Mr & Mr Lincoln-Shaw

21st August was the second most important day of our lives. First being 6th Feb when Pudding came home obvs.

As you all know we WON a wedding on Instagram at the beautiful Peckforton Castle in Cheshire. The big day was held on the 21st of August, the day we got to call ourselves Mr & Mr Lincoln-Shaw!

It all started way back in May 2019 when Antonella, The Uncensored Reviewer posted the giveaway on her stories. Darran being Darran decided to enter ‘for a laugh’. With the help of our amazing followers, Holly Drynan, Rachaele Hambleton (Part-time working mummy) and all of our amazing followers. We were mentioned more than 800 times in the comments (there was only a total of about 1100 comments).

When Peckforton Castle announced the winner on their stories, we couldn’t believe that we had won! I mean, who actual wins a WEDDING! We then spend the rest of the day calling around and telling family and friends that we’re getting married in 3 months time!

This is where Darran goes full-on  ‘bridezilla’ to get this wedding sorted.

This is now where Darran takes over the blog as Tim has no clue what to write as I did it all….

Call me a wedding planner

I have never planned a wedding or anything as big as what we had. It was time to get out a note pad and write down everything i wanted. Then whittle it down to what we could afford. I tell you this list was endless to 8-foot blossom trees, an ice-cream truck and a white bouncy castle were just a few of the things i wanted.

So many of you wanted to know what we won so here it is:

  • Use of two large function rooms and private bar
  • Late-night wine cellar bar until 1.00 am (we paid to keep it open till 3.00 am)
  • 60 x Wessex drinks packages (1 glass of sparkling wine on arrival, ½ a bottle of wine for during the wedding breakfast and a glass of sparkling wine for the toast, per person)
  • 60 x Wessex wedding breakfast (3 courses sit down meal)
  • 60 x Reduced evening buffet of bacon/sausage baps with potato wedges
  • The honeymoon suite for the night of the wedding (kindly gifted us another night)
  • Your photography by Louise Cuppello (from getting ready to the first dance)

Louise and Alex were fantastic and have captured some of the most beautiful photos of our tribe, the day and our beautiful son. They did us both so proud.

  • Blossom trees and plinths for venue dressing (we decided to go with someone else)
  • Evening DJ Supplied by HIPSWING

So there you have it that is what we won. As you can see its absolutely amazing but there is still a lot more to do to be wedding-ready.

Let’s get planning 

Having a fantastic wedding coordinator in the form of Erin McFadden. She seriously kept me sane and helped me to start planning the wedding of our dreams. Although i have a list as long as both arms. Erin helped me prioritise to get the most important things done first.

This is where calling the registrar is probably the most important and to get wedding insurance. The team at Cheshire East Register Office were amazing. If you are reading this to get ideas of how a wedding works. Expect a big bill to make it official. We paid £525 for this bit and i was shocked. We couldn’t fault the ladies that made it official and they both were so lovely. Even when we both got stuck on the word solemnly (currently still trying to say it correctly).

Instagram is going crazy

Our followers are just as shocked as us but so happy… Well some of them! We all know there are bitchy people, jealous of others being happy.

We had so many generous offers from so many people and businesses wanting to gift us things for our wedding or offering their services. We couldn’t quite believe how generous people were being. We were overwhelmed with the love and support we were getting.

Here is a list of the beautiful people who helped us at our wedding

Katie from @maddisonjcreations offered to dress our wedding for us and fuck me did she do a good job. We met up at Peckforton Castle, went through everything with her and being the bridezilla i was i thought at one point she and Lorraine were going to tell me to shut up. But they didn’t. They continued to say “ you can have whatever you want, it’s your day”. A million thank you’s will never be enough for what they created for us.

Anne-Marie from @thelittlecakecompany offered to make us our wedding cake. Again we were so overwhelmed by what she was offering us. We went to her beautiful home and had a cake tasting afternoon. In her kitchen, there were loads of display cakes staring us in the face. I couldn’t quite believe what we were doing and sitting here after everything has died down I’m so so thankful to her for creating a masterpiece which was inhaled by all of our tribe.

Cath and her Husband from @cpdfilm captured our whole day in film form. We were so lucky that my parents offered to pay for this and Cath kindly gave us a discount. Speaking with my parents at their house it was so important to capture this on film to show pudding when he is older. Boy oh boy we have some great footage for his 18th birthday or for when he brings home a partner. But most of all it was important to show him how much love he has in our families.

Rebecca and the team from @porkypenguin got in touch with us to help with place names and table numbers as well as gifting us an order of the day and our seating plan. Again shocked at what we were getting. Rebecca literally hates me i swear. The number of times I emailed her a table plan then to email her to say it had changed. She was great at calming me down when i was having a manic panic.

Emma from @carwayscandy for gifting us a sweet table full of amazing pic n mix. Which i didn’t even manage to get a pic of, or have any myself because as soon as they were brought out the kids and some adults devoured them all. This shows how bloody good it was.

We also had so many other people help us out:

@rosewoodjewellery for gifting us our wedding rings which we will be changing in the near future to go to her studio to create our own.

@nikkikinney1974 for creating the beautiful floral headbands for our flower girls.

@tinks83 for offering her discount on our suits which again i was a nightmare with.

@rusticrebeldesignsboutique for gifting our gift boxes and bags for our wedding party.

@the.madbatter for discounting an order for us of cupcakes, brownies and rocky roads. Delivered them to our door and was so bloody kind.

@ianlloydeventsltd for creating such beautiful corsages, buttonholes and gifts for some of our guests.

@honeydarlingcandlecompany for gifting our gifts for the bridal party

@cufflinksgalore for gifting us our cufflinks, tie clips and collar stiffeners

@thelovelylittlecraftshop for gifting our personalised champagne flutes and we also paid her to create the children’s names for all the children’s activity packs

Even though we were gifted so so much by so many amazing people, we still managed to spend over 3k on extras and I didn’t get my ice cream van or bouncy castle. The day was faultless.

Bloopers

The first blooper started with me running around the hotel the night before trying to get last-minute bits done before my night out with friends and family in a local pub.

I grab my sister and Kez to help me sort out taking gift boxes to where they needed to be and make up the children’s activity packs, not realising she’s carrying her own gift so knows she’s getting something.

The morning of the wedding I’ve got full tit sweat on while I’m doing my hair and this is when everyone wants to pop in and say hi… No! Get out, please!

The surprise guest which was Tims bestie from Australia arrived and I’m trying to keep her hidden as well as get ready myself. This was so stressful but it went down a treat and soon as she walked into our bedroom i had a panic attack and rushed into my parent’s room where my Dad said: “BREATHE”. He also said to go back into the room and ask everyone to leave in a nice toned voice so you can have some space. I swear i walked back in and went “CAN EVERYONE GET OUT” but i have been told i was nice.

So… we are about to walk into the ceremony room to make it all official. We are literally stood outside the room and i have a panic that i haven’t given all our bridesmaids their necklaces and our mums theirs too. Again Erin to the rescue to tell me its ok we will do it after. The music is playing and I’m wanting to go back to the room. IM MAD! We are late already.

Wedding vows have finished and we are heading outside. One of my friends comes out and said: “your mum is in there smashing up the place”??? I’m thinking what’s going on. To that my mum arrives and tells me she had kicked over two of the glass vases filled with water and floating candles and smashed them… EEEEEEEEEEK. Water is everywhere. But this is probably one of the funniest moments but not for mother.

By this point, if anything had gone wrong i honestly didn’t care id just married the man of my dreams and the best dad to our son.

Enjoy looking through the photos and watching our mini film. I’ve watched it, i swear over a 1000 times.