Wedding!

On the 25th May 2014, after many years of procrastination and denials that we would ever get married, Lisa and I finally tied the knot. It was a superb day, plenty of fun was had by all, and I thought it was worth writing a little bit about some of the companies, suppliers and individuals who helped make it so good. If you’re planning a wedding in Shrewsbury or Shropshire, you can do far worse than to ask these guys for their help:

Venues:

The ceremony venue was in what is almost the ‘default’ venue for civil ceremonies in Shrewsbury: Shrewsbury Castle. You can’t use the word ‘fantastic’ enough when you’re talking about the castle - it really is a great venue. We got married there, my mother got married there recently, and our friends got married there before her. It’s limited in terms of the numbers you can have in the ceremony itself, but that really didn’t bother us, and so the castle was the obvious choice. Ian (the castle custodian) was really helpful, from our first contact onwards. He was always available to answer questions, and on the wedding day he worked really hard to help everything go smoothly. Such a lovely, friendly chap, we knew we could relax about the ceremony as he had everything under control.

The reception venue was Drapers Hall, a great restaurant just around the corner from Shrewsbury Castle. When we visited home in 2013 to look for venues, I thought this was kind of a strange option - it wasn’t anything like the more traditional hotels, country houses and renovated barns that we were looking at. In the end, I think it was that fact that made it perfect. We spoke to Nigel, who runs the restaurant, about our wedding, and from the moment he started talking about food, describing the kind of thing he could make for the wedding breakfast, and then for the evening reception, we were sold. Because he wasn’t a hotel trying to sell us a ‘package’ deal, we were able to tailor everything to our own tastes and needs. The venue itself is amazing; a great old Shrewsbury building, full of history, and decorated with a mix of old and new that works so well.

The food was glorious - all our guests got a choice of starters and main courses, and they all tasted and looked amazing. The staff were great, very helpful, always on hand without being overbearing, and nothing was ever too much trouble, all evening. We had a dedicated contact all day, who introduced himself to Lisa as she was wandering the halls the evening before the wedding (unaccustomed to having nothing to do) by saying “Hi, I’m Tim. I’ll be your guy for the wedding day”. He totally was our guy; whenever we needed something, he was there to help. He kept us up to date with plans and timing, and managed the whole event to help it go off smoothly.  The rest of the staff were also consistently brilliant, doing everything from re-making a playlist on spotify at short notice, to dealing with some idiot (me) knocking over the celebration cake in the middle of the evening party. The rooms in the hotel are glorious, and there are only six of them, so you can restrict who you invite to stay over! I was so pleased with the whole event, it was really good fun.

Flowers:

Dress:

Again, not really my domain, but after visiting every wedding dress shop in the world in Cardiff and Shrewsbury, and conducting 3 months research into what did and didn’t suit, Lisa went with Hayley J. Obviously I can’t really comment on the process, having not been involved, and I haven’t even met Hayley herself, but Lisa assures me that the whole thing was done extremely well. The story she tells is that she had sort of decided what she wanted, but couldn’t find anything that ticked all of the boxes, or anything that fit properly. She was only visiting Hayley on the off chance, expecting that a custom made dress would be far too expensive. Within about thirty seconds of meeting her, Hayley had described exactly what Lisa wanted without even asking what she was looking for in a dress, and had quoted a more reasonable price than any of the ‘off the peg’ dresses Lisa had been considering. A couple of fitting sessions later, and Lisa had the most lovely wedding dress ever. I think she looked amazing in it, and I know she was delighted.

Suit:

Originally, I was going to hire suits for myself and the groomsmen. However, I wanted to wear an everyday three-piece suit for the wedding, I wasn’t really interested in going with a morning suit as might be more traditional. Then we actually looked into hiring normal style suits, and they were pretty awful. Plus, hiring suits is expensive. So, with only a couple of months to go before the wedding, I told my groomsmen and family they were on their own, and I wasn’t hiring them suits. Instead, I was going to take the suit budget and blow it all on me, getting a suit tailor made. I checked a couple of places online, but then went with Martin David. I turned up there expecting to be told there was no way that they could make a suit in time, but actually they said they could do it in seven weeks. Again, the guys there were friendly and helpful, they explained all the choices and decisions well, and I felt totally happy all the way through the process. Plus, it was nowhere near as expensive as I thought it would be. I ended up with a really classic looking three piece suit, that will last me well for years.

Bridesmaids Dresses

Again, a Lisa thing. I think that, as with her own dress, she tried every shop in the world for Bridesmaids dresses, before deciding on ordering some through Wedding World in Shrewsbury. As with all the people we met while organising our wedding, they were extremely friendly, knowledgeable and helpful. The dresses arrived on time, and they even dealt with a couple of small manufacturing problems quickly and efficiently.

Wedding Car:

I’m pretty sure that Frank Painter & Sons is probably the best choice for hiring a wedding car in Shrewsbury, but we hired them because of a pun. I mean, their cars are ace, and their prices are reasonable, but it was the pun that sold it to us. While out touring wedding venues, we bumped into a couple of their drivers who were sat outside a hotel while the ceremony happened inside. We mentioned we were getting married, and asked if they had a card we could take away so we could call them later. At some point, we mentioned that we were only looking for one car, for Lisa, and one of the drivers said “well, you could always have one each. You know, his and hearse!” It was hilarious. As long as you know that Frank Painter & Sons is also a funeral directors. Which you didn’t. But you can see why we hired them, eh?

Band:

Oh the music. We agonised for ages about the music. Then at almost the last minute, we booked the Hot Jazz Biscuits, and I am so glad we did. They’re actually run by an old school friend, although I didn’t realise it at the time. We’d heard some good things about them, and their videos online looked pretty good, so not really knowing what we wanted, we went with them. They were awesome. They turned up on time, were set up and ready to go when the party needed to start, and they played wonderful music all evening. We didn’t really have a plan on how many sets we wanted, or when they should play, so they just took care of it themselves. We didn’t even have a first dance planned (we just couldn’t decide) so we told them to play something and we’d dance to it! That’s how we ended up with Van Morrison’s Moondance as our first dance. The music was good, and we danced all night, which it turns out is exactly what I was looking for. They even did a few encores for us, even though they’d played for longer than we’d paid them for. A superb band that kept the party going all night.

Photographers:

This is a bit irrelevant in a post about a Shrewsbury wedding, as we didn’t use photographers from Shrewsbury, or even Shropshire, but they were ace so they deserve a mention too. We used the lovely Caroline and Ian from weheartwedding, based in Cardiff. Lisa met them at a wedding fair, they were nice, and they were happy to travel as long as we paid for fuel. Professional and lovely all the way through the day, I can’t recommend them enough. We got the photos through just a few days ago, and they’re all brilliant (most of the photos in this post came from them). Choosing which ones we want to print out and display is going to be a really hard task indeed…