The Whitby Brunswick Centre -Fiona & Jack’s Story

The Whitby Brunswick Centre is the latest wedding venue we have the privilege of promoting. We have always dreamt of finding a unique wedding venue on the picturesque Yorkshire Coast so when we had the pleasure of providing the bar for Fiona and Jack’s wedding here, we fell in love with the venue as much as they did. Our first taste of how a wedding could look and feel in this venue, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to find out more about how this lovely couple came to tying the knot in Whitby.

Tell us a little about yourselves
We are a couple in our early 30s who met at university in Leeds over a shared love of music. We now live in London.
How long was your engagement?
Just 9 months!
What made you choose The Whitby Brunswick Centre as your venue?
As one of us is from the North East and the other from Bristol, we knew our guests would have to travel wherever we decided to get married, so we settled on Whitby as the ideal place to bring our guests to.
We searched every hireable venue in the town and surrounding area without finding the perfect place that suited our hopes for a down to earth, DIY wedding that would accommodate our fairly big guest list of 75+people.

We really wanted to be able to choose our own food, music, and decorations so that we could be
creative and save money at the same time. Then we remembered visiting the Brunswick years earlier for a market fair, and as soon as we found out it could be hired for weddings, we knew we’d found our perfect venue.

Describe the style, theme and vibe of your wedding We never really settled on one clear theme like some couples do, but all the details came together in the end to form a very crafty DIY wedding with lots of mid century vintage touches, like the groom’s mod suit and the bride’s original 1950s wedding dress, and plenty of Northern Soul and Motown music on the playlist. What was your most favourite part of your big day? This is the hardest question! There are so many wonderful memories. There was a moment immediately after the ceremony, where all of our guests had been ushered outside ready for the confetti throw, and we were left alone, just the two of us. It was so wonderful to look at one another and feel such a sense of joy and relief, after all the planning and hard work, we were finally married. What was the most challenging part of planning your wedding? Probably the part where we decided to do almost every single thing DIY. Creating and planning everything in the months leading up the day was very enjoyable, however the last couple of weeks before the wedding where everything needed to come together required a lot of intense planning!.We would probably do it all the same way again though.

What was your most memorable moment? The look on the bride’s parents faces when we presented them with a surprise cake cutting of their own – to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary from a few weeks earlier. Describe newlywed life in 3 words Same but different! Any advice for anyone planning a wedding? I heard this a lot myself and actually wish I had taken it on board more – it’s your and your partner’s day, so listen to your hearts and plan the day you want. From day one of your engagement everyone will have suggestions for you (with the best intentions most of the time), but try not to get swept away with all the outside enthusiasm, and follow your gut instead. We knew there were many typical wedding traditions that didn’t suit us, and I’m so glad that we stuck to our guns and had the day we wanted. Also, don’t take on too much – as naturally creative, organised people, DIY-ing everything was still a lot of work. You can put your stamp on your day by just choosing a couple of things to be very particular about. In the end it’s true what they say – on the day you’ll be focused on getting married and not the tiny details.

Which vendors were involved with your big day & how did you find the service they provided?

Venue: The Brunswick Centre – Just wonderful, all the people we dealt with were so friendly and helpful and the space was fantastic as a truly DIY venue.

Mobile bar: Louisianna’s Mobile Bars – They blew us away, from start to finish their service was impeccable and we highly recommend them.

Catering: Sander’s Yard Bistro – Another amazing vendor, the food was fabulous and catered so well to our range of dietary needs. We got so many wonderful comments on the food.

Photographer: Peter Hugo Photography – Pete was fantastic, his pictures are just out of this world and he was such a reassuring presence on the day, helpful in every way and really helped the day go smoothly.

Videographer: Egg TV – Our videographer was great and cooperated really well with the photographer. We love our wedding film!

Day coordinator: Kook Events – We hired a day-of coordinator (a must for a fully DIY wedding) and we are so glad we did. April kept everything running smoothly on the day without us having to worry or check on anything.

Flowers: The Flowerpot – We DIY’d the venue flowers but our buttonholes and bouquets from The Flowerpot were stunning.

PA system: Esk Audio: We used a self curated playlist and an iPod for our music, and the PA system that was provided as well as the microphones for speeches worked perfectly.

Cake – Marks & Spencer giant caterpillar cakes – these went down a treat.

Groom’s suit: Mod Clothing

We can not thank Fiona and Jack enough for choosing us to be part of their big day and sharing their amazing wedding journey with us.

We wish them both all the happiness in the world & an exciting life together.

PLease contact us for more information on this unique wedding venue or f you would like to arrange a viewing.

We are also happy to announce we will be hosting our first wedding fair at The Brunswick Centre. Come and explore what this venue has to offer and meet some of the regions best wedding suppliers.

The Whitby Brunswick Centre
23rd February 2020
11am until 3pm
Free to attend

All photographs have been kindly provided by the talented Peter Hugo Photography