I love this wedding so much, it’s so vibrant, beautiful and fun, right from the romantic reason for it’s woodland theme to the train ride to the venue. It’s just gorgeous. Bride Fran wore the most stunning bridal separates too from Catherine Deane at BHLDN with a breath taking Gibson Bespoke necklace, such a pretty statement piece.

Fran and Iain were married in July at Liverpool Town Hall, with a stop at ‘Oh Me Oh My’ for a rooftop image before celebrating with their adorable woodland inspired reception at Leaf on Bold Street in the city. Complete with glitter confetti bombs and vintage cars, the day is just brilliant.

The whole day has been captured to utter ruddy perfection by the very lovely Emma Hillier Photography, she’s a marvel is Emma, we love her. So let me hand you over to beautiful bride Fran to tell you all about the day;

We met at primary school at 5 years of age; however never got together until we ran into each other at a local pub in 2011 age 27! A drink turned into a date a week later and the rest is history. We decided to formalize things in 2014 and got engaged, setting the date for a local Liverpool wedding 18 months later.

I was never keen on the traditional wedding planning set up as it felt like a lot of pressure to be under. So we thought we’d just have fun with it and see what evolved. Shortly before we got engaged, Iain had given me a card for our anniversary which featured a fox and a badger; in it he wrote that “every fox needs a badger by his side”. Somehow from this we decided that we would have a woodland animal theme running through the wedding …why not?!

With the woodland theme in mind we definitely wanted a relaxed and fun feeling about the day, without too much emphasis on formalities.

We knew that we wanted to have our reception in Leaf from the outset. Leaf is a venue we have frequented over the years as a gig and event space; we were able to hire out the upstairs venue space which is roomy and has great decor which suits our style. Leaf provided us with an event coordinator, Fiona, who was brilliant and so generous with her time and adding her creative flair to our ideas for the day!

Liverpool Town Hall is a beautiful venue with a number of rooms which you can tailor to suit your wedding size. We decided on 70 guests and the Small Ballroom within the Town Hall was perfect to accommodate our wedding ceremony. We knew that the Town Hall’s beauty speaks for itself and we wouldn’t need to do anything to make it ‘wedding’ ready. The Town Hall were happy to have us for the ceremony and also a drinks and canapé reception before we made our way across town to Leaf.

My lovely dad gave me away, I’m the last of his 4 daughters to get married and it was really special. We walked down the aisle to Sigur Ross, Hoppipolla.

Fran and Iain chose Emma Hillier Photography to capture their day;

Iain is a musician and had met Emma several years before when she had photographed him as part of the band he was in at the time. Iain suggested that we look into having Emma do our wedding as he liked her style of photography. We met with Emma and decided to book her straight away; she is less about the formal (groups of guests standing in lines) and aims to capture the mood and ‘moments’ throughout the day. She was absolutely brilliant and our guests commented on how she managed to be everywhere capturing the moments during our day.

My dress skirt was by Catherine Deane and both pieces of the dress were bought online from BHLDN which is a wedding line from the US Anthropologie department store. I love the style of the dresses from the BHLDN line, and admittedly it was a fluke when I ordered the skirt and cami top, had it shipped from the US and loved it immediately. It was the first dress I tried on and I didn’t go into any wedding dress shops at all!

I bought the necklace from an online Irish boutique called Gibson Bespoke who sells on Etsy. Again, it was a fluke once I’d taken the risk of ordering the handmade necklace that matched my dress perfectly! I decided not to have a veil as I wanted the necklace to take centre stage. My shoes were from Kurt Geiger.

We had all of our hair and makeup done at the Powder Room in Liverpool who were so patient with us all and did a great job. We went to the salon the morning of the wedding, where we drank champagne and relaxed into the morning while they pampered us.

I chose Jo Malone’s Peony and Blush Suede. I love the floral scent and have kept it for special occasions since we got married.

The bridesmaids each chose their own dress; their brief was Navy Blue with a metallic shoe. I wanted the girls to feel completely comfortable, wearing something that they had chosen. And they did the rest. The dresses and shoes are from a range of high street stores.

Iain’s suit was tailor made by Nick Collier at Harland and Collier. Nick helped Iain choose his own fabric, lining and suit style and he looked and felt great. At 6 foot 6” he always struggles to find a suit which fits properly, so this was an obvious decision.

Again, the groomsmen wore their own navy blue suits, brought together by a burgundy knitted tie.

We were recommended Passion for Flowers by a friend and they didn’t let us down. I had quite a specific brief (a Pinterest inspired lavender and daisy bouquet) which they recreated perfectly. The rest of the flowers were simple gypsy grass bouquets with lavender, as were the groomsmen’s button holes and centre pieces in the venue.

Iain has special interest in classic cars and drives a 1983 Mercedes W123 which we used as our wedding car. A friend drove me and my dad to the wedding which was lovely.

We had to make a decision about getting out guests between the venues. Both the Town Hall and Leaf are in Liverpool City Centre but it is a 20 minute walk which we felt was too much to expect the guests to do, and only a 2 minute car ride which we did not feel warranted hire of 2 coaches! We decided to contact Merseyrail who agreed to give us a carriage on the local train which was a perfect compromise. It was great being amongst the local commuters in our finery and added to the fun of the day.

We designed our own invites and table plans with special attention to our woodland theme. We hired our woodland themed décor items from Sweet Pea and Ivy who delivered and collected the items before and after the wedding.

We ordered woodland themed cupcakes from a delightful local independent cake designer Braidey Maloney of Say It With Flours. We met with Braidey prior to the wedding and explained our woodland theme to her, as well as the general look and feel of the venue and we let her do the rest. It was such a buzz arriving at the venue and seeing for the first time alongside the guests what she had created…the cakes were amazing!! And they tasted great too.

Leaf provided catering with the venue hire. We chose a “1 pot” buffet style menu which gave the guests a number of options in the middle of the table which they could choose from. Leaf also provided a DJ.

Our first dance was Wilson Picket -Hey Jude. We chose it just because it’s a brilliant tune with a lovely sentiment and you can’t help but dance to it! 

For our honeymoon we drove the pacific highway in California from San Francisco to San Diego with stops along the way. We used AirBnb for all of our stops and loved every minute!

I really couldn’t choose a favourite moment from our day…there were too many.We wouldn’t change anything, it was just brilliant from start to finish!

Our advice to others, just enjoy it and put as much of yourselves into it as you can.

Sending our congratulations to Fran and Iain, thank you so much for sharing your amazing day with us, it looks like it was so much fun. Huge thank you also go to Emma Hillier Photography for these images. Emma is so good at capturing the energy of a day, tapping into the emotions and creating really gorgeous images, be sure to check out her work and say I sent you.

With love and Happy Easter,