Love at first sight! Brad and Jo’s real wedding

It’s great to hear from wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phers across the UK, whether they’ve years of expe­ri­ence or are just start­ing out. Zenna from Zen Pho­to­graphic got in touch a cou­ple of weeks ago to share this lovely Cheshire wed­ding with me and I loved it — the strong colour theme, fun images and gor­geous bride and groom clinched the deal and I’m very pleased to be shar­ing a really spe­cial wed­ding on the blog today. I hope you enjoy it!

Brad and Jo met in Ibiza and after a whirl­wind romance Brad pro­posed on the very same spot where they fell in love — how roman­tic is that? Two years down the line and they cel­e­brated their mar­riage at Arley Hall in Cheshire. With beau­ti­ful pho­tog­ra­phy by Zen Pho­to­graphic and Jo’s own words to tell their wed­ding story, I’m going to enjoy putting this blog fea­ture together as much as I hope you’ll love read­ing it. Please share a com­ment at the end if you have a sec!

Zenna has asked me to men­tion Claire Penn Pho­tog­ra­phy — Claire was shoot­ing the wed­ding with Zenna and some of the images below are by Claire too. www.clairepennphotography.com

Over to Jo (words) and Zenna (pictures)…

There are so many mem­o­rable moments and a lot of the bril­liant ones were the on-the-day sur­prises. Brad sur­prised me with a gor­geous dia­mond bracelet to wear as my ‘some­thing new’ this then led to a quick change in items for the other ele­ments and we found my grandmother’s engage­ment ring which I decided to wear as my ‘some­thing bor­rowed’. This was great for my dad as she passed when he was young so this added a really sen­ti­men­tal touch to our day that we hadn’t planned.

As my wed­ding dress didn’t have any ‘bling’ detail I was keen to acces­sorise with a touch of glit­ter. Veils didn’t suit me, so I opted for a side head­band to com­pli­ment the one shoul­der detail. This was pur­chased from the col­lec­tion at 7th Heaven Bridal. I found the gor­geous ear­rings from Glitzy Secrets and my shoes were a lovely satin peep-toe style with dia­mante from Bourne.

Brad’s suit was from a shop in Essex where we live. He chose navy tails and ivory shirt and waist­coat. Brad opted for a cus­tom tai­lored silk suit for him­self and wore all ivory, while the rest of the grooms­men wore a striped ivory and teal tie to match in with the colour scheme for the day.

I bought my wed­ding dress from 7th Heaven Bridal in Con­gle­ton who were fab! This was the sec­ond shop I went into dur­ing what was a mam­moth shop­ping trip, where I tried on at least 45 dresses in one day! Sur­pris­ingly it was the first dress my father saw and he let out a ‘wow’ as the cur­tain was drawn back. Cer­tainly the reac­tion I wanted, but I wasn’t sure if this was because it was ‘the’ dress or because it was the first wed­ding dress he’d ever seen me in. How­ever look­ing back at pho­tos it was the clear win­ner with a sim­ple but ele­gant style and unique shoul­der strap. It was a design by Vic­to­ria Jane, from Ronald Joyce.

Jo’s wed­ding day advice

Do all your plan­ning and think­ing well in advance of the big day, that then gives you plenty of time to absorb all the excite­ment in the build up the week before. Every­one was sur­prised by how calm Brad and I were in the few days before but we had done all that we could have done, we both then felt it was impor­tant to relax and enjoy the entire expe­ri­ence! The actual day goes that quickly that it’s good to look back on the entire week­end and think of the won­der­ful time we had with the peo­ple that mean the most to us and not to think of us feel­ing stressed out by last minute jobs.

in the evening we ded­i­cated one hour of enter­tain­ment to our favourite Ibiza tracks, hand­ing out disco specs to all still stand­ing! Our wel­come drink was our favourite cock­tail, Cosmopolitan’s which got every­one in the mood for a dance and the dance floor was packed out all night thanks to the amaz­ing job The Hip­sters did.

Another moment was the impromptu sec­ond dance that was demanded when the band pre­formed ‘Can’t take my eyes off you’ by Andy Williams. They got every­one in a cir­cle whilst Brad and I jumped around and our guests sang at the top of their voices!

Jo and Brad’s rec­om­mended wed­ding suppliers

Zenna from Zen Pho­to­graphic has been bril­liant through­out the prepa­ra­tions and we have both been very happy with the shots from our day!

7th Heaven Bridal in Con­gle­ton (http://www.7thheavenbridal.co.uk/) were absolutely amaz­ing from the very first appoint­ment until when we picked up the dress and beyond! The shop is so wel­com­ing and serene and you really feel the sense of excite­ment when sift­ing through their collection.

The Hip­sters Band (http://www.hipsteronline.co.uk/) were unbe­liev­ably great, our friends are still talk­ing about how good they were and they had us all chant­ing for an encore at the end of the night!

Thanks to Zenna from Zen Pho­to­graphic for sub­mit­ting this lovely wed­ding for the Eng­lish Wed­ding blog, and to Jo for the bril­liant write up. I hope we’ve given you some inspi­ra­tion for your own wed­ding day

Claire xx