Gorgeous Autumnal Navy Burgundy & Gold Wedding

What a treat it is to be sharing the gorgeous Carlton Towers wedding of Gareth and Becci, who were married on the 4th October 2019 in North Yorkshire. Their day was autumnal and intimate, with a rich burgundy, navy and gold colour palette. It was all just stunning!

From the decadent flowers to the stylish attire and statement autumn wedding cake, there are so many fantastic inspirational ideas to take away. Oh my.

Photography34 thank you so much for sharing these utterly beautiful images with us. Enjoy it all folks.

Carlton Towers Wedding

The Proposal

Gaz definitely went above and beyond for this! We’d booked the day off work in December for the concert so we could go out for lunch then go eat in Manchester before the gig, it was a normal day, I got up and started getting ready when all of a sudden he started rushing me saying we were going out for an early lunch. We parked up outside a pub in Featherstone near where we live and I assumed he was dropping something off for them when he made me get out and there on the side of the road was a billboard asking me to marry him. I was so shocked, I just cried and said yes obviously! People were driving past, beeping and shouting congratulations it was lovely but very unexpected!! He’s not a big, out there type of person so I definitely never saw something like this coming! My ring is beautiful, it was exactly what I would’ve picked! He did very well! It was nice being local celebs for a few weeks 😊

The Vision

Our vision for the wedding was that we wanted a low key autumnal theme incorporating navy, burgundy and gold and wanted to keep the guest list relatively small to keep it quite intimate. Even with this in mind I still wanted a ‘wow’ venue, I think that was very important. I wanted somewhere that would look amazing on our photos as they are thing you are left with after the big day.

Budget

We discussed budget at length, where we wanted to splurge and where we would rather save. We were very thankful to the bit of help from our parents as this really helped us have our dream day. In the end we didn’t want to spend more than £13,000. The wedding came in under at just over £12,000 with the majority of this spent on our dream venue and overnight accommodation for most of our guests.

The Venue

Our venue was the beautiful Carlton Towers, a listed stately home in Carlton, North Yorkshire. While being a large venue, and we had exclusive use, it still felt intimate and allowed us to mingle with our guests in a variety of smaller, more intimate rooms as well as the main ceremony rooms. This is one thing that people seemed to be blown away by, they couldn’t believe somewhere like Carlton Towers existed as it is just tucked away. I knew as soon as we pulled up at the open day this was our venue, it took my breath away. Seeing the rooms dressed for a wedding just sealed the deal. It was an authentic period venue which was just what I wanted and although it was large the use of different spaces and the fact we were the only guests kept things intimate on the day. We had so many options for photos as well and the overall aesthetic of Carlton Towers really fit with us as a couple. The fact it was autumn as well and you had all the autumnal colours in the grounds really worked well with our colour scheme.

Your Outfits

My dress was from Abigail’s Bridal Boutique in Leeds. It was a Justin Alexander gown in gold, blush and ivory. I had tried lots of lovely dresses on but they didn’t have the wow factor for the venue, then my mum chose this as her pick and even though it was a much bigger dress than I had tried I just knew it was the one as soon as I had it on. I mean I couldn’t have got my favourite shot of the train on the stairs in any other dress!

Gaz always said he wanted a navy suit but when he started trying them on he decided he wanted something different as he was the groom, he didn’t want to be in the same as the groomsmen. We were browsing ASOS and came across the burgundy which went well with our theme, it really suited him and definitely was a talking point for our guests!

The Ceremony & Music

The ceremony was lovely and we had three readings that we had chosen, A Dr Seuss one, one from The Amber Spyglass and one from Game of Thrones. They really represented who we are as a couple and fit with our vows. We had Phoebe, a family friend sing after the ceremony while guests were mingling to give us an opportunity to go out for some photos. We picked a handful of our favourite songs for her to sing. I walked down the aisle to ‘Stolen’ by Dashboard Confessional, one of my favourite songs. I love music so all the playlists for the day were chosen by me. At night for the last hour we had a lovely ‘rock disco’ and our friend Gaz who was our DJ played some of our favourite rock songs for us to finish the evening off to.

Your Photographer & Filmmaker

Our photographer was Tony Wilson from Photography 34. Finding our photographer was one of Gaz’s few wedding jobs! He works as a graphic designer and has a passion for photography so I trusted him to find us the best. He found Tony through a work colleague who had used him for her wedding and Gaz was impressed with his style of photography. We wanted photos that weren’t too posed (bar the usual family shots), we wanted ours to be more natural and represent who we are as a couple. He really smashed it, we were overwhelmed with the quality of all the photos we received. Our favourites have been blown up to A1 and framed in our home, the colours in them fit perfectly and blend into our décor and everyone who visits always comments on how wonderful they look. Tony was fabulous on the day and spent the whole day capturing every little detail.

The Styling & Decor

The venue really didn’t take much styling. We kept to a navy and gold theme with some burgundy elements which fit with the venue as it was gold and burgundy in the room we got married in. My flowers were autumnal blooms and included these colours, we also included little pumpkins sprayed navy and gold within our table centrepieces to tie in with the autumnal theme. Our cake was lovely and was a mix of grey marble effect, navy and gold to fit our theme. It tasted divine and we served it at night for after our evening food for guests to help themselves.

The Honeymoon

Unfortunately, we haven’t made it on our Honeymoon yet, we had a mini-moon booked for November 2019 to Iceland but this clashed with us moving home so had to be rearranged and then our main honeymoon was a Caribbean cruise in March 2020 which due to the pandemic was cancelled. We are hoping to get away somewhere this year, maybe to Iceland so we can finally celebrate our honeymoon!

Memorable Moments

Seeing my dad’s face when he saw me in my dress and trying not to cry as we walked down the aisle! I also loved Gaz’s response to me in my dress! We have a great photo of that moment 😊

Advice For Other Couples

To me the things people remember are the venue, the food and drink and the music at the night do! As long as you have an amazing venue, delicious food and plenty of drink and a DJ or band who keep the dance floor full, then you’ve got a great wedding! One more thing, do not scrimp on your photographer, your photos are what you have forever to remember your big day so make sure they are as perfect as possible.

Credit Where Credit Is Due

How wonderful!

Gareth and Becci, thank you so much for sharing your amazing Carlton Towers wedding. I hope you get to have your dream honeymoon soon.