The Real Wedding of Elisa & James

James proposed on Old Hunstanton beach on the day that we registered the birth our little boy. One of our first dates was a walk at Old Hunstanton beach and its always a place we love to visit no matter the weather. Ultimately we knew from the beginning that we would want to get married in Norfolk, we stumbled across Caley Hall and fell in love with the place straight away. It was a cold /snowy day in February the fire was roaring and atmosphere was relaxed and cosy. The quintessential ‘Norfolk’ feel and top notch lunch we ate meant we didn’t look anywhere else. It was important for us to be able to not just have a wedding day, but allow friends and family to stay with us to make our wedding a weekend celebration and Caley Hall provided this.
I’ll be honest I have not dreamed of getting married my whole life but I knew straight away what style dress I’d like and even though I tried a handful of other options on I found my dress in the first shop visited in my home town. James was keen from the beginning to buy a Ted Baker suit he could keep, from this we choose dark blue & burgundy colour ‘scheme’ which we knew would also complement the colours at Caley Hall.
The bridesmaid dresses where brought online from Dorothy Perkins. We brought the groomsmen suits as was cheaper than hirer, from Suits Direct.
Again I knew from the beginning that I wanted something different from our flowers (I just didn’t know what exactly), until I found our florist, Little Norfolk Flower, we met with Lucy who really was fabulous, so full of knowledge, passion and ideas, she was able to source some of the flowers locally
which was another massive selling point for us. I gave Lucy an idea on the colours, and a few ‘favourites’ and left it up to her and we were not disappointed. For me the flowers were exceptional, Lucy and her team went above and beyond to dress the venue and were very professional from beginning to end.
We didn’t actually want a ‘normal’ wedding cake, with James not being a massive cake fan so we therefore chose a Brownie Tower scattered with Strawberries, this was created by Caley Hall, and was a massive talking point for our guests.
We both stayed at Caley Hall the night before the wedding so the morning was very relaxed. I had breakfast with my Bridesmaids in the room before going over the road to the Old School House salon for our hair & makeup. All the staff at the hotel did the setting up and laying out of our decorations, it was completely stress free and they did a fab job. Our parents looked after Ralph our son so James also had a chilled morning, with a walk to the beach and photos after with the Grooms party.
During the ceremony James aunt did a reading which was beautiful and it added great pace, so that the ceremony wasn’t over too quickly. We did have a giggle because Ralph did loose his trousers a one point (his ‘suit’ was hand made by my mum and the trousers were a tad big), whilst being passed around for cuddles, not that he understood what all the sniggering across the room was all about.
Myself and James took ourselves (well the best man drove) down to the beach to get some special shots, it was rather windy but we definitely had a giggle.
We chose what food to have for the Wedding Breakfast based on some of our favourites’ , it was great that we had free range to choose exactly the food we wanted, we loved it an so did our guests.
As the evening guests started to arrive and continued through the evening we arrange for a Magician, Chris. He circulated through the night around the venue and really did go down a storm, again another massive talking point post wedding.
I originally wanted a live Band to play in the evening but the price of a decent band meant we had to consider other options, I found a guy, (Matt James) who offers live music sets in conjunction with a DJ service, he acoustically sang our first dance which was lovely and exactly the vibe we were looking for, the dance floor was never empty, again we couldn’t have asked for more. I only wish I had more time on the dance floor but with all the mingling the evening went so fast!
It was after the first dance that James had arranged a surprise Firework display – WOW the display was utterly amazing and so professional.
Myself and James stayed in the hotel an extra night and had a lovely meal out, we plan to have a honeymoon once James has finished his training.