Sophie & Chris’s beautiful English wedding at Curradine Barns, with Nellie Photography

Published by Claire Gould on November 30, 2020November 30, 2020

Morning lovelies! I’m feeling lucky today to be sharing one of those rare 2020 weddings. Back in February, gorgeous couple Sophie and Chris were able to tie the knot at Curradine Barns, and lovely Nellie Photography captured their day. Sophie’s stunning in a dress from English Wedding members TDR Bridal (whose new website is looking AMAZING btw!), and Chris’s Peter Posh suit is just perfect with an adorable dickie bow! This is all so beautiful – the moments are heartfelt and bring a tear to my eye. The pure happiness on these two’s faces is absolutely what I need to see – and it helps me to believe that soon, we’ll have weddings back. Stay strong, Beautiful – this will pass and here’s a glorious example of what we can all look forward to soon!
With love,

Did you love wearing your outfits? How was the dress / suit shopping experience?

Yes! we loved wearing our outfits. I had an idea in my head of the dress i wanted and ended up falling in love with something completely different! The dress i chose was actually the first one i tried on (one of my bridesmaids picked it for me to try). I went to a shop called The Dressing Rooms in Halesowen, along with my bridesmaids, one of my sisters and mine and Chris’s mom’s. We had the store to ourselves and got the chance to rummage through the masses of dresses they have there and pick out which ever I wanted to try on. I just fell in love with the beading on my dress and I will only get to wear a super bushy dress once! I wore it with a pair of Ted Baker shoes and some vintage jewelry that we got from Birmingham’s jewelry quarter. I wish i could wear it all again!!

Chris enjoyed spending time with his dad, brother, best man and groomsmen trying on suits and getting into the wedding spirit. He got his suit from Peter Posh in Wolverhampton, it was a three piece navy herringbone tweed suit with a bow tie and brown brogues along with a red pocket square and a pocket watch with chain. He also bought engraved pocket watches for our fathers, and engraved hip flasks for the best man and groomsmen.

My hairdresser was Hair at home with Jess, who made my hair look amazing, it really fit in the style of my dress and makeup, I would highly recommend.

We wish we could do it all again!

Wedding photographer’s website

www.nelliephotography.co.uk

How did you choose your photographer?

I have known Sarah since childhood, i follow her photography accounts on social media and have always loved her unique style of photography. Having known her for so long i knew she would capture our day perfectly! We didn’t even consider anyone else.

Were you pleased with your wedding photographer? Do tell… we love a brilliant review!

We are over the moon with our photos, they really captured the entire day and every emotion of us both and our guests. Sarah has an infectious, happy personality and lights up the room with her humour. She was very professional but at the same time friendly and approachable. This made us feel very relaxed and made the pictures seem natural. We were sent a gift box with some special goodies along with our photos. She really went out of her way for us and even stayed late. Its lovely having such great photos so that we can relive the day over and over again. We couldn’t thank her enough and would recommend her to anyone.

Tell us about your venue – what made this place special for you?

Our wedding was held at Curradine Barns in Worcestershire, its a 19th century restored barn. The venue has everything we wanted, as our wedding was in February the venue allowed for everyone to stay inside the whole day, though the rooms are very separate. There is a cosy bar area with a fire, a rustic barn style ceremony room and a dinning room, this also meant people who didn’t want to dance on the evening could sit comfortably away from the noise. They also have a preparation room upstairs along with a photo booth for guests which is a lovely touch, we got lots of good photos of guests! The grounds are beautiful, as soon as we turned into the driveway we thought “wow!”. They also have a honeymoon suit, which is a separate little cottage, so me and Chris could stay there on our wedding night and a farmhouse which close family could stay in. The staff were really friendly and attentive to our needs. We were invited to a tasting evening, so we got to sample the delicious food. The food and drink on our wedding day really exceeded expectations and they catered to all our dietary requirements with no problems (even with my severe nut allergy). It was great, lots of our guests commented on how beautiful and ‘perfect’ the venue was.

Did you hire a florist? Tell us about any floral amazingness

Our florist was the Floral Roundabout in Worcester and she was amazing! we booked our wedding only three months before the big day so when i went to meet the florist i hadn’t bought bridesmaid dresses or completely decided where we wanted flowers, we just knew we wanted lots. She was so friendly and helped us decide which ideas would work in our venue and even let us change some of our center pieces to tall ones quite late on. We didn’t have a clear idea of what flowers we wanted so just showed her some pictures we liked on pintrest and the colours we liked, she created us a mood board so we could see what ideas she had for us too. She suggested picking the best flowers at auction on the day so we decided to trust her to pull it all together and it was absolutely the best decision, they blew us away. There were some really unusual flowers in there which we loved and it made it look so special. We would highly recommend her.

As cake lovers here at English Wedding we’d LOVE to know who made your cake, and how delicious it was?

We got our cake from a small company called Hand-Made-Bake in Dudley, he also did my sister and brother-in-law’s wedding cakes. We asked for a tall vanilla cake with Italian meringue icing which had a marbling effect on, the florist then placed a small arrangement on the top. The cake was exactly how we imagined it to be and was delicious, we had so many complements on the taste of the cake. It is without doubt the best tasting cake we have ever had and we wouldn’t hesitate to use them again for parties in the future.

Tell us about any special personal touches, or creative projects you made yourselves

We did lots ourselves, we had a few trips to a big warehouse that sells craft supplies. We made the chair ties and table runners out of lots of rolls of a sheer deep red fabric (i had to do lots of tying practice). We made the signs ourselves (welcome sign. order of the day, wedding this way sign) by staining sheets of wood and then getting the letters printed to stick on. We made chalk board signs so guests would know where the gin table and photo booth was along with a large chalk board with our love story timeline on (I also spent a lot of time practicing my calligraphy). We made our table plan out of copper pipe and ribbon to attach the tables and the name cards. We put lots a fairy lights in the dinning room along a long white brick wall . My sister and brother in law made the table numbers also using copper pipe and black photo frames, the copper pipe is a homage to Chris’s heating and plumbing business. And we put together a sweet and crisp table too. Everything turned out looking really good, we’re so glad we decided to do so much ourselves. Although, we did also have a few bits done by a professional, we used venue styling and flowers by floyd, shes did us a couple of really lovely displays for photos of me and Chris. And, as our surname is Love we decided to make the most out of being Mr & Mrs Love by having her set up some huge ‘LOVE’ wooden light up letters in the ceremony room, we also had ‘S&C’ on the balcony overlooking the ceremony room.

Did you personalise your vows or have any wedding readings? What were they?

We didn’t as we were both so nervous, but Chris’s speech was brilliant and had the whole room laughing, a lot of the guests said it was the best grooms speech they had heard. I dont know why he was so nervous about it!

What was your first dance song? Why did you choose it?

Our first dance was to Kiss Me by Six Pence None The Richer played and sung by our wedding band, The Jukebox Gems (who were also brilliant). We just thought it was a really lovely song.

Entertainment

We cant leave out mentioning the magician Close up Chris, who was fantastic and filled the time between the end of dinner and the band starting. he really got the guests mixing and had everyone in fits of laughter, guests kept mentioning how great he was. He really kicked the night off to a brilliant start.
The Jukebox Gems our wedding band who everyone loved, it really makes the evening special having a proper band and they do amazing songs, with so much energy. They got everyone dancing.