All the latest wedding news for couples getting married in Essex, along with bridal fashion and beauty inspiration and honeymoon ideas.
New honeymoon experiences for couples with a conscience
Hotelgift is the ideal way to share the joy of travel with a newlywed couple with a conscience; from uber luxury glamping to wellness journeys for two. For every Hotelgift bought and for every gift card that is redeemed for a new hotel stay, 1,000 litres of water are donated to support local communities in places that need it most through a partnership with Made Blue.
Posted: 20 January 2023
New hen/stag do offering in Stratford, London, March 2023!
Grab your #weddingsquad, it's time to get dressed up and put on your dancing shoes because Tony n' Tina's Wedding - the immersive hit Broadway show from America - is coming to London! This unique live theatrical experience - during which the audience and cast interact together during a 'live wedding' - will officially open at the ArcelorMittal Orbit tower at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London on March 16th, 2023, and here at County Wedding Magazines HQ we think its got all the ingredients for the ultimate stag/hen or sten do!
Posted: 19 January 2023
Average ages we are hitting life’s milestones
A new study from Confused.com has revealed the average ages we are hitting life's milestones in England & Wales, including getting married at age 35! So how does your milestone timeline compare? Typically, the first milestone people in the UK reach is moving out of their parent's home at age 20, followed by moving in with their partner at 27. The next life milestone those in the UK usually meet is having their first child, with couples seeming to have children before marriage. The average age for having children is 29, while the average age for getting married is 35. The data also suggests that on average, people are choosing to have children before purchasing a property. This could be a result of house prices continuing to rise making it harder to save for a deposit.
Posted: 18 January 2023
Pre- and post-wedding accommodation in Gosfield
Need somewhere to stay pre or post your big day? Check out Gosfield's The Stables & Silos at Iron Pear Tree Farm. "We offer wedding accommodation in a variety of beautifully converted farm buildings, whether you're looking to relax with your bridal party before your big day, or somewhere to spend your wedding night," says owner Carrie-Anne Porter. "Our packages vary from two to 12 guests, offering quirky but comfortable accommodation with private spa facilities and great views.
Posted: 17 January 2023
Couples are opting for eco-friendly weddings
One of the UK's leading waste and recycling management companies BusinessWaste.co.uk collected data, which shows how much attitudes to environmental and sustainable choices in regard to weddings are changing. According to the research searches for 'sustainable wedding' has skyrocketed by 75% over the last year, while 'sustainable wedding venues near me' saw an 80%+ increase along with 'sustainable engagement ring' which saw a staggering 96% search increase. What's more, us Brits came out on top overall for our eco-friendly mindfulness, with France and Greece also seeing the biggest increase in searches for sustainable wedding venues.
Posted: 16 January 2023
Keep your wedding guests warm this winter
Putting the chocolate back into drinking chocolate with their unique fine beads, Cocoa Canopy are making winter weddings super cosy with its sample-szie offering. Perfect for winter wedding favours, they offer the ultimate in comforting hot chocolates, guaranteed to put a smile on the receiver's face! Cocoa Canopy is the only UK drinking chocolate brand to craft unique fine chocolate beads for beautifully smooth, real chocolate drinks made from only a handful of sustainably sourced ingredients.
Posted: 13 January 2023
How to throw an insta-worthy engagement party
You never have to scroll too far to stumble upon a celebrity engagement party on instagram and if you've recently got engaged yourself, you're probably thinking - should I throw one too? The short answer is yes, absolutely. While planning the wedding is always top priority, there's no reason why you shouldn't have a party to get all your loved ones together and celebrate the big news straight away - particularly when most weddings take place a good 12 to 18 months post-proposal. However, hosting an engagement party of your dreams can still be quite a daunting task. To help, wedding jewellery experts, Queensmith have pulled together 11 tips for taking your celebratory soirée to the next level.
Posted: 11 January 2023
Braintree’s Bar Number 92's new cocktail offering
Looking to hold a pre-wedding get together? Book Braintree's Bar Number 92, which has recently incorporated the Essex Cocktail Club into its premises. Both venues are available for private use, with Bar Number 92 hosting up to 40, while the Essex Cocktail Club can cater for up to 20. The high calibre venue has an extensive menu, with an incredible list of cocktails, with spirits from the Essex Spirits Company featuring heavily. There's a wide range of wines from New Hall Wine Estate to enjoy, plus an excellent cheese and charcuterie selection from the East Anglian region.
Posted: 10 January 2023
Spotify data reveals the most popular wedding songs
Luxury engagement ring retailer, Diamonds Factory, has scraped Spotify to find the top 100 most popular wedding songs to include in your playlists. To do this, Diamonds Factory analysed over 100 Spotify playlists containing the word 'wedding' and found the most featured songs across all playlists. These playlists included 3500 unique songs, and the data scrape also used additional keywords to reveal the top wedding ceremony songs, wedding party songs and top wedding artists, too.
Posted: 9 January 2023
County Wedding Events coming to Hedingham Castle in Essex!
If you're newlyweds-to-be embarking on your wedding planning journey, pop along to the County Wedding Events wedding show at Hedingham Castle, Essex, for inspiration on Saturday 8th January 2023! A must-visit for all those that got engaged over the festive months, the event brings couples that are desperate for face-to-face wedding planning in touch with local professionals who are on hand to help plan the wedding day.
Posted: 7 January 2023
New planner reveals when you can afford to tie the knot
With wedding costs rising by 3,000% since the 1950s, and set to reach an all-time high in the 2020s, making and sticking to a wedding budget can be a real headache for couples. To help would-be newlyweds with the complex task of budget planning their big day, the wedding finance team at money.co.uk have created a new wedding budget planner, to help couples account for all their costs for each stage of their dream wedding. The new planning tool also helps you calculate the earliest date you should set for your big day, based on how long it will take you to save up enough money to pay for your dream wedding. The wedding budget planner page also has lot of tips to help couples save cash, including:
Posted: 6 January 2023
Win a ‘One Night Luxury Four Poster Hotel Break for Two’ in Colchester
County Weddings Magazine has teamed up with The Rose and Crown Hotel to give our readers the chance to win a 'One Night Luxury Four Poster Hotel Break for Two' in their 700 year old hotel. The lucky winner will receive a voucher which can be redeemed any time in the next 18 months. Also included is a bottle of champagne waiting in your room on arrival, breakfast in the morning, early check-in and late checkout, and a delicious three course dinner in their onsite restaurant.
Posted: 5 January 2023
The most popular wedding foliage 2022 revealed
Wow, 2022 was quite the year for weddings with a bumper amount taking place. Looking back at what was trending last year, perhaps inspiration for those tying the knot in 2023, wedding insurance specialists Protectivity have researched the most popular wedding flowers, based on UK Google Search Volume. The most popular wedding bouquet foliage was Eucalyptus, with 585,000 searches! Followed by, Ivy 495,000, Jasmine 458,200, Rosemary 374,600, Ferns 351,200, Monstera 319,500, Silver Birch 219,600, Philodendrons 219,400, Olive branches 143,000 and Myrtle 133,300.
Posted: 4 January 2023
Billericay’s Leanne Perilly MUA has a 2023 offer
Google 'Essex Make-Up Artists' and you'll be hit with nearly six million results. Gulp. Step forward Billericay's Leanne Perilly, with an impressive 17 years as a professional make-up artist under her belt. "My passion is for attention to detail, making you look and feel your most confident and beautiful on your special day," says Leanne. "I've introduced a special offer for 2023 brides who book me before the end of March 2023 for mid-week Essex weddings. For £410 – saving you £50 – this includes your make-up on the day, along with four others, in addition to your pre-wedding make-up trial."
Posted: 3 January 2023
Honeymooning in your married name
If you are dreaming of jetting off to sandy shores with your sparkling new ring, spouse and matching passports...then this guide from NameSwitch will tell you how to make your dreams come true. Please do have a proper think about whether having matching passports straight away is really that important to you because, trust us when we say, it's not an easy thing to pull off! With recent changes to how processes work, effects of the Pandemic, and added complications like not being handed your marriage certificate on your wedding day, or needing the name on your NHS records to be the same as the one on your passport, an already stressful undertaking just got even more nail-biting! Now it's not mission impossible, but you do need 3 key things to be aligned (and nerves of steel) if this is going to work...
Posted: 2 January 2023
Spotlight on... Billericay's Greenwoods Hotel & Spa
For a wedding venue that stands out for all the right reasons consider Stock's Greenwoods Hotel & Spa, set in stunning gardens and providing a tranquil setting. With three luxurious function suites blending traditional and contemporary, Greenwoods can accommodate both intimate and grand ceremonies. Heart set on a romantic outdoor wedding? Its dovecot-style gazebo caters for up to 120, and is situated in the gardens with pretty trees and sweeping drive.
Posted: 27 December 2022
The rise of double-barrelled surnames
n the past couple of years, there's been a continued increase in the number of people wishing to join their names. For example, in November, research by The London Mint Office to mark The Queen's platinum wedding anniversary shows that 11% of married couples between the ages of 18 and 30 joined their names. As the UK's leading Name Changing Service, NameSwitch has also seen an 18% year-on-year growth in couples wishing to adopt a double-barrelled surname, which accounts for 12% of the thousands of name changes we've assisted over the last 12 months. So, why are more of us opting to double-barrel their surnames?
Posted: 26 December 2022
With the Pandemic derailing wedding plans since 2020, the next few years look set to be a busy time for couples celebrating their union. But couples themselves are evolving – from individuals who feel shoehorned into traditions or cultural expectations they don't feel comfortable with, to those who feel more confident creating their own idea of how a wedding should be, encompassing a far wider range of preferences, traditions, and cultures. When NameSwitch was invited to speak on diversity at a recent industry event, Bridelux Symposium, the overwhelming consensus of wedding professionals was that they, too, are seeing a change in how weddings are becoming more individually unique; created to celebrate the heritage (often blended) and preferences of each couple.
Posted: 23 December 2022
GREAT! romance to Launch on Thursday 5th January 2023
Dreaming of cosying up with some love-ly film entertainment in the New Year? GREAT! romance, a new, free-to-air, TV channel dedicated to bringing feel-good, romance films to TV screens, all day, every day, is launching on Thursday 5th January 2023. If you have a soft spot for romantic movies and are looking to indulge in escapist entertainment this winter, then look no further! Romantics across the UK can fall head-over-heels with the only TV channel that promises back-to-back love stories all day every day - for free! - and the curated selection of movies is guaranteed to melt anyone's heart at the start of 2023.
Posted: 21 December 2022
Chelmsford's new Sleep.8 store opening
Setting up your marital home? Check out the new Sleep.8 design-led store at Chelmsford's Chelmer Village retail park! Following the success of its recently opened Bluewater, Lakeside, Chelsea and King's Road locations, Sleep.8 continues to bring consumers face-to-face with sleep solutions. The new store features a design lab that allows customers to tailor the bed of their dreams with a wide variety of fabrics, textures and colours.
Posted: 20 December 2022
Christmas winter wedding music
Getting married at Christmas doesn't mean that you have to plan a Christmas-themed wedding. Here, roaming band The Travelling Hands, suggest songs that would work well for a Christmas winter wedding and the songs to avoid! When it comes to music, the same rule applies. Just because you want to get married at Christmas it doesn't mean that your musical playlist has to be full of Wizzard & Cliff Richard if you don't want it to be there. When our acoustic roaming band The Travelling Hands perform at winter weddings we see a wide variety of decisions when it comes to Christmas songs. Some want to embrace the Christmas classics - adding these into their day. Others like a few placed in here and there, whilst some want to just stick to their favourite songs without any Christmas numbers added in at all.
Posted: 16 December 2022
Rayleigh florist's new packages
Deciding on wedding flowers is never easy, with price and season to consider. That's why Courts of Rayleigh Florist's Gillian Fautley now offers set packages for 2023. "We find the perfect combination to match the style, theme and seasonal selection to suit your day perfectly," says Gill. "For just £1,000 our Willow Package includes a teardrop or luxury handtied bouquet, special buttonhole and five additional buttonholes, four smaller bouquets, two corsages, altar/top table arrangement, six tall hired stand designs, eight pre ends and a pedestal for your ceremony and entrance to your wedding breakfast.
Posted: 15 December 2022
Outdated wedding laws need to change
In an article earlier this year there was discussion and praise aimed towards the Government's plans to allow outdoor weddings to be made permanent. The article also highlighted the eagerly awaited Law Commission report into marriage laws, which was due to be published in July. Now it has been published and we have had some time for the dust to settle, Kate Van Rol, Barrister at 4PB has looked into these recommendations, "Are wedding laws at present 'confusing, outdated and restrictive' as the Commission suggest, or would the implementation of their suggestions trivialise weddings and commercialise the ceremony?". Kate continues...
Posted: 14 December 2022
Christmas activities from The QHotels Collection
The festive season is almost upon us, bringing with it all that sparkles, from decorative baubles to candles, crackers, and colourful lights. But as December approaches, it's easy to let the time run away. So, The QHotels Collection list their top five ways to keep the sparkle alive, bring a little twinkle to your eye and warmth to your heart in the run-up to the holidays. 1.Start a countdown to Christmas - who says advent calendars are just for the kids? Extend the Christmas fun over the whole of December by finding a special way to countdown to the big day. Why not play a different Christmas song each day on your commute? To really get in the festive spirit why not book a festive activity for every weekend in December? It could be anything from making homemade wrapping paper to heading out to see the panto or enjoying a festive-themed afternoon tea with your mates.
Posted: 9 December 2022
Pantone’s Colour of The Year - we love it!
Pantone's Colour of The Year, Viva Magenta, is oh-so gorgeous and perfect for wedding colour palettes whatever time of year. Claiming, 'It's a shade rooted in nature descending from the red family and expressive of a new signal of strength. Viva Magenta is brave and fearless, and a pulsating colour whose exuberance promotes a joyous and optimistic celebration, writing a new narrative,' how very appropriate for weddings!
Posted: 2 December 2022
Unlike a national magazine, An Essex Wedding is packed with regional features, venues in your area, inspirational real weddings and regular features on bridal fashion, beauty trends,
photography,
cars,
stationery,
flowers,
cakes,
music,
entertainment,
catering,
hair & beauty, etc.
So when you decide to look for local suppliers, wedding retailers and service providers for your special day, our magazines can really help you plan your wedding.
We also have regular exciting wedding competitions and free giveaways, expert question & answer pages and lots more. Quite simply, all the information you will ever need to get married in your area.
We have 19 wedding titles covering counties and regions throughout most of England and Wales. An Essex Wedding is available to download for free as a high quality eMagazine. Regional wedding magazines covering other areas are available here.