Faye and Jason were married in Manchester Museum. The ceremony was held underneath the Tyrannosaurus Rex, in The Fossils Gallery. This was followed by a drinks reception amongst the taxidermy – including a tiger, lion, and a polar bear – and all underneath the skeleton of a sperm whale!
“Our wedding theme was ‘English Eccentric'”, said the bride. “We ended up with a mixture of English heritage, taxidermy, cake that looked like savouries, and Manchester iconography.”
“We didn’t have one particular inspiration as such, we just wanted to make it as fun as possible for everybody. We wanted lots of colour, brilliant music and a relaxed and friendly feel. We also wanted to support small, independent and, where possible, local, businesses. We’re so pleased we did as we got exactly what we wanted and a personalised service. We knew we didn’t want an off-the-peg wedding experience and every one of our suppliers spent time getting to know us and tailoring things for us.”
After the ceremony and drinks reception, the wedding party headed to Band on the Wall for the main reception/ after party! “This venue has a history of over 200 years and has been part of the Manchester music scene since the 1930s”, she continued. “We hired the whole venue including all the staff (box office staff, music engineer, bar staff). For us, this was the ideal venue and one that took a long time searching for! We wanted somewhere in the city centre that was easy for our guests to get to.”
Faye’s incredible outfit was made up of a Yorkshire tweet corset, skirt and silk underskirt embroidered with Manchester bees by Kiku Boutique. Her amazing horn headdress was from Hysteria Machine and her jewellery was by Bloody Mary Metal. “Lynn and Sadia at Kiku were an absolute dream to work with”, she said. “They worked with my ideas to create my perfect outfit. Also, Cara of Hysteria Machine is an absolute wonder, and even made the buttonholes for us at short notice when our original idea didn’t work out.”
Instead of a cake they had a three-tiered pork pie cake, they also had pastries and pasties on their ‘desert table’. “Our pork pie cake was one layer each of pork, pork and black pudding, pork and stilton. We also had a Mediterranean veg and feta pie. We also had ‘scotch eggs’ made with Cadbury crème eggs wrapped in chocolate fudge and covered in white chocolate and biscuit crumbs; pork pie cakes made with a blondie surrounded with apricot jam with a shortbread crust; Cornish pasties – sweet pastry filled with dried fruits and apple; and ‘sausage’ rolls made with a chocolate blondie in a sweet flaky pastry. There was nothing left of any by the end of the night and we had ordered A LOT!”
One of the couple’s favourite things was their bands, Thingumabob and the Thingumajigs and Misty’s Big Adventure. “We had the two most colourful and fun bands we know, and flipping lovely people too. A wonderfully psychedelic mix of moustaches, ukuleles, brass instruments and a dancing red and blue manbeast! The bands were one of our biggest expenses but we always said that if we got married we would book them if we could. We went to see them together very early on in our relationship and have been huge fans ever since.”
“The best part about planning our wedding was spending the time to do things exactly as we wanted”, Faye concluded. “Yes it would have been easier to have an ‘out of the box’ wedding but we were so disappointed by this approach that we found at most of the venues we looked at. In the end I wouldn’t change anything about the day, I just wish it had lasted longer!”
