Relaxed & Quirky Sailing Club Wedding

Anastasia and Jason’s quirky style sure did shine through on their wedding day which was held on the 14th November 2015. They chose Rudyard Lake Sailing Club for their reception venue thanks to it’s glass frontage and scenic views. Everything came together just so, with super stylish attire, DIY décor and that candy floss machine. YES.

Anastasia chose a stunning lace Allure Bridals gown which she accessorised with a vintage veil. The gents looked really handsome in their tweed outfits and the maids wore vintage style floral frocks in contrasting colours. Amazing.

Thanks so much to Bridgwood Wedding Photography for sharing these mesmerising photographs with us.

THE PROPOSAL | Jason and I went away for our first holiday to Egypt which was at the same time as my birthday. We’d planned a few excursions, one being a boat trip around the island where you then stop off at another and have dinner. We’d decided this was the one we would do on my birthday.

Whilst on the trip we got to do some snorkelling which was so beautiful but absolutely terrifying after convincing myself we were going to be eaten by sharks. After the trauma of potentially rein-acting a scene from jaws and Jason trying to prevent me from having a panic attack we hopped back on to the boat.

We were dropped off on a beautiful island called Paradise Island where we had lunch and had a chance to relax underneath the palm tree huts. While lying down Jason turned to me and asked if he could ask me a question, I replied of course in sleep dazed manner. He then said “I’m not going to get down on my knee because I’m already lying down” I turned and looked at him and said “what are you on about” he then said those words every girl dreams of hearing. Will you marry me? My reply was with laughter and the words “are you pulling my leg”? after a minute or so of me repeatedly asking him if he was joking and him trying to convince me I eventually said yes and we were Engaged.

THE VISION | We’ve never been one for convention or ordinary and anyone who knows us or comes to our home thinks it’s a little bit quirky, so I guess that shone through on the style of our day.

Neither of us felt comfortable with the word formal and from then on we decided that we wanted a relaxed, carefree day where everyone could just enjoy them selves, have a little food, a little drink and a good old dance to help us to celebrate the two of us tying the knot. This was our main focus and everything else was built around it.

THE PLANNING PROCESS | The day Jason asked me to marry him I think he knew we wouldn’t exactly be having an ordinary wedding. I will say that I was the one who took the reins on planning our wedding as most brides do. I had got so many ideas in my head, I was beyond excited in seeing them come to life.

I then discovered Pinterest which was like my life line of inspiration. I’d like to say I was pretty organised and knew what I wanted but I think the problem I had was having too many ideas. Once I’d decided on one thing I then saw another idea so I had to kick myself in to making the decision again. I think I have quite a creative mind so I really enjoyed the whole process. I’m not going to say it wasn’t a little stressful at times but as long as you keep reminding yourself what it’s all for and knowing at the end you get to enjoy all of your hard work you’ll be fine. It really is worth all of those tears and little moments of chaos.

BUDGET | Our budget was supposed to be £5,000 but then I found my dream dress which I only thought existed in my head, then of course came our fabulous photographer – Steve Bridgwood from Bridgwood Wedding Photography. We then realised there are just some things on your wedding day you just can’t budget for especially if you really have your heart set on them. We lived in the moment when deciding on many of our choices and with the saying “we are only going to do it once so we may as well do it right”.

THE VENUE | We had decided from the beginning that we would marry in our local church of Saint Mary’s in Leek. We then went through stages of what we thought we would want, what we actually wanted and what was realistic for our reception.

Our first choice was actually to have a tipi wedding and after going to an open day with Tipi and Kata we fell in love. After a serious talk as a couple on our own away from all of the magic we decided it actually wasn’t what we really wanted.

The main thing that changed our mind was finding a venue that was still as beautiful as the tipis to set our day, but we just couldn’t put our finger on a perfect place that we would be allowed to access. I spent another couple of weeks searching the Internet for our dream venue and one place kept popping up, I wasn’t really sure as I didn’t actually know where it was. So one evening after work Jason and I took a little drive to find the hidden gem, it was dark and difficult to see but it was still so beautiful, instead of having an outdoor wedding we would bring the out doors in. It was a beautiful glass front building opening up on to Rudyard Lake, It was perfect and we both fell in love with it immediately.

FINDING THE DRESS | The day I found my dress was accidental, I had decided a long time ago that my sister Natasher was to hand make my dress, she is and always has been so creative and talented and has a background in fashion. As I didn’t need to go out and try any it was simple but being a bride it is all part of the experience and I felt like I was missing out.

I decided to have a day out with another one of my sisters who was also my maid of honour, I had booked to go to a bridal shop just to have a look and maybe try on a couple of dresses. When I got there I was told to have look around and pull out any dresses I might like, again as I wasn’t really looking for my dream dress so I only really looked at what fabrics I liked, the styles didn’t bother me so I pulled out four different styles. There was one dress that I had picked for it stunning lace and colour but was not the type I would ever choose, it was also the first one I pulled from the rails so the lady got me to try this one on first.

As soon as I stepped in to it my heart stopped, it was so beautifully made and unbelievably comfy. As I stepped out of the fitting room to see myself in the mirror, in my head I wanted it to not look good. As soon as I saw myself I just fell in love with it and wanted it. The detail and how it fitted was just how I’d imagined my dream dress. It was designed by an American bridal company called Allure Bridal who have the most stunning collections but with a price. The lady from the shop got me to try on the other three dresses but it was pointless as my heart had made its decision on the first. I was completely and utterly love struck! I now had to break the news to my future husband that the next 12 months we would be living on baked beans and then to my beautiful talented sister that she no longer needed to make me my dream wedding dress. From that moment I realised that every decision we made about our day would effect the others around us. It was so difficult and at times a little upsetting but we had to keep reminding ourselves that it was our day.

THE DRESS & ACCESSORIES | Although I had found my dream dress it needed a little tweaking to fit me perfectly. I had also decided that I needed a sash to tuck me in and a little extra detail around the shoulders. Two handmade shoe clips to finish off my beautiful Rachel Simpson Shoes and slight alterations to me vintage veil that I had found in a charity shop for £7.

In my home town of Leek there is a very talented lady who has a beautiful vintage bridal boutique called Joan Brown Vintage Brides, filled to the brim with stunning handmade bridal accessories and beautiful handmade gowns. There was no one else I would have chosen to alter or to enhance my beautiful dream dress, or to hand make my sash and shoe clips. She tweaked my dress to make it just as I’d imagined, it fitted me beautifully and was finished off perfectly with my stunning sash.

GROOM’S ATTIRE | For the Mr’s we decided that tweed was the way we would go. As we were getting married at the end of Autumn, early winter we wanted them to have something in keeping and that would also keep them warm. We looked around at so many places and couldn’t find anywhere to hire tweed. We then made the decision to buy them, so they all ended up with their own tweed suit to keep which was also a little gift from us to them as a thank you, we didn’t necessarily want them to match so we decided on slight colour differences for the jackets but with matching trousers and bow ties, except for Jason who had a tweed handmade bow tie that I had gotten him as a little wedding gift. We ended up finding four of the jackets including the grooms from Racing Green and the other two from Greenwoods, the men were happy and they looked as handsome as could be.

THE READINGS & MUSIC | When it came to the readings at our ceremony we asked my eldest brother Julian to write us a few words of advice. It was so lovely, very honest and wise, It even brought a slight tear to my eye. As for our choice of music, we decided on ‘Moon River’ by Danny Williams for me to walk down the aisle and ‘All I want is you’ by Barry Louis Polisar for us to walk out as husband and wife, both songs that we both love.

BEAUTIFUL BRIDESMAIDS | When I was a little girl I always said that my closest friends would be my bridesmaids. I was lucky enough to still have the ones I had then as I do now and after knowing them for over 20 years there was no question about it. As I got older I had also made the decision that if I did ever get married I’d have to have my four sisters too, even though I never wanted to have too many. In the end I just couldn’t not have them all so I ended up with 12. My four sisters and my 8 best friends who to me are all like sisters, I also had one of my nieces Gabriele as my flower girl and two of my nephews as page boys.

Finding 12 bridesmaid dresses that suited each one of them and one that I liked too was not as easy as I had hoped, I even ended up buying two lots of dresses as the first ones I had chosen just didn’t suit the girls for our wedding.

Then one day I was browsing the Internet and I discovered Lindy Bop. I had already decided that they weren’t all going to have matching dresses or they would look like a little army marching down the aisle, I knew that I wanted florals and lots of colour and now I had found it. I chose white and pink florals for 5 of them, blue and pink florals for another 5 and a red and a pink for the other two to create some balance.

THE FLOWERS | Our beautiful flowers were put together by a lovely little shop in Congleton called Sweet Pea Florist. I had decided I wanted something simple yet beautiful and settled on white, pink and purple for my colours but still simple and subtle. My bridesmaids would have a small posy of flowers each and I would have one a little bigger but not too big or heavy, I had chosen the flowers that I wanted about 6 months before and hadn’t actually seen them together until the day before when we picked them up, I was slightly nervous about my colour choice but I loved them.

THE CAKE | Our cake was made by my Dad’s partner Pat who loves to bake, we had looked around and seen so many beautiful cakes and we were overwhelmed by the choice. It was so difficult to decide who we would have to make it. We only knew that it would be a naked cake as Jason does not like icing, after returning from another wedding fair we popped to see my dad and his partner and showed them the cake we loved. She told us she could easily make us a cake just like it, in what ever flavours we wanted, so we agreed if she was happy to do so we would be delighted. We chose to have a Victoria sponge for the base, a Chocolate Black forest for the middle and a lemon drizzle for the top. It was decorated in beautiful fresh flowers, it was delicious.

YOUR PHOTOGRAPHER | The fabulous Steve Bridgwood from Bridgwood Wedding Photography, at the time of seeing his beautiful work we had already asked a friend to take our wedding photos. But we were just so blown away by Steve and his stunning photos we had to change our minds and have him instead. We are so glad we chose him. He got us completely down to a T, everything we could have wanted and more and such a cool friendly guy. Having the right photographer is so important as your wedding photos are what you keep and look back at for years to come.

THE DETAILS & DÉCOR | We had decided right from the start that we had to have great music and lots of it to set our day. We contacted a local band that is known for rocking every wedding they’ve played at. Then we came across two separate acoustic performers, one who played for our first dance and the other who played whilst our guests were eating. My husband and his band even played a set as a surprise, performing a few of our favourite songs.

Then came the food, we decided we needed good wholesome grub that would fill up our guests, tasted great but not be at all formal. We chose to have a BBQ, with marinated stakes, chunky meat skewers and of course burgers and wedges which would also keep our guests warm. For dessert we had to have our favourite, nothing other than jelly and ice cream and for the evening we had a hot beef stew with wedges followed by a candy floss and popcorn cart.

When it came to the décor one of the most important things was that it had to show our personality. We decided that almost everything we did was handmade, from our favours to our bunting. Myself and my friends cut, stitched and designed every last piece. It didn’t have to be perfect it just had to look beautiful.

We decided to bring the outdoors in and used tree trunks from the woods behind our house to make our wedding cake and cupcake stand. I also dried out our own petals which we used for our confetti and to scatter on our tables.

As our venue was virtually glass the outside already shone through, all we did was add a few little touches to make it special for us.

Not forgetting lots and lots of fairy lights.

We wanted our day to show our memories and how we got to that day, we also wanted to share our memories with our loved ones, so we had our photo bunting with our selves and all of our families and friends. We chose to call our table names by our favourite box sets and films that we have shared together. Not only with ourselves but with our families and friends too, it was important to us that everyone one felt just as special on our day as we did.

THE HONEYMOON | For our hzoneymoon we wanted to do something a little different so we booked a week away to Barcelona which would end with 3 days in Paris, a cruise along the river Seine and an evening view of Paris from the Eiffel Tower. The day before our wedding we were decorating our venue when we heard the awful news that there had been incidents in Paris which were then reviled to be terror attacks, we were unsure of what to do as we didn’t want to be celebrating our future when so many were mourning their loss. We decided the day after our wedding to contact our travel providers to discuss our options as we would be leaving the day after. They were brilliant and extended our stay in Barcelona for the extra 3 days.

Barcelona is such a magical city, so much to see and so many places to go. The food, the culture and the people are just incredible. We would recommend it to any one as there is so much for everyone, what ever you may like. We visited The breathtaking Sagrada Familia, the Olympic Village, countless different tapas and cocktail bars, La Boqueria Food Market, Las Ramblas and even the beach. We literally walked the soles off our shoes, it was fabulous.

MEMORABLE MOMENTS | I think it would have to be dancing back down the aisle in hand as husband and wife, the most amazing and happy feeling I think I’ve ever felt. And of course the photos, there was moment having our picture taken and as I stepped back on the walk way on the lake, my heel got stuck in a groove and as Jason tried to pull me back he almost fell in to the water, I couldn’t stop laughing, think Steve actually got a picture of it happening.

ADVICE FOR OTHER COUPLES | Our one and only piece of advice for any couple. “Don’t forgot yourselves”, you are what is important and always remember the only people you can and have to please is yourselves, remember it’s your day, enjoy it.

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE |

Photographer | Bridgwood Wedding Photography

Dress alterations & accessories | Joan Brown Vintage Brides

Hair & Make up | Bridal hair and make up by Katie

Music | Live Wires

Music | Dom Morgan

Music | Kayleigh Knight

Food | A Js Catering

Flowers | Sweet Pea Florists

Honeymoon | TF Travel

Venue | Rudyard Lake Sailing Club

And certainly proof that rain on your wedding has really doesn’t matter.

Thanks so much to Anastasia and Jason for sharing their wedding story today xo Lou