The Grand Hotel, York Wedding Photography

The Grand Hotel, York Wedding Photography

Charlotte & Matthew were married at The Grand Hotel & Spa, York. Housed in the iconic former headquarters of the North Eastern Railway Company The Grand Hotel certainly is a stunning wedding location. Charlotte & Matthew had a very small wedding with only 12 guests to watch then exchange vows followed by a few extra friends joining for celebratory drinks then dinner.

Charlotte & Matthew say; Charlotte had always sworn she would be wearing a simple slimline dress but rather quickly fell in love with a very big princess-style dress! The Pronovias dress was strapless with a fully beaded bodice which gave it that real 1950s glamour to it! It was the second dress I ever tried and I knew straight away I loved it, although I had originally not even thought of trying that style on! Bridal Rogue Gallery in York were great with helping us with everything.

We bought the Groom, the Best Man and the Dads a simple black suit, white shirt, champagne-coloured waistcoat and gold tie from Dobell – we needed a style to fit all heights (and widths)! We didn’t have any bridesmaids as it was important for us to have a small wedding and ceremony and Charlotte was worried about who to pick! We didn’t have any flowers other than a simple bouquet of white flowers for the bride which Charlotte’s mum created! Instead of flowers on the tables, we had gold light-up trees with a black sequin table runner to add some real old Hollywood glamour to the room! We bought our wedding cake from Gayle at Where The Ribbon Ends. We first met Gayle at a wedding fair and then booked a tasting and designing session before ordering the cake. We picked a 3 tier cake; one layer was salted caramel; another was white chocolate and raspberry; and the final layer was fruit cake. It all tasted amazing! Gayle was fantastic throughout the whole process – she was so helpful with everything including delivery.

We spent a long time researching wedding photographers as we wanted someone who concentrated on natural “real” shots with only a few posed photographs. Bethany Clarke was amazing and provided us with just that.

She spent time with us to find out about our wedding theme and what we weren’t comfortable with (Charlotte hates her hands!) and then Bethany did what she could to avoid those types of shots which made it so easy on the wedding day! Bethany hid in the background taking so many natural beautiful photographs giving us all day to spend with our guests. For us, it was so important to enjoy our day and time with our guests rather than spend hours away from them without compromising on getting amazing photographs from the day – Bethany really did that for us! We cannot thank her enough.

Before the wedding we did an Engagement shoot in The Muesum Gardens