Isabelle and Ryan's Urban Chic Intimate Sheffield Wedding by Paul Joseph Photography

Yay for Friday!! I hope you have all had a good week so far and are looking forward to the weekend! If you are in the UK, I hope you aren’t melting too much, boy it’s hot! Nika and Dexter (my husband and son) are off on a camping trip this weekend with the local cubs group, which means I have the house to my self for the whole weekend. I have a party on Saturday night and meeting up with a friend on Sunday, plus an endless list of jobs to get through! First though, I have this rather gorgeous super fun urban chic Sheffield wedding to share with you. Isabelle and Ryan wanted an intimate wedding where they could do things their way and not follow a wedding rule book. They chose 99 Mary Street, a venue that let them choose their own caterers and basically run the wedding they wanted to. The results are this super chilled, full of fun celebration of love. Big thanks to the magnificent Paul Joseph Photography.(Paul and Kelly) for these fab photos.

Our wedding day was intimate, filled with laughter and exploding with love. Our love for each other, our daughter and our close family and friends really felt echoed throughout.

Isabelle and Ryan's Urban Chic Intimate Sheffield Wedding by Paul Joseph Photography

Isabelle and Ryan were married on 24^th September 2022 at 99 Mary Street in Sheffield. ‘We always wanted a smaller wedding, so many venues require a minimum of 80 or so guests and we really didn’t want a huge wedding! We loved how quirky and intimate the venue was, and that it was a family run venue. It was the perfect space for us and we loved how we could sort catering out ourselves as we really didn’t want the typical ‘3 course wedding breakfast’. We had 40 people to the day in total and probably 90 at night. It took pretty much around a year to plan, The wedding venue was the first thing we booked and we did that in early September 2021.’

How they met
We met at a mutual school friends 18^th birthday party! We’ve been together for 12 years this November.

The proposal
Ryan suggested we go to Filey for the day, we went and took our dog Peanut. After walking along the beach on the blustery October day, we were alone, and it was lovely and private. Ryan got down on one knee and proposed with the most beautiful ring! I actually had a bag of dog poo in my hand after I had to clean up after Peanut about 5 minutes prior, I threw the poo bag in surprise hahaha (we looked for it afterward, but it had disappeared somewhere in the cliffside!). He told me we were staying for the night and he’d had somewhere booked for dinner and that he and my mum had packed all my stuff and it was all in the boot of the car! I had no idea about the whole thing and was totally gobsmacked.

Where did you splurge and where did you save?
We splurged more on our photographers, shoes, entertainment, flowers and rings. And saved on things like food?! We had masses of pizzas and salads for the wedding breakfast, which is exactly what we wanted, and our favourite fish and chip van for our guests in the evening. Being able to sort out exactly what food we wanted for both the day and night really let us both choose what we really wanted! Instead of having to choose from specific set out menus.

How did you choose your photographer?
A recommendation on the back of another photographer and a thorough Instagram stalk!

The dress
My dress was by Lilian West, shoes were Christian Louboutin.

The suit and bridesmaids
Ryans suit was Hugo Boss and his shoes also Christian Louboutin. The 2 bridesmaids wore dresses from Pretty Lavish, they’re actually the same dress but I had my nieces completely altered to match the vision in my head. And our daughters flower girl dress was from Next.

Theme or colour scheme
Black and white, with hints of champagne.

Flowers
We went for a mix of large white roses, white dahlias, white hydrangeas, waxflower, Limonium and eucalyptus. I really wanted white Larkspur in the bouquet but had just gone out of season after a hot summer. We had 2x large gypsophila wreaths hung behind where we got married, a large gypsophila display along the top table and bunches on the other tables. My maid of honour had a smaller bouquet the same as mine, my niece a gypsophila posey and our daughter a gypsophila head garland. Ryan, my dad, Ryan’s dad and the groomsmen all had buttonholes matching the bouquet.

Decoration
We had the wreaths on the back doors, giant vases going down the aisle with floating tea lights in, bunches of gypsophila in cute vases, black varied height candlesticks with candles in. The venue already has fairy lights on a structure above which fitted our vibe.

Food
We ate pizza! Pizza pizza pizza for the wedding breakfast with salad, potato salad and coleslaw and we actually had our wedding cake for dessert!

Wedding cake
Rebecca Croft made our cakes! She is amazing and makes cakes regularly for our family, we had 3 individual cakes. We had chocolate and caramel, lemon and elderflower, and the third was rhubarb and custard with champagne buttercream. 10/10 best cakes ever.

Entertainment
We had DJ mannie DJ for us, and we had Andy Taylor Magician entertaining, both were incredible.

Who supplied the stationery?
We sourced this ourselves, the signs and name plates were from Rosesignage. Acrylic drink signs were etsy, along with the tissue packs/name markers/orders of the day for the ceremony. Our invites were Papier.

Where did you go on your honeymoon?
We went to an amazing 5* boutique hotel in Crete, we had our own private villa room with our own pool which was unreal.

Personal touches
We did quite a lot ourselves in terms of preparing the venue, we decorated the aisle, laid out how we’d like each table to look, knotted napkins. Lots of bits and bobs.

Special moments
Our actual ceremony was beautiful, emotional and felt like it was just us, we loved it. The late afternoon sun also came out for some of our photos. Our beautiful daughter walking down the aisle was also wonderful.

Advice for other couples
Do what you two want! Don’t listen to people saying you ‘should do this’ or ‘should do that’ or ‘invite distant uncle John you’ve only met once and has nothing to do with your lives’. They’ve had their wedding and this is yours! Invite the day ones and do what’s authentic to you, you wont go wrong.

Biggest surprise
Reading our personal letters we wrote to each other in private. We knew we were going to do this but reading them, wow.