10 years ago today, I was the bride being photographed rather than the photographer behind the camera. To celebrate a decade since Karl & I had our wedding in Northumberland, I wanted to share things I learnt as a bride, how we incorporated our favourite things into the day, and some of the beautiful photos from the day (thanks to our amazing photographers Katy Melling & Lottie Ettling).

Things I learnt as a bride

It can be hard to sleep the night before. I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep – I always try to reassure my couples not to worry if they can’t sleep the night before as they’ll still have an amazing day
Buttons are fiddly. My sister’s hand was shaking as she fastened the buttons on my dress – it’s good to leave a little more time than you think you need when you’re getting dressed, especially if it involves tiny buttons!
An engagement photoshoot is a good idea. Having an engagement shoot really helped me to feel relaxed and natural in front of the camera on our wedding day – and we were able to use the photos for our wedding invitation and order of service.
The weather changes all the time. I had been glued to the weather forecast for weeks – there was flooding the weekend before, but somehow we got lucky and were able to get married outdoors (But I still recommend to always have an indoor back up option!)
Readings don’t have to be wedding-y. We looked at so many ‘wedding readings’ – and in the end asked our friends to read an extract from the novel ‘Hector & the Search for Happiness’ & the Edward Lear poem the Jumblies!
It’s ok to be quirky. I opted for wedding shoes with mouse faces rather than something traditional – and they made me smile every time they peeked out from under my dress!
Not everything has to be seasonal. While it’s great to choose seasonal flowers, there is nothing to stop you from celebrating things you love about other seasons… our September wedding included the first dance song: “All I want for Christmas is you”.
Print your photos! It is great to have digital files, but by creating albums and framed prints we get to see and enjoy the photos much more.

How we incorporated our favourite things into our wedding

Animals. As we were sadly pet-less at the time there were no guinea pig bouquets/ ring bearer cats / best man dogs – but our cake featured a polar bear and my Marc Jacobs wedding shoes were white mice complete with eyes, ears and whiskers
Travel. We both love to travel and used a world map with luggage tags for our seating plan, designed and printed our own ‘Lonely Planet’ guide book instead of an order of service and Sugarfun Cake Artistry created an incredible spherical cake iced like a globe
Photography. Our beautiful wedding photos from Katy & Lottie were always important to us and we allocated plenty of time for photos. We used a photo of each guest to mark their place, photos we’d taken on our travels on the tables and had a slideshow of images on display
Karl’s Chinese Malaysian heritage. We celebrated our marriage again in Malaysia, but also included a traditional tea ceremony in our wedding. I wore a red qi pao and our (third!) wedding cake was a tasty green pandan chiffon cake – a Malaysian speciality
Friends. We were lucky to spend a full 12hours (noon till midnight) celebrating with those closest to us. We created a guestbook with a page for each person printed with their photo and wrote individual cards for every guest to find on their plate
My Scottish heritage. My mum made beautiful Celtic knots for my bouquet as my something blue and for the top of the traditional wedding cake she baked, thistles featured in bouquets, buttonholes & table flowers by Bels Flowers, and the Hedgehog Skin ceilidh band got the party started