Colourful The Engine Shed Wedding & Embroidered Wedding Dres

What a treat it is to be sharing WWW readers Chris and Jacqueline’s stunning The Engine Shed wedding in Yorkshire. Not only is it a colourful, laidback day but it features loves of theirs including constellations and dinosaurs. Hooray!

Also, I must mention how much I love Jacqueline’s beautiful embroidered floral wedding dress! Another great part of their story is how most of their decor was DIY projects, oh and do look out for the really cute cakes too.

Nicola Mackrill Photography, thank you so much for sharing with us these joy-filled captures. So much happiness!

The Engine Shed Wedding

The Proposal

We’d talked about getting married beforehand and had both planned to propose in New York in April 2020. However, Jacqueline got a little impatient and proposed in November 2019 using a treasure hunt around the house, which was fortunate as our trip to New York ended up being cancelled due to Covid!

We went out for a lovely Sunday lunch afterwards to celebrate.

The Vision

We knew from the start that we wanted the wedding to reflect us as much as possible, from the decorations to the music, we tried to make it ‘us’. We wanted it to be really colourful, as you can see in the decorations and Jacqueline’s dress, laidback and fairly informal.

We also wanted to bring in our interests, Chris is a bit of a stargazer so we had constellations as the tables. We’re both quite science-y (we met while studying a chemistry course at University) so that influenced a few things like Chris’s rocket cuff links and the dinosaur cake toppers.

Finally, we also quite like DIY and craft so we wanted to create as much as we could ourselves, including arranging the flowers, making the table names and table plan.

The Venue

The Engine Shed, Wetherby

We wanted a venue that did everything, from the ceremony to the food to the evening reception and as soon as we walked into The Engine Shed in Wetherby we both really liked it. We loved the ballroom style with a mezzanine floor above and the styling of the venue. There’s lots of old train signage around the building that really gives it some character.

It also helped that Lee, the wedding planner at the venue was brilliant and such a massive help throughout the whole process. Plus we both really liked the idea of the ‘be the chef’ option for the wedding breakfast. It’s a carvery meal complete with a chef hat for the person on each table that was carving the meat.

The Ceremony & Music

We had a civil ceremony at The Engine Shed, Jacqueline walked down the aisle to Better Together by Jack Johnson with both of her parents. Neither of us could keep much of a straight face throughout the ceremony, we were both laughing too much.

Chris’s aunt did a reading from Neil Gaiman, This For You, and Jacqueline’s friend Leanne read Friendship by Judy Bielicki.

We walked back down the aisle as a married couple to I Believe in a Thing Called Love by The Darkness.

Our first dance was to Bring Me Sunshine by Morecambe and Wise, which was perfect because it’s not too soppy and quite upbeat so really sums up who we are as a couple.

The music through the entire night was playlists we had created of songs we love and requests from our guests, which did lead to an odd choice or two! This was one of the biggest successes of the day as we got multiple compliments on our song choices. The dance floor was never empty!

Your Photographer & Filmmaker

Nicola Mackrill was our photographer and she was brilliant for the whole day. We really wanted someone that would capture the informal and fun vibe we were going for and she managed that perfectly.

Your Outfits

Bride – the dress was from Needle and Thread. I wanted something different and colourful as white isn’t my usual colour. I loved the embroidery and detail and had loads of offers from people to hire the dress for themselves afterwards!

Groom – Ted Baker suit from Moss Bros. complete with rocket cuff links. I wanted something that was a little different and was looking to buy rather than rent and this suit fit that perfectly.

Chris’s Mum used to be a dressmaker which came in very useful for alterations for both the bride and groom.

The Styling & Decor

Neither of us had really specific ideas for what we wanted for our day except to get married! We tried to bring in lots of our interests into the day and created as much as we could ourselves.

The table centrepieces were a mix of foliage and real flowers from Janice at Yorkshire Petals who provides buckets of locally grown flowers for couples to arrange themselves. We also used these with the help of Chris’s sister and mum to create the bouquets and buttonholes.

Each of the tables was named after a constellation; Orion is Chris’s favourite so that was reserved for the top table, and we made the table names, place names and table plan ourselves. For favours, we gave everyone a little bag of pic’n’mix sealed with a cartoon drawing that was used on our invite.

We had four cakes, including three from Hannah’s Kitchen: a Lemon Drizzle, Biscoff and Strawberry Shortcake. We then had a Colin the Caterpillar to complete our array. For cake toppers, we bought our favourite dinosaur figures and dressed them in a top hat, bow tie and veil.

The Honeymoon

We went to Edinburgh for a few days after the wedding and are going to New York and Florida in 2022 (the postponed trip where we had both initially planned to propose!).

Memorable Moments

The first look was really memorable. I had no absolutely idea what to expect, Jacqueline’s dress was not a traditional style but fit her personality perfectly.

Chris dancing to Any Dream Will Do from Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat with his Grandma (her song request) was definitely a highlight, it was just before the evening started so the dance floor was empty and she loved it!

Lots of memorable moments also came from the photo booth from Viva La Booth, there are some brilliant and very silly photos and we have a photo album full of photos and messages from the guests. Months after the wedding, just looking at those photos really makes us laugh.

The speeches were also great and the best men’s speech came complete with a PowerPoint containing various photos of Chris from over the years, some of which only a little embarrassing! In a slight break from tradition as well, Jacqueline also did a speech which went down really well with everyone.

Advice For Other Couples

When you’re planning, don’t forget it’s your day so do what you want with it even if it isn’t always the most traditional option. And then when it gets to the big day, don’t forget to enjoy it!