Welcome to the world of wedding planning! Whether you’re feeling excited by wedding ideas and inspiration or a little overwhelmed, try these top tips from Combermere couples and celebrate the best day ever.

Weekday Weddings

Have you thought about having your Cheshire wedding on a weekday? The immediate thought for many couples is to choose a Saturday in the summer, but inevitably, there are only so many each year. Choosing a weekday wedding has plenty of perks too, as Rachael and Thomas tell us:

“We had a weekday wedding at Combermere Abbey and I was worried that people wouldn’t party as hard. I couldn’t have been more wrong! Although it meant some people taking time off work, your true friends and family don’t mind and the money you save on a mid-week package means you can put more into the wedding itself. If anything, I think people enjoy it more as they should be at work and aren’t!”

Take The Pressure Off

Pinterest can be an amazing source of wedding ideas, but it can also create unrealistic expectations. Use the wedding ideas you find as a starting point, then scale them up or back to suit your own vision, venue and investment.

“We live in a generation where there is a lot of pressure for everything to be perfect. It can be easy to get carried away with trying to make your wedding unique. However, the main thing is that you invite guests who love and support you,” say Hayley and Umesh. “This is what will make your day special.”

Set The Scene

“My top tip for any bride-to-be is to focus on getting the venue right,” adds Hayley. “I think this is the most important aspect of any wedding. Looking back, I was always worrying that suppliers were getting booked up so early, but this was unnecessary as there are so many good options out there.”

Find out how Hayley and Umesh made Combermere Abbey their own with a team of talented suppliers in their real wedding.

Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff

After hour upon hour of planning, from the colours of your table linen to your bouquet, it’s easy to get hung up on your carefully chosen wedding ideas. But Combermere couple Helen and Sam urge you not to.

“It’s your wedding – the one day especially for you and your partner – so make sure it’s the day you want it to be. Nothing else really matters – the day is about you and your partner getting married. Everything that goes along with the day is just an added niceness. So, don’t worry about everything going to plan. Things will get forgotten, people will do things wrong, someone might not turn up but it really doesn’t matter and you probably won’t notice!”

The Wedding Morning

We’ve featured a lot of real weddings and hosted hundreds more. One of the trends we’ve noticed among them is to have plenty of ideas to make your wedding morning special (think Champagne in Stone Cottage and matching silk robes), but a less than polished approach to the timing. This is something real bride Natasha urges you to get right:

“I would set an alarm for getting my dress on in the morning. This part went too quickly because I left this a little late.” You’d never know it from Natasha and Brett’s beautiful real wedding photos, though!

The Celebration

From the moment you walk hand-in-hand back up the aisle as newlyweds, to the toasts, the banquet, the dancing… Your Cheshire wedding will be a whirlwind of excitement, but that also means it can fly by. Luckily for us, Combermere couple Zoe and Junior have some great advice.

“If we could do it again, we would talk to more to people and make time to take things in. Your wedding is such a blur and goes by so fast!”

The Wedding Photos

“We didn’t plan too many wedding photos, just our immediate family and bridal party because we didn’t want many posed pictures,” explains Combermere couple Scott and Kate. “But the one picture we wished we had got was a group one of all the guests.”

You can still add an informal twist to group photos. Try group shots taken from above by drone as you mingle in the Walled Garden or fruit tree maze. Alternatively, you could channel the excitement with a Champagne toast en masse.

The Memories

“Make sure you book a videographer as well as a photographer,” advises Natasha. “Our videographer – Appleyard Productions – captured every little detail that we didn’t have time to see on the day.”

Managing your big day budget is important, but invest in a real wedding video and the results will last long after your big day.

With these top tips and wedding ideas in mind, you’re ready to plan to perfection. Check out our ultimate guide to wedding planning to tick off the right wedmin tasks at the right time.