Imogen in Suzanne Neville Orianna with custom sleeves for an autumnal wedding in Scotland

We're so delighted to share Imogen and Danny's beautiful Autumnal wedding with you today. The wedding took place in the stunning grounds of Newhall Estate country house in Midlothian, Scotland, with a rich Autumnal colour palette and lots of thoughtful, personal DIY details.

Imogen wore Suzanne Neville Orianna, which she made her own with the most gorgeous custom full length sleeves; just perfect for the chilly October day! Imogen accessoriesed her dress with a glamorous dark smoky eye and a stunning handmade headband in rich berry tones that worked wonderfully with her Autumnal bouquet and the surrounding scenery.

Read on to find out more about this wonderful day, and how Imogen and Danny overcame the pandemic restrictions to make it so special and memorable, with images by Mirrorbox Photography.

Suzanne Neville Orianna wedding dress with custom sleeves

I chose Suzanne Neville’s Orianna. Ahead of my first appointment at Miss Bush I had a very clear idea of the dress I was going to be choosing. The wonderful team at Miss Bush even had another sample shipped in for me to try! However, it was quickly clear that it wasn’t the one when I tried on a Suzanne Neville dress. Putting on a Suzanne Neville dress is quite extraordinary. I’m not sure how it’s possible, but with Orianna they have created a dress that not only made me feel graceful and elegant (two things I am rarely described as) but also completely strapped in and supported. I’m not a girl who likes to be without a bra so I was always fully intending on wearing a dress which would hide bra straps. I would never have believed it possible that any dress could have enough support to allow me to ditch bra straps, but that was before I tried Orianna on.

My mum and my three bridesmaids came with me to find the dress. All of whom are very happy to give me their honest opinions, and have terrible poker faces so would never be able to hide a reaction anyway. I knew as soon as I walked out in Orianna that it was the right one just by their faces.

Dress Shopping

Trying on the dresses at the very beginning was wonderful, it’s a lovely memory to look back on because I was with all the girls and it was so exciting. However, the best part of the experience was the last few fittings with Jo in the month or so running up to the wedding. Deciding to go ahead with our ceremony in October was hard and we were constantly worried we would have to cancel, or someone would have to self-isolate. But for those appointments I just got to put on the most spectacular dress in the world and chat to Jo about anything and everything while she worked her magic.

The great thing about planning a wedding during a pandemic is that if you’ve already had to reduce your guest list and keep track of all of the constant guideline changes across England, Scotland and N.Ireland, nothing else seems too big of a problem!

The team at Miss Bush were wonderful with my quest to add sleeves to my dress. I love a long sleeve and was so keen to find a way to add them. It was quite a divisive issue amongst my Mum and the bridesmaids but I am over the moon we made it happen. It made the dress individual and perfect for me. Also it was freezing (Scotland in October + Covid safe ventilation) so I was very grateful on the day!

Styling

I have nightmare feet but love a chunky platform so managed to find some bargain silver heels. I knew I wanted some sort of headband for my hair, so I could have it down but out of my eyes but I couldn’t find the perfect one no matter where I hunted. There are spectacular ones out there but either they weren’t quite the right colour scheme or the price tag was just a bit much. Luckily, I have very talented bridesmaids and one of them told me not to worry - that she thought she might be able to throw something together. What an understatement. My headband was perfect, I can’t imagine anything better.

A colourful autumnal wedding in Scotland

There wasn’t really a specific style to the day - our venue was so beautiful and the autumn colours so spectacular that we just tried to bring as much of the outside in. This literally meant that the wonderful team at Newhall were bringing trees in for us to fill the coach house where we ate and the sun room where we had our ceremony.

We are not particularly crafty people but lockdown did give us the opportunity to learn some new skills, so we ended up making much more than we thought we would. Nothing went to waste either - we even used the invitations we originally ordered before reducing numbers and turned them into confetti cones!

The best bits

The ceremony was my favourite part of the day. Seeing Danny’s face when he turned around as I walked up the aisle. It’s what it’s all about, and when you’re in a room with such a small group of your closest family you are reminded of what the most important things in life are. It was all so beautiful and everyone was just so overwhelmed that we had actually made it to the wedding that we all just sobbed the whole way through.

The end of the day was very special. We love fireworks but had decided against them originally as the cost was just a bit much. But when we reduced our numbers we had some money left in the pot so were able to go for it. I’m so glad we did, what a perfect way to round off the day.

Imogen's Advice

It’s difficult to know what’s ahead, but I hope that soon you can plan whatever sort of wedding you want. It was really difficult deciding to go ahead with the wedding, telling our guests we were reducing our numbers and they wouldn’t be able to come was harder than we could have imagined. Even then the stress didn’t go, we were still watching the updates constantly to see if we would have to make more changes. But in spite of all of that we had an utterly wonderful, perfect wedding. On the day I was blindly, and embarrassingly happy from start to finish and if I could do it all over again every day I would. With that in mind I’d say don’t let the state of things stop you from getting excited or starting to plan. Control what you can and try and be flexible with what you can’t (much easier said than done!). The most important thing is the two of you so do what makes you happy.