Gothic Glam Autumnal Wedding

Jessica Stott Photography

September 9, 2020

With autumn just around the corner, we know you’re going to love swooning over Gemma and Neil’s big day. They were hitched in November 2019, and planned their day to reflect their mutual love of the season.

“Autumn is our favourite”, Gemma told us, “it’s absolutely beautiful in Cumbria at this time of year. Our decor had a symbolic nod towards new beginnings with fallen autumnal leaves below green foliage and freshly bloomed flowers.”

Choosing Three Hills Barn in Torpenhow as their venue, they were really able to make it their own. The couple did all the flowers themselves as well all of the decorations. The bride’s mum even made the cake. “We wanted the day to be as personal with as much meaning as possible”, she continued. “We had our favourite incense burning throughout the ceremony and in our decor we used items collected on our travels together. The autumnal leaves, pine cones and conkers all have their little stories attached, my favourite memory was collecting the conkers while walking alongside the river in Paris.”

“We both love crafty projects so we decided to do everything ourselves. We started a year in advance with our own sloe gin which we then bottled and hand burned each of the wooden tags to make our favours. We hand made our invitations and then put together our signs, ring box, venue and table decorations, including the floral circle which the ceremony was held by. I made my own bouquet, the buttonholes, bridesmaid flowers and flower girl basket along with all the floral headpieces.”

Another unusual (although not to her) element was that Gemma opted to wear black. Her guests were not at all surprised to see her saunter down the aisle looking like a gothic princess, “Our guests knew I could never wear anything white!” she laughed. “My flower girl was my daughter, Sailor Rose, and she wanted her dress to sparkle so I hand beaded her a new waistband for the front of her dress, she said she felt like a princess! After beading her dress I had a mad idea to also modify my own dress and spent three hours cutting off all of the delicate silver beads, it then took a further 120 hours to embellish the detailing with labradorite, spinel, pyrite and glass beads. It was hard work, a lot of added stress, but it was worth it in the end!”

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