Real Weddings: Emily and Ryan

Oct 23, 2025 | Real Weddings

Groom twirling the bride with a sunset backdrop for a personalised fun wedding

Welcome to our Real Wedding Blog!

We’ve spoken to our couples to find out their top tips, advice and favourite moments of their wedding at Kelham House in Nottinghamshire. If you’re getting married with us, or simply looking for some wedding day inspiration for your own wedding plans, read on to find out more.

Emily and Ryan

Wedding Date – 21st August 2025

‘A fun, personalised wedding bursting with charm and unique details’

Emily and Ryan’s summer wedding was a perfect reflection of their personalities, featuring book themed decor, travel inspired table names, and fun touches like a post dinner raffle and shot trolley. Surrounded by the beautiful Nottinghamshire countryside, their day was filled with laughter, personal details, and unforgettable moments captured in the stunning grounds of Kelham House. Read on to find about more about their fun, personalised wedding…

Describe your wedding in 3 words…

Perfect, fun and ‘us’

What was your inspiration for your special day?

Emily really loves books and reading so we used book pages in a lot of our decorations (welcome sign, seating plan, tables). We enjoy travelling together and so our tables were named after places we’ve visited.

We mainly wanted our day to be fun and to reflect us both! Which is why we included a post-meal raffle, personalized sunglasses and a shot trolley in the evening.

What was the highlight of your wedding day?

Our ceremony was absolutely perfect! Our celebrant, Nichola, made sure it reflected us as a couple, with a balance of sentiment, memories and fun! A game of rock, paper scissors was used to determine who would say their vows first and we were smiling and laughing the whole way through our script as it was full of such great memories! We also included a Quaich ceremony which was really special.

Our post-dinner raffle went down a real treat as well! Ryan loves a raffle and so we decided to host one of our own on our special day, with prizes reflecting some of our interests, including a Lego set, a Eurovision shirt and a Pitbull flag!

In the evening, the highlight had to be our shot trolley – the combination of shots, glowsticks and bubbles made sure the dancefloor was full and got everyone on their feet!

Why did you choose Kelham House?

We wanted a venue which included a beautiful house, some lovely outdoor spaces and somewhere for us to stay overnight and Kelham House ticked all of those boxes!

The team have been so helpful throughout and that has made the whole planning process so easy and smooth. Lauren was great and was always on hand to answer any of our questions and helped the day run smoothly.

How did you decide which menu was right for your day?

We attended a tasting event and came for a Valentine’s Day meal to get an idea for the food which helped a lot! There was a lot of choice on the menu and we found some of our favourite dishes on there which made choosing food easy! The easiest course to decide was dessert – Ryan’s favourite is Sticky Toffee Pudding and Emily’s is Crème Brulee, both of which were on the menu! We had tried the bacon wrapped chicken at the tasting event so that had to go on our menu, and the fried brie is absolutely to die for so that was a must as well!

We had a selection of canapes for our drinks reception: beef Yorkshire puddings, tempura prawns, cucumber and houmous and chicken satay. These were a welcome snack after our ceremony!

We were able to ask the bar to host our signature cocktails as well (Aperol Spritz and Strawberry Daiquiri) which was a lovely touch.

What were your favourite parts of the venue?

The grounds are so pretty and we had a lovely photoshoot in the woods with our photographer. The front of the house is such a great view as well which we loved. We got so many photos outside, from our group shots in front of the gazebo, to our photoshoot on the front lawn and the woods and pond area.