OUR WEDDING DAY 10 YEARS LATER: LOOKING BACK AT OUR 2016 WEDDING

Our Wedding Day 10 Years Later

It feels strange to think that it has now been ten years since Lawrence and I got married. On 25 June 2016, after almost two years of planning, we had our wedding ceremony at Ordsall Hall in Salford before celebrating with our family and friends at Chancellors Hotel in Fallowfield.

For our wedding day 10 years later, I've been going back through my old wedding planner, photographs and videos, as well as some of the things I still have packed away in boxes. There are details I'd completely forgotten, things I would definitely do differently now and others that I still absolutely love.

I put so much into planning our wedding. I made a huge amount of it myself, spent hours looking for things I could alter or repaint and probably drove Lawrence slightly mad with the amount of wedding stuff gradually taking over our house.

So I thought it would be fun to start a series looking back at our wedding, beginning with the wedding day itself.

💕 A Wedding That Felt Like Us

Our main wedding colours were blush pink and mint green, with touches of gold, and we had a vintage love-birds and birdcage theme.

There was actually a very simple reason we chose pink and green. Pink is my favourite colour and green is Lawrence's, so it felt right to have both of our favourite colours as part of the wedding.

Mint green probably isn't Lawrence's favourite shade of green, but it worked much better with the soft, vintage style I had in mind, so mint green it was!

The love-birds and birdcage theme then came from somewhere completely unexpected — a piece of wallpaper.

I found some wallpaper in a shop that had birds on it and loved the design, so I took a sample home and scanned it into my computer.

I still have an early version of the design saved. I can't remember whether I'd already made a few changes to the original wallpaper by this point, but it was before I changed the colours and started adding all of the extra elements that eventually became part of our wedding design.

From there, I started changing the original colours to fit our blush-pink and mint-green wedding colour scheme.

I then took it much further, cutting out and rearranging elements I liked and adding other images, including birdcages and pairs of love birds. I used these to create different designs that I could adapt for the things I was making for the wedding.

That one piece of wallpaper ended up inspiring so much of the wedding.

I used my adapted designs across everything from our invitations and programmes to our menus, bridesmaids' gifts and lots of other little details. It meant that although I was making things at different times, everything still tied together.

I even made all of our save-the-dates and wedding invitations myself.

Looking back, I'm definitely not going to pretend that everything I made was wonderful. I still have some of the save-the-dates in a box and they are terrible! I rushed them and, looking at them now, they're really difficult to read.

The invitations were much better, but if I were planning my wedding again, they are probably the one thing I wouldn't make myself. They took so long. It felt as though I was never going to finish them.

There were plenty of other DIY projects that I would happily do again, though. I made or altered so much of the décor, stationery and bridesmaids' gifts that there is far too much to talk about here. I'm going to dedicate a separate post to everything I DIYed for the wedding.

💅 The Final Wedding Preparations

Even in the last few days before the wedding, there were still things to do.

The day before the wedding, my mum, my sister Rachel and I went to have our nails done.

We all had gel French manicures and I also had a pedicure.

My hair had been slightly more eventful.

I wanted black hair for the wedding and had decided to have tape-in hair extensions.

Thankfully, I'd tried the extensions beforehand because the first time I had my hair dyed, it came out dark brown rather than black and didn't match the black extensions.

That gave me enough time to get the colour corrected before the wedding.

Even then, the extensions gave me one last bit of drama. They were fitted two days before the wedding and started falling out the following day. Thankfully, the salon managed to get me back in quickly to refit them and, once they were put back in, they stayed in for the wedding.

There is quite a bit more to that story, but I'll save the full hair-extension saga for my post about my wedding dress and bridal preparations.

👰 Getting Ready for the Wedding

I spent the night before the wedding at my parents' house, which was also where I got ready the following morning. Lawrence stayed at the house we were living in at the time and got ready there.

On the morning of the wedding, I got ready at my parents' house with my bridal party before travelling to Ordsall Hall.

My sister Rachel was my maid of honour, and my bridesmaids were Natasha, Joanne, Emma, Jennifer and Louisa. We also had Lawrence's niece Arianwen as our flower girl.

Even the getting-ready part of the wedding had turned into another DIY project. I'd personalised robes, T-shirts, slippers, bags and hangers and had made jewellery and other little gifts for my bridesmaids.

The bridesmaid dresses were mint green and came from BHS.

I didn't have a huge budget for bridesmaid dresses and I didn't want the girls to have to pay for their own, so I was really pleased when I found the perfect dresses reduced to around £20.

Unfortunately, they didn't have the right size in the short dress for two of my bridesmaids. They did have the long version, although those cost over £60 each, so we ended up with four short dresses and two long ones.

At the time I was just happy that everyone had the dress and nobody had been expected to pay for it themselves.

Looking back at the photographs now, though, I think the different lengths look a little odd in some of the group shots. I think it would have worked much better if the two girls in long dresses had been positioned together at one end, or if we'd had one at either end of the group.

It's only a little thing, but it's one of those details I notice looking back ten years later that I probably wouldn't have thought about at the time.

🏰 Our Ceremony at Ordsall Hall

Our ceremony took place at 1pm at Ordsall Hall in Salford.

We had Vittorio String Quartet providing the music, which was another way we brought something we loved into our wedding day.

Lawrence and I are both massive theatre fans, so although the visual theme of the wedding was vintage love-birds and birdcages, our love of musical theatre was woven throughout the day as well.

I walked in to Wagner's Wedding March, and during the ceremony Lawrence and I exchanged personal vows that we'd written ourselves.

I remember our vows being quite an emotional moment. As we read them to each other, quite a few of our guests were crying, and even the registrars conducting our ceremony were wiping away tears.

We also had two readings, but neither of us knew what they were going to be.

My sister Rachel had written her own reading especially for us, which she read during the ceremony. It was another really emotional moment, and there were quite a few tears again as she read it.

My friend Natasha, who I've known since high school, and my university friend Nandan put the other reading together themselves and read it together.

We'd left the readings completely up to them, so Lawrence and I heard both for the first time on our wedding day.

After exchanging our rings, we signed the register while the string quartet played, before leaving as a married couple to Mendelssohn's Wedding March.

🕊️ After the Ceremony at Ordsall Hall

After the ceremony we went out into the gardens at Ordsall Hall for photographs, confetti and our dove release.

The dove release didn't quite go according to plan at first.

Lawrence struggled a little with how to hold his dove and it flew away before we were supposed to release them!

The dove handler then had to take another dove out of the basket and make sure Lawrence was holding it properly so that we could release our two doves together.

Second attempt successful!

After Lawrence and I released ours, my bridesmaids released the remaining doves from the basket.

It's one of those little moments that probably wasn't in my carefully organised wedding plan, but it's quite funny to remember ten years later.

We then had drinks and cupcakes in the Old Kitchen before travelling to our reception.

The cupcakes were actually made by my bridesmaid Emma as a wedding gift to us, which was such a lovely and personal contribution to the day.

We also had the homemade lemonade station I'd put together, continuing the pink and mint colours through another little DIY detail.

Not absolutely everything went according to my carefully planned colour scheme, though.

One thing I remember being disappointed by on the day was the flowers supplied as part of our Ordsall Hall package.

I'd given them our blush-pink and mint-green colour scheme, but when I arrived, the arrangements were much brighter and deeper pink than I'd expected. One was positioned very prominently at the front of the ceremony.

At the time I was disappointed because I'd spent so long making sure everything coordinated, but I made the decision that I wasn't going to let something like that spoil my wedding day.

Looking at the photographs ten years later, I actually think the flowers were very pretty.

They just weren't the right colour for our wedding!

I'd originally intended to take one of the arrangements with us to use at the reception, but because it didn't fit with everything else, I decided to leave it behind.

🌸 Arriving at Chancellors Hotel

After the ceremony, it was time to leave Ordsall Hall and travel over to Chancellors Hotel in Fallowfield for our reception.

There was a bottle of champagne waiting for us in the wedding car, and we travelled to Chancellors with the back hood down. I remember people waving to us as we drove past, which was such a lovely little part of the journey that I'd almost forgotten about.

Once we arrived at Chancellors, we had Buck's Fizz in the conservatory, Vittorio String Quartet continued playing and I'd made lawn games for everyone to play outside.

The quartet's repertoire included musical-theatre songs from shows including Wicked, Les Misérables and The Phantom of the Opera, alongside pop, film and other music.

It was another way we managed to bring our love of theatre into the wedding without making the entire visual theme about musicals.

By this point I also made a very practical change.

I changed out of my wedding shoes and into a pair of white Skechers that I'd bought specifically for the wedding.

After all the effort I'd put into decorating my actual wedding shoes, comfort eventually won!

🌷 Seeing Everything Come Together

Arriving at Chancellors also meant seeing so many of the things I'd spent months making finally being used together.

The reception décor was probably the biggest DIY part of the entire wedding. I'd bought lots of inexpensive and sale items and transformed them with paint, ribbon, flowers, pearls and other decorations.

There were painted birdcages, candelabras, crates, chalkboard signs, chair decorations, lawn games and lots of other little details.

I'd set up the evening reception room myself the night before, including the sweet table and the cupcake and macaron display. For the areas that couldn't be set up until the wedding day, I'd prepared everything with instructions showing how I wanted it displayed.

I can still remember seeing everything finished.

After almost two years of picturing it in my head, it finally looked how I'd imagined it.

I was really proud of what I'd managed to create.

🎭 A Musical Theatre Wedding Breakfast

Our love of musical theatre became an even bigger part of the wedding once we sat down for our wedding breakfast.

Rather than traditional table numbers, we named each of our tables after different musicals, including Wicked, Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera, Rent, The Lion King, Legally Blonde and Rock of Ages.

But I'd also planned something much bigger.

Something Lawrence wasn't supposed to know anything about.

I'd secretly booked the West End Singing Waiters to perform during our wedding breakfast.

I'd seen them performing musical-theatre songs at other weddings, including songs from Les Misérables, and because Lawrence and I are such big theatre fans, I immediately thought they would be perfect for us.

There was just one slight problem.

They were over my wedding budget.

Instead of giving up on the idea, I worked lots of overtime so that I could afford the extra cost.

I was determined I was having them.

And ten years later, I'm very glad I did.

😂 The Surprise That Didn't Stay Secret

I'd managed to keep the Singing Waiters a secret from Lawrence for such a long time.

I'd specifically told our wedding coordinator at the hotel that they were a surprise and that she mustn't mention them to Lawrence.

Then, just days before the wedding, we had our final meeting.

During the meeting, the coordinator mentioned in front of Lawrence that she'd had a phone call about the Singing Waiters.

I just stared at her in disbelief.

After keeping it secret for all that time, she'd just told him!

She suddenly realised what she'd done and apologised. She'd forgotten that I'd told her it was supposed to be a surprise.

So my big surprise wasn't actually a surprise by the time our wedding day arrived.

Thankfully, once they started performing, it really didn't matter.

🎶 Seasons of Love

The West End Singing Waiters were fantastic.

They performed a selection of musical-theatre songs during our wedding breakfast, including songs from shows such as Les Misérables, Wicked and Rent.

My sister Rachel had also been in on my original plan.

When I told her I'd booked the Singing Waiters as a surprise for Lawrence, she asked whether she could sing one song with them because she thought it would add something extra to the surprise.

So during the wedding breakfast, Rachel joined the West End Singing Waiters to sing “Seasons of Love” from Rent.

It made an already very personal part of our wedding even more special.

The Singing Waiters were professional, friendly and went above and beyond to help us.

They also performed for around an hour later in the evening, this time with songs everyone could get up and dance to, before our DJ took over.

They may have pushed me over budget, and the surprise may have been accidentally ruined just days before the wedding, but ten years later I can confidently say:

The West End Singing Waiters were the best thing I booked for our wedding.

💃 Our First Dance

Our first dance was another part of the wedding where we decided to do something personal.

Our song was “Beautiful With You” by Halestorm, but rather than simply having the DJ play it, we had it performed live.

My sister Rachel sang while my university friend Nandan played guitar, with Lawrence and me dancing to their performance.

Going through our wedding photographs ten years later, I've found pictures of the printed song sheet, Nandan playing guitar, Rachel singing and Lawrence and me dancing.

It's lovely being able to put all of those photographs back into the context of what was happening at that moment.

After our first dance we cut our wedding cake, the evening buffet was served and the celebrations carried on into the night.

✨ A Wedding Full of Things I'd Made

One of the biggest things that strikes me when I look through our wedding photographs now is just how much of it I made myself.

My favourite things were probably the table centrepieces. Each table had either one of the birdcage centrepieces I'd decorated or one of the painted candelabras, surrounded by lots of the smaller details I'd collected, made or altered to fit our wedding colours and theme.

Looking back at the photographs now, I still really love how the tables came together.

Another area I was really pleased with was the cupcake and macaron display. The cupcakes and macarons were made by Pretty Tasty Cake, but I created and styled the display using painted cake stands and crates, glass domes, candelabras, flowers, vintage china and other decorations I'd collected and altered.

Then there was the sweet table. I bought the sweets, decorated the jars, made the labels and signs and put the whole display together myself.

And those were only some of the things I'd made. There were handmade signs, lawn games, stationery, menus, programmes, bridesmaids' gifts, chair decorations, guest-book details and so many other projects.

Some worked better than others.

Some took far longer than I ever imagined.

Some I'd happily make again.

And there are definitely a few where ten-years-older me looks at them and wonders what I was thinking!

But that's part of what makes looking back at everything so interesting.

💗 What Would I Change 10 Years Later?

Looking back at our wedding day 10 years later doesn't mean I think everything was perfect.

There are definitely things I'd do differently.

I wouldn't make my own wedding invitations again. They took far too long, and I think that was one DIY project too many.

I'd put more thought into how the different-length bridesmaid dresses would look together in the photographs.

I'd also probably be a little more confident about speaking up when something wasn't what I'd asked for, whether that was flowers in the wrong shade or being unexpectedly charged for something in the run-up to the wedding.

But I don't look back and wish we'd had a completely different wedding.

Quite the opposite.

The little mishaps are part of the story now.

Lawrence accidentally releasing his first dove too soon makes me smile far more than a completely flawless dove release probably would.

And the Singing Waiters surprise being accidentally revealed didn't stop them becoming my favourite booking of the entire wedding.

💕 Looking Back at Our Wedding Day

What stands out most ten years later is how personal everything was.

So many of our friends and family became part of the wedding in their own way.

Emma made our post-ceremony cupcakes as her wedding gift to us. Rachel chose one of our ceremony readings, joined the Singing Waiters for Seasons of Love and then sang our first dance. Natasha and Nandan chose a reading to perform together, and Nandan later played guitar for our first dance.

Then there were all the things I'd spent almost two years making and planning finally being used by the people we'd made them for.

The wedding really did feel like ours.

Even the colour scheme represented the two of us. Pink was my favourite colour and green was Lawrence's. The mint shade fitted the vintage style I wanted, and then a random wallpaper sample I'd spotted in a shop became the starting point for the birds and birdcages that ran throughout the design.

My love of making things filled the venues with handmade details, while the things Lawrence and I loved together — particularly theatre and music — became part of the actual experience of the day.

It wasn't perfect, and ten years later I don't want to rewrite history and pretend that it was.

There were things I'd do differently.

There were things I'd never attempt to make myself again.

There were things that didn't go to plan.

But there were also things I'd choose again without hesitation.

It was our wedding, full of the people and things we loved.

And ten years later, I'm still incredibly proud of what we created.

💍 More From Our Wedding 10 Years Later

I've found so much while going back through our old wedding planner, photographs, videos and boxes that there is no chance I could fit everything into one post.

So this is just the beginning.

I'm going to share more about everything I DIYed for our wedding, our venues, my wedding dress and bridal preparations, the décor and stationery, our suppliers, what everything actually cost, what I think was worth spending money on and what I would do completely differently if I were planning the wedding today.

I'll also be looking back at our honeymoon, which began just two days after the wedding and took us to Florida and New York.

And I still have boxes containing some of the original things I made, including those rather questionable save-the-dates!

After ten years, I think it's going to be really interesting to see which of our wedding decisions have stood the test of time — and which ones definitely haven't