Real Wedding || Rhi & Chris

Wednesday is my favourite day here because I get to share some amazing weddings. I can't even begin to explain how excited honoured I am to be sharing today's Real Wedding with you and I hope you all love it as much as I do.

Rhi and Chris we're married on the 14th September 2013 at Plas Cadnant, Menai Bridge. I've not known another couple who have even considered Plas Cadnant before, a real hidden gem on Anglesey. Enjoy!

Photography by: Gill Jones Photography
Brides make-up by: Charlotte Parry Jones

How did you meet?

Chris would tell you we met months earlier, but the way I remember it… We met while at University, working for the same student pub. We got to know each other a little through working shifts together (and the occasional lock-in after work!) but we had our first real night out together as part of a work outing to a University charity night involving watching the Uni Ice Hockey team play, then getting to do lots of drunk ice skating (for most of which Chris was sat on the ice!) and then headed to a club in the city centre for what turned out to be Girls Gone Wild and the UK Chippendales. It was a great night and we still laugh about it now!

Tell us about the proposal...

I was told to take a couple of days off work with no idea of where we were going or what we were going to do. We set off on a magical mystery tour (for me that is, Chris knew exactly where we were headed!) and arrived in the Yorkshire Dales, more specifically Ingleton Falls. We headed up a hill, passing lots of pretty streams and small waterfalls and eventually made it to the top where the largest waterfall, Thornton Force, is and Chris suggested we get a closer look. The ‘closer look’ turned out to be scrambling along rocks to make our way underneath a large overhang of rock and falling water! Though mildly afraid for my life, we finally made it to where Chris had pointed and sat down. At this point Chris reached into his backpack and pulled out a small hand-made red velvet bag and handed it to me. It contained a copy of the 75^th Anniversary Pocket Edition of The Hobbit, one of my favourite childhood books. I opened the book, carefully paging through the first few pages, thinking Chris had written a lovely note to me or something! He impatiently chuffed at me, so I flicked through the rest of the book and was surprised to find he had stuck together the back half of the book, hollowed out the middle and nestled a beautiful Princess Cut diamond ring inside. Neither of us remembers whether he actually said the words, or whether I even said yes, but the ring definitely made it onto my finger! We toasted with a surprise bottle of champagne Chris had snuck into the backpack (along with plastic champagne flutes he’d had the forethought to buy!) and sat and admired the view! The proposal trip didn’t end there though, as Chris had booked a beautiful suite in The Green Dragon (a gorgeous inn that provided the name inspiration for Tolkien’s ‘local’ for the hobbits) which owns the waterfall underneath which Kevin Costner bathed in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (one of my favourite films). We had more champagne while getting ready for a lovely dinner in a nearby restaurant, and the next day Chris took me to the Wensleydale Cheese Factory (I LOVE CHEESE!) and then also to the waterfalls where Robin Hood and John Little have their iconic long staff fight, Aysgarth Falls.

It was a magical trip, so thoughtful and amazingly well planned. Quite a few of his friends have ‘thanked’ Chris for helping set their girlfriend’s expectations quite high!

And your gorgeous Dress...

When starting to look for a dress I had what I thought was a very good idea of what I’d like, and after trying on dresses at quite a few shops as well as at the busy Wedding Show at the NEC I found a dress which I thought ticked all the boxes!

The main goal I’d had was to have something with straps to give me a little more support and to help minimise a generous bust. I’d wanted lots of lace but not too much volume. I didn’t want a train, but I’d thought about having a veil.

As I said, it ticked all the boxes, except for another key category I hadn’t mentioned… price! I just couldn’t afford it!! I scoured lots of websites looking for bridal shops stocking the dress and which had sale days coming up and came across one in Chester, Berketex Brides.

I was a little sceptical when I arrived and saw that there wasn’t really much variety in the sale dresses, but then one of the lovely ladies working in the shop encouraged me to have a look at the full price dresses anyway, as some of them were discounted too so I had a look around and saw the same dress I’d already decided was perfect but completely out of my price range! I asked if I could try it on again (glutton for punishment) and the lady recommended I grab another couple by the same designer, just to see!

As it turned out, I had changed my mind entirely about the dress I’d previously tried on, and fell completely in love with another by the same designer, Sasha Perez, which was strapless, corset back with beautiful appliqué and beading over the dress. It wasn’t too big in diameter but it did have a train! Also it was much more within my price range! To top it off, my mum said ‘Well I don’t know about you Rhi, but I think that’s THE ONE!’. It turns out she was right!

What about the Grooms suit and Bridesmaid dresses?

We both wanted a relaxed approach to the wedding, and Chris isn’t really into wearing a full morning suit, so we settled on him wearing smart trousers, a shirt, a tie and a waistcoat. The waistcoat took the longest to buy as Chris was quite particular about what he wanted, but found a really nice tweed type waistcoat with lots of different colours picked out in tiny detail so when looking at it from a distance it just looked neutral, but close up you could see threads of yellow, green, red, purple and blue. We hoped, given all the different colours in the waistcoat, that it would be really easy to get some contrasting trousers, and with the help of a very kind sales assistant we tracked down a beautiful pair of plum coloured trousers and a matching tie. He looked gorgeous and really comfortable all day!

The bridesmaids dresses were only found 4 weeks before the wedding (risky you might say!) as Chris and I had moved to New Zealand shortly after the proposal and hadn’t managed to go dress shopping before we left. Given the expense of the wedding and the frightening cost of flights to and from New Zealand, we only made it back to the UK for a holiday for the summer leading up to the wedding. As a result, I organised a relatively last minute trip to the Trafford Centre with my bridesmaids and my mum and we spent a lovely day shopping. We actually found the perfect dresses in the first shop we went into and set them to one side to pick up later if we were still of the same mind. Thanks to a handy student card (thanks little sis aka Maid of Honour!) and very easy going bridesmaids, we managed to get gorgeous Oasis dresses, in a dark green with gorgeous bronzed beading around the neckline, as well as a golden metal belt for each bridesmaid in no time at all really, and under budget, so we had no qualms about having a lovely lunch or about going for a glass of bubbly and a cake later on!

Why did you choose your venue?

A weekend visit to my parent’s house in Menai Bridge ended in a Sunday afternoon meander around a beautiful private garden which had been recently opened to the public and which was right next to my parent’s house. The gardens are beautiful – a structured formal garden at the top and then a beautifully whimsical woodland garden, which leads down a hill to a waterfall, and stream. We stopped for a drink in the Tea Room at the top of the garden and got chatting to the owner and one of the staff. My mum jokingly mentioned how amazing it would be to hold weddings there and got a slightly unenthusiastic response – it turns out they’d had a previous wedding and weren’t thrilled about doing more!

We went on our way, but couldn’t stop thinking about it and were becoming more and more convinced that it was the perfect place to hold our wedding. We wanted something informal, relaxed, as outdoors as possible but with sufficient indoor space to cover us against any surprising Welsh weather, as well as being a venue with something a bit different! With four sets of friends getting married in the 2 months before our wedding, we didn’t want to end up with a day which would meld in with all the other weddings the summer had on offer!

Chris came up with a wonderful idea, and armed with a posh new pen and paper he wrote a letter to the owner of the venue begging to be able to hold our wedding there. We waited an anxious few weeks and in the end we got a lovely email in response, apologising for the delay as the owner had been on holiday and only just had a chance to get back to us with some very good news!

Plas Cadnant was happy to hold our wedding and as a bonus, we would be the only wedding there in 2013!

Why did you choose your Photographer?

The choice of talented North Wales Photographers was a little overwhelming and we only started looking once we had arrived in New Zealand – just to add to the difficulty of decision making!

Chris and I had seen a range of photographer’s blogs and had begun building a picture in our head of the kinds of photos we liked. I stumbled across Gill Jones’ blog and fell in love with one photo in particular, of a grandfather with a huge tearful smile on his face during a Church ceremony. The way Gill had captured the emotion of the moment was perfect – not posed, not stiff and formal but rather full of character and blissfully unaware of the photographer herself.

No matter how many other blogs I looked at, I couldn’t get that image out of my head so we bit the bullet and checked Gill’s prices, and relieved to see they were very reasonable, we got in touch and organised a skype meeting to get to know her a little! We had a range of questions prepared to ask Gill, but didn’t really need them in the end as she was very thorough and personable and we liked her immediately!

By the end of the meeting we only really had one question – where do we sign?!

After the wedding, seeing the photos Gill took of our special day was amazing, and they are a constant reminder of how wonderful the whole experience was. We will have those photos for the rest of our life and can only say another big Thank You to Gill for capturing our moments so beautifully!

How would you describe the theme/ style of your wedding?

We went for a country feel and also a handmade one! In tune with the relaxed vibe we wanted for our big day we opted to include a palette of autumnal colours rather than one specific colour, and got some great ideas from our choice of florist – The Artisan Dried Flower Company, who we’d come across at the NEC Wedding Show and who have a beautiful and cost effective take on wedding flowers.

Trying to stick to our budget meant we tried to figure out a way to cut some cost corners without sacrificing the quality we wanted.

As a result, we designed, printed and put together all the save the dates and invitations, we asked both the Mums to make the wedding cakes (a challenge they rose to beautifully), we handmade around 200 metres of bunting, collected and decorated glass jars for candle holders for all the tables, the groom made lots of wooden and slate based candle holders as well, made little bags of hessian to hold jelly baby prizes for completing a treasure hunt around the gardens, the Mother of the Bride knitted lots of squares which people could collect and which she then turned into cushion covers after the wedding and posted through to each person, as well as lots of little stuffed shapes which could be used for a baby mobile or hanging up on a kids Christmas Tree, the Mother of the Groom put together an incredible 3 tier cake of Cheese (with both Welsh and Lancashire cheeses for the Bride and Groom) and the Father of the Bride made the cake stands by twisting and painting steel bar and topping it with welsh slate in addition to him brewing up all the booze which was drunk leading up to the toast! We had homemade cider for the welcome drink, and then homebrewed beer (named Brewsius after the groom) and home made red wine for the Sangria (aka Sang-rhi-a!) all of which had their very own logos designed by the Maid of Honour!

It was incredible how all the different input pulled together to match the vision we’d had. The groom and his mum were up most of the night before the wedding (along with other much appreciated family members) doing a brilliant job of decorating the marquee. We even had a close friend play the piano during the ceremony and raided my mum’s garden to provide all the flowers for the big day!

What was your favourite part of the day?

My favourite part of the day would have to be the ceremony itself. As we had chosen a venue which wasn’t licensed, we’d actually tied the knot the previous day at the Registry Office in Bangor so we had the freedom to do as we pleased for the ceremony on the big day. Sticking to our theme of doing things a little differently we decided to ask our eldest siblings to preside over the ceremony, and we wrote it ourselves including some funny poetry, plenty of jokes, a favourite childhood assembly song and left some space for our siblings to say a few words about us (which we did not vet beforehand, so as to have some surprises for ourselves too!). We also wrote our vows separately (though we did have to check in with each other about how long to make the vows – apparently I natter on far too long and Chris had about 2 minutes written versus my 8-10 minutes!), and we involved our mums by lighting an eternity candle with their help.

We had lots of great feedback from all our guests at how lovely and heartfelt the ceremony was, as well as being personal and unique to us. It set us all up for a fantastic rest of the wedding and I love thinking back over it and getting that lovely warm smiley feeling all over!

What was the best wedding planning advice you were given and do you have any tips for our future Bride & Grooms?

The best advise was probably to make sure we ended up with a wedding which was OUR wedding, not one which conformed to everyone else’s expectations! A few different people gave us variations on this advice, and it turned out to be the best thing we could follow!

Everyone around you, who loves you, wants to you to have the best day – but I think they all want to have their say as well! Be firm with the people you love about the things you like and the things you’re not quite so fond of. You don’t have to explain every decision but you should be happy with each one, so don’t let people end up on the guest list who you aren’t fussed about, choose the food you want to eat, choose outfits you will be comfortable in and won’t hate looking back at, and most of all don’t take it too seriously! I think that weddings easily end up being 12 months of stressful planning when really they should be filled with happy choices and exciting experiences. Get the wedding you want and keep your blood pressure down by simply and firmly sticking to your guns.

That said – make sure the groom is as involved as he would like to be. I know friends who have made virtually every decision by themselves because their grooms didn’t really mind about the choices, but my groom wanted to be involved in absolutely everything so we ended up with a wedding that really showed off the best of both of us!

Where did you Honeymoon?

We were headed straight back over to New Zealand after the wedding, to finish up work contracts so we delayed our honeymoon by a few months and had a mini-moon in San Francisco to break up the very long flight. Once we finished up our work commitments in New Zealand we took the long way home and spent a few weeks on the South Island of New Zealand, then Christmas in Rarotonga in the Cook Islands, headed to Sydney, Australia in time for New Year with some friends, spent 4 weeks along the East Coast of Australia and then headed up to South East Asia for 9 weeks of wonderful experiences in Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Singapore.

It was incredible and made possible by the wonderful contributions by our wedding guests, as we decided to ask for experiences rather than a more traditional gift list for the home. Having lived together for a while already and knowing that opportunities like travelling for 4 months don’t come along very often we decided to jump in with both feet and don’t regret it for even a minute!

Here's what the photographer had to say...

“Receiving a fresh enquiry is always exciting. I’m keen to understand the bride and grooms wishes and to interpret their day using my creative flair no matter where the wedding is taking place. However, when I realised where the celebrations were to be held I was enormously excited and I wanted to be involved. Plas Cadnant is a magical place.

Rhi and Chris were uber organised, it’s not often I’m given a timetable by the bride and groom. On the day that careful planning was forgotten and Rhi and Chris were swept away with emotion, quite rightly. Everything came together as it always does and I am delighted with the results."