Wedding Blog

We were recovering from celebrating the most amazing day of our lives. Today we’re recovering from the honeymoon, and I have to be honest everything still feeling as surreal as it did two weeks ago.

I know what you’re thinking, how do you recover from the Maldives? That’s another story, but for now we just wanted to take time to reflect on what an amazing wedding we had, better late than never, which is kind of our thing anyway 🙂

I would love to say we were calmly preparing for the wedding in the lead up, but in all honesty you can swap out ‘calmly preparing’ for the more accurate ‘frantically trying not to forget anything’ in the in the weeks and days prior to our big day.

Mixed in amongst the chaos of planning quite an elaborate wedding, was the crazy idea to film it ourselves in 4K with 5 cameras and a drone. Honestly, what were we thinking!

It’s fair to say the week leading up to the wedding was frankly chaos. There were wedding things everywhere, we only just got the order of services printed up on time, there was camera kit all over the place across several houses, deliveries going to every neighbour on the street, we had no idea if the flower girl dress was going to even fit, we didn’t even know if our niece Amy was going to make it to the wedding as she was expecting a baby two days before. The wedding rehearsal was like hearding cats, during which we realised we had somehow mis-calculated how many aisle runners we needed and that we only had enough for one side of the church.

Fair play to our friends and family. Father of the bride swiftly made a phone call straight after the rehearsal about the aisle runners, following which a guy turned up a few days later with the runners beautifully prepared, I didn’t dare to ask how he got them done in time. Amy lay flat with her legs crossed to try and stop baby from making an appearance earlier than anyone wanted, maid of honour Tor kept the bride on point and slowly guided her back on the rails when required, mother of the bride spent hours washing and ironing shirts, not to mention all the other general running around that our parents did, best man Dan stepped up to super Dan mode, and everyone just pulled together to do what was needed to pull off our quite frankly completely mental vision.

The day before the wedding was still chaos. Chris was very surprised to have a red Ferrari California (like we hired in Paris) delivered on Thursday morning so that he could drive himself to the church, thank you so much to everyone who was in on it, as many of you will know he’s difficult to surprise and equally as difficult to get cooperation from when you’re trying to surprise him.

Thank you too to Dan Brennan and Jojo, for totally pulling the setting up of the church out of the bag with less than 24hours to go. It was a huge ask and we honestly don’t know how you guys made it all happen.

Back at bride HQ, the bridesmaids arrived on Thursday to a slightly stressed bride who had completely run out of time to do everything she had planned. Cue bride squad going to argos, the supermarket, whipping up a curry, keeping the drinks flowing, and generally being awesome in a way that only they know how.

Over at the grooms quarters for the evening and following a the grooms ‘last supper’ with friends and family, they discovered quite late in the evening that the shirts had got a bit muddled up and it turns out that noone had any idea what size they were. Time for a huge shout out to one of the most amazing people we know Becky, who was as Chris described it ‘Vicky for the evening’, sorting the boys out with their suits, shirts and shoes so that they were all ready to go the next morning. She even took one for the team going for a spin in the Ferrari in the middle of the night, while Sam stayed up until the early hours while Chris wrote his speech, yes he really did write it the night before.

The morning of the wedding was a little calmer for the bride, but we found the timings start to slip (as everyone warns you) from 8am when the first group of ladies needed to be at the hairdressers. The bride was back at the house having her makeup done…

Still everything was falling into place, the flower girl dress fitted perfectly, the flowers were beautiful, and the house had a bit of a slightly crazy Christmas morning feel to it if that makes any sense. There was minor panic over getting to the church on time, but with crazy traffic we were only 25 minutes late in the end, which is the brides prerogative right?!

I remember pulling up the church and just feeling overwhelmed with excitement, I’ve never been so excited about anything in my life! All of the little bits of detail feel so important before the day itself, and actually a lot of it is, but the second you get to that church nothing else matters except for the reason you’re there in the first place.

We couldn’t have booked the weather had we tried, everything was so perfect. As we were getting married outside of our parish we had been attending church regularly in Knowsley for the last eight months, and it was so lovely to see the congregation of St Mary’s in the church for our wedding. We couldn’t have asked for a more welcoming church.

Thanks to vicar Hugh for not only letting us get away with turning his beautiful church into an OB, but for delivering a beautiful service that was so perfect and personal to us.

The stunning horses from the Ostler made the journey to the venue perfect, we even got chance to stop and meet ‘Judge’ and ‘Jury’ properly on the way to the hall.

As for Knowsley Hall, what a venue! We arrived up the drive to the very talented string trio playing on the front steps, with all of our friends and family waiting for us. Thank you to Wayne the event coordinator for styling out the amended timings perfectly. It was a magical moment for us walking into the room for the wedding breakfast, piano playing, friends smiling and the room looking simply stunning.

And the evening reception, well we promised you a party! We couldn’t have dreamed in a million years how awesome soul revolver would sound in the ballroom, and while it wasn’t the most conventional first dance, I’m sure you all agree it was perfectly us.

Thank you to Matt and the evening team at Knowsley Hall for keeping everything running smoothly even when we had a few hiccups. No wedding is complete without a bit if drama, and we certainly had our share as the night went on but the staff at Knowsley handled everything with cool, calm, professionalism as we knew they would.

There are of course too many people who made our day so perfect and unforgettable to thank properly in a blog post, and we will be in touch with each and every one of you individually as soon as we can (you know who you are anyway).

Thanks for all of the pictures you’ve all been sharing on social media. If you have any others please send them over so that we can make a super album on the Facebook page.

Sorry to anyone who we didn’t get chance to speak to properly too, it turns out it’s impossible to speak to anyone properly on your wedding day, and as much as we tried so hard to mingle and party in equal measure, the whole day was a total whirlwind!

Lastly, congratulations to Amy and Jack on the birth of Evelyn Lilly May Williams, who held on in there until the 26th May.

Thanks to everyone who joined in with the photo booth fun. If you want to check out your photo booth pics, head to the gallery on our website, or our Facebook page.

Time for us to finish off the cake and get some rest, then we will tell you all about the honeymoon.

Well that didn’t quite go as we expected. We thought the drama was over after the father of the grooms little stumble in church, but not to be out done the mother of the bride stepped up.

Thank you everyone for your concern and well wishes. My mum arrived back at Knowsley Hall this morning after several tests and a bit of sleep, my poor dad looking slightly more shattered having not slept a wink.

The short version is that she’s fine. Thank you so much for all of you messages which have of course been passed on, and major kudos to the staff at Knowsley Hall for being so amazing in every way. Soppy post to follow, but for now it’s a thank you for everything, lots of love to everyone, and we’re off to get some sleep x x

Well here it is lady’s and gentlemen. The wedding of the year! We are delighted to present to you our final vision.

The stage is literally soon to be set, the cameras are in place and the groomsmen groomed (well, nearly).

I sprung out of bed this morning to see what the weather was doing. Pulling open the shutters to gaze out from my room, past my wedding car, (a classic red Ferrari California T) and down the long gravel drive, I am pleased to report that I can see right out towards Liverpool. Visibility is excellent and their are beautiful bright blue skies to begin our setting as the sunrise glints on the magnificent Knowsley Hall.

I had a late night, getting to bed at 3am having finally written my speech with my lead Groomsmen Sam. There may be bags under my eyes today, but there will be plenty of smiles too, a reminder of the hard work we’ve all put in behind the scenes to make this a wedding to remember for the rest of our lives.

My family are here, I had a drink with the Out-laws, soon to be In-laws last night, and for the first time I have butterflies. It’s a wonderful feeling. The church looks amazing, the venue looks stunning and you are all in for a right royal treat.

We’re hoping to web stream some of our day, subject to technology cooperating so look out for a link here if we get it working.

In the mean time, grab your sun cream, a hat and get on those dancing shoes to join Vicky and I for the show of the year, and our lives and thank you to you all for your support and being part of it. Tag us in your photos today using our hashtag #monkcroftwedding

We will be recovering from the most amazing day of our lives. Sorry for the radio silence over the past couple of months, to be honest we kind of blinked and we were in May, mid May to be precise. Top tip to anyone looking to tie the not, don’t pick a crazy year for sport to get married when you both work in sport!

So anyway, obviously we’ve been slightly crazy busy since our last post. We’ve had hen doos in Liverpool, stag doos on a boat (what could possibly go wrong), and classic wedding drama at every turn. One of which was the ties, oh dear…

So it turns out that Vicky’s choice of bridesmaid dresses are virtually impossible to match colour wise with ties. You won’t believe it when you see them, but having been on the hunt for over a year, we literally took delivery yesterday morning of some ties that we finally tracked down in New York, that are the only ones we have found to match the dresses. Still at least we found them before the wedding not afterwards, that would have been awkward.

Another top tip would be not to film your own wedding, even if you can, just don’t. I know it will look stunning, it really will, but just the other day we had no lenses for the cameras, so Vicky’s TV coordinator brain had to step in to spend a day fixing the lens situation leaving wedding planning begging in the corner. Turns out there aren’t many lenses left in the country next weekend because there’s a big event on, some other wedding or something, not sure what that’s about…

So with just six days to go, the countdown is nearly over. We’re so excited to finally be able to show you all our vision and share the best day of our lives with our nearest and dearest. I guess the vision thing might sound odd to some of you, but there’s this little picture in both of our minds of how everything is going to look and we think you’re going to like it 🙂

Next step, the rehearsal. Wish us luck! x

When we first started thinking about our wedding invitations, I was adamant I was making them myself. I mean why wouldn’t I? I’m not totally useless with a craft knife and it can get really expensive having someone else do all the work.

I then got some very good advice from a friend who knows how much (or specifically how little) free time we both have outside of work. He told me how much it cost to do their own invitations, and how long it took to make them which I’ll be honest was a bit of an eye opener.

We started looking for ideas, and actually had quite a strong idea of what we were after but couldn’t find it anywhere, until we went to a Knowsley open evening.

Set up in the foyer was this table with the most beautiful array of Knowsley themed invitations, we were both amazed as they were exactly what we had been looking for. We got chatting to the very lovely Cheryl from Pink Sherbet Stationary, who totally got what we were trying to achieve in one conversation, then off she went to draft our proofs.

It took quite a few subbing attempts to make our wording fit (purely because there was so much of it!) but we got there, and we actually went to collect on Valentine’s Day which was kind of sweet.

Chris had found somewhere that makes custom wax seals so that was happening! He made up a logo, contacted the seal company (by email in the end as the phone call was chaos, long story), and within a few days we had our own personalised wax seal kit to play with.

We managed to find an evening to spend together, trading Netflix for the opportunity to make up the first batch of our invitations and practicing our wax seal technique over a bottle of fizz.

I have to admit, I think the personalised seal finished the job off perfectly, and actually there is something quite therapeutic about dripping wax on envelopes. I might have to start sealing all my letters with wax.

We’re so excited by our invitations and hope people love them as much as we do. Next stop, write the order of service!

We spent a long time thinking about which wedding photographer to choose for our wedding, honestly it’s harder than you might think.

To be fair we’re probably pickier than most couples as we can see styles and the effects of using different lenses a mile off, but it’s really important to get what you want from your wedding photographs so we kept chipping away.

We spoke to soooo many different people, some favoured fashion photography, some classic wedding photography, and others went 100% natural with their composition taking no posed photographs.

When we met James from Stack Photography at Liverpool Wedding show, something just felt right. He gets us, we get him, and to top it all off we both really love his work.

We were so excited to do our engagement shoot, and in a twist to the tradition of taking these pictures close to the wedding, we asked if he would take ours early, five months before the wedding in fact, because we were desperate to get the website published.

We chose to have our engagement photos taken in Liverpool because it means a lot to both of us, and managed to choose a dry (but very very cold) December day to have them taken.

At this point I have to give a massive shout out to the guy who was running the carousel at the Albert Dock, who refused to take any money but let us stay on for ages taking the pictures.

It’s was very strange to be on the other side of the camera for once! We’ve both dabbled at reporting back in the day, but for me that was just interviewing friends after races really so I never thought too much of it. Who knew trying to not look cold and awkward while someone takes a photograph of you could be so difficult!

We couldn’t wait for the pictures to come back, I think more out of nervousness over how ridiculous we both managed to look than anything. Honestly though James did such a brilliant job that day, and I just know he will capture our wedding perfectly.

You can see all of our engagement pics in the gallery section of the website if you want to have a look. I hope you like them, Let’s just hope it stays dry for the big day itself too!

Apparently the first thing every bride starts shopping for is THE DRESS. Turns out that’s every bride except for me.

You see, anyone who knows me in any capacity will probably be able to tell you how much food related drama there has been in our lives over the past few years, or should I say drama over lack of food that I can actually eat. It’s been an ongoing saga which has basically turned me into a tired, involuntary vegan with the exception of eggs (at time of writing), and the whole thing has been causing me to feel, well, pretty rubbish if I’m honest.

So imagine trying to face shopping for the most important outfit you will ever wear. Having to strip down in front of a total stranger, feeling like you need to explain how it’s possible to feel bloated, unconfident and in pain while everyone in the room tells you what a nice figure you have. Everyone except for the mirror, who agrees with you that you have no figure at all because you can hardly eat anything substantial.

I know, it’s a first world problem. But every time the conversation of getting married comes up the first question, without fail, is ‘oooh have you sorted your dress yet?’. When you tell them you haven’t even tried one on, the look you get is a bizarre combination of shock, disbelief and panic on your behalf, topped off with a bit of pity as they’re convinced you’re never going to find anything in such a short space of time and you’re going to be stuck.

I did actually come up with a plan that would take away the whole seriousness of finding a dress. I had been talking to ‘Say Yes To The Dress UK’ for some time, and they were really keen for me to go on the show but unfortunately we were unable to find filming dates that worked for myself and my ‘entourage’.

When we got into 2018 I knew that I needed to start taking it seriously. I just couldn’t put it off any longer, so I booked some appointments in Liverpool, and off I went with my Mum and Maid of Honour in tow for some much needed support.

I knew I should be excited, but I’ll be honest, I was absolutely terrified. I was scared I wouldn’t find anything I liked, that nothing would look right on me and that I would just feel plain weird in a wedding dress. But more than anything, I was so worried that nothing on this planet could make me feel confident on my wedding day, which is a very scary concept.

The trip to Liverpool wasn’t completely fruitless. The first shop granted was an epic waste of time and quite frankly re-affirmed everything I had been literally loosing sleep over, but thankfully we found a very sympathetic lady in one shop that we chanced upon who was absolutely amazing. She figured out the style for me, helped me work out which elements of the dress were the most important to me, and actually gave me quite a lot of confidence. It was a real shame in the end that they didn’t have ‘the one’, but c’est la vie and all that.

I set to work hunting down styles I liked, then designers I liked, followed by dresses I liked and then finally shops within a 50 mile radius that stocked those dresses. Because of the unique way my brain seems to work this actually didn’t take too long, the catch was trying to actually get appointments to try on the dresses. It turns out that for some reason everyone seems to be shopping for wedding dresses straight after Christmas, who knew?!

Because I was now starting to quietly freak out that I was going to end up buying my wedding dress from the Trafford Centre because I couldn’t find anything else, I took any appointment I could get to work through my designer hit list. I even took my new found confidence to a shop on my own to try on some of the dresses, which was actually quite liberating if I’m honest even if it was still a bit scary.

The winner was what for now we will refer to as a mystery dress shop in Bolton. Unfortunately this appointment was on a feeling dizzy level of pain day so I wasn’t feeling great in myself at all, but the amazing lady who took my appointment was actually the owner of the shop and she was so lovely.

She took time to ask me what I was after before we even looked at dresses, checked the budget (let’s not go there) before I tried anything on, and was really sympathetic to the general feeling rubbish situation.

A bizarre combination of events meant that my mum and dad were both with me at this particular appointment, which was actually really lovely as I think I had been lacking a bit of male brutality to help me make decisions.

I couldn’t believe that I actually found MY DRESS. A dress that I was happy in on a bad day. I guess in a way that kind of worked out, as by May I’m hoping to feel so much better then nothing will be able to stop me.

I had to laugh at the end of my final dress appointment when my new friend said to me; ‘I have to say, for someone getting married in four months, you’re very calm.’

Yep, that’s how I’m feeling. Very calm…

So you’ve all heard that saying about swans, right?

It sounds like such a simple thing to sort out for the wedding compared to everything else, but until today, neither of us have agreed on any element of what we want in a wedding cake, which in truth was starting to get a bit awkward.

As soon as we saw Suzanne’s cakes we knew we had to book her to make ours. She’s not just a baker but a wedding cake designer, with awards to prove it not that you wouldn’t believe her.

We finally got a day off together to go pay her a visit, managing to pick the snowiest day this year to take a trip to the middle of the Saddleworth Moors.

We talked a lot, she listened and had a few sneaky peaks at the dress, demonstrating the best poker face I’ve ever seen.

Neither of us had any idea gluten free cake could taste so good! We were spoilt for choice trying to pick our flavours. It was a tough job, but we had our loose fitting jeans on and someone had to do it.

After just 15 minutes (and lots of cake) she produced the most beautiful piece of artwork, which was a sketch of how she envisaged our wedding cake would look. We were both gobsmacked with what she was showing us. It was so beautiful, classy, and everything we had both been looking for without even knowing it.

I just hope you all enjoy eating it as much as we enjoyed choosing it.