Fun & Quirky Dodmoor House Wedding with Short Wedding Dress

Hooray! It’s time to share Emma and Dave’s stunning Dodmoor House wedding in Northamptonshire. Their day was gorgeous, from the blue tones to the quirky styling and all the smiles, not to mention the confetti moment.

I adore Emma’s short wedding dress, then there were the bridesmaids in midnight blue and Dave and the groomsmen in grey, didn’t they all look amazing?! There were also beautiful flowers and a striking naked wedding cake creation, oh my.

Two D Photography I can’t thank you enough for sharing these absolutely amazing shots with us.

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Dodmoor House Wedding

The Proposal

Dave and I had been together for 7 years before he proposed. It was the night after our 7-year anniversary and as it was a Friday we had gone out and bought the ingredients to make a nice meal, before staying at home on the sofa to chill out.

I immediately went upstairs to put my comfy clothes on and when I came back down Dave was still in his jeans, putting the record player on, which was weird as we’re usually straight in our comfies as soon as we are in for the night.

He then asked me to sit down as he’d gotten me an anniversary gift. I was surprised as we’d said we weren’t doing gifts, but I sat down to open the present and Dave had brought me a very nice new iron. Ultimately confused, I thanked him and then he asked what else I’d always said that I would need if I was to ever iron his clothes and make his lunch for work. (This was the ongoing joke in our house!)

Unsure where he was going with this, he then prompted. “You said you would need something specific before you would ever iron my clothes”. By this time, it had clicked and I said “A diamond?”. 
Dave got down on one knee and produced the ring box and asked if I would do his ironing for him forevermore and would I marry him.

Obviously, I said yes. I still don’t do his ironing though!

The Vision

We’d always said we wanted our wedding to be fun and casual. Both Dave and I are quite emotional and we knew we didn’t want a massive traditional wedding as we’d both be stressed about getting upset and didn’t feel that we’d enjoy it as much.

With this in mind, we also knew we didn’t want a 3-course sit-down meal and after meeting some vendors at the Milton Keynes wedding show we settled on the idea of afternoon tea for the wedding breakfast and the rest of the day and theme grew around that.

Originally, we’d booked the wedding for the 16th April 2020 as my 30th birthday was the 21st and I wanted to get married before this. Unfortunately, due to covid, this was cancelled 4 weeks before.

We then moved it to November 10th, which again got cancelled (after much back and forth of should we have it with restrictions of 15 people to be able to just get married and then have a party later in the year). We moved it again to the 10th May and then finally to the 5th July 2021 in order to be able to have our wedding with little to no restrictions in place.

Budget

We didn’t really have a fixed budget but we said we wanted to keep it all (honeymoon included) within about £20k as this is what we could afford to save by the time our original wedding date rolled around.

This was then topped up as due to date changes and cancellations we had an extra 18 months to save.

Your Outfits

I (Emma) wore the Eva dress from Wed2B which was actually only the third dress I tried on. I knew I wanted a short dress as that’s more my style so in the January of 2018 just after we’d gotten engaged, I went dress shopping with my mum and sister just for fun and ended up coming away with my dress.

She had to live in the bag for 3 years before I was able to wear her but she was the perfect choice!

Dave and the groomsmen had originally chosen suits from a local suit hire shop in Rushden called Vickers Menswear but unfortunately, due to the pandemic, she was unable to reopen after the first lockdown. The boys ended up in suits from Moss Bros and they looked incredible considering we had to make a last-minute change.

The Venue

We’d know we wanted to get married at Dodmoor House for a few years after attending the wedding of one of my friends. We made sure that we went to see other venues prior to viewing Dodmoor as we knew that as soon as we went again, we’d have made our decision.

This was the best decision we could have made as during the pandemic and all of the uncertainty and date changes, Dodmoor were incredible and supported us through the whole thing. They couldn’t have been more helpful and the staff really kept us positive and looking forward to our wedding even when it seemed like it was never going to happen.

The Ceremony & Music

Dave and I are both really into our music and spend a lot of our time going to concerts to see our favourite bands. One of our favourite musicians is Frank Turner and us and a group of friends have seen him play 10 times or more. I walked down the aisle to Frank Turner – There She Is (acoustic version) and we walked out to Hall and Oates – You Make My Dreams.

During the signing of the register, we played Fleetwood Mac – Songbird (which is the song playing as Dave proposed and we danced to in the living room on the night we got engaged), Elvis Presley – Can’t Help Falling in Love and Natalie Cole – This Will Be (An Everlasting Love).

Your Photographer & Filmmaker

We used Two D Photography for both our photos and for our video. After meeting them at the Milton Keynes wedding show they were the top end of our budget but after speaking to them we got along with them so well and knew that they would do the most amazing job of capturing our day (which they did hands down!).

Again. they were so supportive with all of the changes to the dates etc and I honestly couldn’t recommend them highly enough!

The Styling & Decor

As my engagement ring is a diamond and two sapphires, I wanted to incorporate the blue into the wedding colours. The bridesmaids wore midnight blue dresses and we had various shades of blue lanterns in the grounds and the main room of the venue.

We also had Hendricks’s gin bottles as the table centrepieces and loads of foliage on the candelabras and windowsills to give it a garden feel.

Dave designed all of the wedding stationery himself, including the invites, table plans, place settings and ice breaker games for the table. We named each of our tables after lakes in Canada where we’re going for our honeymoon and Dave made beautiful watercolour prints of each lake to place on the table.

The Honeymoon

We’re due to fly to Canada in June (after many postponements) and have lots of walks and activities planned. Dave is a keen photographer so I’m sure I’ll spend most of my time waiting for him to take the perfect shot!

Memorable Moments

A good handful of our guests (including our cake) started the day by going to the wrong venue. As Dodmoor House is very close to Dodford Manor it was lucky that the couple getting married at Dodford Manor had a sign with their names right outside otherwise they would have ended up with extra guests and two cakes!

As the weather was lovely, we chose to do our first dance outside in the courtyard with everyone around which was such a lovely change that we hadn’t considered. It made it feel less formal but just as special as a “traditional” first dance as it meant we didn’t feel like we were dancing in front of loads of people!

Advice For Other Couples

Don’t plan a wedding during a pandemic. It adds to the stress considerably!

On a serious note, work together as a team. Don’t let one partner be the main decision-maker (a problem shared, is a problem halved, or so they say). Working together helped us make sure we picked things that we both wanted, so we were both excited about the choices that were made.

Get your caterer to leave some food in the honeymoon suite, or keep some to the side as you absolutely won’t eat as much as you think you will!

Don’t sweat the small stuff. Most of the little decorative details that you spend loads of time worrying about and planning you won’t really see on the day.

Only invite the people you want there. As we were slightly limited on numbers, we had to cut the “obligatory” invites and it meant the people that came were the people that we really wanted to share our day with.

Just enjoy yourself. I know it sounds so cheesy but Dave and I had the best day all the way through because it had been such a long time coming and we were genuinely just excited to marry each other and have a big party with our friends and family.

Simply beautiful!

Emma and Dave thanks ever so much for sharing your delightful Dodmoor House wedding story with us.

Further Reading

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