Natasha + Patrick at Healey Barn | August 2025
“I cannot rave about [Sarah] enough, we got so many compliments on our ceremony and on everything about Sarah (pink suit was a hit!). She listened to everything we had to say, made us feel at ease the whole time, she’s such a joyful person who you can tell LOVES what she does.”
Sasha and Patrick’s wedding was so fun because it was so them. They let me into their world - full of self-deprecating jokes and geeky fandom and cultural references - so that I had plenty of material to make it fun. I remember laughing so much in this wedding, and what could be more joyful than that? And when I say “self-deprecating” I mean the bride self-identifying as “a pain in the arse” and that being part of the ceremony.
I was able to pepper geeky references all the way through. And, in what I think was a first for me (and should be at every wedding!), the groom made an entrance down the aisle too. To theme music from Lord of the Rings.
Images by Manchester wedding photographer Phil Salisbury
Natasha and Patrick had chosen to have their wedding at Healey Barn because of me, which was a cool feeling. They’d seen me share the location on my stories, had gone to see it for themselves and fallen in love with it. It’s funny because I’ve now done a good handful of weddings there, in that same room, but none have felt the least bit samey. I don’t want to blow the horn for celebrants too hard, but f- it, this is my own blog. It’s so fun and brilliant and memorable when every wedding feels completely different because every couple is different. And deserve to be celebrated in a unique way that feels genuinely them.
And, like I said, Patrick did an aisle walk to Lord of the Rings. Memorable.
Another moment that will live with me from their ceremony, and make me chuckle every time it pops in my head, was the surprise ring bearer.
If you’ve not seen this done before, the idea is that the wedding bands are hidden (safely attached, y’know, butt-loads of masking tape on the ring box in the fear it plops to the floor at an inopportune moment) under one random chair. But the gloriously funny part of this surprise ring bearer was two-fold:
the, frankly, rather alarmed ring bearer - when he found the box under his chair - announced sweetly and confusedly that he was a plus-one boyfriend and had never met either the bride or groom before in his life
the bride and groom are so damn funny and up for a good time that they did not care
None of us could stop laughing. And it’s those moments that take this job from being fun to being something I can’t shut up about.
This ceremony was not, I hasten to add, one big joke. It was full of touching moments like contributions from loved ones - Natasha walking in arm-in-arm with dear Grandpa Irving, poems from the matriarchs of the family (mothers and godmothers), and long, lovely vows written by the couple themselves. Patrick had even learnt a line in German to say to his wife, knowing it would mean a lot to her bilingual family.
So it was as beautiful as it was hilarious, because what Patrick and Sasha share is so patently real. And, as I said in the ceremony, maybe Lord of the Rings is relevant sometimes.
As Arwen and Aragorn say to each other in The Fellowship of the Ring: “I would rather share one lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone."
And what a lifetime these two are making for themselves. FULL of laughter, FULL of love.
“We couldn’t have picked a better celebrant, who took into account every variation and consideration. The extra little touch like our beautifully printed vows or popping by whilst we got ready.”