An Elegant Black Tie Winter Wedding at Ellingham Hall Northumberland

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It’s Friday – hooray! I’m so pleased the weekend is just around the corner = hopefully we’ll have some sunshine so that we can enjoy our brand new garden toy! This morning’s wedding is the epitome of winter wedding elegance; Cookery Editor Lucy married Consultant Pete on 9th January this year at Ellingham Hall in Northumberland.

I adore Lucy’s slinky, glamorous Kate Beaumont gown – Kate is a member of wedding directory, Little Book for Brides (bookmark it now!) – we’re huge fans of her feminine and elegant bridal gowns. These lovely photographs were taken by 2Tone Photography.

Kate Beaumont makes couture gowns so I was very lucky in that I got to design it myself, choosing everything down to the last detail. I hadn’t found anything that felt like me in the wedding mags, but as soon as I came across Kate’s website, any doubts I had about finding my perfect dress completely vanished. Her vintage-inspired gowns are absolutely beautiful and no one could be more committed to making a bride feel incredible on her big day. Nothing is too much trouble.”

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“I used Kate’s own stunning wedding dress as a starting point and then adapted it – ivory silk instead of oyster, a v-shaped back trimmed with scallop-edged lace, a diamond panel on the front and a sweetheart neckline with thin straps. I loved everything about it, I never wanted to take it off.”

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“My maid of honour bought me a book called The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh, which is about the Victorian meanings given to various flowers and plants. I loved the idea of choosing flowers for the wedding that were in keeping with the day, which is why we ended up with so much ivy (fidelity), baby’s breath (everlasting love), lisianthus (appreciation), ranunculus (you are radiant with charms) and phlox (our souls are united).”

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Flowers by Fern Online

“We live in London now, but both grew up in the countryside so we knew from the beginning that we wanted a rural location up north for our big day. My mum was kind enough to research all the possible venues in Yorkshire (where I grew up) and Northumberland (where Pete grew up) and had loads of brochures sent to us. We were looking for an exclusive venue where we could make a weekend of it with accommodation for our whole bridal party of 27, enough space for a ceilidh and a room for the ceremony as well as the party.

Ellingham Hall ticked all the right boxes. It didn’t hurt that it was so beautiful either – I fell in love with the converted chapel as soon as I saw it. The staff at Ellingham Hall were so friendly and helpful, they made the process very easy for us.”

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“To keep costs down, I ordered some flowers (lisianthus, baby’s breath and ranunculus) from a local florist and we gathered lots of foliage from my parents’ garden, then some of the bridesmaids did a fabulous job of making up the bouquets the night before the wedding.”

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“Our florists, Julie and Jane of Fern Online, offer a free consultation and went to great lengths to understand our wild, rustic vision which was white flowers with lots of dark green foliage and plenty of twigs and pine cones. They were so enthusiastic they even made up a rough bouquet on the day to give me an idea of the kind of thing they could create and later sourced the weathered-looking urns for the table centrepieces. The finished flowers were absolutely stunning.”

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“Since I would only be wearing them once I was reluctant to spend a lot. I didn’t really want bridal shoes as that’s not my usual style. I just wanted something quite plain and fairly low-heeled, but that turned out to be difficult to find so in the end, I did go for bridal shoes. I saw Rachel Simpson’s ‘Flo’ and even though they were being discontinued, managed to track my size down on Ebay for almost 30% less than the RRP (pic included).”

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“I bought a gold 1920’s style wedding forehead band with diamantés and pearls from Agnes Hart.”

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“Accessory wise, I wore my gold ‘Lucy’ necklace, which I wear all the time – it was a gift from Pete early on in our relationship. I also wore my late Nana’s pearl studs, a pearl bracelet that was a gift from my parents and a gold-plated bracelet from River Island that has ‘Love’ engraved on it. Pete also gave me a lucky silver sixpence the week of the wedding, which I wore in my shoe but which rolled out halfway through the drinks reception. Luckily Ellingham Hall tracked it down a few weeks later and Wendy, our wonderful wedding co-ordinator, remembered I’d lost it and was kind enough to post it back to me.”

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“One of my bridesmaids (also called Lucy) is a trained make-up artist so she did my make-up for me. It was ideal because we had chance to do a couple of trials and she knew exactly what would suit me.

Lisa Cameron did a fantastic job of everyone’s hair. Since there was the five bridesmaids and me each having completely different styles (and my trial a few months earlier had made me re-think what suited me completely), it could have been stressful, but we each just showed Lisa a picture and away she went. She’s wonderfully calm and creative, exactly what you want on your wedding day. So many people commented on how beautiful everyone’s hair was and our dos survived some pretty energetic ceilidh dancing in addition to looking absolutely stunning.

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“Kate arranged my veil for me too, through HM Veils. She has various veils you can try on with her dresses and goes through all the possible lengths, colours, trims etc. so I just chose the one I want (floor-length with Chloe lace trim) and she ordered it for me so I could pick it up with my dress.”

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“We met on our first day at Newcastle university. We lived in the same block of flats, Pete on the ground floor and me on the top floor. We hit it off straight away and, unbeknownst to us, all our flatmates started placing secret bets on how long it would take us to get together. We became an item after three months (we still don’t know who won the bet!) then Pete proposed during a break in the Lake District almost nine years later, in September 2014. It was early evening on the shore of Lake Rydal, surrounded by hills and trees – it was perfect.”

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“Pete wore a Ted Baker tuxedo and waistcoat bought at Savoy Taylors GuildI also bought Pete a Rotary pocket watch and had it engraved with the number of days we’d been together up to and including our wedding day. I sent it to him via the bridesmaids in the morning and that’s the only accessory he wore on the day.”

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“I’m not particularly bothered about things matching and Pete was very easy-going about that side of things. Ellingham Hall is so beautiful it sort of speaks for itself anyway. Some of my bridesmaids made me a wedding scrapbook to help me plan the day though and another friend gave me a stack of wedding mags. Both were invaluable. I just went through the mags, tore out any ideas I liked then made a section in the scrapbook for each aspect of the wedding – dress, decorations, stationery, photography I loved etc.

This meant I had plenty of inspiration when I came to plan each aspect of the day. We just started deciding on things in isolation, but in the end it evolved into a sort of winter woodland theme. We wanted it to feel like nature brought indoors.”

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“My maid of honour Roz sang Chantal Kreviazuk’s Feels Like Home at the beginning of the ceremony. We also wanted a light-hearted reading to bring an element of humour to the ceremony so my Mum, Jane, read A Lovely Love Story, by Edward Monkton. We also included the following extract from my favourite book on our order of service…”

Mama told me to make a special point to remember the best times of my life. There are so many hard things to live through, and latching on to the good things will give you strength to endure, she says. So I must remember this day. It is beautiful and this seems like the best time to live and the best place. (Nancy E. Turner, These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901)

 

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“Pete bought me a beautiful princess cut diamond engagement ring and although I tried some traditional wedding bands, I felt they were spoiling the effect so decided to buy a completely different ring to wear separately. I chose a vintage Art Deco 1920’s/1930’s gold ring from Etsy and Pete bought a plain titanium band from Amazon. I now switch between my two rings or wear one on my left hand and one on my right.”

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“I wanted all the bridesmaids to feel like themselves and to be comfortable so thought it made sense for them to choose their own dresses (plus I figured I’d have enough on sorting out my own outfit). I just asked them to buy a floor-length navy dress then left them to it. It worked beautifully because they each chose a completely different dress that suited them perfectly. They all looked absolutely stunning.”

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“We’re not a very formal couple so knew we wouldn’t want a lot of posed shots on the day. We also wanted to maximise the time we were able to spend with all our guests. I came across 2Tone Photography‘s website while searching for photographers covering Northumberland and immediately knew they were the ones we wanted. They describe their style as a documentary approach, capturing the day as it unfolds, and that’s exactly what we were looking for. Nigel and Chrissie did such a wonderful job. We couldn’t be happier with how our photos turned out and can’t stop looking at them.

Every time, it’s like re-living the day all over again.”

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“Pete’s a keen cyclist so we spray-painted an old bike silver, wrapped it in ivy and attached a basket to the front for our wedding cards. We added a “just married” sign after the ceremony.”

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“My mum created a gorgeous table plan using a large laurel branch (laurel = glory and success in the Victorian language of flowers) and this was placed in a milk churn that Pete’s Dad, Keith, engraved for us as a wedding gift.”

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“We tied a length of navy ribbon around each napkin to tie in with the bridesmaids’ dresses. We also spray-painted pine cones silver and used these to hold the Cancer Research donation place cards. We’d celebrated our ten-year anniversary a few weeks before the wedding, so picked a photo of us from every year of our relationship and used the location it was taken as the table name.”

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Ellingham Hall provided all our food and it was absolutely delicious (photo of menu included). Some guests even said it’s the best food they’ve ever eaten at a wedding.”

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“We made three hessian photoboards and filled them with photos (of both of us growing up and of us together over the years) for people to look/laugh at during the drinks reception. We also had lots of pine cones, candles and lanterns on the mantelpieces and windowsills throughout the venue. My dad and I walked down the aisle to Pachelbel’s Canon in D and we walked out to the Ski Sunday theme tune (taken from the Alan Partridge movie soundtrack).”

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“We were both keen to have a ceilidh so we hired Northeast Soiree who provide a package called “ceilidh and covers”. They were fantastic, starting with the ceilidh, then doing some cover songs and finishing things off with a DJ. The dancefloor was never empty.

Our first dance was to ‘Into the Mystic’, by Van Morrison. We got the idea from American Pie’s The Wedding – it’s Jim and Michelle’s first dance song. We both love Van Morrison’s music and this one just felt right.”

 

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Words of Wedded Wisdom

“Don’t worry if there are some ups and downs. It’s all part of the process and no matter what anyone tells you, there will be stressful days in the lead-up! But it’s completely worth it in the end and the most important thing is that you are getting married and will be surrounded by all the people you love. Everything else is just details.

As soon as we got back from Ellingham Hall, I scribbled down favourite memories from the whole weekend in a notebook. In years to come, we’ll just have to read a line or two and it will bring back all those special moments that might otherwise have been forgotten over time.

I also couldn’t have done all the planning without my trusty wedding spreadsheet. I used it to keep track of our budget, guest list, RSVPs, to do lists, playlists, question for various suppliers etc.”

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What an exceptionally beautiful wedding. Brides, you can see more beautiful Kate Beaumont brides here on Love My Dress.

Love Annabel x

Credits & Thanks

Annabel

Annabel View all Annabel's articles

Founder of Love My Dress. Passionate Podcaster and Editor. Annabel lives in rural North Yorkshire with her husband and business partner Philip, their two daughters and menagerie of furry hounds. She loves photography, meditation, walking, being outdoors and star gazing. She is fierce when it comes to championing talent within the wedding industry and when she's not working on Love My Dress, she supports her husband Philip in the running of the family's sustainable flower farm and floral design business, Moonwind Flowers. In 2013, she became a published author.

2 thoughts on “An Elegant Black Tie Winter Wedding at Ellingham Hall Northumberland

  1. Beautiful, congratulations Laura and Pete! (Lisa Cameron was my hair stylist as well, and did a fab job!)

    S xx

  2. As much as I adore a pastel filled, sunshiny day whenever I come across a glamorous, black tie winter wedding with a slinky gown I immediately swing the other way. It’s such a good job that I don’t have to plan another wedding as I’m not sure what style I’d go for anymore! I think you can really see that this dress was made for Lucy – it suits and fits her so perfectly. The flowers are gorgeous too and I loved reading about the Victorian meanings. The groom looks rather handsome in his suit and my highlight is the table plan and the engraved milk churn. Very creative. Many congratulations to our happy couple 😉 xx

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