Tom & Josh: A Christmas Wedding Day at Millbridge Court

Millbridge Court offered us the perfect setting for our winter wedding. We knew it would be a large wedding, as we both come from big families, and Millbridge Court gave us the space and layout we needed to make our day work. We also knew that we wanted a modern look with a traditional feel, and the venue was perfect for this. With accommodation on site, it meant our close family and friends could be with us the night before and the morning after our wedding.

When we decided to have a winter wedding, we knew we wanted to go for traditional Christmas colours, so we opted for red and green. To give us the extravagance we wanted for our wedding, we encouraged a black-tie dress code for all the guests and chose velvet fabric for ourselves. Our suits were tailor-made by Zebel, who matched the suits to our vision.

We decided to move our legal wedding to the morning of our day with only family and close friends in attendance. We wanted to make sure this contrasted with our formal service, so we decided to go in the opposite direction and got legally married in our pyjamas. Of course, we had to stick to our colours, so we found matching button-up pyjamas in red and green.

From Tom’s time in school, he was always fond of the tradition of singing the 12 Days of Christmas at their annual Christmas Dinner. This is where the idea of having a Christmas wedding started. We both love Christmas and wanted our wedding to feel luxurious and well-designed. Being a same-sex couple allowed us to play around with traditions and create an elegant festive celebration we now fondly remember. We knew we had to go big but didn’t want to go over the top. A big focal point was a must, and of course, with it being so close to Christmas, we chose to put a 12-foot Christmas Tree in the Atrium, completely decked out in red and gold. We then took this idea and ran with it and added accents of gold and jewel tones (think… rubies, emeralds, sapphires…) throughout our décor and styling. For months, we collected gold lanterns, nutcrackers, and candles, and Josh knitted miniature Christmas trees as our favours on the tables.

Our Florist was Hannah Berry, who came highly recommended by a family friend of Tom. We met with Hannah a few months before the wedding and explained our vision for the day. We wanted jewel-toned flowers to match our knitted Christmas tree favours and complement our suits. Josh had seen a few examples of moon gates, so this was his big desire for our ceremony. Tom had hit the Pinterest boards and found pocket meadows, which are little flower arrangements attached to a piece of card, and put in the pocket of a suit in place of a pocket square. We decided to give the groomsman traditional boutonnieres and saved the pocket meadows for us to give us something special in lieu of the fact neither of us was a bride with a bouquet. Our bridesmaids had matching smaller bouquets with the same jewel-tone theme. These were then tied with ribbons of fabric from Tom’s late Granny, who had used it to make him a waistcoat and tie when he was 3 years old.

To style the venue, we were led by Hannah, who knew the venue very well as she is a preferred supplier. She loved the moon gate idea and used this to create a design for the whole room that included the lanterns we had collected and floor meadows down the aisle, which were then repurposed in the dining room for the Wedding Breakfast. The centrepieces we chose were small dome arrangements held in gold-footed bowls. One of Tom’s requests was to include brussel sprouts spray painted gold. Josh wanted pinecones painted gold so these featured throughout and were even included in our pocket meadows. Hannah also curates the Millbridge Court wreath every year, so for Christmas 2023, we made sure it matched our aesthetic and dressed the rest of the venue with small trees, vintage ice skates, and a sledge to complete the look.

Our Photographer was Jonny MP Photography. Getting married on the shortest day of the year meant we faced lighting challenges. We had looked at the Millbridge preferred vendors list, and Jonny stood out straight away. The colours of his portfolio, we felt best lined up best to the look of our plans and knew he would make the colours of our Christmas Wedding pop! We met with Jonny for an initial meeting online and clicked straight away. We knew we would feel relaxed with Jonny at the helm and end up with an amazing set of photos to cherish for years to come. Jonny was amazing on our day and captured every moment, from the legal ceremony all the way through to the party in the evening.

He even managed to navigate an unpredicted situation when a guest fainted, turning our confetti shot from an indoor setting to outside. Luckily, the guest was fine, albeit a little embarrassed. Before we even made it to our bed the night of our wedding, We had a set of previews to look through and, within a few weeks, had over 1000 photos to look through, which are now memories we have forever.

We also wanted to capture the day on video, so we used Ash Videography alongside Jonny to create even more lasting memories. We had the entire ceremony, speeches, and little snippets throughout the day videoed, which Ash edited into a documentary-style montage of our wedding.

Without a doubt, singing the 12 Days of Christmas was an absolute highlight and a moment we will never forget. We had named the tables after the 12 days, so every table took the line of the song that corresponded to their table. We loved seeing all our friends and family singing together and enjoying all the merriment. The team at Millbridge were amazing at helping us make this work by ensuring we had enough space and facilitated setting up the keyboard in the corner to accompany the song. A massive thank you goes out to them and to pianist and family friend Helen Bendall, who played on our day. We also loved that we could make our dog, Toby, part of our day. He could be there with us all morning and had his shining moment in the spotlight as our ring bearer in our formal ceremony. He had a matching outfit and made our day even better.

When we started the wedding process, we had such a clear vision in our heads of what we wanted our wedding to be like; however, as we went along, things changed, or we found out things weren’t possible. Our big advice would be not to feel downtrodden or disheartened by this and instead find alternatives to make your wedding the day you want it to be. Using vendors recommended by Millbridge meant that they knew the venue well and could offer advice and insights that helped shape our day. With planning any wedding, there are a lot of opinions from many different sources, but the best advice we got is that ‘those that matter don’t care and those that care don’t matter’. Enjoy your day for what you want it to be, and don’t let anyone take the joy out of it.