Fashion and Beauty: A prop-er wedding for rugby bride Louise Moore

Mar 11 2010 by Hilarie Stelfox, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

THE MAKERS of Four Weddings were on the look-out for unusual ceremonies and outspoken brides to appear in the new series of the Living TV programme.

They found 32-year-old Louise Stention, a school finance officer from Thornhill, and her fiance, 28-year-old Richard Moore, a prop forward for the Wakefield Trinity Wildcats rugby team.

While planning their wedding, which took place in November last year, Louise decided to put her name forward for the programme, which enjoyed a phenomenally successful first series with millions of viewers.

“I thought it might be fun,” said Louise, “so I applied on-line and they rang me back in five minutes. I think it was the fact that I was marrying a rugby player that interested them.”

And so the mother-of-two became a contestant in the show, which invites four brides to compete for the prize of a luxury, all-expenses-paid honeymoon by impressing the others with their venue, dress, ceremony and reception. At the end of each wedding, attended by the other brides, points are awarded and comments made. Film crews follow the progress of each wedding and encourage the brides to pull no punches with both praise and criticism.

“All four weddings were very different,” said Louise, who met her husband through a social networking site.

“The first one had a budget of £40,000 and was really posh and formal; while mine had a budget of about £14,000. We had lots and lots of entertainment and everyone said it was the most fun.

“The third wedding had a naturist blessing, where the bride and groom were naked, but we were allowed to wear clothes, and was followed by a reception on a barge in Battersea.

“And the fourth wedding cost only three or four thousand and was a budget knees up,” she added.

Louise and Richard’s own wedding took place at their parish church in Thornhill and was followed by a reception at the Casa del Lago near Brighouse.

“A lot of my guests said it was the best wedding they’d ever been to. We had a live band called Helter Skelter and a singer called Paul Hanafin, who I met in Magalluf a few years back,” explained Louise. “I asked Paul if he would come and play for me when I got married and he travelled down from Darlington where he lives.

“We also had casino tables. I had the most amazing time,” she added.