Ashleigh and Joe met by chance. “It all started with an encounter in Yates, Hartlepool, after I had been out in Newcastle for the day for my friend’s birthday,” says Ashleigh. “Joe had been out with his dad and they decided to have a cheeky stop in town before heading home. When one of the best mixes came on over the speakers, a dance off broke out with boys vs girls. Joe saw his chance to take the centre of the circle, but little did he know that I would break out into dance and steal the show. A few weeks after our chance encounter, we crossed paths again on Tinder, and as we recognised each other, we started talking and eventually organised our first date.” Joe proposed to Ashleigh in December 2021 while on a pre-Christmas break in Edinburgh. “It’s a city we both love and it was our second visit there as a couple,” shares Joe. “We got the train up from Newcastle and explored the Christmas markets before heading off to an Irish bar for a few drinks. A few weeks before the trip, I started researching various spots in Edinburgh for where I could pop the question. I settled on an amazing viewpoint known as The Vennell, which has great views of Edinburgh Castle. We left the bar and I led Ashleigh up the stairs. Once we were at the top, Ashleigh turned around to find me on one knee, asking the question. Ashleigh’s initial response was ‘Are you being serious’ but she eventually said ‘yes’. It was a complete surprise to her and we went on to celebrate the rest of the night.” SETTING THE SCENE “I’m an interior designer, so the overall look and vibe of the venue were really important to me,” explains Ashleigh. “When we were looking at venues in Northumberland, Halton Grove kept coming up as a suggested venue, but it had no interior shots available as it was still going through a full renovation. We contacted the team and had a great conversation with Simon, one of the owners, who provided us with the initial floorplans of the venue, photographs of the original grounds and look books created by the interior designer, which, when we went through them together in detail, gave me butterflies and I immediately wanted to make a viewing. For the first viewing, we were told to bring warm clothing and walking shoes or wellies due to the renovation, but even that didn’t put us off bringing our parents with us to have a look around. The site was inevitably a building site, but the passion of the owners, Simon and Martyn, during the walk around and the knowledge of each and every decision were enough to put us at ease in booking a venue that would only be open for a couple of months before our chosen date. We also loved the fact that Halton Grove wanted to specialise in two-day wedding events, as we liked the idea of spending some special time with our nearest and dearest before and after the wedding day. The site has a dedicated bridesmaid cottage and a honeymoon lodge for the newlyweds, so it really had thought of everything you could need to make the weekend unforgettable.” For their favours, the couple handmade iced shortbread biscuits embossed with a personalised stamp of their married surname and wedding date. “We placed them in clear cellophane bags tied with black ribbons, which added a lovely personal touch to the tables and looked really expensive even though we had made them ourselves,” recalls Ashleigh. “For our cake, we had a four-tier design, which was actually two tiers with two fake tiers on top and two tray cakes to save on costs. Our cake maker, Cakcophony, worked with us to create a plain white fondant exterior trimmed with a thin white ribbon that was decorated with handmade sugar flowers and leaves.” Ashleigh made the couple’s table plan. “I had seen something similar on Pinterest,” says the bride. “We thought the concept was really fun by using a photograph of each of our guests to highlight the table they were assigned to, which doubled up as a removable photo that guests could stick alongside their message in the guest book. The place names were a labour of love made on evenings in the run-up to the wedding. As guests had RSVP’d to the day a few months in advance, we thought it was inevitable that some would have forgotten their order, so we made personalised menus highlighting the choices that each guest had made and put a short personalised message to each guest at the bottom thanking them for coming and mentioning an in-joke or a personal quip. This went down amazingly with the guests, as everyone read the personalised messages and commented on how it made them feel fully involved and considered on 31 REAL WEDDINGS
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