Real Wedding at The West Mill Venue, Derbyshire
Your Love Story?
We both played rugby and found ourselves in a car share travelling from Nottingham to our club Lichfield three times a week. During these trips we got to know each other and sang a lot of karaoke in the car, we started to realise that these car journeys along the A38 were the highlight of our week – it didn’t take long to work out why.
Jasmine took Stephanie back to Lichfield rugby club to propose.
What was your inspiration and vision for your day?
We are big foodies and it was important for us to reflect that in our wedding. As well as plying our guests with good food and drinks, we named our tables after our favourite meals. On each table name centrepiece we listed the ingredients of that meal and explained what each meal means to us.
We also used the venue as inspiration for our styling, as it is an old cotton mill, our stationery incorporated blueprints of cotton looms which we tweaked for our colour scheme. To balance the industrial feel we opted for lots of greenery and warm accessories.
Why did you choose The West Mill Venue?
Because it is different to every other venue we have been to or attended a wedding at. We live in an old converted fire station with a very similar vibe and after seeing the West Mill, we couldn’t imagine getting married anywhere else.
Did you do any DIY projects?
We put our families to work! Jasmine’s uncle is a joiner and her mum enjoys painting. Together they made a personalised beer pong table and a cornhole for the drinks reception. Stephanie’s dad’s company usually makes cardboard boxes and point of sale displays. They created all of our stationary which was designed from scratch and completely tailored to us.
Due to Covid we lost 3 of our suppliers, including a makeup artist the day before and DJ an hour before the ceremony! Our covid-stricken suppliers found last minute replacements who were excellent and everything we could have hoped for!
Tell us about the details…
The West Mill really doesn’t need any additional décor as it is pretty perfect as it is. As it is an old cotton mill, we incorporated cotton flowers and blueprints of cotton looms into our wedding stationary designs. To balance the industrial nature of the building we used warm accessories and plenty of foliage with seasonal peonies and roses.
What was on the Menu?
We loved the fact that the venue was no corkage and plied our guests with prosecco, wine and beer (we even had a beer pong table).
Food is very important to us (we even named our tables after our favourite meals) and we wanted a menu that reflected this. We felt that lamb was a crowd pleaser, so we opted for Moroccan style lamb with a trio of desserts to follow (because we couldn’t decide on one dessert).
What was your favourite part of the wedding?
We both walked into the room at the same time from doors facing each other. This meant that before walking down our aisles we got to see each other for the first time. At that point we were both overwhelmed looking at one another and it was very difficult to turn and walk down separate aisles when all we wanted to do was walk towards each other. Also, we hadn’t told our guests about our planned entrances and they didn’t know which way to look which made for good photos.
Do you have any advice for future brides & grooms?
Have a physical wedding folder. It’s great to have everything in one place and to be able to take it wherever you go. Not everything is electronic and ours included swatches, brochures picked up from wedding fairs and stationary samples. It also makes for a nice memento afterwards!
Start early as suppliers get booked up quickly and it takes longer than you think.