Features

If you’re getting married soon, there’s a good chance that your mum will be by your side every step of the way. Mums are often integral to wedding planning; from the moment you announce the news to the time you say I do. Yet many wedding traditions are still geared towards the father/child relationship. With Mother’s Day in March, we’re throwing the spotlight on all the special mums out there. And with the help of expert wedding planner Liz Taylor, we’ve outlined some lovely ideas about how to honour your mum at your wedding day.
Borrow something from her wedding

A good night’s sleep is just what you need to look and feel your best on your wedding day. But how can you make sure you get enough rest? Phil Lawlor, Sleep Expert at Dormeo, offers his advice for soon-to-be-weds looking to get their forty winks. 
After all the planning, organising, and last-minute jobs, the night before your wedding can be one of the most restless that you’ll ever experience. Whether it's down to pure excitement, sheer anxiety, or just being in a strange environment, losing sleep before your wedding day is all too common.

Wedding speeches, who’d give them? They wreck your nerves; you study endlessly beforehand and sometimes (don’t say it out loud) they’re not good. However, tradition is still routinely followed and that means the groom, father of the bride and the best man are usually the ones taking the mic to share outrageous anecdotes, flatter the bride and attempt to make the crowd laugh. 
Over the last few years, with a noticeable renaissance in the rise of feminism, perhaps spiking after Meghan Markle took the mic at her own wedding, women are now delivering bride speeches. 

When you are planning a wedding, no matter how organised you are even the best laid plans and budget can easily fly out of the window if you don’t take control. Having been involved with two family weddings recently, I soon realised how many similarities there are between business and weddings. 

Here are some top tips learned from years helping companies applied to the serious work of wedding planning!

1.    Have a Vision
Just as you have to set your commercial horizon and think through what you want your business to be – do the same for your wedding. What do you want it to look like, the feeling to be, the memories you will have?  Make sure you communicate it clearly to family and friends.

 Wedding planner Rianna Elizabeth has been in the industry for the past decade and has experience organising lavish weddings in Florence and Paris through to smaller, intimate affairs in London.

With the start of Spring just a few weeks away, we’ll soon be entering wedding season. 

Planning the perfect day can be a daunting prospect for some people. But regardless of your budget and whether the task excites you or slightly intimidates you, a few useful pointers from those in the know can never go amiss,

Many of the weddings that we plan are either destination weddings or weddings that are far enough away that guests spend the night in a hotel. We have found that a really lovely and personal touch to treat guests who travel from both near and far is to surprise them with a welcome bag upon arrival to wherever they are staying. It really sets the tone for the wedding and kicks the weekend off on a positive, cheerful note! They are a great way to say “Hello! We’re delighted to have you celebrate with us.” As well as little treats, the welcome bags contain useful information about the celebration and the local area. 

Planning your wedding is one of the most exciting times of your life – trying on dreamy wedding dresses, sampling extravagant wedding cakes and picking out beautiful flowers…there are so many amazing moments. But it can also get pretty stressful. From deciding who makes the guestlist to staying on budget to agreeing on seating plans, there can be lots of tricky decisions and you can guarantee everyone around you will have an opinion…
But the most important thing? To look after your own wellbeing – there is no point in planning the perfect wedding day and then being too burnt out to enjoy it.

By Milena Gorska Wedding & Private Events Manager at The Brewery
Women have come a long way in the last century, from a time of not being able to vote, hold positions of power or have autonomy over our own bodies and relationships, we have seen first-hand the revolutionary changes being made. The world has made significant advances towards gender equality and female empowerment; we have seen the number of women in the workplace and in leadership positions rise, pay levels are starting to equalise and gender diversity and inclusion has become a priority for many organisations. Yet still, to this day, many archaic traditions remain – including the ideology that only men can propose to women. 

Marrying someone from a different culture
By Charlotte Ricard-Quesada, Founder of La Féte

As long as I can remember, I’ve felt very drawn to Mediterranean and Spanish culture in particular, from my teenage summers there learning the language to my regular visits for Fería in Seville. Over a decade, I built a network of friends in the south of the country, became intertwined with their lives and thus, began dating: a pretty natural evolution, which tied me closer to my quasi-adoptive country. Things continued the same way until I met my now husband. An incredible, imposing and open-minded man who had big dreams and who would move to London within the first 6 months of our first date, set up by mutual friends. 

With the average cost of a UK wedding in 2019 rising to £31,734 due to increase in pressure from Instagram[1], award-winning wedding experts at Dine, are telling attendees to leave the ‘Gram firmly at home with the launch of their Wedding Etiquette Guide for the Roaring 20s.

The guide helps couples and guests navigate the seventh most-stressful life event[2] with weddings trumping being fired and even pregnancy - by identifying the five biggest wedding etiquette faux pas to avoid this decade.

Sharing your life with someone is a big step, but sharing your finances is potentially even bigger. While it’s easy to fall head over heels into a relationship, it’s very important to keep a level head when it comes to joining your finances together. Our research found that 67% of those in a couple now have a joint bank account, and quickly adapt to sharing finances and swapping personal details without a second though.  But if you’re going to do this, it’s crucial to make sure you’re on the same page from the start.

Months of time and stressful planning goes into preparing for a wedding day, but even with strict attention to detail, things can still unfortunately go wrong.

To ensure you receive the right amount of compensation if things don’t go to plan, The University of Law, the UK's longest-established specialist provider of legal education and training has put together a guide to your legal rights on your wedding day.

What should I do if my wedding dress doesn’t fit?

Another year has already begun and everyone in the bridal industry is excited for what the 2020 wedding season has to come.  Weddings are becoming much less traditional with more couples choosing their own personal wedding journey. 2020 wedding trends will include; 3-day events, second wedding dresses, eco-friendly wedding, having pets as members of the bridal party and an increase in American trends like rehearsal dinners. There are so many exciting changes happening in wedding trends this year.

18 years is believed to be the sweet spot for true wedded bliss and 267,961 couples could be celebrating that anniversary this year

A new study commissioned by Beaverbrooks the Jewellers shows that 41% of people across the nation still firmly believe in the concept of marriage.

As part of the survey, 1,000 respondents were asked to pinpoint the year in which they felt people are the happiest in a marriage, with the majority suggesting that 18 years is the sweet spot for true wedded bliss.

Some 267,961 couples got married in England and Wales in 2001, which means a lot of people will be marking their 18th (porcelain) anniversary this year*.

A MOVE towards more sustainable and ethical weddings is helping ensure one historically important property is preserved for future generations. 

Grade I-listed Samlesbury Hall, in Lancashire, has long offered a timeless, romantic setting for couples looking to tie the knot.

 But ceremonies held at the venue every year are now helping to protect the unique heritage of the eye-catching 700-year-old building - with the income generated contributing to its upkeep in order to keep it safe for years to come.

Samlesbury Hall director Sharon Jones explained more couples are looking to incorporate elements to their wedding that leave a longer-term benefit to the venue or local area.