The Merewood Country House Hotel Elopement

January 10, 2019

Jade & David eloped to the stunning Merewood County House hotel on Windermere with what the hotel calls a "Just us wedding". The day was full of glorious sunshine and adventure. David wrote a rather cute story of how they came to be the amazing couple that they are so I'm just going to leave it to him to tell the story...

"We met in Hereford at College in 2008. For the first couple of years of knowing each other we were just friends, and not really that close - more just an exchange of niceties whenever we saw each other. We started talking a lot more after a football session we were both involved in, after I ended up with an injury and had to leave, I saw Jade as I was leaving looking fed up. She seemed to just want to leave the session, so I invited her for a cuppa and a chat to see if I could cheer her up. We got on like a house on fire.

A month or so had passed and we hadn’t really spent any real time together, apart from a few nights out with friends. At the time I was working in the college bar and was putting on a bit of a Christmas Party in the college bar with some obligatory Karaoke, and to my surprise, Jade came over toward the end of the night carrying the Mistletoe… This was to be the start of everything.

We both left Hereford for the Christmas break, going our separate ways for a couple of weeks. Me to Manchester, and Jade to Wales. I don’t think there was a day that went by that we didn’t talk in one way or another. It was crazy how much we grew close over that couple of weeks. We talked about anything and everything, it felt so natural. I couldn’t wait to get back and see her.

Once back in Hereford, we met up and everything just felt right. We were then inseparable. We did everything together. It wasn’t long after we started seeing each other that we booked our first holiday – for 12 months down the line. We went on a cruise to the Canary Islands and found we both had a great love for travelling. Since then, we’ve travelled all over, thoroughly enjoying each other’s company and taking in different countries, cultures, and sharing experiences.

After being nagged pretty much since the day we got together to propose, I finally decided to go ahead with it and having been looking for a winter holiday in 2017 and settling on a Caribbean cruise on board P&O’s Britannia, the location was set in my head, that’s where I’d do it. It gave me a few months to prepare. Jade had always told me that she wanted me to ask her Dad beforehand so he could give his blessing, and conveniently we were all going on holiday that summer to Ibiza, so again, another location set in my head. November was rapidly coming, and everything was starting to come together. I’d booked for us to go in Jade’s favourite place to eat where I was going to pop the question. But, Jade being Jade, and having good food in front of her, ate way too much and just wanted to leave. The plan went out of the window.

Time was running out, the holiday was nearly over, and I hadn’t asked her yet. A couple of days later we were going out to another speciality restaurant, but instead of waiting for dinner, I decided I had to just get on with it. We were about to leave the cabin when I turned to her, dropped down on one knee and asked. I’ll never forget that look on her face.

Once we got engaged, we started looking at what we wanted to do for a wedding. We’d both agreed that we wanted an all or nothing wedding, and with family living all of the UK (and Jade’s Mum being out in Australia), we decided to just do it by ourselves. After a lot of searching for the right place, we found the Merewood Country House Hotel’s “Just us wedding” package and decided to just go for it. We became a couple on January 8th 2010 and Jade is determined for me to never, ever, forget that date as we’ve booked January 8th 2019, 9 years to the day."

If you would like me to photograph your big day, please feel free to contact me! If you’re thinking of Eloping why not read more about my thoughts on my blog “Elopement isn’t a dirty word” after you’ve seen this beautiful day in full.