Our Wedding

18.05.19

This is going to be a monumental post as I've piled all of my favourite images from our wedding here, and we have a lot of them. I am so lucky to work in this industry, giving me the connections to work with industry titans. Our wedding photographer Melanie Fiander of Fiander Foto flew into Scotland from Bermuda to shoot our wedding. Yup, you read that right. Her blog post is here.

We had the beyond wonderful James Little and Rosie Hardy of Little Films on videography. I've screen shotted so many stills from our video because it truly is a visual masterpiece.

I even photographed my ladies getting their hair and make up done along with my details, simply because I couldn't resist it. Lastly, my dear uncle Brian photographed all of our guests and did a stellar job.

It might be an industry faux-pas to put all the images in one blog post but I have so much love for all of these photographs and together the tell complete story of our wedding.

Catherine McCarter Make up and Carl Zabrowski Hair were fantastic and such a good giggle too. I forgot to bring along so many things on our wedding day (the list of things I forgot about is ridiculous) and this included the bluetooth speaker we brought to Portugal.... I ended up putting my phone inside a victorian wash basin and it worked a treat.

Too well maybe. The sting quartet began playing as I was putting my dress on and I was desperate to hear the romantic songs I'd chosen played on strings but just when Paca Bell's Cannon was drifting down the hall, my girls starting screaming along to Jolene by Dolly Parton at the top of their lungs and the strings were hilariously drowned out.

One of my favorite, unexpected parts of the day, was the warm and fuzzy feeling that I got while watching all of our suppliers set up for OUR wedding. It was such a surreal feeling to sit back and watch everyone work hard to create my dream day. It was the best surprise feeling that I didn’t expect.

I didn’t know what my bouquet would look like until it arrived a couple of hours before the wedding so my dramatic bouquet was a (beautiful) surprise on the day. I had told Amy Annand I wanted something wild and natural looking and although I asked if she could include succulents and peonies, we agreed she would go ahead and use whatever blooms looked best on the day. They turned out perfectly!

Abbie and Jaimie thoughtfully gifted me with an antique Irish 6 pence and rather than put it in my shoe, they had a jeweller put it on an ankle chain. I adore this sentimental twist on tradition.

(I love this photo of my husband ^)

For two years I had imagined our wedding ceremony to be outside in front of the stunning lilac wisteria, but my biggest fear came true, IT RAINED. Yep. Poured. We had to finally accept defeat and move it indoors. In the end we didn't have an aisle, which felt a little bit strange. We were married at the bottom of the stairs with our guests standing around the bottom. All I could focus on was how to walk down the stairs whilst holding my skirt, my bouquet and my dad's arm without tripping, until I saw Karl at the foot of the stairs, tears in his eyes. My favourite moment of the entire day.

A humanist ceremony allowed us to make it as personal as possible. We wrote our own vows and couldn't believe how similar they were. They were phrased almost identically, despite them being written in secret.

One of my favourite parts of our ceremony was the quaich. My uncle Warren leant us a giant, antique silver quaich and my dad poured in a dram of Scottish single malt and Karl's dad poured in an Irish whiskey. The idea being, once these two whiskys are blended, they cannot be separated.

One of the things I love dearly about Errol Park is the amount of places you can wander about .. the grounds are perfect for photographs. Time away from our guests to pose for photos was almost excruciating! I didn’t want to miss a single bit of fun, but of course, the results are wonderful and we’ll cherish the photos forever.

I'd deliberately composed a short list for the family group shots so we could get our photos taken in the old folly in the woods but after posing for pictures with our bridal party we were told it was time for dinner and I couldn’t believe it was nearly 4 o'clock - WHO STOLE THE TIME?!

We made our way into the stables for dinner. Things started to go wrong here, but by then it was too late to do anything about it, and you have to shrug it off and enjoy yourself. I mean, at the end of the day, I'd just become Mrs Bleakley so no playlist cock-ups or catering mishaps can dampen how wonderful that felt. I left my phone upstairs in the main house, which was locked, meaning I didn't have our wedding dinner playlist. We tried to use Karl's phone but the patchy signal inside the stables meant we could only play his already downloaded tracks, and that meant listening to Stormzy. Our videographer James rescued this situation by having a laptop on hand with Celtic folk music on it, which was beautiful.

We cut our cake with an antique US military sword, thanks again to my generous uncle Warren.

My wonderful bridesmaid Abbie created our incredible cake. The bottom tier was carrot cake and the top tier was orange sponge with white chocolate and they tasted amazing. I was so impressed with the bake off skills of my best friends. Yardley spent the week before baking 110 macaroons in 4 flavours (chocolate, white chocolate, gin and tonic and orange) as well as gorgeous cupcakes and Courtney made us heart shaped biscuits iced with our wedding date and initials. My Nana and Papa also cooked up two batches of Scottish Tablet. This was one of my favourite elements of the day, it was such a small thing but the effort my girl's put into creating desserts for us, and how beautifully they executed them, meant the world to me.

I didn't have any appetite on our wedding day but one of my favourite moments was hanging out with our friends the next day in the driveway, tucking into our left over cake, macaroons and chicken burgers on the bonnet of Paul's hire car.

The second most special moment of our day (after the ceremony) was changing into my gran's 57 year old wedding dress.

I had spent roughly TWO YEARS drying out petals from every bunch of flowers I could get my hands because I love confetti at weddings. My mum and I had then fashioned the cones out of paper doilies. We weren't allowed to throw confetti indoors however and rain kept our guests inside until after our first dance. I was pretty upset about missing out on the confetti when we hit upon the idea to use it for the second dress reveal.

Rosie snuck it downstairs tucked inside a dressing gown then rallied everyone outside under the guise of the all important confetti shot. My brother positioned Gran at the end of the line and seeing her burst into tears was such an amazing, emotional moment.

Taking off my soaking wet, muddy, heavy ballgown and putting on a pair of clean, dry heels was also an absolute treat.

To top off our evening, Rosie and Jim pulled out some sparklers from the boot of their car and we lit them with the fire pits. It was a great way to get people outside. Dancing is fun, but so is mingling and hanging out under the string lights after a summer rain. Our venue had so many different layers to it, but the courtyard was a favourite. Having all the people you love the most in one place is the absolute best thing about getting married.

I want to thank everyone who made our day so incredibly special. Our parents and grandparents for their love, support, and hard work, but most of all for setting an example for us to follow. Our wedding party filled with our greatest friends and family who donated their time, resources, and talents from cakes, to sparklers, to rescue playlists, you guys are our rocks. Our photographers and videographers, Melanie, Rosie and James for capturing our day perfectly. That day remains one of the greatest and each and every touch made it undeniably perfect. A wedding is a living, breathing phenomenon that couldn’t happen without all of you.

Venue: Errol Park

Photographer: Fiander Foto | Videographer: Little Fims

Florist: Amy Annand | Caterer: Season Catering

Officiant: Lucie Johnston of Humanist Society Scotland

Personalised PJs: Jean Alice | Rings: T. Paterson Jewellers

Hair: Carol Zarebski Duffy | Make up: Catherine McCarter

String quartet: Arta | Band: Northern Star

Linen and candelabras: 88 Events