Mismatched Fresh Pretty & Quirky Spring Wedding at The Hospitium York Museum | Whimsical Wonderland Weddings

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Glen and Amanda chose to marry on Good Friday of this year and chose The Hospitium at York Museum Gardens to host their wedding. Amanda is a card designer and certainly used her creative flair to make their wedding really personal. They wanted a day which was mismatched, colourful, fresh and pretty.

With fairy lights and tea lights nestled alongside gorgeous flowers, lanterns, bunting and flag table names the reception looked gorgeous.

Amanda donned a lace long sleeved dress by Maggie Sottero which she wore with a pretty headband and belt, while the boys wore rented suits with fun ties. So much style.

Thanks goes to the brilliant Craig Goode for providing the imagery today.

THE PROPOSAL | Glen wanted to surprise me so knew that if he'd organised a holiday, or weekend away I'd be suspicious. So on Good Friday 2013 we'd gone for a walk at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park near by. It had just been snowing and was quite muddy also. Glen said he kept looking for a dry patch on the floor! We'd walked over a bridge and I'd commented on how lovely the view was with the sun shining, so Glen took this as a good sign and got down on one knee and asked the question! He got emotional and I kept laughing! We've been together for 9 years and mentioned about getting married but it still all felt surreal but lovely.

THE VISION | I knew I didn't want a set colour or theme for the day. Being a card designer I'm always seeing inspiration for my job so knew things that I liked. Pinterest of course is the perfect place to start. I knew I'd like to do as many things as I could myself being a designer, but also to help with the budget. As the wedding was in Spring I wanted things to look fresh and pretty. I didn't want things to match too much! The venue would be really important and we wanted somewhere that would reflect us and that meant something to us both. York has always been somewhere I've been with my family when I was younger and is a place me and Glen love to go now so when we found the Hospitium in the Museum Gardens we both felt the excitement that this would be the place! The style of the building was so lovely and immediately I started thinking of ideas for décor!

THE PLANNING PROCESS | We felt a bit overwhelmed at first of where to start with it all! It was nice to spend a month also just enjoying being engaged and not to worry about the Wedding details straight away. Then when it had all sunk in we started thinking about numbers of people we would like to invite and this helped look at the size of venues for us first and to get a good idea of prices too, as we had no idea! We started looking at local places. I knew I fancied somewhere a bit different. Once we'd decided on the venue we could then think of the date and time of year we wanted. We knew that we'd like to do it as soon as within reason. Spring was really appealing and then we thought that having it on Good Friday the following year would be perfect (when Glen proposed!). Luckily the date was free so we booked it which left us 10 months of planning time. It worked out really well as we could just do a bit each month. I didn't want it to take over our lives! We made a list of the things we'd need to think about, hotels, transport, flowers, music, cake etc and went through our list and booked things in. We thought we could leave the details then until after Christmas to finalise. It didn't seem stressful then as we knew we had the main things in place. Then once we'd finalised our list I could start to make the invites and we sent them out a few at a time. It was easier to manage that way also.

THE VENUE | The Hospitium, York Museum Gardens

THE DRESS & ACCESSORIES | My dress was a Maggie Sottero dress from Hoops-a-Daisy in Wakefield. My headband and belt were from the Jenny Packham range from Debenhams. My shoes were from Dune.

FINDING THE DRESS | I knew I'd like a dress that I would feel comfy in and be able to be myself in and something that was a little different but I didn't know what that was! I tried on so many different styles. When I tried the dress on I chose it felt perfect and really light and easy to move in which was important to me. I loved the sleeves and neckline and so knew that was it! I'd only been to one shop as well and chose it there on the day which isn't like me!

GROOM'S ATTIRE | Luckily for me Glen wasn't too fussy what he wore but knew he wanted to wear a 3 piece suit and have matching best men and Dads suits so thought hiring them would be a more affordable way to do this. We choose navy suits and hired them from the Grooms Rooms in Normanton, Wakefield. The suits where perfect and Glen loved them straight away. I love Liberty prints and had seen a beautiful blue floral tie which Glen liked too! We bought some spotty ties from Debenhams for the best men and then had some plain blue ties for the Dads.

THE READINGS & MUSIC | We really wanted to have some live music as part of the day and when we heard the Pavilion String quartet playing at the Hospitium at a wedding fair we thought how perfect they would be for the ceremony and drinks reception. We chose a mixture of classical and modern music, both of which meant something to us. We'd been out to Leeds for a drink with my sister and brother in law and heard a fab guitarist Alec Townsend playing in the Living Room. Glen asked him if he would do weddings and he did! It worked perfectly as we got him to play just after the meal and before the evening disco.

One of our friends writes poetry and so asked if she'd write something for us. It was so lovely and personal to us. Just perfect for our day.

BEAUTIFUL BRIDESMAIDS | I had 3 bridesmaids, my older sister and my 2 nieces who were both 8 years old. I didn't know what colour to choose for them but after the seeing the tie I thought a blue would be really nice. I ended up getting all the same colour Dessy dresses, from Cottage Brides, in Horbury Wakefield. The younger girls loved the long floaty dresses and all the styles worked well together. The colour also suited all 3 of them. I bought 3 matching headbands from accessorize and the younger 2 had sparkly cardigans from Monsoon.

THE FLOWERS | I really wanted to have some lovely fresh flowers for our day, something that didn't look too neat but liked they'd just been hand-picked for the day. I liked the idea of having some height in the bouquet also. I loved soft pinks and peaches with some sage foliage and so printed a page with lots of lovely bouquets on. I talked it through with our florist, Garden of Eden in York and they were brilliant. I chose soft pink and peach roses, white freesias, cream stocks, wax flower, grape hyacinth and eucalyptus. When I saw the bouquets on the wedding day they were perfect, I couldn't have asked for anything better. We also had some simple flower arrangements in jars on the tables.

THE CAKE | We chose to have cupcakes and a small cake for our wedding cakes. We both like different flavour cakes so thought it would be good to have 3 different kinds, vanilla, chocolate and coffee and walnut. I wanted them to have some patterns on that I'd used in the wedding stationery so had the 3 different cupcakes with 3 different designs. I'd made some little flags and a banner for the small cake on top. We saw Sarah, from Babycakes, York at a Wedding fair at the Hospitium we went to. After chatting to her she was so lovely and really understood what we wanted. Her cakes tasted so delicious and I really trusted that she'd do a fab job for us. She did and the cakes looked and tasted amazing!!

YOUR PHOTOGRAPHER | We choose Craig after seeing his wedding photos from a couple of people I know. It was just what we wanted our photos to be and Craig was so lovely, which made him perfect. It's good to know we could trust him to capture our day how we wanted it to be. The photos really reflect it. He's created some wonderful photos which helped us remember our day and we'll have forever.

THE DETAILS & DÉCOR | Because the venue we chose was so lovely, I wanted to embellish this so just planned on having lots of lovely fairy lights and tea lights in jars to make the features more pretty. Honeycomb balls were perfect also as they could be hung from the beams and add lots of colour. I designed the wedding invitations and used the same pattern for the menus on the tables. I wanted to try and get lots of colour on the table so decided to get different coloured patterned sweet bags for favours which doubled up as name tag place names. I had a couple of chalk boards for the table plan and a welcome sign which I wrote myself. We had a white post box for the wedding cards. For our first dance we chose 'Bring Me Sunshine'. We really liked the lyrics to the song so I designed a print which we put up in the venue. It was really lovely seeing everything together and I was really pleased how it all worked. Simple and pretty.

THE HONEYMOON | After planning all the wedding we knew we both would like a really simple relaxing short break in this country for our honeymoon. We've been on so many amazing holidays before that we knew we'd struggle affording a big holiday abroad that we'd like. We've both not been to Cornwall together so chose to go to St Ives. We found such an amazing B&B called the Salt House. It was just perfect for what we wanted. We felt so tired after the wedding and it was nice just being able to throw a few things in our cases and not worry too much about planning things. We had a lovely week and also can plan in another holiday for later in the year too!

MEMORABLE MOMENTS | We had the most perfect day! I didn't want to look at the weather as I knew it was something that we couldn't do anything about. But on the morning of the wedding woke to bright sunshine which lasted all day! It was amazing and made it all the more special as we could have lots of lovely photos in the surrounding gardens. In the evening, just as the sun was setting, we were able to wander off just me and Glen with our photographer to get some last minute photos. The gardens were quieter then and it was lovely to have a walk and reflect on the day so far. I remember a couple of strangers congratulating us which was really lovely. We'd hired a campervan to take us both from the hotel we were stopping in to the Hospitium. We'd only seen it on photos and when it turned up it looked ace! I remember when we'd all got ready and we headed outside with my parents and bridesmaids. It was such a nice feeling as we weren't rushing and were all ready, with a moment of quiet between us all waiting to set off. Both of us really loved being surrounded my all our family and friends. It was such a special feeling to know that everyone had come there to be with us and share our day. It's a lovely feeling.

ADVICE FOR OTHER COUPLES | Don't think about everything at once. Make a list and then put things in order and do one thing at a time. It's good to have a rough timeline of what you'd like to do when, and then even better when you can cross something off the list!!! Try not to worry about all the details, I think that the day really reflected us as a couple, we just wanted to have the things that we both liked and tried not to think about what we were supposed to have or do. I didn't want it to take over my life so just tried to be relaxed about all the planning. Don't lose sight of why you're planning your day either, everyone wants to be there for you and will have a good time no matter what happens.

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE |

Venue | The Hospitium

Caterers | Bradshaws Caterers

Wedding Dress | Hoops-a-Daisy

Bridesmaid Dresses | Dessy & Cottage Bridals

Men's Suits | The Grooms Room

Photographer | Craig Goode

Florist | Garden of Eden

Cake | BabyCakes York

Campervan Hire | Liberty Campers

Lighting Hire | Wedding Venue Lighting

String Quartet | Pavilion String Quartet