Catherine and Jerome’s Intimate Manchester Wedding. By Nicola Thompson Photography

Happy Monday everyone and welcome to another fun packed week on the blog, how is the wedding planning going?  We have lots of gorgeous weddings for you this week to help with your inspiration and lots of fun packed and informative articles to help you with all those different areas of planning that you may be having trouble with.  We are kicking off the week with this gorgeous Manchester Wedding from Nicola Thompson Photography.  Nicola is a regular to the blog, I always love featuring her work as she always offers something a little bit different.  This wedding is an intimate wedding of 37 guests that takes place in the heart of Manchester city centre.  With minimal fuss, and a fab first look, Catherine and Jerome have put together the wedding they wanted and not been pressured into the traditions they didn’t want.

‘A relaxed and fun day surrounded by the people we love. The happiest day of our lives!’

Catherine  and Jerome were married on 18th October 2014 at Manchester Town Hall and the reception was held at The Cornerhouse Cinema, Manchester. ‘We decided to get married in the town hall because we live in the city centre, so in addition to being one of the great buildings of Manchester it’s also quite near home.  We have previously been sat in the town hall square and seen wedding parties arriving and leaving, and thought it looked like a good place to do it. The Cornerhouse is the first and only reception venue we considered, it’s our favourite place in Manchester. It was important to us to go somewhere that we had a connection to, somewhere we felt relaxed and familiar with. There was an additional sentimental connection to the Cornerhouse as this was where my parents used to come before my dad died so by celebrating there is felt as though he was there in spirit. We had 37 guests to the ceremony and reception, with a few more arriving in the evening to join us for a drink. It took 6 months to plan the wedding.’

How they met
We met in first year at Manchester University, when we lived together in student halls. We were pretty ambivalent to one another at first but we eventually grew on each other and had been together for almost 8 years when we got married.

The Proposal
There was no proposal! We had talked about getting married for a while and when I saw a white dress I liked we decided to take the plunge. I ended up sending the dress back as it turned out to be not quite right but we decided to crack on with the wedding anyway.

How did you allocate your budget
Neither us wanted a extravagant day with lots of guests so it wasn’t too difficult to keep the costs relatively minimal. We saved on decoration, flowers etc and splurged on the photographer, a decision we have never regretted for a second.

How did you choose your photographer
We saw Nicola in action as we were enjoying a Solero outside the town hall one Saturday afternoon. She was shooting a gorgeous wedding where the bride arrived in a Cadillac and she had a really relaxed and friendly manner when organising the guests for the group shots. A few weeks down the line I came across the pictures from this wedding whilst googling wedding photographers and both Jerome and I know straight away that she was the photographer for us. Nicola has an amazing eye together with a real talent for making you feel at ease which meant her photos have a beautifully natural and unstaged quality. We are both so delighted with how our photos turned out and both agree that choosing Nicola was one of our best decisions.

The Dress
My dress was by Caroline Castigliano and was an ex display dress that I found on the website Preloved. I always thought it was a bit of a cliche when people say you’ll just know when you find “the one” but as soon as I saw myself in this dress I knew it was what I would be wearing on my wedding day. My shoes were some gorgeous flamingo pink court shoes from Whistles that I had had in my Asos basket for months and getting married was the perfect excuse to buy! My veil was from Etsy and I wore my gold locket that I wear every day which contains a lock of my dad’s hair together with my Grandma’s engagement ring which was my “something borrowed’ from my mum.

The Suit and Bridesmaids
Jerome wore a three piece suit and shoes from Reiss. My sisters were my bridesmaids and I wanted them to wear white but that was as specific as it got! They ended up wearing different dresses, one from Reiss and the other from Asos.

Theme or Colour Scheme
No! We both just wanted a really simple feel to the day so didn’t really go down that route.

Flowers
The bouquets were simple bunches of white roses with a blue and white striped ribbon. We had little bunches of yellow roses tied with the same ribbon dotted along the tables the the reception.

Decoration
Again we kept the decoration quite minimal, no chair covers at this wedding! The room at the Cornerhouse was so lovely it didn’t need much dressing up but we had strings of fairy lights between the ceiling beams and lots of candles on the tables which created a lovely soft and intimate feel.

Food
The Cornerhouse put on a cracking menu, they gave us 4 choices of starters, mains and desert to choose from. Most of our guests chose the steak and then chocolate tart for pudding.

Wedding Cake
We are incredibly lucky that Jerome’s cousin runs her own bakery, Sweet As in Leamington Spa, and is an absolute genius when it comes wedding cakes. Jenny made us a beautiful 3 tier chocolate cake that was ridiculously tasty. I think every guest left with a doggy bag and it was the hit of the day.

Entertainment
We hired a jukebox for the music which worked well although my sister did have to unplug it at the wall after seeing my horrified face as “Timber” by Kesha and Pitbull started to play!

Buy or DIY your Stationery
I wrote all our invitations and place cards by hand.

Personal or Handmade Touches
One of our favourite bits of the day was having our names up on the front of the Cornerhouse along with all the films showing that weekend. It was such a thrill to have our names up in lights

Special Moments
It sounds cheesy but the whole day was one big highlight!.All the months of planning don’t prepare you for how incredible it is to spend a day surrounded by all your favourite people getting married to the person you love.

Advice to other couples
Try not to get bogged down in the tiny little details, the day itself goes so quickly you won’t notice/care about them when the time comes! Also don’t feel like you have to stick to all the wedding traditions, just do what will make you feel happy.

Biggest surprise
How great it was! Every part of the day exceeded our expectations and it was one of the happiest day of our lives.

Supplier Shout Outs

• Catering – [email protected]
• Make up – [email protected]
• Photographer – www.nicolathompsonphotography.co.uk
• Hair – www.reubenwood.co.uk
• Cake – [email protected]
• Flowers – [email protected]
• Dress – [email protected]

For more information on Nicola’s work please go to:

www.nicolathompsonphotography.co.uk
FACEBOOK
PINTEREST
@nicthomphoto