Helen & Mark: Simple, Elegant and Stylish!

Your Love Story?

Anyone who’s used a dating website knows how elusive online dating can be! However, thanks to Match.com it worked for us! Our first date was on the 26th July 2016, Mark was 30 minutes late (little did I know that was a sign of things to come!), he blamed a wrong turn on his lateness! 

Mark proposed on the 5th December, he chose that date as it was the date that his Mum and his late father first met. He proposed at home as I made it very clear that I didn’t want a public proposal! He got down on one knee with Oliver and Luke (marks sons) excitedly looking on! 

We welcomed our baby boy Mylo in August 2020 and our family is now complete. 

What was your inspiration and vision for your day?

Simple, elegant and stylish! One of the great things about the West Mill is that in our opinion you don’t have to do much to the venue, it was more about complimenting its original features. We wanted to keep it simple with a neutral colour palette and decor.

Why did you choose The West Mill Venue?

We didn’t want a typical wedding venue, or somewhere that you had to keep moving out of a room whilst it was set up. So The West Mill was perfect! We loved the exposed brick, pipe work and the general industrial feel to the venue. Andrew and Chrissie have done an amazing job with the style and decor. We also thought that if the weather wasn’t great on our wedding day then it wouldn’t really matter because of the venue having multiple floors and lots of space. The no corkage was also a massive bonus!

Did you do any DIY projects?

No!

Tell us about the details…

I found our florist Nadia Di Tullio on Instagram, when we first met her she instantly got what we were looking for. We went for a modern and contemporary look in whites and greens with lots of foliage – clean, fresh and simple! 

We wanted to make a feature on each floor as our guests walked in around our welcome signs, so Nadia created that with crates, lanterns, candles and lots of foliage. 

She also made a great hanging ceremony back drop that she then moved downstairs to hang above the top table. 

My brief for my bouquet was large and statement and she delivered! My dress was simple so I wanted my flowers to be my accessory. The bridesmaids bouquets were a slightly smaller version of mine.  

We hired copper candelabra centre pieces for the wedding breakfast tables and let Nadia style them with foliage. We also hired copper charger plates. 

We wanted something different for the place names so we decided to go for a natural agate stone with our guests names written on in copper calligraphy – the end result was stunning and it pulled the colour of the candelabras and charger plates together perfectly. 

Our wedding cake was made by an old school friend, Sarah Jayne who has been making all of our birthday and celebration cakes for years. Again, we kept it simple and went for a four tier white cake with foliage and white roses. We chose four amazing flavours too! White chocolate, raspberry and prosecco, lemon, chocolate orange and toffee with biscoff! 

For our on the day stationary we decided against individual menus, order of the day etc and decided to put everything in one place and give our guests a wedding newspaper that would also be a keepsake of our day. We used Made by Wood & Wood who were amazing, we were so happy with the end result and received lots of compliments about them! 

We also hired a really cool neon sign “till death do us party” that sat in the corner of the dance floor.  

We hired a Magic Mirror which is a fully interactive, full length selfie taker – it was a huge hit with our evening guests who all got to take away their selfies as a memento of the night. 

What was on the Menu?

Firstly, we have to say how amazing Hannah was! All of our catering meetings were done remotely because of the pandemic, but that didn’t hinder anything and I always looked forward to our calls! 

For our drinks reception we chose five canapés per guest and we served White and Rose Prosecco and bottles of Peroni. 

For the wedding breakfast we had Chicken Liver Parfit served with Pineapple and Chilli Chutney and toasted Sourdough, followed by Rosemary and Garlic Butter Roast Lamb Rump, Charred Broccoli and Dauphinouise Potato Terrine and to finish a trio of deserts because they all tasted so good! We went for Chocolate Brownie served with Vanilla ice cream and Salted Caramel sauce, Classic Lemon Tart, with fresh raspberry and Sticky Toffee Pudding, served with Toffee Sauce and Vanilla Mascarpone. On the tables we had Sauvignon Blanc and a Rioja Reserva. 

Once the speeches and toast were over we had arranged for a shot to be served to each of our guests, who we asked to all stand up and take the shot together before heading downstairs to start the evening celebrations! 

We decided on the Bombay Bicycle grazing table for the evening food and it went down really well. We were initially worried that there wouldn’t be enough food, we’ve all been to weddings where you have left hungry, so we really didn’t want our guests to go hungry – they didn’t! 

What was your favourite part of the wedding?

All of it! The speeches were all emotional, my 15 year old step son Oliver delivered an amazing best man speech and Mark seeing me in my dress for the first time was his highlight of the day.

Do you have any advice for future brides & grooms?

Everyone tells you how quickly the day goes by and it really does. Enjoy every single moment! All the stress of planning and pulling things together will pay off in the end!

If you’ve been inspired by Helen & Mark’s wedding and would like to know more about The West Mill, we’d love to hear from you! Feel free to download a Wedding Brochure or get in touch.