Hannah in Jesus Peiro for her Intimate Brunton House Wedding in Northumberland

Family was at the heart of everything for Hannah and Josh, who married in early September at Brunton House in Alnwick, Northumberland. Their celebration was intentionally simple – full of colour, full of meaning and stripped right back to include only what felt true to them.

Hannah wore a bespoke Jesus Peiro gown, a beautiful fusion of structure and softness, sourced from Morgan Davies Bridal – who we recommend most highly. Her look was classic yet modern, with meaningful personal touches (spot her sweet wrist corsage), and perfectly in keeping with the relaxed but refined atmosphere of the day.

With just 13 guests, no wedding party, and vows exchanged in the intimacy of Bruton house itself, this lovely Northumberland wedding is a really beautiful reminder that small doesn’t mean any less impactful or meaningful on your wedding day.

Love and thanks to photographer Amy Woodham for sharing these gorgeous, joy-filled images.

We wanted a small and intimate wedding day in Northumberland where I am from. Josh’s family had never been to Northumberland so it was a great excuse to make the wedding into a week’s holiday. We hired Brunton House for the week for 15 of us and we got married in the house on Monday 4th September. It was so nice to have our families together for the build up of the wedding and afterwards to enjoy it all before we all travelled our separate ways. 

We were very set on having a day that was right for us. We did things a little differently to the traditional format. We only had 13 guests, I didn’t have bridesmaids, Josh didn’t have groomsmen. My brother was our ‘paige boy’ (ring holder). 

We chose the aspects of a wedding that we wanted and got rid of everything else. For speeches we had both Dads, Josh, and me. I wrote my own speech, I really wanted to take the opportunity to thank everyone in that room for the role they had played in my life. 

We wanted a colourful relaxed wedding and we definitely created that. Our colours were pink, yellow and orange with accents of gold. I sourced or made as many decorations as I could. I bought Kantha fabric and made the table runners and napkins. We had a lot of candle sticks and tealights. I really wanted any of our guests to arrive and know this is definitely the wedding of Hannah & Josh.

As we got married in Northumberland I really wanted to get couples portraits on the beach. We had planned to do this at 10.30am, after our first look at the house, so that we weren’t leaving all our guests alone for an hour after the ceremony and we could just relax. The whole of Summer 2023 was a wash out and the beach portraits were looking less and less likely as the days counted down.

My Dad walked me down the stairs and gave me away. At the top of the stairs while we were waiting he had the idea to shake Josh’s hand but then to trick him and pull his hand away. I thought it was a brilliant idea … he did it and it was excellent, everyone laughed and Amy captured it.  My entrance song was an instrumental version of ‘Higher Love’, by An International Affair.

A Registrar from Northumberland Registrar’s office officiated our ceremony.

We wrote our own vows and ring exchanges. We used inspiration from examples given in wedding pack and then what came to mind. If you’re writing your own vows, start early and spend a good amount of time on refining and familiarising yourself with them. They were really special.

Josh handmade the vow booklets out of card and Kantha fabric, so they matched the other decorations and added a further pop of colour and continuity to the ceremony.

We each asked one of our aunties to each do a reading. My Aunt did a reading by Saint Francis of Assisi which spoke about not letting the hard times out shine the good ones. I really loved the below part as it felt like a blessing from her and my family to us. And give to each other this day, and forever more, your loyalty, your companionship, and your hearts, as we in your company give to you the same and are now blessed to witness this. 

Joshua’s aunt read the Apache Blessing, she chose this herself. Apparently it’s a popular wedding ready but we had never heard of it prior. Again another blessing from her to us. 

J N Jewellery made both our wedding bands. My engagement ring was an antique bought at auction. 

Our photographer was the incredible Amy Woodham Photography.

We chose Amy because there was so much life and joy in her photography. Another big thing for us was lighting and editing, we loved the way Amy lit up her photographs as we weren’t keen on the darker moody photograph trend. We definitely wanted more candid and relaxed photos than editorial images and that’s what Amy gave us.

The fun of the day and the love between myself, Josh and all our guests comes through really well in the photography. I so easily relive the day when I’m flicking through. 

Amy was open with all my ideas. I wanted the family photos to be like portraits, so I sent Amy photographs of the royal family as inspiration and suggested using chairs in the photos. They turned out better than I’d hoped!

Amy is our #1 recommendation from our wedding. We practically write it in our friends’ engagement cards! We loved working with her.

She’s such a lovely lady, always smiling and making you feel comfortable.

We both love our food – Josh is a fantastic home cook. So it was important that the food we gave our guests was something as good as they’d get in our home. Dan at 1901 Catering did not disappoint, his flavours and presentation were incredible. He went above and beyond for us. His menus are varied, so we were able to pick things that suited us and our day.   We couldn’t recommend him enough. 

Our cake was a Marks & Spencer naked cake, which my Mam and Josh’s Auntie decorated the night before the wedding (during a heat wave). They saved the day! We used a silicone mould to make the chocolate letters for JUST MARRIED. We added M&S macarons to the top as a nod to our engagement. 

Flowers were a big part of our day because my parents are very skilled and passionate gardeners. We worked with Ginger House Garden to choose colours and I highlighted specific flowers we loved or that we already had in our garden that would be a nice nod to have on the wedding day.  

I saw an image on Pinterest of a couple getting married in front of a fireplace with a lot of flowers and wanted to do something similar with the stairs. Ginger House Garden did an incredible job! They used vases to create individual arrangements but made it look like the flowers were naturally cascading down the steps. 

We kept the stairs arrangement a surprise for everyone until they started setting up, I’m really pleased we did that. We spent the rest of the week looking at the dahlias in awe. We had dahlias in bud vases down the dinner table which were gorgeous! There was a gorgeous dahlia called Cafe Au Lait that was a similar creamy champagne colour to my dress.

Because we didn’t have a lot of guests, we had budget for all the gentlemen to have button holes and all the ladies to have wrist corsages. This worked really nicely as it made everyone feel appreciated and included, especially as we didn’t have matching suits or ties for any of the men. 

I designed our stationery. I painted a coat of arms type logo, with both of our family dogs and an Orca (our favourite animal) scanned it and designed everything from there on Canva. There are also some great templates on Etsy.  I created a Wedding newspaper on Canva, attached it to a tote bag and hung it on everyone’s bedroom doors as more of a welcome bag. It contained a candle that I’d made, with stickers I’d designed on Canva and printed at Moo.com with our engagement photo on and a little thank you message. The bag also had some Northumberland favourites in there like black bullet sweets.

Thge wedding week turned out to be a heatwave, it was a scorcher! So we got to go to the beach and WOW the photos from that are my absolute favourite. It was also lovely to just spend that one on one time with Josh dressed in our wedding clothes and enjoying each others company, it really calmed our nerves.

There were people on the beach who wished us well and cheered for us too, I love the idea that they might remember ‘the time they saw a bride and groom on a beach in Northumberland on a Monday morning’. 

On the wedding day and even the few days before, don’t let something that hasn’t gone to plan ruin all the other things that have gone to plan. Everything will be what it is, don’t spend too much time worrying instead of enjoying it all. 

You’ve spent so long working towards this day, really stop and take time to take it all in because it does go over too fast. 

Also don’t leave your spouse’s side! Do everything together or you will get split up and not see each other for another hour. Greet all your guests together, dance together, even go to the toilet together with a rendezvous point in the corridor! 

Budget wise – we spent around £10k, excluding outfits. This did include the venue rental for the week and marriage fees. 

And finally, I wished we had a videographer to capture more. Everything else was perfect. 

We recommend an incredible collection of videographers to capture your wedding day. Here are some of them. You’ll find more here.