Francesca and Harry have chosen Santorini as the destination for their wedding in 2020 and over the few months we’ll be sharing their wedding planning journey!
Enjoy finding out more about the lovely couple below and keep your eyes peeled for Francesca’s future wedding features…
Tell me a bit about yourself and your partner…
Well where to start, I’m Francesca Charlton, I’m 28 and currently manage Weddings and Events in Birmingham, which I love. It’s going to be so hard handing over the reigns of planning my wedding but we are so excited to have the pressure lifted off. Harry Wall is my amazing fiance, he is 25 and drives those huge lorries you see on the motorway, I worry about him all the time. We have recently bought our first lovely house together and have spent lots of time making it our home. There is nothing more we enjoy than a cuddle on the sofa with our kitten Caspian, watching a great series and stuffing down a Chinese.
How did you meet?
Funnily enough through Facebook, at the time I was in a vintage cabaret group called the pin-ups and one of the girls I was performing with knew Harry from school. He randomly poked me (on Facebook) and we started chatting and we never looked back. You hear all of these dodgy stories about meeting people online, but I guess sometimes it really does work. He looked even better in real life as well when we first met, I couldn’t believe how lucky I was and here we are 6 years down the line.
And your engagement story? How did he pop the question?
Well we both spent some time apart after being together for 5 years, it was a really hard time for both of us, but we both realized that even though we drove each other mad no one else would ever compare and no one would make me laugh the way that he can. After getting back together a few months later on my birthday he took me for a really special meal at Marco Pierre White’s overlooking the whole of Birmingham. I had no idea, but when I mentioned that the restaurant was starting to get busy, he got down on his knee and asked me to marry him. Harry is not very romantic but he made it so special, everyone around us clapped and of course I cried a lot! He then arranged for all of our friends to be waiting at a local bar to celebrate, we drank lots of Champagne and I cried even more. It was honestly the best day of my life.
What made you chose to get married abroad over a UK wedding?
Initially we were looking at getting married over here, but when we received quotes from the venues we liked they really knocked us back. One even quoted us £40,000 just to hire the venue for the weekend. I’m very picky and knew that the best option was for us to go abroad. Harry was so happy about the idea as he isn’t a fan of being the centre of attention in big crowds and wanted it to be more personal and more about the two of us and what it means to us.
How did your families react when you announced you were getting married abroad?
They were excited, we knew that not everyone would be able to come away, but we are having a big party for everyone when we return anyway. Most of our family said that it’s mine and Harry’s day and that as long as we were happy they were too.
You’ve chosen to get married in Santorini, was this an easy decision or did you look at several other destinations before choosing?
We did look at Las Vegas, we have been there twice and it is our favourite place in the world. We knew it would be a struggle to get a lot of our family over there for many reasons, so we decided to look into Santorini. When The Bridal Consultant sent us over the brochure for Dana Villas we fell in love. We had seen the famous video of the honeymoon suite on the internet, so we couldn’t believe it when we found out you could get married there. We decided that we are going to do Las Vegas for our honeymoon and maybe have a day where we get our wedding blessed and celebrate just the two of us. We are so happy to be getting the best of both worlds and we can’t wait to start getting into the initial planning.
Dana Villas is one of our favourite venues on the beautiful island of Santorini and we can’t wait to plan Francesca and Harry’s special day here, Francesca will be telling us all about her wedding theme in her next entry.
