Where was the wedding?
Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada. The service was held on the lake and the reception was then held in the hotel in the Lefroy room.
How did you meet?
We first met in our local village pub! We both grew up in a small sleepy Suffolk village, the pub was the place to meet friends and then head on out to the nearest town for a night out. One quite Friday night, Ben and his friend challenged my friend and myself to a game of pool. We all had a good couple of games and said good night and thought nothing of it.
At this point I was home from university and wanted to make a bit of money for the upcoming year so I started working at a big factory in a nearby town. A day or so in, the machine I was using had a fault and the maintenance team was called to make the repair. To my surprise Ben appeared! It turned out he was one of the factory electricians! There was a moment of I know you?! And off he went! In the following week, we continually kept bumping into each other at work and in our local! Sure to say we swapped numbers and a first date shortly followed.
How did he propose?
Ben and I have always loved to travel. We had been together around 6 years at this point and had many adventures. We decided we would try a cruise as we wanted to cover many destinations in Europe and this seemed a great way of doing it. Day 4 and we headed off to Florence on a day trip, we wandered around the city and took in all the sights. For the evening we had a meal planned in an old palace!
After wine and a beautiful three course meal we walked down the winding alleys and towards the famous river area. Ben stopped, knelt down and popped the big question, I am not even sure I said yes I was crying so much, although I think it was clear I was very happy at the proposal!
That’s so romantic! So tell us about the dress? Did you know the kind of dress you were looking for?
Funny enough I did at the start but I actually ended up having something quite different to what I had imagined! I only visited two wedding dress shops, in the first one I found the dress I likes but wasn’t 100% sure. It was the dress I had imagined myself in: long lace sleeves, a fitted bodice and a ball gown skirt! I decided I wasn’t going to put all my eggs in one basket and tried another shop! I described what I wanted and the lady was amazing! However once again I wasn’t sure, so the Lady picked out a few dresses that might suit!
I then found the dress that I knew was the one - the fit to my body was just right and I felt lovely in it! When I walked out of the fitting room my mum burst into tears which just confirmed exactly how I felt! The dress in the end was quite fitted and had a trumpet style skirt and an off the shoulder sleeve!
How did you accessorize your wedding day look?
I wanted the dress to be the main feature as I loved it so much. My colour scheme was yellow gold, navy and a soft blush pink. I had my nana’s earring, bracelet and necklace which were sapphire, diamond and yellow gold so these were perfect! I picked up a gold and pearl comb to go in one side of my hair, a long veil with subtle diamantes and gold shoes. I actually ended up with a few pairs of gold shoes, but a girl can never have too many!
How was the planning, did you have a theme, any tips for budgeting or advice for brides to be?
We decided early on we wanted the wedding to be intimate with only a few members of family and close friends, we also wanted to have it somewhere unique and memorable as we didn’t have the expense of catering for large numbers of people. We looked at wedding venues in various locations all over the world and we stumbled across Lake Louise in Canada. The place just looked beautiful! We used Virgin holidays to book the wedding and we were assigned a wedding planner in Albert to help organise the day. As part of the package with Virgin you selected the florist, the cake maker and the photographer from a list of approved providers. This made it so easy and the variety of providers to choose from was great.
We wanted to have a gathering after the service, so I contacted the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise were we were staying to organise a room for the evening where we could have a bar and food for our guests. I was also assigned a wedding planner who helped me organise the menu, drinks and how I wanted to use the room. Both planners were incredibly helpful, organised and took any stress out of the experience, they also got in contact to ensure everything would run smoothly on the day!
With regards to dressing the reception room, I am a graphic designer so I designed my own stationary for the day. I ordered an additional string of flowers to run down the centre of the table through our florist. We were given the option to hire items for the room but this was quite expensive and we had to return the items to the supplier the morning after the wedding, and with no vehicle this started to get complicated! So we simply took a small carry-on bag with ribbon for the chairs, placemats, favours, cake stand, topper and other decretive items!
What was the best bit of your wedding?
The best part of the wedding was my dad walking me down to the Lake and then seeing Ben. We pretty much cried throughout the entire service! Happy tears of course!
As told to Lisa Robson
Photography: Michael Buckley