An Invitation to a Real Wedding – Louise & Patrick

“We got engaged Christmas Day 2013. We’d not long moved into our first home together and a couple of weeks before I had found out that I was pregnant with our first child together… It was absolutely lovely.

It was just us, I had opened all my presents and was presented with one more. Patrick had handmade a box with the Mariah Carey, All I Want For Christmas Is You CD built into it, inside was a silver heart engraved with ‘Louise, will you marry me?’ and inside was my engagement ring.

All I remember is asking ‘really? really? really?‘ until he told me to just answer him! It was so unexpected and I loved it.”

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“Our ceremony and reception were held at Birchwood Park Golf and Country Club in Kent on Wednesday 28th December 2016. We had a civil ceremony at 1.30pm with 50 of our closest family and friends, followed by our wedding breakfast and then our evening reception.”

“For our Wedding Breakfast we served Smoked Duck Breast with a redcurrant reduction, Traditional Roast Turkey with all the trimmings and ‘Demon Trio’ of chocolate for our dessert.

For the evening reception, we had a further 40 guests who arrived at 7.30pm. We had a DJ supplied by the venue as part of our package and we also hired a photobooth for 3 hours – that was really fun! The company provided us with a scrapbook, where they stuck a copy of each photo and got the guests to write us a message. I love looking at the book now with everyone and their silly props!

We also had a DIY sweet table, we bought lots and lots of tubs of sweets and my mum sourced lots of jars and scoops to use. We ordered personalised bags from eBay, the adults liked it more than the children!

Our first dance was Craig David’s version of ‘Lets Stay Together’, we danced alone for half of song and everyone else was invited onto the dance floor to join us. It was so nice to be surrounded by all of our favourite people…”

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“We had my 2 sisters and Patricks daughter as our beautiful bridesmaids.

Patrick asked his best friend to be our best man. For his ushers, he had his two close friends and his eldest son. We then had our 2 year old and his two youngest sons as mini ushers.

The bridesmaids wore sequin dresses from Quiz and fluffy wraps from BHS, bought before it sadly closed down.

 We hired suits for all of groomsmen from Well Suited. Our son was too small to fit a hired suit so we bought him one from Roco Clothing.”

“I wore the ‘Alexa’ dress from Amanda Wyatt with an added bridal belt, my shoes were from Dune. For my bridal accessories, I wore a Tiffany bracelet and my earrings were from George at Asda – they were an absolute bargain at JUST £2!

Patrick wore a hired suit From Well Suited and his shoes were from Next.

I wore Jo Malone Pomegranate Noir perfume and Patrick wore Armani Diamonds aftershave.”

“We wanted a winter theme, without being overly festive and came up with the colour scheme of tiffany blue, silver and grey.

We had lots of snowflakes and sparkle. Our table centrepieces were white trees with fairy lights, we had candles and mini tiffany boxes on each table and as favours we had silver crackers with chocolates inside. We also had wooden names painted tiffany blue as place names and for people to take away.

The reception room overlooked the golf course and it was a beautifully sunny day –  the view was amazing and we were so lucky.

Patrick was a brilliant help and between us (but mostly his hard work!!) we managed to DIY most things – as we struggled to find things in the Tiffany blue colour.”

“We had an 8ft tall white Christmas tree with home made decorations and some HUGE fake presents that looked like Tiffany boxes to go under it… We had these around the registry table initially and then moved them for the reception.

Instead of a typical guest book, we had a large wishing tree, we found plain white tags and threaded them with ribbons that matched our theme, we asked our guests to write a message on the tag and hang onto the tree. We are going to compile all of the tags into a big frame and hang it in our hall.

We had 4ft MR & MRS lights as a backdrop to the ceremony, they were in the bay window behind the registry table and then later that area became the dance floor and we had them there all night and they looked amazing. They were from Wed Lights.”

“Our cake was 4 tiers…. the bottom tier was actually made out of foam!

The other 3 tiers were different flavours – we had Victoria sponge, lemon drizzle and gluten free chocolate at the top. It was delicious!

I’m pleased we went with the fake tier as it made the cake look more grand! The cake was decorated to match our theme so sparkles, snowflakes and tiffany blue and silver. It was from All Shapes and Slices.”

“Flower wise, due to the time of year and the way the bank holidays fall over Christmas, we were unable to have real flowers for the bouquets and had to have artificial… I was originally dubious of fake flowers but mine were AMAZINGLY realistic.

I had a mix of silk and foam, I asked for roses and peonies with some grey berry type foliage and the florist did a fantastic job, obviously a huge bonus of having artificial flowers is that you get to keep them.

Our florist was Flowers By Marion she also provided some lights and decorated our top table for us….”

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“My favourite moment was getting to Patrick at the end of the aisle, my legs were shaking so much under my dress –  but luckily nobody could see! We had looked forward to that moment for so long and I was so happy to be marrying my best friend…

My other favourite moment was being announced as the new Mr and Mrs Hopkins (although the registrar got it wrong and announced us by my maiden name!!) and then walking out to Mariah Carey – All I want For Christmas Is You. It makes me smile thinking about it, it’s definitely our song and it was probably the last thing our guests were expecting!

And lastly, Patrick’s speech. He is usually very quiet and I’m the talker, but his speech was amazing, I was SO proud of him, he did an excellent job and yes – it made me cry…”

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“Everyone says it, but ENJOY every second – it flies by. It was the happiest day of our lives but it just went soooo quickly – enjoy every single minute, remember everyone is there because they love you and its so special.”

“Consider having a top table just for 2, we had one and it was so nice to sit and eat together and look out and think, we did this!

It was the most time we spent together all day, I’m so pleased that we did it…”

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All images courtesy of N Photography

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