Authentic Red & Navy Whitworth Art Gallery Wedding

A very warm welcome to Felicity and Kit who are gracing our pages today with their epic Whitworth Art Gallery wedding in Manchester. Yes!

Their day was all about party vibes, with Kit and his band performing at the reception, meaningful readings and their 4 pm ceremony.

I adore the moody, atmospheric feel of their day with red and navy tones and stunning florals. The glass room where they hosted their reception looked magical and the stationery was very pretty. I also have to rave about how amazing Felicity and Kit looked – woah!

This was one very special day indeed. Thanks ever so much to the very talented Amy Faith Photography for sharing with us these sensational images.

Whitworth Art Gallery Wedding

The Proposal

There isn’t a huge, dramatic proposal story – flash has never really been our thing. And we’d already been together the best part of a decade, talked about getting married lots and knew it would happen at some point.

What actually pushed us to pull the trigger was Fliss’ grandma. She was a huge part of Fliss’ life and would often talk about what her wedding day might be like. She had a massive stroke in October 2019 so we got engaged in the November. Unfortunately, she died in March 2020. It isn’t a sad thing though, Grandma knew we were getting married and Fliss is thrilled that’s the case, even if she wasn’t around for the day itself.

The Vision

Kit plays lead guitar in a band, and we knew we wanted his band as our live music. Everything pretty much fell in and around that idea – we wanted a cool venue where you might go and see an indie group. And we knew we wanted to do it in Fliss’ hometown of Manchester.

We also much prefer weddings in one venue as opposed to moving guests during the day, so needed somewhere licensed for the legal bit. We found our venue on Manchester Council website and the rest is history. Dark, moody colours seemed the fit the gig vibes so it was a no-brainer.

Budget

We were very lucky to not be working to a set budget, all in all we spent around 50k.

The Venue

The Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester.

Your Outfits

Bride – wanted something in a fabric that wasn’t fussy, but was also dramatic and had a lot of volume. Ended up in an angular, one-shoulder dress by Pronovias. Shoes were navy blue by Jimmy Choo, and accessories included a jewelled hairpiece and matching earrings.

Groom – Kit often wears a velvet smoking jacket for smart occasions, so knew he wanted something in velvet he could wear again. He and the groomsmen ended up in bespoke suits by Moss Bros – navy velvet dinner jackets to match the bridesmaids.

The Ceremony & Music

Ceremony was a civil service that started at 4pm, the later start made the whole wedding feel like a night out rather than your traditional summer afternoon affair. We chose the least fussy wording options with the registrar, not wanting the ceremony to be too mushy. Jokes on us though, as we wrote our own vows and both sobbed through them.

Our favourite part of the ceremony though was the readings, we had three, each one read by one of our three siblings. Kit’s two brothers and Fliss’ sister.   Kit’s brother Corin read the sceptical wedding speech by the Hot Priest in Fleabag – it begins “love is awful…”.

Fliss’ sister Phoebe read “I wanna be yours” by John Cooper Clarke, a much loved Manchester favourite.

Kit’s brother Leo read from “Cosmos” by Carl Sagan. Aside from being in a band, Kit’s day job is as a professional physicist – space had to make it in there somewhere.

Music was all stuff we loved, no deeper meaning than that.

Entrance of the bride: Archie Marry Me, by Alvvays
Signing the register: It Must Be Love, by Madness
Departure as Newlyweds: I Believe In A Thing Called Love, by the Darkness

Evening band sets included:

Emo setlist – 2000s Panic! At the Disco, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance etc.
Manchester classics – Oasis etc

End of the night – Kit got up on stage with his boys and performed (as lead singer, he’s the only one with a high enough pitch ability!) Fliss’ fave song (I Believe in A Thing Called Love). He then finished the night with Hey Jude.

Your Photographer & Filmmaker

Amy Faith Photography

Red Seats Videography

The Styling & Decor

Décor was just straight-up flowers – handily, Fliss’s best mate from school is a professional florist!

Colour scheme across the board was ‘moody’ – oxblood, reds, deep blues, navy.

Table names were a fun personal touch – we named them after towns in our favourite video game, Red Dead Redemption 2. We spent a lot of time when we first moved in together playing that game and we thought it made a nice little Easter Egg for anyone that knows us well.

Cake was custom made by Slattery, three tiers of sponge in royal icing – decorated in colours and with flowers to match our theme.

Bottom tier: Chocolate sponge with white icing
Middle tier: Vanilla sponge with navy blue icing
Top tier: Red velvet sponge with white icing

The Honeymoon

Fliss was already pregnant by the time the honeymoon rolled around in August – so spent a fair bit of it being sick! Still, we had an excellent time:

Started in New Orleans, visited an old plantation, had dinner/dancing on a steamboat on the Mississippi River, went on a swamp safari.
Then went to Nashville, and got fully immersed in country music. Went to the Grand Ole Opry and the country music hall of fame, where Kit got to play Elvis’ piano. Also caught a baseball game.
Finished it all off with a week on the beach in Antigua, drinking plenty of non-alcoholic cocktails.

Memorable Moments

All our favourite parts of the day were the places where the people we love contributed. We both came away feeling so so loved, and these people (amongst many others) are why:

Readings: Between us, we have three siblings, and they each did a reading during the ceremony.
Flowers: Fliss’ childhood best friend Scarlett is a professional florist, and we gave her free reign to do whatever she wanted with our flowers. The brief was: “burgundy, oxblood, generic dark and moody. Want it to look wild, like an overgrown meadow.” Scarlett absolutely killed it, and we were in awe at how hard she worked to bring it all together before but also on the day.
Band: As above, felt so special to have them play. So many people in the crowd remarked on how good the band was, a couple have since admitted to being sceptical about using Kit’s band for our wedding, but that they were wrong. The boys (who are all dear friends) knocked it out of the park and made our wedding what we wanted it to be – a massive party.

Advice For Other Couples

The visual identity of the wedding was really important to me – I wanted all the stationery to match from invites, to on the day, through to thank you cards – so planning this ahead of time and making sure the supplier could provide everything I needed at the beginning was hugely important. Don’t buy invites only to realise that nothing else will match later down the line.

It’s also fine if wedding planning pisses you off from time to time. Weeks went by when life, home, work etc. needed to take priority and wedding planning got ignored. Advice is that it will still be there when you get back to it, and you WILL have everything done on time. You just will.