St Patrick’s Day brings luck on student’s wedding day

An International Business and Human Resource Management student finally got to celebrate her wedding day in style, after a year of planning around pandemic restrictions.

Fourth year Natalie Horsfall was delighted to get the chance to say, “I do” to husband Stuart alongside family and friends at the Lynnhurst Hotel on the 17th of March.

Natalie said: “It’s crazy to think that it’s been well over a year that we’ve been organising it all. We thought coronavirus would mean that we’d have a really small wedding, but restrictions started to ease, so we then thought we couldn’t leave anyone out. We ended up having 30 guests there for the ceremony and some extra in the evening.

We didn’t actually realise it was St Patrick’s Day until after we booked it, so it was definitely reason for double celebrations!”

She added: “I had stayed at the hotel the night before with my sister and my bridesmaids - we just had a really chilled out time together. The next day was when it all hit me!

My partner had the kids, so he got them all sorted at the house. I was busy getting my hair and make-up all done, it was all a bit hectic and a bit of a blur.”

Despite the busy schedule in the lead up to the ceremony, Natalie explained that it was all worth it in the end.

She said: “Once I got to the end of the aisle, it was as if I couldn’t see all the people around me. I was so focused on what was going to happen next - it was an amazing feeling.”

There were also two very important people on the guest list, helping Natalie through the day’s proceedings:

“My daughter Lucy was supposed to be a flower girl but she was a bit upset on the day and didn’t walk down the aisle. She’s only a year old, but she sat really nicely throughout the whole ceremony. My little boy Dylan, who’s three, was the page boy but his job was basically to look cute and go around speaking to everybody – he was loving all the attention!”

Into the evening and it was time for Natalie to get on her dancing shoes - something she isn’t afraid to admit filled her with a bit of dread.

Natalie explained: “I was terrified for the first dance! I’m definitely not a dancer by any stretch of the imagination, so it was literally just a kind of rock back and forth. Once you’re up there you feel a lot better but I’d never done it before, and definitely don’t plan on doing it again!”

With the champagne popped and the confetti having fallen on a momentous day, Natalie and Stuart are already looking forward to their future together – but there’s the small matter of a honeymoon on the horizon, and a dissertation to submit.

Natalie said: “We went to Fort William for the day and that was just to get a bit of time away from everything, it’s been a stressful few months with coursework on top of everything else.

Once I’ve graduated, the plan is to go to Santorini for two weeks in July. I’ve spoken to loads of people who say it’s amazing with all the white buildings and blue roofs. It would definitely be the best way to round off the celebrations.”

By Ross Clark                  
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