AdRIAN ANd PAUL
34 » pink weddings magazine
‘We knew we wanted our day
to be unique and special to us,
with everything that
represented us as a couple.’
I took on the majority of wedding planning, as it’s not
really Paul’s thing, but luckily we were both very much in
agreement on the type of wedding we wanted. It wouldn’t be
in a church for a start, as neither of us are particularly religious
– and we knew we it was going to be a considerable size as we
have large circles of friends and family. We decided we wanted
to only invite those that we see often and socialise with on a
regular basis – family included – rather than those whom we
only see once in ten years.
We also wanted the whole wedding – ceremony, wedding
breakfast, evening reception and accommodation – all in one
venue, so a hotel was the obvious choice. It was tricky finding
a venue locally, as the majority of our friends had got married
in the last few years and we didn’t want to choose the same
place. We also knew we wanted to keep it fairly traditional,
with just a few little twists to make it different.
We started looking at venues online that met the criteria
we wanted – big enough to accommodate all our guests, not
too far away from Leamington Spa (preferably within an hour’s
drive) with accommodation available.
There was an image in our heads of the style of hotel –
somewhere with nice large gardens for pictures, somewhere
with character but not too old, and with modern furnishings.
We looked at about six places and finally fell in love with
Cotswold House Hotel and Spa – a luxury grade-two listed
townhouse in the heart of Chipping Campden in the beautiful
Cotswolds. It ticked so many boxes for us; we loved the
quintessential English style of the market town with its
gorgeous Cotswold stone buildings and the venue had large
gardens at the rear of the hotel, a stunning variety of rooms
and suites with steam showers and private hot tubs, and
courtyards and gardens. We could also have different parts of
the day taking place in different rooms, as we wanted.
We are both partial to a drink of two, so I came up with the
idea of naming our wedding breakfast tables after our
favourite drinks. We took it a step further by giving everyone a
glass of the drink for the table they were sat on –
Cosmopolitans, Malagousia white wine imported from Greece,
Independent Warwickshire craft beers and more.
We also had our very own ale, Lloyd-Brown Wedding Brew,
made especially for the day by our good friends at Church
Farm Brewery, along with badges for the pumps. The guests
loved it, as did we, and we even jumped behind the bar to pull
a few pints of our own wedding ale.
We chose to have an autumn wedding in October, as the
leaves changing colour look beautiful for photos. We were
incredibly lucky to have sunshine and blue skies all day long; it
was actually just as warm as a summer’s day and guests were
having to remove coats and jackets in the gardens and pull out
their sunglasses.
We wanted the style of our ceremony to remain classic,
yet modern, to fit with the venue. Flowers were tricky as
neither of us is particularly green fingered and we didn’t want
it to be to feminine. Luckily there was a florist just a few doors
