, I got to wear two dresses! My other dress was a gorgeous Grecian style teal dress from Kaliko. This is much more the style I originally thought I wanted for a wedding dress, so I love the fact that I got that style in there somewhere. And best of all, unlike my wedding dress, I can wear this dress again!

Talk us through the theme and decor of the wedding: 

Chris’ favorite colour is green and mine is blue – so we combined the 2 and went for a teal colour scheme. My favorite flowers are calla lilies so I always knew what flowers I’d have. We didn’t pick a specific theme as such for our wedding, but instead tried to add little personal touches here and there to make the day truly ours.

Anything quirky and creative we should know about your wedding?

The biggest ‘quirk’ about our wedding day was that we had our sit down meal before our wedding! We’d always talked about how we loved the idea of a really small intimate meal, but this presented us with a dilemma as we still really wanted our friends and family there to witness us marry. So…I had a brain wave – why not have the intimate meal first and then our friends and family could join us later for the ceremony?! So that’s what we did! At lunchtime I sat down (In my other gorgeous dress – we’d both agreed that the first time Chris saw me in my wedding dress should be when I walked down the aisle) with my soon to be husband, our parents, siblings and bridal party to eat a gorgeous 3 course meal – and with a chef who used to work at Buckingham Palace the food at Woodborough Hall was amazing! We then had a break for a few hours where Chris and I parted ways and I got ready for our ceremony – the break went very fast and before I new it I was in my wedding dress about to get married and trying very hard not to cry! I walked down the aisle to an acoustic version of ‘Everlong’ by the Foo Fighters, both our dads read poems and we both wrote personal vows. The start of the day was certainly different and very untraditional, but it suited us perfectly and was everything we wanted for our special day.

Both of us are self-confessed geeks and we really wanted to put our personality into the wedding. We handmade the name cards for the meal and each guest had their own superhero/super-villain alter ego! I also had a personalized cake topper made where the groom was wearing a Spider-man costume under his suit – this was a surprise for Chris and he loved it! Music is another big thing for us so we spent a lot of time compiling playlists for the meal, bar area and evening reception full of all our favorite songs – our first dance was ‘Starlight’ and we had a ‘rock/indie’ hour which showcased our favorite genre of music.

It was raining on and off throughout the day and just before I was about to walk down the aisle it absolutely chucked it down. Seriously heavy rain, complete with thunderstorm – we even got a rumble of thunder when we said our vows! Before the big day I was really worried about the weather and not being able to have photos outside, but Hannah and Ben from HBA Photography were fantastic at utilizing the venue and we are so happy with our professional photos.

The day was full of tears (mainly from my dad!) love and laughter and thanks to the summer rain we got a lovely rainbow to top off an amazing day!

Well then, doesn't that show just perfectly how, come rain or shine, you will have the best day of your life. A huge thank you to Elouise for her lovely words and to HBA Photography for the stunning images.

Today is the most gorgeous wedding and one very close to my heart as it was held at Thrumpton Hall, my wedding venue back in May 2010.

Fabulous pictures by the Butterworths and a lovely write up by the blushing bride Lorna:

♥ Firstly, where and when did you get married?

We got married on the 1^st July 2011 at All Saints Church in Thrumpton. Afterwards we had the drinks reception,wedding breakfast and party in the grounds of Thrumpton Hall...it was the most perfect day.

♥ What made you decide on your venue?

We didn’t really know where we wanted to get married, we live in Leeds and Paul’s from Yorkshire but I grew up in Nottinghamshire and its where my family live, so we looked at loads of venues in both areas until we decided on Thrumpton. I saw 36 in total! It sounds crazy but I really enjoyed looking around all the fabulous places you can get married and to begin with we didn’t really know what kind of wedding we wanted, so it helped us to piece together what we liked. We decided we wanted a big wedding so we could be surrounded by all our family and friends and liked the idea of a garden party that gave the whole thing an informal but summery feel. We also really liked the idea of a marquee so that everything could happen in one place with everyone together. Thrumpton Hall has such beautiful grounds, I never even knew it existed, but when we finally decided what kind of wedding we wanted it was the perfect fit. Everything from the charmingly intimate church, to the fact we could walk to the reception venue, the stunning rose garden overlooking rolling countryside and the huge marquee set beside the peaceful stream, it was everything we wanted. So many of our guests commented on the venue and said how much they loved it.

♥ What was it like choosing your dress and had you always had your heart set on that style?

Well, after hunting through the 36 venues I think my Mum and bridesmaids were dreading me then finding a dress, but it was actually only the 2^nd dress I tried on and we did it all in a day! I’d never really thought about what dress I would wear on my wedding day before, but I’d started flicking through the bride magazines and turning down pages on the ones I liked. I knew it would be something quite extravagant and detailed and I knew which style wouldn’t suit my shape, but I still didn’t really know what I was looking for. Mum and I went to the Wedding Show at the Birmingham NEC to get some ideas on themes, suppliers and decor, so hadn’t really gone expecting to try any dresses on but there were hundreds of stands there with boutiques from all over the UK so Mum convinced me to try one on and from then on I was like a kid in a candy shop.

The first dress was the sort of design I thought I would probably go for, but when I had it on I didn’t think the style suited me at all, then I saw my dress and just loved it from the moment I saw it. To begin with I thought it was a bit OTT and thought it would blow the budget out of the water, but it was actually quite reasonably priced given all the detail it had and when I put it on I didn’t want to take it off. It sparkled and swooshed and made me feel amazing...I didn’t want a simple or understated dress – you’re only a bride once so I decided that when it came to the dress more was definitely more! I tried on lots of others that day and there were some beautiful dresses but both Mum and I knew that this was the dress for me.

♥ Talk us through the theme and decor of the wedding

We wanted it to feel like a summer garden party, so we had Pimms and Apple Mojitos as the welcome drinks, which was held in the rose garden while a live jazz band played in the background, we scattered flowers and candles in hurricane vases around the garden and twirled fairy lights around the outside of the marquee. It was a gorgeous summer day - we were so lucky with the weather, so guests mingled in the sunshine on the lawn until dusk and then some sat out under the stars and twinkling fairy lights – it was exactly how we’d imagined it. For the colour scheme we chose pink and a vibrant green, which looked really fresh and summery. We both love travelling so we added subtle hints of this through the food we chose and our table names, which were the names of places we’ve visited together.

♥ Anything quirky and creative we should know about your wedding?

Both Paul and I absolutely love cheese, so instead of a traditional cake we had rounds of cheese stacked into a tiered cake and decorated it with figs, grapes and flowers, we then served it with antipasti meats, rustic breads and pickles in the evening – it looked great and I’m told it tasted amazing, although I never actually got to have any. We also booked a live jazz band – Mad Dog and the Sophisticats – who were just fantastic! As all the guests were leaving the church they appeared from nowhere and started playing. We hadn’t arranged it so it was a real surprise and everyone loved it. They walked with the guests from the church to Thrumpton Hall - it was so funny to see such lively, upbeat music being played in the usually sleepy village and lots of the neighbours came out to see what was going on, it was very surreal. They played the whole way through the drinks reception and wedding breakfast and were very entertaining, serenading a few of the female guests and generally amusing the audience, but their finale, after the wedding breakfast, was brilliant - they had all of our guests singing and acting out the moves for “I am the music man” with full on “pia, pia, piano” blasting out by all. Very funny!

We had the most incredible wedding day - I loved every minute.

How fabulous does that wedding sound? I know I'm bias but Thrumpton Hall really does look pretty amazing in those shots

Big thanks to the lovely Butterworths for their fantastic images and the bride, Lorna for such a heart warming story about her beautiful big day.

Today we bring you a classic, elegant wedding with a movie twist!

All images courtesy of Red Square Photography. For further information on the talented Becki at Red Square Photography click here!

So, I will now hand you over to Victoria and Dan for their 'big day' story!

Firstly, where and when did you get married?
28th May 2011 at St. Martin’s Church in the village of Stubton, Lincolnshire. Then it was across the road to our reception at Stubton Hall.

What made you decide on your venue?
Well, we were actually driving back from a venue we’d checked out nearby. It hadn’t been for us, and we were joking that we were never going to find something that we instantly fell in love with when we saw what looked like an old stately house being renovated in the distance. A quick Google search and phone call later and we were wandering around a half-completed Stubton Hall wearing hard hats! Even then we could see it was going to be breathtaking. We didn’t need to say a word as we drove off, we both knew we’d found the perfect place.

What was is like choosing your dress and had you always had your heart set on that style?
The dress I chose was a strapless lace gown which went all the way to the floor. Having been together with Dan for a number of years before our engagement, I had had plenty of time to look through the different wedding magazines and select some possible styles for when the opportunity to have my special day came round. As it turned out – the styles that I had chosen were all very similar and when it came to finding the dress I decided to go to the wedding show at the NEC in Birmingham and hopefully find what I wanted.
When we arrived I charged my maids of honour with going off and finding the dress, having giving them a pretty exact description of what I wanted – figure hugging, strapless, floor length, medium train and above all classic and sophisticated. Within about an hour we had met up again having tried on a few dresses which were less to my taste and more for the fun of the day when the girls asked me to look at one they had found. Needless to say on the mannequin it looked exactly the style I had been envisaging. I tried it on and the girls and my mum were in tears and said that it was the dress for me, whilst I being the unconfident person that I can be, I tried to find some reason to dislike the image staring back at me in the mirror – however there wasn’t any chance of this and the tears came – yes, that was the dress for me.

Talk us through the theme and décor of the wedding The theme I wanted to convey for our wedding day was simple – classic elegance with lots of fun thrown into the mix. What more can I say – our wedding pictures say it all. Becki is the most wonderful kind and understanding person I could have ever hoped to have capturing the memories of our day – we could not have asked for better.
Our colour scheme was something that changed a bit initially but we went with olive and cream and it really worked so we were very happy with it. As for a theme, well we’re both movie freaks so we had to go with a film concept for each table. Narrowing down our favourite films to just 10 table names was one of the hardest things we had to do! Other than that we were really conscious that we wanted it to be a fun family day as we had a lot of young families attending as well as being a good party in the evening, so everything else was set up to just make it a really relaxed affair for everyone.
For the church service, we also had a string quartet playing and we requested that they play songs from our favourite movies whilst the guests were waiting for us to arrive and the day to begin – this went down very well as a lot of the songs- whilst everyone knew – weren’t initially obvious as they were being played with classical instruments – our guests loved it.

Anything quirky and creative we should know about your wedding?
[Over to Dan] I didn’t think we had the right look for the movie-themed table names and as Vicky had planned every detail of the day to the finite degree I wanted there to be a few nice surprises for her, so I asked a local artist friend of mine to come up with designs for each film. He put days and days of effort in, buying each film and watching it for all the key bits. When finished, the designs looked even better than I’d dare hope and so many people asked where we’d got it from. It was just one of those many little things that made the day perfect. He’d kill me if I didn’t give him a mention because he’s now keen to do the same for other couples and can be contacted through www.danevilparker.deviantart.com

For our evening entertainment, we wanted to have a band playing as well as the house DJ that was included in our package with Stubton. As such I went about gathering more current information on bands and compiling this with the information I had obtained through the years and eventually I came up with a list of possible artists which I then sent to Dan to look at. Dan being Dan made this part really enjoyable and turned the selection of the band into band date. By band date, I mean that as most wedding bands play a varied choice, they also all play some of the same songs. So, he played 2 or 3 songs by 5 of our final choices and didn’t tell me who we were listening to – I just had to give them a score. When I had done this the band who scored the highest were the band that we would go with.
As it turned out, I secretly had liked 2 of the bands the most but couldn’t choose between them. Doing band date helped with this and the band that I had but second on the list actually won the game so we went with them. Having now had the wedding I can confirm we definitely made the right choice, they were amazing! They are called the Mesh Band and are absolutely amazing performers!! They are more than worth the money and gave everyone of fantastic night of dancing playing music from 50’s- 00’s and they went down so well that 2 people have asked for their details to book them since then.

We introduce to you a stunning wedding from Katie and Leo and our friends at Papakata.

All images courtesy of Cris Matthews Photography

Firstly, where and when did you get married?
Got married on 23rd July, 2011, in the Yorkshire Dales at St Wilfrid's Church Burnsall followed by a reception in PapaKåta tipi's at Knowles Lodge, Appletreewick.

What made you decide on your venue?
We wanted to get married in the Yorkshire Dales because it's where I grew up and I love it there, it's so beautiful and both Leo and I love the place- Burnsall is one of my favourite places in the world, so we had the church service there. We had originally been looking for a barn or somewhere rustic and country- we then thought about having it in a field, but decided we didn't want to end up wearing wellies if the weather was bad as we still wanted a bit of elegance to the day- so we decided we would go for a sort of woodland magical wedding and so once we found Knowles Lodge which has views over the river and set next to a woodland we knew it was perfect- we wanted a tipi reception because we both wanted a boho feeling wedding and they look so great with the trees behind them so they suited us down to the ground- marquees didn't really do it for us, so when we found the PapaKåta tipis they were just right- we loved the chill out area and the fires as well so it all seemed right.

What was it like choosing your dress and had you always had your heart set on that style?
Choosing the dress was so hard! I didn’t want anything too traditional or structured or formal. I wanted to wear something pretty and elegant and yet still quite boho -I wanted to feel special but also myself and comfortable- I loved lots of dresses but they were all so so expensive, I really wanted lace if possible but again it's so expensive- I then found this dress on 'sell my wedding dress.com' - a woman who ran a bridal shop was selling off a sample dress, so it had never been worn but was half the price, it was a Temperley dress, the honeysuckle style and usually it's a fortune- as soon as I tried it on I knew it was the right dress- the lace was beautiful and it had little delicate sequins on it- you couldn't really see them, so it wasn't bling, but it sparkled in the sun when they caught the light- it was beautiful.



Talk us through the theme and decor of the wedding
I think I said above what we wanted- we wanted magical woodland feeling. Another bride came to look at the venue the day before our wedding- we had just finished setting up and she said ' it feels like midsummer nights dream here'- i was so chuffed because that's exactly what we wanted- we had a chill out tent and had all the fairy lights in the tipi's. We also had two fires in there that made it so cosy- we decorated the poles with trailing ivy which really worked in the tipi's and we had loads of tall candles on each table which looked incredible in the dark. it looked magical.

Anything quirky and creative we should know about your wedding?
We had fortune cookies on each table place and stuffed lottery tickets in them so all the 120 guests had a lottery ticket- then later in the evening in the middle of the dances we announced the numbers- no one won millions, but a few people won £70-100. The guests loved it...

Also after dinner we had a cocktail hour, before we started dancing, we had the bar in the chill out area so people could chill round the fire or go outside with their cocktails- all our guests said it was their favourite part of the night- it was so worth doing- it really kicked off the evening from day to night. The PapaKåta fires in the tipis are such a great idea because people who don't want to dance can just sit and chill out by the fire.

We also found a local girl at appletreewick folk festival who played the ukelele to sing in church and our first dance- i think she was the hit of the evening= she was incredible- she was only £100 and she blew everyone away- we later found out she had sung at the royal wedding as she is Ellie Goulding's backing singer but we had no idea- she sang acoustic versions of Eve Cassdidy's songbird, Dusty Springfield's I only want to be with you, and the Wanadees you and me in the church and then for our first dance she did a version of somewhere over the rainbow that mixes into wonderful world- it was incredible!

On a day filled with horrendous news stories and terrible violence, we bring you a sense of calm and serenity in the shape of the gorgeous wedding of Kelly and James. Sit back, relax and witness the LOVE

All the fantastic images by the Butterworths.

Firstly, where and when did you get married?

We married on the 28^th May 2011 at St Stephen’s Church in Borrowash, Derbyshire, a beautiful little chapel just a few minutes from our house. It’s the church where James was christened and where we go every Christmas Eve for carols round the tree so it holds a special place in our hearts. The reception was held by the lake at Draycott House, in Draycott.

What made you decide on your venue?

Whenever we talked about our wedding day we’d always said we wanted to have a massive party and for everyone to come away saying they’d had an amazing day…..Lakeside at Draycott House allowed us to do just that! The marquee gave us the blank canvas we wanted but the grounds are where Draycott House comes into its own. Next to the lake and surrounded by beautiful countryside with the house itself in the background we felt a million miles from anywhere…..the best thing was that we were actually just a stones throw from our house! Lynne and Charles were fabulous and did everything they could to give us the day of our lives.

What was it like choosing your dress and had you always had your heart set on that style?

I’d never really thought much about the dress but knew that I definitely didn’t want a train! After trying on all sorts of styles I was still no closer to a decision when by chance I popped into the Dream Wedding Dress shop in Nottingham and met Kathryn. I think I tried on half the shop that day and finally thought I’d found my dress but when I brought my bridesmaid back for a second opinion it just didn’t feel right. So there we were back at square one when Kathryn said ‘You didn’t try this one on last time did you?’ The dress she was holding up was beautiful, all sequins and beads and layers of tulle, a real fairy princess dress but totally not me. Encouraged by my bridesmaid and not wanting to rule anything out I tried it on and loved it……train and all! I never thought I’d have that moment when you just know you’ve found your dress but when you do it is amazing!

Talk us through the theme and decor of the wedding

We travelled from the church to the reception in an old Routemaster bus, it was brilliant to have everyone together and really set the tone for the day. I wanted the reception to have a really relaxed vintage country garden feel so we crammed the marquee with peonies and stocks in all sorts of containers from enamel jugs and tea cups to jam jars and galvanised buckets. The table numbers were written on heart shaped chalkboard stakes and our favours were home made Irish whiskey fudge and coconut ice – the boys had a little something extra too, polystyrene gliders which were flying across the marquee all through the wedding breakfast!

Anything quirky and creative we should know about your wedding?

I’m currently setting up a business designing and making wedding stationery and accessories so our wedding was the perfect opportunity to get some practice in! My hair band was made from a vintage Art Deco dress clip, I made all the sweets we gave as favours and had great fun making our ‘mini me’ cake topper out of old fashioned dolly pegs.  We had a fabulous day and have so many great memories and I can’t wait to play a part in helping to give other couples their perfect day so look out for Fable and Grace. www.fableandgrace.co.uk

Well, I don't know about you but this wedding has made me want to head for the nearest field away from the chaos of the city and just throw a great big country themed party. If only.

Kelly, thank you for your lovely write up and for allowing us to take a sneak peek into your fabulous wedding day.