Swords, horns and a post-wedding fight… Shelley’s big day went with a bang
The bride and groom stand side by side to repeat their marriage vows. It’s the best day of Shelley and Lewis Butler’s lives — but it’s a long way from traditional.
For Shelley, there is no big white dress. Instead she’s in black lace with a tiara of moonstones. As for her groom, he’s wearing a back tabard and a crown of feathers, and has a giant axe swinging from his belt!
Even the registrar is looking slightly out of the ordinary, clad in fur.
'Let's have a Viking wedding!'
He even has to ask the god Thor for permission for the couple to wed before asking them to exchange swords — to roars from the guests.
Welcome to the Butlers’ Viking wedding.
Shelley, a teaching assistant from Manchester, has been a Viking superfan since researching her family history in her teens.
‘I discovered I’m a descendent of Rollo, the Viking king who became a ruler of northern France,’ Shelley, 46, says.
So when her fella Lewis, 31, proposed, she knew exactly what kind of wedding she wanted.
‘I couldn’t imagine walking up the aisle in a long ivory gown,’ she laughs. ‘I said to him, “Let’s have a Viking wedding”.’
Lewis agreed immediately.
He was already a fan of the Netflix show Vikings when he met Shelley, after he rescued her from a disastrous date in a local pub.
‘I’d arranged an online date and wasn’t having the best evening,’ she recalls.
When Shelley’s date popped to the loo, Lewis saw his chance.
‘He came over and said I should ask my date if he was man enough for me,’ she says.
Shelley did just that, and her date left swiftly.
She and Lewis quickly became a couple. He moved in with her after six months and proposed a year later.
The couple told their story in Take a Break, sharing their New Year’s Eve meeting in our bumper issue last year.
But Shelley’s knight in shining armour didn’t just save her from a boring evening out.
‘A few weeks after he proposed I found a lump in my breast,’ Shelley says. ‘The GP told me it was nothing to worry about but Lewis insisted I went back.’
Shelley was then sent for a biopsy and was diagnosed with cancer that had almost reached stage three.
‘He saved my life because I’d never have gone back if it wasn’t for him,’ she says.
A lumpectomy and radiotherapy followed, and while Shelley was off work recovering, she started planning her wedding.
She handmade the Viking shields, best men’s axes and bridesmaids’ headbands, as well as the invitations and name places.
The couple booked Bredbury Hall, in Stockport, for their special day.
As Shelley’s sister Debbie and husband Jason are wedding planners, they got busy decorating the hall with animal skulls, feathers, lavender and drinking horns.
When the big day arrived, Lewis’s three best men led the way down the aisle in leather armour.
Then came Shelley’s daughter Aaliyah, 21, her niece Megan and adopted daughter Sophia, plus pet shih-tzu Jimmy, who wore a fur cloak with an axe and shield attached.
Shelley followed on the arm of her dad Jim who was dressed in fur, jewels and a crown made by her mum Christine.
‘Then we exchanged swords, meaning we’d always protect each other,’ says Shelley.
A Viking spectacle of axe-throwing and fire-eating followed and there was even an actor dressed as Thor to entertain the guests.
‘We had a Viking meal of meats, cheeses and bread and drank mead from drinking horns,’ says Shelley. ‘It was amazing.’
As for the honeymoon, the couple picked Iceland, a fitting choice as it was the first island settled by the Vikings. Luckily they didn’t need a longship to get there!