I know I say it about every bride we feature on RMW but good grief, Rachel is a complete beauty, I can’t imagine a gown that would have suited her more than the Rosa Clara jersey grecian number of choice. And her barnet? super glossy. L’Oreal must be quaking in their Elnett fragranced boots – locks like that can only come from an excellent gene pool, not out of a can.

A Jewish ceremony that took place in pituresque woodland, the most perfect citrus colour palette and understated contemporary decor makes this W-day one of my all-time favourites.

Oh and did you know Rachel and Troy made nearly everything themselves? Yep.

That makes it D.I.Y spectacular too.

Gorgeous Grecian

Rachel The Bride: Troy and I were married in June 2012, on the Jubilee. We are from London but we were lucky enough to be able to have our wedding in Troy’s uncle’s beautiful house and garden, in Buckinghamshire.

I wasn’t looking forward to dress shopping. I wanted something special I could walk and dance in and that was close to my usual style – strapless was not an option! Over a year before the wedding I happened to be wandering around Liberty (my happy place). I spied a closing down sale in the bridal department and there it was. It was by the Spanish designer Rosa Clara and was firstly stunning and secondly 90% off! So although it was the first and only dress I tried on I wasn’t too hesitant in buying it. It was ivory silk jersey, Grecian in style and with lovely sparkling details at the waist and shoulders.

Heirlooms

My necklace was important to me. Some of the stones are from my great great grandmother’s jewellery and the necklace was designed by my grandfather for my grandmother when my mother was born, so it was very special to be able to wear it. I also wore a ring that was from another great grandmother from the 1920s.

Our wedding rings were made for us by Patrick Wyatt in Hatton Garden. I went simple in the end for my hair and the florist wired up some freesias for me.

Beehive

Carolanne Armstrong did my make-up and that of a fair few others in the wedding party – she was a very calm presence in the morning. We all got ready in the house and the super-detailed organisation paid off as I was really relaxed before the wedding and was able to sit around with my mum and bridesmaids getting ready and drinking champagne.

Carolanne and I decided on a fairly natural look which stayed in place all day. We had two hairdressers, Chevonne and Tammy from HoB in Amersham who came to make us all look our best. Again the style was pretty similar to my normal hair – wavy and slightly 60s inspired, pinned at the back.

Best Women

I had five lovely bridesmaids and wanted to make sure they were all happy with their outfits. We were originally going to go all mismatched around aqua/teal colours, but actually on a shopping trip with three out of five ladies a simple shift dress from Hobbs was found which met with approval from all – easy. It was a little less easy tracking down five of them as they were in the sale, but we got there in the end!

As thank you presents to the bridesmaids I ordered custom-made dressing gowns from India, which we wore while getting ready.

Troy’s best man was actually his sister Tara. I didn’t see her outfit before the wedding but she looked amazing in a silver dress complete with sparkly undone bow tie and very statement jewellery. Her nails also deserve a special mention, decorated with our initials, wedding rings and ‘mazel tov’! Most stylish best man ever!

Converted

Walking into the ceremony was incredible. I came in with both my parents, my brother David and bridesmaids, and the space looked so beautiful. Troy and his friends had been hard at work making the chuppah (wedding canopy) from scratch, painting it white and decorating it with wisteria taken (with permission!) from the house. You may remember that it poured with rain most of the bank holiday weekend but we were so lucky that we were able to get married outside as planned, and the sun came out and mostly stayed out.

When we came into the woods I took in everything but actually didn’t notice too many details as I was so focused on Troy looking very handsome in a suit made for him by Hackett, which I only saw at the wedding. After the ceremony he took me to one side to show off the skull and crossbones lining he had chosen – not so classic but probably to be expected!

I am Jewish and Troy converted, so we had in some ways a traditional Jewish ceremony, outside in a beautiful woodland setting. Our rabbi Judith is a good family friend and inspired us to add our own ideas, ending up with a ceremony that was egalitarian and involved all our family, who added personal blessings to the traditional ones.

Troy is Irish so we had Irish content too! Beyond the amazing party, decorations and decisions, having such a beautiful ceremony with so many people we love involved was the best thing of all.

Mind Your Own Business

Michelle at Wheelers did our flowers and was great at listening to our ideas and very happy to put something a bit different together. We wanted yellow, white and greys to fit into our colours, so the bouquets had lots of pretty yellow and white flowers (I’m not good with flower names!) and grey succulents.

Button holes were round yellow craspedia and eucalyptus. On the tables we had a modern and laid-back mix of yellow tulips and a fluffy green plant in terracotta pots which was brilliantly called ‘mind-your-own-business’.

Found Via RMW

After a lot of looking online we found Dominique Bader on this very blog. We made a shortlist of photographers but chose Dominique as her photos are classic, romantic and really capture emotions and moments… as well as making everyone look good! It was so exciting seeing all the professional photos and picking all our favourites to put up online and send out to family.

Grand Cakes

We decided would ask some family and friends to bring along their specialities for a grand “Table of Cakes”. We had my grandmother’s very famous fruit cake, chocolate brownies, lemon drizzle, rice crispy, my mum’s chocolate cheesecake and many more. I decided I had to try absolutely all of them, obviously. YUM.

For the ceremony our music came from a local musician Stuart Bonner and his young but very talented son. I walked in to Hoppipolla by Sigur Ros, Troy walked in to the music from Game of Thrones (bit of an in-joke there for those that recognised it), and we walked out to Here Comes the Sun by The Beatles. My aunt Lauren who sings opera sang beautiful traditional Jewish music in the ceremony.

For the partying we booked Ok Ma a brilliant DJ and Saxophonist combo that I came across in the Bedroom Bar in Shoreditch. They kept everyone dancing until the surprise fireworks at the end of the night.

D.I.Y

We had favours that did triple duty! They were little succulents that we re-potted to act as place names and table decoration too. We painted the tops of the terracotta pots with blackboard paint and wrote the names on in chalk pen.

Oh the decoration. We essentially made everything, or bought it on Ebay… very labour intensive but a lot of fun, especially getting all the family and friends who very very kindly came together over the days before to set it all up. We had paper lanterns, made rainbow bunting, fairy lights and miles of paper circles on string to hang all over the marquee. Then there were mini trees, more lanterns, hessian runners on the tables, tons of mercury glass candle holders and vases. We made the chuppah, all the save the dates, invites, the programmes, we designed a monogram and had it made into a stamp to use on everything, I made flowers out of felt that we scattered on the tables… so many little details, too many to mention .

We tried to keep roughly to a modern rustic look and to our colours of yellow, grey and a sort of seafoam green to pull it all together.

Do What You Love

My advice would be do what you love! If you love making things by hand then do and enjoy the process, not just the day. If you are not into DIY but love music spend your time on the playlist instead, or the outfits, or whatever you like to do. Pinterest is brilliant, I spend a lot of time on there.

Having a marquee wedding without a professional venue required a lot of arranging generators, delivery times and so on. It was great in so many ways but make sure you understand what you are taking on if you go down this route – our relaxed and fairly informal wedding was the result of some serious spreadsheets!

Above all the most important thing really is spending the time with your future husband or wife and with those that matter to you, that’s what makes a wedding so try not to worry too much about anything else!

Click here & view all images from this wedding

Venue – Family garden, Marquee by High Field Events
Make-Up – Carolanne Armstrong
Brides Gown – Rosa Clara
Maids – Hobbs
Grooms Suit – Bespoke at Hackett
Blooms – Wheelers
Entertainment – DJ Ok Ma
Photography -Dominique Bader

I am in LOVE with those hessian wrapped trees used to decorate the interior of the marquee – so fresh.

And how about the potted succulents? stylish table centrepieces as well as doing double duty as cute favours.

Big Rachel’s Hair is IMMENSE Love

Charlotte xxx

Katharine and Dan Simpkins married in Yealmpton at the church Katharine attended for most of her childhood. A beautiful outdoor reception in Modbury followed and the sun shone brightly bringing the vibrant yellow colour scheme to life.

If you take a shine to Katharine’s dress then this could be your lucky day as it is listed for sale in the “undress” section of Rock My Wedding. You can visit undress through the tab in our header called “Sell My Dress” or you can jump straight to Katherine’s listing by clicking here.

A Dress With Pockets

I bought my dress at a local dress shop called The Wedding Company. It was designed by Essence of Austrailia.

Katharine The Bride: When I started shopping I had no idea what I wanted except I that I didn’t want a strapless dress, I tried on a few strapless dresses also though as there were so few with straps, some shops only had strapless! I actually liked most of the dresses I tried on and probably would have worn any of them – wedding dresses are beautiful! but when I tried on this one I loved the back. I went back with three groups of bridesmaids and eventually with my mum before I finally bought it. I was nervous about buying one with such a huge skirt but there is a huge hall at the venue that I’d seen an incredible photo of a bride wearing a huge dress, so I went for it! Also it had pockets!

I tried the dress on in cream and in a spur of the moment decision ordered it in white to keep it younger and fresh. It was very risky and I was so nervous it would be really shiny but it ended up perfect for a summer wedding!

A 5 Minute Do

Dan wanted me to wear my hair half up half down as he likes it that way but I was worried it would ruin the back of the dress.

I’m not really a hair up kind of girl and eventually saw a tutorial showing how to tuck hair into a band to get a loose easy up do. I bought my hairband for £10 from Monsoon and practiced in the car on the way to a dress fitting a month before the wedding. It took me 5 minutes on the morning of the wedding! I was going to wear a family veil but the dress was too white so I ended up buying one on gumtree!

The Perfect Pair

I wanted green shoes (to match my engagement ring!) and found the most perfect pair at phase eight – in the sale – fate! They are the most comfortable shoes I have ever worn and I didn’t really even consider that when I bought them. I didn’t want to take them off but Joseph (our photographer) suggested going down to the lake for some photos so I was glad I had bought my amazing bubblegum smelling yellow flipflops. I love flipflops and I knew Dan and I would go crazy when the band played so had thought it would be a good idea. The one thing I hadn’t counted on was my dress then being a lot longer, I ended up falling over a lot even with the bustle… It made for some amusing pictures!

Tears Before Church

I never wear makeup so one of Dan’s best friends, Nic did it for me, we had one trial with some make up I’d bought and I looked really grey, teach me ever to go shopping alone again! On the day of the wedding with her make up it was soo amazing! It stayed on all day, even after my tears before church! She gave me the lipstick to carry around with me which I kept in my pockets!! (I did my own hair)

Daisies In Drug Pots

Annie Jones (Dan’s cousin) did our flowers. Dan wanted nice smelling flowers and I love peonies which were luckily in season therefore in the bouquets we had smelly roses, peonies, freesia (my grandmothers favourites), craspedia and mint. Dan also had honeysuckle in his buttonhole which he went out and picked the day before the wedding. In church we asked for lots of gladioli as they were my grandfathers favourite and he sadly passed away last year.

We didn’t have many flowers at the venue as we wanted everyone to be looking at the amazing countryside. On the tables we only had ox eye daisies in drug pots (I’m a vet and collected them for a year) as we had cakes as centre pieces.

Urm…. No.

We wanted the wedding to be bright and fun and Dan got it in his head that he really really wanted flowery bridesmaid dresses!! Fussy groom his wedding catch phrase was “Urm no”, which became a family joke as we suggested sillier and siller things.

Anyway, I must have tried on a hundred potential dresses and sent him photos before he finally said he liked one and thank goodness he insisted because they were beautiful and we designed the wedding around them (I scanned them into the computer and used it on all the wedding stationery!) The colours were yellow, green, white and some red; luckily we had the weather to pull off the summery theme.

Dan wanted to wear a morning suit (which I was really happy about!), he and the groomsmen hired them from Apollo mens wear. I bought them all grey ties and Dan green monkey socks as he always wears stupid socks

Uninterrupted

I refused to see Dan or any of the men in their suits before the wedding so it was as much a surprise for me as him when I got to the top of the aisle. He looked so smart but also like himself and I was so glad to see him!

As we’ve been together for so long I can defiantly say that I wasn’t nervous at all because I’d wanted to marry Dan for ages but outside the church everything got a little overwhelming, as soon as I was up there holding his hand all that disappeared.

I suppose the thing I was most pleased about was that we learnt our wedding vows instead of doing the ‘repeat after me’ (at my father’s request!) I was sure Dan would never get round to it but he learnt them the night before and was amazing. It really meant a lot to me to stand there and say our vows to each other uninterrupted.

Many Weddings Later

Dan and I cannot say enough about our photographer Joseph Hall. He is a friend of a friend and he’d taken their wedding photos, we still remembered how good they were – 5 years and many weddings later – so thought that it had to be him and wrote to ask if he’d do ours. We’d been to weddings before where the photographer was bossy and we defiantly didn’t want that!

Joseph fitted into everything so well and put up with us changing our minds a hundred times! All my family loved him! It was so nice to have someone who felt like another friend rather than a stranger at our wedding, hopefully he’ll do my sisters weddings too some day!

The photos speak for themselves… stunning. I look at them all the time!

Amazing Taste

We had a tea party, catered by my mothers company – Amazing Taste, I made the cakes – one for each of the eleven tables as the centre pieces which were then taken away and then served with the speeches. Each was a different flavour – chocolate fridge cake, almond cake, rice crispie cake… I’ve made wedding cakes before and since but I don’t think I’ll ever try to make and decorate 11 in a row again!

A Caribbean Mood

This was one of the most important parts of the day as Dan is a professional musician and his family are very musical. We had a steel band called Real Steel to bring in the Caribbean mood (I lived in Barbados when I was younger and Dan proposed there on a small private beach). They were fantastic and even played our requests! In the evening we had a band called Fake Tan, their drummer is a friend of ours. They play covers and are absolutely amazing I have never danced so much! Dan and I went completely crazy, with his tie on his head – his normal wedding dancing attire! We bought loads of £1 retro sunglasses to help everyone feel as silly as us!

Ain’t No Sunshine

Our first dance was Louis Armstrong’s ‘Aint no sunshine’. Neither of us really wanted a first dance but Dan’s brother told us we should as he’d had to at his wedding! We chose louis Armstrong as I thought it wasn’t that cheesey (apparently I’m wrong!) and it was short!!

We weren’t going to have favours but ended up giving away beer brewed by Dan’s cousin from Moodley’s Beer. He made us a special wedding beer called Archers Bay (after the beach where Dan proposed)

I went a bit crazy with the decorating as I love craft. I painted 15 canvas’ with flowers to hang down the aisle in church, I made swizzle sticks for the pimms, 100 meters of bunting for the marquee – never again! table runners, and hearts to hang everywhere. My father made all the cake stands we used for the tea party.

Family Fun

Dan and I really wanted it to be a proper family wedding, my sisters and sister’s in laws were bridesmaids along with my godchildren and Dan had his brother and best friend as best men and all his male cousins as ushers, it was really fun to have everyone involved.

Of all the parts of the day I hadn’t really thought that much about was the service, we chose hymms and readings and then forgot about it but it turned out to be so amazing and so personal. Definitely my favourite bit of the whole day which is saying something as I loved it all!

Our family friend who is a vicar married us and wore a dog collar I’d illustrated for him when I was little – I noticed it as soon as I got to the front and really wanted to whisper to Dan!

My cousin read ‘The Owl and The Pussy Cat’ in church (Dan’s the guitar playing owl and I’m Kat!) and she was so fantastic she made lots of people cry

During the register Dan’s brother and father sang Ben Folds ‘The luckiest’. Dan had never heard his father sing… We promptly finished signing and got up to listen… I think it might have even made him cry!

Dan’s uncle also sang for us, he’s a japanese opera singer and we’d asked him to sing Frank Sinatra ‘When your smiling’. He sang a beautiful japanese love song and then did the best ever rendition of Frank Sinatra I have ever heard. He was incredible, I only wish we had videoed it, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard such a big round of applause in church!

Dont Stress About The Small Things

I can’t even imagine having a better wedding day there isn’t one photo of Dan and me not smiling, laughing or crying!

Tip – Everyone says it but do not stress about the small things. The day before the wedding my father ran over our dog! I’m a vet so had an impromptu trip to work very early in the morning (luckily she was ok except for a dislocated tail!) was not really what I had in mind when I was supposed to be decorating all the cakes! We definitely had our fair share of problems especially with the venue, lots of our plans got changed the week before the wedding, they pulled out of many of the things we agreed on which was frustrating. Get everything in writing with your suppliers, it’s your wedding but it’s also a lot of money and you want to get exactly what you booked.

Click here & view all images from this wedding

Boutique: The Wedding Company
Dress: Essence of Austrailia
Shoes: phase eight
Formal Hire: Apollo mens wear
Photographer: Joseph Hall
Catering: Amazing Taste
Steel drums Real Steel
Band: Fake Tan

I’m walking on sunshine woah oh… I’m walking on sunshine woah oh… You get the idea.

Loving the summer vibe. I can’t even remember a day last year that looked as light and bright as this. Katharine and Dan lucked out with the elements but they totally deserved a bit of sunshine to finish off this rustic treat.

And remember, Katharine is selling that beautiful Essence of Austrailia. Let’s hope it gets another day in the sun. You can visit Katherine’s listing on Undress here.

Adam.

Charlie and Tom married on a glorious day in a little Devon village called Lympstone last year. They held their ceremony in Lympstone Church and then walked to their reception which was hosted in the village hall behind the church.

How about that for keeping things simple.

Charlie officially became Charlotte Church on getting hitched which inspired the title of this wedding post…never one to miss an opportunity me.

This wedding is a real cracker; there’s reams of bunting, possibly one of my favourite bouquets that’s graced these pages and a whole heap of real, heartfelt gutsy love.

Take it away Charlie…

Channelling Elizabeth Bennett

Charlie The Bride: My dress was from Phase Eight on the high street – I saw it online, and ordered it straight away as I thought it was perfect! It was a little bit Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice and it didn’t actually fit until a month before the wedding, despite buying it a year before!

I was determined not to wear any jewellery, but my beautiful sisters gave me a Tiffany necklace on the morning of the wedding with a little blue heart on it, and it went perfectly! I also bought a vintage veil from eBay from the 1940s I think. I loved the idea that a few different women might have worn it on their wedding days, and the lovely girl that sent it to me said she had loved wearing it. I’ll probably put it back on eBay soon for some other bride to wear on her special day!

I’m in danger of starting to sound a bit bargain-basement, but I bought my blue shoes from Monsoon at 70% off, a week or so before the wedding! My engagement ring is a pale blue aquamarine stone, and they matched that a little bit, and so were perfect!

A Sixties Flick

Eve Ashby did our make-up and was just such a lovely, calming presence on the day! She made everyone look and feel amazing. We decided on a slightly 60s look for me, with flicky eyeliner, and I felt like me, just a million times better! She also did the make-up for my mum, two sisters and my sister-in-law, and they all looked absolutely beautiful, and were all thrilled with their look.

Becky Simpson did our hair on the day, and she was so bright and bubbly, making everyone smile. It was fab to have both of them with us while we were getting ready, as they were just so utterly brilliant. Becky did quite a relaxed updo for me, but it stayed in place all night – amazing! I loved it. She also did my mum and the bridesmaids, and they all looked (and felt) stunning.

Just Picked

Sarah at Bella and Fifi sorted out the amazing flowers at the village hall, and also the bouquets, hair flowers and buttonholes. My mother-in-law is a bit of a dab hand with flowers, and she arranged everything in the church, including a rather high archway outside! It all looked incredible.

When I was chatting to Sarah, she got straight away that we didn’t want anything too structured and fussy, and wanted a ‘just picked’, country feel to the flowers. They were beautiful, and such a treat to have on the day.

Dreamboats And Petticoats

The boys were all in navy suits (that they chose), and white shirts, and we bought them all a pale blue polka dot tie, and navy Converse to wear. I’m massively biased, but they looked so brilliant!

Tom wore the same as the rest of the boys, and wore a lovely navy suit from M&S, with navy converse. I thought he looked so lovely, and I couldn’t wipe the huge grin off my face when I saw him standing there.

My sisters wore navy polkadot 50s dresses from Vivien of Hollloway, with pale blue petticoats, and nude shoes from New Look. I have never seen them look more beautiful – I loved their dresses, and they were perfect for twirling at the end of the night! (I was a bit jealous of the limited twirling potential of mine…!)

Our lovely little flower girls wore pink and white dresses from Debenhams (and eBay!) with pale green cardigans, and they just looked like little colourful, adorable posies running around, and bouncing on the bouncy castle.

We didn’t really have a colour scheme at all – just lots of the colours we liked!

Photographers, Tea And Cake

Our photographers were the utterly lovely Pen and Cam at McKinley Rodgers. We looked at loads of photographers online, and as soon as we saw Pen and Cam’s website, we knew it had to be them. Their photos are just so dreamy and romantic, with a very special feel to them. It was actually very lucky that they are so good at their jobs, as I think we’d have wanted them as our photographers whatever they’d been like… we fell a little bit in love with them when we went to meet them, helped by the addition of tea, cake, and two rather gorgeous dogs! Their photos just captured the feel of our day so completely, and are beautiful, perfect memories of a brilliant day. I still haven’t got bored of looking at them!

Pen and Cam also organised a brilliant photo booth after the meal, which was brilliant, and we’ve got so many fantastic photos from that… a personal favourite is Tom’s 90 year old grandad rocking a Batman mask. Superb.

Tower Up

My oldest friend made us a tower of brownies which were (and always are) so, so delicious! Tom loves them, and was in his element at pudding time! Our sister-in-law also decorated the most beautiful cake for us, and lots of other friends and family members also made something yummy for our pudding table. It all looked and tasted amazing!

Baby I Love You

We also had a bouncy castle as there were so many children at the wedding, and made sure that it would accommodate adult bouncers too!

We walked out of the church to Morcambe and Wise singing ‘Bring Me Sunshine’, which felt so lovely, with everyone around us beaming and grinning.

Tom and I spent hours planning the iPod playlist for the wedding, which we both loved doing. We just wanted to dance at our wedding thinking “oh, my god – I LOVE this song” for nearly every track… which we did! Finding another person who knew all the words to the rap section of the 90s classic, ‘Oh What a Night’, was an added bonus. The playlist included some 60s classic, reggae, Britpop and a cheeky bit of Flight of the Conchords; we loved it!

Our first dance was to ‘Baby I Love You’ by The Ramones. It’s just been our song really since we first got together so was always going to be that one.

It’s All About The Detail

The details were quite important to us when we were planning the day, and lots of people helped to make the hall look so wonderful. Tom’s mum made metres and metres of beautiful bunting, and my Grannie spent hours making cushion covers to go outside which looked lovely.

Tom and I made photo placenames for everyone, which we strung up like bunting, so everyone could see our gorgeous guests! My brother made us a thumbprint guestbook with space for everyone to add a balloon thumbprint. It looked beautiful and is now proudly framed in our house.

We collected little vintage glass bottles, and vintage tea cups and saucers for the tables, and they looked lovely. We also had table centres in paint cans, wrapped with stripey personalised labels from Dottie Creations. Zoe at Dottie was so very lovely and clearly very talented! They also did a more traditional guestbook, and all our stripey confetti cones too.

We didn’t have any favours, but did do party bags for all the children to keep them happy during the meal and speeches! We also made little fortune teller flippers with trivia questions on them, as Tom is a bit of a quiz aficionado!

We used a marquee lining in the hall from the lovely William and Julia with little fairy lights, and it just made the hall feel really magical.

Don’t Rush

Our wedding was so special because it was such a family affair, and we just felt so honoured and lucky to have so many wonderful people making such an effort to celebrate our day with us. Our wedding just felt relaxed, fun and such a happy day…I wish we could do it every year! We knew we’d have a lovely day whatever happened, so we planned the day, trying to think about the people that were coming all the way down to Devon, and the little things that would help them to enjoy it.

The one piece of advice that a lovely friend gave me, was not to rush down the aisle to Tom, but to take it all in, stop at the bottom, and turn to give my brilliant Dad a kiss. It’s only a little thing, but was a very special moment during the day, and I liked that piece of advice! We planned lots of the wedding together, so it never really felt stressful, just really exciting! (I was training to be a teacher whilst planning the wedding, so it did feel like a treat, and a break from studying/lesson planning!)

Click here & view all images from this wedding

Dress: Phase Eight
Shoes: Monsoon
Make-up: Eve Ashby
Hair: Becky Simpson
Photographer: McKinley Rodgers
Florist: Bella And Fifi
Marquee Lining: Claremont Marquees
Stationery: Dottie Creations

Do you remember those fortune teller flippers that Tom and Charlie made for their tables? I saw them and was instantly transported back to my Junior School days! What a great way to keep guests entertained.

I also utterly adore those table centrepieces – a perfect example of something personal that can totally be used in the home after the big day has passed.

And lastly I absolutely agree with Charlie’s advice about not rushing down the aisle. These are literally the last few moments before you become a married woman and that’s something pretty special indeed.

Relax and take it all in, I promise it will be worth it.

All my love Lolly xxx

Chris and Ele instantly fell in love with Notley Abbey when they went to look around its wonderfully aged walls and were determined that this was the place for them. So much so that they didn’t view any other venues.

When you just know, you know, don’t you.

And I can totally see why they picked this beautiful venue. Exquisite gardens, sheep in the surrounding fields and a whole heap of history.

And that’s not all. Ele looks like a fairytale princess in her Lyn Ashworth gown and Chris looks as proud as punch to call Ele his wife. Their love for each other positively emanates from the photos below.

Just you wait and see.

Scarlett

Ele The Bride: I was torn between a Lyn Ashworth dress called ‘Scarlett’ and a Jenny Packham dress (which had always been my dream!) but after lots of deliberating I just knew Scarlett gave me loads of confidence and felt like something I could swoosh around in all day and feel comfortable in. Scarlett was a full organza skirt with bodice top and detailed straps, with a detailed belt.

I never thought I would wear a veil as every time I put one on I just felt like the corpse bride! In the end though when my dress arrived and the lovely ladies from Brides of Berkhamsted convinced me to try a full length simple veil it was like the icing on the cake. I kept my jewellery pretty simple as I didn’t want to overwhelm the detail on the dress and just opted for some drop earrings borrowed from my mum.

Shoes were also important to me. I knew I wanted something that I would get use out of again, so for me this ruled out white satin shoes (especially seeing as I knew I would be out on the grass during the day). In the end I found a perfect pair of sparkly Jimmy Choos which I felt were understated but special enough for the occasion. I also had a pair of corn flower and peach Vivienne Westwood jelly shoes (my sister, also maid of honour, had a pair to match!) which matched the bridesmaids dresses perfectly for the dancing in the evening. I also had a pair of peach Hunter wellies in case the rain came!

A Bevy Of Beauties

I really deliberated over my big day make-up. I got in touch with Nikki and she put me completely at ease and assured me that we could do a bridal look without being too bridal..if that makes sense. She was an absolute star on the day and even managed to help all of my eight lovely bridesmaids with their eyes which was great!

The team from Ciente in Berkhamsted did all of our hair, quite a feat with eight bridesmaids, and even managed to do my Dad’s! The girls had a selection of flowers for their hair if they wanted. It was important to me that everyone wore something that felt like them, so I didn’t ask for any particular hairstyles etc.

Beautiful English Country Flowers

One of the most important elements of the day for me was getting the flowers right. I researched hard for London florists prepared to come out to the country, but they all seemed beyond the budget

I stumbled across a website for Green and Gorgeous in Oxfordshire and fell in love straight away. Beautiful English country flowers, from a few miles up the road, that would be chosen the day before the wedding depending on what was looking best in the garden.

I met with Jo and she was honestly so helpful and understood everything that I wanted to achieve with the flowers, including my request for a ridiculously oversized bouquet and a big hanging pom pom for the ceremony! I adore dahlias so knew these would need to be a big feature.

When it came to decorating the venue, Jo and her team were a delight to work with and turned up on the day with an enormous quantity of flowers which were arranged around each of the rooms in a massive assortment of loaned vases, jugs and bottles. Just gorgeous!

It was very exciting a few days before the wedding going round the garden and picking the biggest most amazing dahlias for the centrepieces, and it was extra special knowing it was all home grown from just down the road. We kept the table centres fairly simple and opted for a variety of smaller displays and tea light holders.

Eight Birds

Twobirds Bridesmaids were a complete dream to work with. It was really important to me that the dresses for the girls not only matched their personalities (there were eight of them after all!) but were something that they would genuinely want to wear again and again.

Twobirds Bridesmaids fitted the bill perfectly as each of the girls could personalise the style of their dresses exactly how they wanted them. We opted for two colours to complement their different skintones and styles, and thankfully ended up with half in one colour and half in the other which meant it looked even on the day.

I also bought each of the girls a little trinket for them to wear on the day from Banana Republic or Monica Vinader.

Classic Liberty

Chris wore a gorgeous Paul Smith suit in charcoal grey and Reiss shoes. He wanted something that he would feel comfortable in and could wear again so we opted for a three piece suit.

We really struggled to find a tie that made Chris stand out but wasn’t too ott. We both agreed that something floral but not overly girly was needed. As the day approached we visited a tailor in south London whose suits weren’t quite right for Chris and his broad shoulders, but did mention that they could create bespoke ties.

I knew then that this was the way forward and in the end bought three of Liberty’s classic design prints – one for Chris, my dad and Chris’ dad. Each of the ties were different but complementary; I also used the material for Chris’ tie as the backdrop to the seating plan.

The boys had suits from Reiss and ties to match the cornflower blue that half of the girls wore.

A Friend From The Beginning

Jodie was a pleasure to deal with right from the outset. We knew we would have to act quickly with a bank holiday wedding to get a great photographer and meeting in one of our favourite London spots and seeing her beautiful work put us at ease straight away.

We did an engagement shoot near home in Angel and just loved the way Jodie felt like a friend from the beginning and didn’t ask us to pose for pictures but just snapped away in the background. We now have the most precious photo albums, including images of all of our loved ones that we will cherish always.

The Icing On The Cake

We deliberated over the cake for quite a while; it was the one item Chris and I really couldn’t agree on as he was adamant the cake had to have icing to be a wedding cake! I was veering towards a tiered Victoria sponge design but we just couldn’t agree.

Cue Rock my Wedding to the rescue.

I spotted a cake on RMW from Katja’s Kupcakes that had an intricate soft iced design which was so unusual and so I happily agreed to having an iced cake! Everyone on the day commented how original the cake was.

We chose tiers of chocolate, beetroot and raspberry and lastly white chocolate; it tasted delicious!

We wanted something traditional but quirky at the same time. We really loved the tiered designs on the ‘chunky’ side. Katja did some initial illustrations which were exactly what we were looking for and even drove the cake down from Cheshire the morning of the wedding!

My mum has always made the yummiest chocolate mars bar crispy cakes (not good for the waistline!) so she was a complete superstar and made ridiculous quantities in the kitchen in the days running up to the wedding for our wedding favours. We bought some Chinese noodle boxes and made some stickers with ‘Mrs P’s chocolate treats’ on them for guests to take home. They were all so popular we never had a look in but I’m sure they tasted great!

My Girl

We saw Andre at a family wedding and thought he was absolutely amazing. When it came to music for the ceremony we wanted something which would be memorable but in the right way! Andre invited us to see him perform with his band at an event in London and they were so incredible we decided they would be perfect for the ceremony itself. My Dad and I walked down the aisle to the Ellie Goulding version of ‘Your Song’ and had Train ‘Hey Soul Sister’ and Bruno Mars ‘Just the Way you are’ during the ceremony.

Annie, one of my beautiful bridesmaids read ‘A Lovely Love Story’ by Edward Monkton, absolutely amazingly in the ceremony. It was one of our favourite moments and she deserves a special mention as she so nervous when we were getting ready in the morning!

We had a Jazz band in the evening – The Jazz Cannons – who got everyone up and dancing all night before the DJ later on.

Chris had two best men, both old school friends. We knew Dickie (one of the best men) was due to go out on duty to Afghanistan for his first tour with the TA shortly after the wedding. What we weren’t expecting however was that the army would decide to bring this date forward to the week before the wedding! One of our friends works for the BBC as a sports presenter and together with one of the bridesmaids arranged for the filming of a mini speech for Dickie – there wasn’t a dry eye in the house when his little face appeared on the wall, especially after Chris had got so emotional talking about him in his speech!!

As Chris and I have been together for quite a long time (coming up for ten years now) and the songs we used to love back in the day all seemed far too outdated for our first dance. We opted for a classic ‘My Girl’ as it made us both smile when we heard it and knew we could shuffle along to it and look like we vaguely knew what we were doing!

The Finishing Touches

Notley is so gorgeous we wanted to let it speak for itself and didn’t want to go OTT with the décor. We did however make sure there were lots of fresh flowers dotted around the place and candles in the evening. Jo our lovely florist also brought along some ribbons for the covered walkways too.

Mum and Dad organised a surprise fireworks display for later in the evening which was amazing
We also created a homemade photo booth with a Polaroid camera which everyone enjoyed using and we now have a great guest book to flick through.

We made our own stationery designs, and used a local printers to get them all printed professionally. I was particularly proud of the table plan which incorporated the Liberty fabric from Chris’ tie and a bargain ornate frame with printed cards.

Stop Procrastinating

My top tip as a fairly (ok very!) indecisive person, would be to not give yourself too much time to plan. I found after the first six months I spent far too much time procrastinating and just wanted the day to hurry up!

On the morning of the wedding itself, I felt remarkably calm and somehow managed to get a good nights sleep. So take it from me, just relax and enjoy the day as it goes so quickly. It’s not worth stressing about the tiny details on the day as it is too late by this point.

Click here & view all images from this wedding

Venue – Notley Abbey
Photographer – Jodie Chapman
Band – The Jazz Cannons
Dress – ‘Scarlett’ by Lyn Ashworth
Boutique – Brides Of Berkhamsted
Groom’s suit – Paul Smith
Maids dresses – Twobirds Bridesmaids
Cake – Katja’s Cupcakes
Florist – Green And Gorgeous
Hair – Ciente

So there we have it.

Isn’t Ele’s bouquet simply gorgeous…and how about those eight beautiful bridesmaids. They are the most perfectly girly entourage you’ve ever seen.

And I well and truly take my hat off to any woman that picks not one, not two but three different sets of footwear for her big day. Ele you were well and truly prepared for whatever the weather.

All my love Lolly xxx

I ain’t go to lie to you (although I am going to use bad english). I’ve seen a lot of weddings in my time. A. Lot. Don’t get me wrong, we are spoilt for choice at RMW so they are all a bit special but occasionally one drops through the letterbox that makes you wish you’d known about it before the event… And that you’d had an invite.

Maybe it’s the fact that Louise and Anyas are both muso’s, maybe it’s the relaxed rustic charm, that Suzanne Neville dress and the way it swoops around the dance floor in the barn. And WHAT a barn… Seriously folks you are in for a treat. Katharine Peachey has really done the day justice with a beautiful set of images too.

Enjoy…

Venue

Louise The Bride: The venue was a very easy decision. Amyas grew up in a beautiful Suffolk farmhouse called Ansells Farm, and was christened in the local church where we got married. His parents, Stephen and Melinda, were kind enough to let us hold the wedding at their home, and were amazing at helping with all the preparations. Amyas’s brother even planted special flowers so the garden would look nice! We wanted to make sure all our friends could enjoy the day and not have to spend too much money, so we had space in the meadow for camping for those who didn’t want to stay in a hotel, with rows of tents that gave it a mini-festival atmosphere.

Hair & Makeup

I was very lucky that my cousin’s wife, Sam Phillips, is an incredibly talented make up artist, and made me look fantastic on the day – as well as helping me with pre-wedding nerves! She does amazing eyelash extensions, which lasted for the whole honeymoon and meant that I could be lazy and not bother with make up for three weeks – totally recommended.

Dress

I have never had a perfect wedding dress in my head. I knew that I didn’t want anything too dramatic or extravagant, and that I wanted sleeves, but that was about it. A couple of weeks after we got engaged, my mother and I went to a sample sale at Ellie Sanderson in Oxford, who were lovely and very helpful. I hadn’t really intended to buy anything, but ended up with a Suzanne Neville dress which was perfect except for a rip in the skirt, which was fairly easy to fix. It was only ever going to be something I wore once, so I didn’t mind when it ended up with about three inches of mud at the bottom from running around in the fields and dancing all night.

Accessories

My friend Charlotte’s mother, who is a genius at dress making, made my lace shrug which was my favourite thing about my outfit. I knew that I didn’t want to wear a strapless dress, and it was a perfect cover-up. I had a little birdcage veil—again from Ellie Sanderson and a pretty comb from Etsy. I did actually buy shoes, but ended up freaking out about falling over while walking down the aisle and left them in the hotel room, so I spent the day barefoot. And didn’t fall over once.

Maids & Groomsmen

Amyas, who is very clever at making things, made cufflinks for his groomsmen, which looked fantastic. My mother went on a flower arranging course and learned how to make buttonholes, and each one had a rose and a sprig of rosemary, so they smelt nice too.

My bridesmaids, Sophie and Jasmine, chose their own dresses – these were from Next – and they looked absolutely gorgeous.

The Look

We didn’t really have a coherent “look”, so much as a series of little ideas. Amyas knew he wanted to wear a Liberty print shirt, so we used some spare Liberty material (left over from when I made cushions) to tie around the cutlery, which my very patient sister-in-law helped me do the morning of the wedding. I had spent seven months in South America after University, and Amyas lived in San Francisco in the Mission District, so we made papel picado – Mexican-style bunting – for the barn as a reminder of both of those. In a similar vein, we drank Cusquena from Peru and Sierra Nevada from San Francisco at the party. And our friend Sabrina helped us make tin can lanterns, which we put candles in outside.

The Florals

My mother did an amazing job with the flowers – including going to Covent Garden Flower Market at 6am the morning before the wedding to pick them up. The bouquet was hydrangeas, roses and some beautiful purple mint, which smelled gorgeous. We had roses, hydrangeas, lavender and rosemary on the tables, and delphiniums in the church, which the best man’s mother and the wonderful ladies of Alphamstone village arranged.

We had a really personal ceremony, which I absolutely loved. I walked down the aisle to November Rain by Guns N Roses, which Amyas’s aunt Alison reworked for the organ. My friend Charlotte played the cello, and Amyas’s father, who is a professional opera singer, sang Roger Quilter’s ‘Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes’, which was beautiful. My godfather Mark read ‘if everything happens that can’t be done’ by ee cummings, and Amyas’s sister, Oriana, read from Corinthians. Our recessional was ‘Toytown Trumpeters’, composed by Amyas’s late grandfather, the organist and composer, William Davies.

Entertainment

We both love music, and it’s really important to us – our eyes first met over the mixing desk at Leeds Student Radio.

Our first dance was Never Let Go by Tom Waits. Perfect for us – a bit rough around the edges but very romantic, which had lots of special memories, including our first weekend away together in Paris to see him play.

Our wedding band was awesome. We’re very lucky to have an incredibly talented bunch of friends, and we had performances from a rolling cast including members of The Medusa Snare, The Wednesday Club, Sarah Phillips, The White Keys, and T.O.Y.S. The band started with Imitation of Life by REM, and finished with Minnie The Moocher from the Blues Brothers.

I spent about six months writing down tracks we loved to create an amazing playlist for afterwards. I hope the rest of our guests enjoyed it as much as we did!

The Nosh

My friend Mei has a company called Foodilicious Cakes, and makes the best cupcakes you’ve ever tasted, so we had red velvet, carrot cake, vanilla and chocolate cupcakes to choose from. We wanted something that everyone would enjoy eating, rather than a traditional fruitcake.

We wanted to have a really casual, friendly atmosphere at the tables during supper, so each table had a leg of roast lamb from the farm up the road, and a dedicated carver to serve it. Everyone helped themselves from communal dishes, and sharing was encouraged! Gemma Haining stepped in with just over a month’s notice to do the catering after our first caterer cancelled, and was brilliant. The food was all delicious, and the whole process was very stress-free.

We had fabulous Italian wines from Selezione Zanotto – choosing those was a fun evening – and prosecco for the toasts. To reflect our shared love of San Francisco and South America, we drank Sierra Nevada and Cusqueña after dinner.
Instead of party favours, our friend Kath brought us a beautiful box of Romeo Y Julietta cigars back from Cuba – Winston Churchill’s favourites – which we shared with our guests in the evening.

Because we know our friends, and ourselves, well, we figured they’d stay up late. Amyas’s mum had the excellent idea of having some cheese and bread laid out after supper, for late night snacking by the ping pong table, which proved a very popular combination. The Lancashire Bomb went down particularly well.

The Stationery

Our friends and family were all so generous with their time. My uncle, George Foster, is a top graphic designer, and created our invitations for us, which was fantastic.

We named our tables after different places we’ve lived in, although that became slightly complicated when it came to trying to create a seating plan that incorporated old flatmates and friends from university, but I think we did a good job in the end. It was great to bring all of our friends together and see them all getting along!

Final Thoughts

I think that most people already have an idea about what’s most important to them. Be it the food, the wine, the music, the decorations, the photography. In practical terms, make sure you get your priorities in order and don’t be disappointed looking back and thinking ‘I wish we’d done this differently…’. But most importantly, I’ve been so happy since Amyas and I got hitched. I married my favourite person in the world, and while we had a killer wedding, it’s that that makes me smile every day.

Click here & view all images from this wedding

Venue: Ansells Farm.
Make-up: Sam Phillips.
Dress: Suzanne Neville.
Boutique: Ellie Sanderson.
Maids: Next.
Cupcakes: Foodilicious Cakes.
Catering: Gemma Haining.

See what I mean… Do you see? Completely perfect from the blooms (blooming brilliant work by Mother Of The Bride by the way) to the decor to the P.A.R.T.Y.

Throw in a selection of stunning portraits (check out the gallery for the full set) and you have something approaching wedding heaven.

Adam.

Right then….where on earth to begin with what I love most about Lucy and Andrew’s sunshine filled outdoor wedding.

I. LOVE. IT. ALL.

The mis-matched floral maxi dresses for maids are a winner especially when combined with cute shrugs and cardi’s for the evening reception. Lucy also designed her own gown – a shining example of timeless simplicity.

And to accompany the many delicious food offerings guests were given a lunch time “set” which included cutlery, a napkin and an envelope which contained a request for favourite recipes….so the bride and groom could make them during their first year of marriage.

How cute is that?

Festival Vibe

Lucy The Bride:Our wedding was on the 15th September 2012. As soon as we started planning we both knew we wanted a wedding outdoors with a ceremony that reflected our Christian faith. It was so much fun imagining our ideal day and as our tastes are quite similar planning our festival style wedding was easy. We are fortunate enough to have a friend who owns some land, and he let us use the whole of Coulbeck farm, in Hutton Rudby, for our big day!

We hired two large tipis and a yurt to give it that festival feel.

Maximum Impact

Andrew’s suit was hand picked and tailored by our amazing brother in law at Brigdens, Derby. We asked the groomsmen to wear grey suits, navy braces and brown shoes. Dressing the bridesmaids was a bit more tricky. Having been a bridesmaid five times I knew how important it was to accommodate peoples tastes as far as possible. My sister was pregnant at the time so I needed to find dresses that everyone felt comfortable and beautiful in while walking through a field!

I decided to choose different floral maxi dresses. We pulled them all together with a high waisted tan belt and a three quarter length navy cardigan to cover shoulders, as the ceremony was outside! Our wedding had a festival vibe and the maxi dresses and braces suited it perfectly.

Dream To Reality

I always knew I’d be creating my own dress, I’m too fussy and always want to alter clothes to make them right for me anyway! I got to know Helen just as she was setting up her dress making business ‘Awake at last’. We clicked and started working on ideas straight away.

She is brilliant to work with, I described my ideas using images of bits of dresses I liked and she was able to make it into a reality.

We’d been looking at quite a few florists in the North East but when we found Cinnamon Rose we knew they would be perfect. They got our vision and were able to work to our budget. We chose white Hydrangea heads in threes for bridesmaid bouquets and table decorations in vintage green and white glass vases. The bouquets were wrapped with dyed cotton in our colours.

My bouquet was mixed whites and greens with rosemary, eucaluptus and David Austin roses, it had the most amazing scent. One of my favourite details were the button holes, a flash of bright blue feather, rusty reddish brown leaf, rosemary and small pine cones that they had collected for us on their walks in the woods. I would highly recommend Cinnamon Rose.

Hay Now

My entrance involved walking over a hill and into the small valley where we held the ceremony. It was amazing to see all the guests and Andrew waiting for me in the midst of the crowd and the hay bales. Andrew looked gorgeous in his suit. The preparation had been quite intense, so to finally arrive, stand with him and be in that moment felt so good- we did it! (but he did have hay stuck to the back of his trousers!)

The One

The one area we wanted to get right was the photographer, we met James Melia at a wedding fair, and immediately knew we wanted to use him. He was excited about our ideas and it was refreshing to have someone just get it all.

The way he works is so subtle and so much fun. His images are amazing and we can’t rave about him enough!

Pudding Club

We decided not to have a cake; we looked carefully at the traditions in a wedding and questioned why we would be doing them, we made it our day, and cutting a cake together didn’t really make sense to us, we preferred to spend money on lots of pudding for everyone!

For the ceremony we wanted songs that reflected our Christian faith whilst also expressing our love for music, and our ceremony band, led by my brother and some good friends, did just that- think Mumford and Sons singing hymns! a bunch of other folks also came prepared to do a song or two in the evening open mic. We are blessed to have so many talented friends!

The Greatest Space

We were looking for a venue with a difference. We are big fans of camping, tents and nomadic living. That sort of thing! So when we found Papakata we had to hire two of their Katas. The environment inside was beautiful, it really transported people into a magical atmosphere. Our wedding was very international, with many African, Middle Eastern, and European guests… It was a space that everyone felt at home in.

Go With The Flow

We ended up not dancing to our chosen song as it didn’t quite work in the moment (Tom Traubert’s Blues by Tom Waits) but instead went with the flow of the evening and started dancing to our friend’s set instead (an electronic duo called Foura). After that everyone was up dancing to a brilliant playlist Andrew had made on Spotify. We continued late into the night with drumming and dancing round the fire.

Do It Your Way

We used palm leaf plates and created a lunch time set for each person, with a napkin, wooden cutlery and an envelope on each one. Inside the envelope we placed a recipe card, asking people to post us a favourite recipe for us to try during our first year of marriage. We love sharing food with friends, there were picnic boxes down the centre of the tables and everyone shared food together, it was a great atmosphere.

Our friend Karl made us some amazing wooden signs which we had all over the farm, and a Chuppah which we got married under (He sells his signs through Etsy). We loved our day, it was personal to us and the weather was incredible!! Our advice would be, look at tradition, question why your doing something, and then do it your way!

Click here & view all images from this wedding

Venue – Coulbeck Farm
Brides Gown – Awake At Last
Grooms Suit - Brigdens
Florist – Cinnamon Rose
Photography – James Melia

I still haven’t attended a wedding where the reception is in a tipi – have you?

Loving all of the portraits amongst the hay bales…..so romantic.

Big Festival Love

Charlotte xxx

Seriously….SNOW?!

I think someone needs to have a word with whoever controls the weather around here.

This afternoon however we’re bringing you sunshine – LOTS of it. And a slightly different real wedding feature in that we are focussing on the film of the beautifully bohemian W-day of Love Lust List member Binky Nixon created by RMW Sponsor Ben at Kissing Gate.

Binky’s super pretty affair has already featured in various publications but in light of Becky’s recent (and uber popular) “Regrets” post we thought we’d share with you the full moving action as it were….

Plus there is the most immense Matthew Williamson frockage going on, and who doesn’t need some glitter on a cold and blustery Friday?

Of course if you do want to see more of the stunning stills you can pop on over to photographer Marianne Taylor’s blog.

Binky Nixon:Obviously when planning my own wedding I was pretty well connected to source some amazing peeps. Being in the industry and being a photographer, stills and film were obviously very important to me. I lost my Dad nearly 10 years ago and I have no moving footage of him. I know what weddings involve, the rare gathering of all the people you love the most.

For me a film was a must as I know in years to come some of those people sadly won’t be here anymore. On film you get to see the expressions, the way someone holds them self, they way they walk and if they throw their head back when they laugh.

I still remember the first time Ben text me to say he posted a film on facebook and wanted my opinion. I had no idea it was ours! Off I trundled to have a look and had total goosebumps when i saw the title frame. I don’t even know how to write this next sentence, how to sum up how that film makes me feel. I watch it and smile, I feel like i am there all over again. I can smell the flowers, feel the sun on my face and feel the love from everyone in that barn. Ben was given a gift when he arrived on earth and that was to capture all of this. To tell peoples stories in the most magical way possible. He didn’t miss a single thing, what we ate, what we drunk, the people we love, our gorgeous pooch but most of all how we feel about one another.

Every time I watch the film I smile and cry all at the same time, it brings back amazing memories of what is by far the best day of my life. Ben will never know how grateful we both are for our film, for getting us, what is important to us and putting it all together in the most beautiful way.

Iv just watched it again whilst writing this and I am off, teary but oh so happy, its beautiful and I love it so much! Thanks Ben x

Photography – Marianne Taylor
Videography – Kissing Gate
Stationery – Something Kinda Cute

Have you ever seen such a perfect car?!

Or such a perfect flower crown?!

I die.

And if you want to see more rustic and romantic wedding-y stuff then come and meet Team RMW at Avenue restaurant in London on Sunday from 12pm until 4pm, we’ll be there with our boutique and many of our stylish industry collaborators.

oh…and there will be cocktails.

Obviously.

Big Binky Love

Charlotte xxx

This really is one of the loveliest wedding reports I’ve read so if you can get 5 minutes with a cuppa to sit and read Leonie’s words as well as look at the stunning photography from Love Lust List member John Day I promise you will fall in love with her wedding story.

With a professional florist as a Mum the flowers really are beautiful. And you get a real sense of the entire day, from Leonie setting up the wedding breakfast in her dressing gown to dancing the night away to a band she’d known for over 10 years.

There are perfectly mis-matched bridesmaids and beautiful flower girls. The cake is also pretty flippin’ cool.

Dan and Leonie got married at The Rectory Hotel in Malmsbury in April last year.

Here is their story.

Leonie The Bride: I found my dress in the very first shop I went into, Caroline Castigliano. My mum, sister and I were welcomed with a glass of champagne and regardless of the fact it was an 11am appointment we were happy to toast such an exciting day. The manager was wonderful; the shop was ours for as long as we needed and I tried on around 12 dresses, starting with huge ‘princess’ dresses, slowly working my way down in scale. When I tired on ‘the one’ I’m afraid I lived the cliché; we all cried and I knew instantly that it was meant to be (and typically cliché it was way over budget.) The multitude of delicate ivory lace gave it a feminine vintage feel, whilst the cluster of diamantes below the bust line added some glamour.

Diamantes couldn’t be any less ‘me’, but with a cathedral length veil the dress was toned down and I felt every bit of the bride I wanted to be. We visited another couple of shops that day, but I couldn’t shake ‘the one.’ Wary that it was over budget I promised myself (and my generous mother) that I would sell the dress as soon as we were married, but she knew then as well as I do now that I will never be able to part with it.

Something Borrowed

I fell in love with my veil (almost as much as my dress!) I felt particularly special shrouded in such delicate silk. I thought I’d be able to save money on the veil and so I investigated buying a second hand one; buying directly from a lady who makes them in Ireland; but none seemed to match the quality of the fine silk from Caroline Castiglinano so I ended up splurging there too. Unfortunately you get what you pay for in the veil department!

I bought my diamante hair-clip from Ardinglay antiques market – and bought 5 more for each of my bridesmaids! My tiara was my ‘something borrowed’ from my sister and was originally from Liberty. It felt very special to have something of hers with me all day.

The Perfect Balance

I was struggling to find suitable shoes. Thankfully I saw some adorable ivory heals on Rock My Wedding. Rachel Simpson shoes are the perfect balance of vintage glam, and the heals aren’t too high for dancing the night away (although admittedly mine were kicked off immediately after the first dance.) I bought mine from a gorgeous boutique in Soho called Fur Coat No Knickers.

Incredibly Thankful

I feel most comfortable with my hair up (because I have no patients and scruffy-up is my fallback position.) I had planned to go ‘curls loosely pinned up as if just been frolicking in field’ look, until I tried on the veil and for some reason the combination of a cathederal length veil and an ‘up do’ left me looking bald – which wasn’t the look I was particularly aiming for. So I had no idea what I was going to do until the day, when my wonderful makeup artist popped some curlers in my hair (as simple as that!) As soon as we had finished the wedding breakfast, I was whipped upstairs to take the veil off and pin my hair up; this took all of 30 seconds and I was thrilled. I was lucky enough to have my makeup done by one of my best friends who is a professional makeup artist for film and television. I had a trial the week before and I couldn’t believe the magic she can conjure! I was frightened of looking too ‘done up’ but she gave me a very natural look, and added a little more eye shadow in the evening – I was incredibly thankful to have my makeup artist on hand all day, and one of my best friends with me as I got ready in the morning. If anyone wants to save money by doing their own makeup, I’d avoid doing this as professional makeup artists have an incredible ability to ensure the makeup stays put all day, and it’s a very long day!

A Bunch For Everyone

In the floral department I am very lucky as my mum Lizzie is an incredible professional wedding florist (she even did the televised ‘BT wedding’ commercial where Chris Marshall finally gets hitched to the girl he met in a lift… remember that one?!) For someone who can make huge, elaborate, painstakingly well crafted centre pieces, I was relieved that she was happy to go with my request for ‘flowers that look like they’ve been picked from a field and thrown together in mismatched vases.’ Mum had a collection of vases for me to go through, as well as some original 1950s milk bottles, some jars, zinc troughs and wooden boxes and we selected them based on a loose colour theme of dirty pink, sage green and duck egg blue. I wanted nothing too manicured or pruned, just natural and so so beautiful; I wanted flowers-flowers everywhere; I wanted the rooms in the Rectory to smell of rose beds; I wanted it to look like a field in the sunshine, and it really did. There was 6 vases on each table; troughs of bedded flowers in the conservatory; flowers hanging from green vines on the ceiling; rose petals on the floor and dripping from the cheese cake; my beautiful niece and flower girl had a head band of fresh flowers. And at the end of the day there wasn’t a flower left in the building as mum wrapped a bunch for each and every person. Lucky us.

My Beautiful Girls

I went a bit leftfield with my bridesmaid dresses. Although matching dresses can look divine, I felt like it would give the impression of formality and tradition, which is what I was desperately trying to avoid. I’m lucky enough to have friends with very different personal styles and I wanted everyone to feel comfortable on the day, and themselves. I wanted to see each of my beautiful girls just as they are, not stuffed into a uniform that would disguise them. So, I asked that each of them find a dress in a ‘dirty pink, cream or brown’ in exactly the style that they like the most and I think it worked out perfectly.

My husband wore a very dashing, made to measure three piece suit from Reiss. His two brothers also wore suits from Reiss, as well as matching ties. Dan has a collection of around 50 pocket squares, so as a homage to Dan, they all wore Reiss pocket squares and looked very dapper indeed. I can’t begin to describe the moment I first saw Dan as he waited for me at the end of the aisle… breathless. We held it together for about 2 minutes but after that we pretty much sobbed throughout the ceremony. It was a very wet day! It didn’t stop pouring outside and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

Emotive

Our photographer was fantastic – another Rock My Wedding find! As soon as I went onto John Day’s website I knew he was just who we were looking for. It was so important to us to find the right person, who could capture the day in such a way that means that for the rest of our lives, when we look at the pictures, we can be transported back there, time and again. His reportage style captured treasured moments, without us ever having to pose, or force a smile, or be taken away from our guests for hours on end. He snapped away whilst I was getting ready with the girls, with Dan and his friends in the pub, whilst my sister and I had a pre-wedding tearful hug, when Dan and I held each other for the first time alone as man and wife – John was there, but we barely even noticed. To me, his work is natural, emotive, honest, artistic, unique and he is as charming as his work.

Cheesy

Dan and I both love cheese; selfishly we decided that we would prefer to eat cheese than cake so it was an easy decision to make – a cake of cheese! We went to our lovely local cheese monger Hamish Johnston and enjoyed a delicious tasting session. The cheese proved incredibly popular whilst the band was taking a break and everyone needed re-fuelling.

I knew which band I wanted ten years before I’d met Dan! When I was at Uni my friends and I loved dancing to Mowgli, who were all Music students at the time. And years later they are incredibly successful and have been invited to play at weddings around the world – including at sisters wedding where I didn’t stop dancing ALL night. They lived up to my expectations and more and even though it was a small wedding, the dance floor was heaving!

Impromptu Moments

We struggled to find a first dance as our favorite songs all seems to be a bit inappropriate for the occasion. So instead of going for something with a ‘cool factor’ we went for a song that we found ourselves singing along to together years before – ‘Everlasting Love’. Our wonderful band learned it especially for us, and as the chorus kicked in, everyone around us began to dance. Alicia Keys ‘Empire State of Mind’ is a favorite song of ours (New York being one of our all time favorite places) and when the band played it during their second set we had an impromptu ‘first dance’ moment. Everyone gathered round us in a circle and sang their hearts out to us as we spun round in the middle. That will remain one of my most treasured memories of our day – a moment that was entirely unplanned but meant so very much.

The Hangover

My Mum and all her wonderful friends collected antique cup and saucer trios for months before the wedding so that we could give each girl at the wedding a lovely memento of the day. It took quite some time (and a lot of ‘antiquing’) to find enough, as complete trios are hard to come by. Aware that the boys would be a lot less sentimental, we made them ‘Hangover Kits’ containing essentials such as Paracetamol, cans of coke and chocolate. The night before the wedding my bridesmaids and I spent hours packaging them up, which was a hangover in itself!

Pretty Perfect

Being incredibly lucky to have a wedding florist for a mum, she was able to bring a lot of magical touches to the décor, including home made bunting, wooden hearts, lace ribbon, candles and an incredibly array of containers. There was a bird theme running through the wedding. Dan and I fell in love with and bought a beautiful original bird print and I got this design made into a rubber stamp. So, anything that couldn’t move – was stamped, from the stationery to the table plans; even the hangover kits were branded.

We wanted the beautiful venue to feel like home so we filled it with as many personal touches as we could, including framed pictures of our friends and family. We fell in love with our venue, the Rectory Hotel, because of its unique, bold and creative décor, so our canvas was pretty perfect to begin with.

Stick To Each Other Like Glue

The Rectory Hotel and all their staff were simply incredible. Their attention to detail was thorough and the wedding planner was dedicated to responding and meeting our every need in a laid back and sincere approach. No task was too great for them, even when my friends were ordering unusual cocktails at 3am! My advice to brides to be is to find a venue that you love and the rest will follow.

We spent a full weekend at The Rectory before we made our decision – we ate the delicious food which is all sourced from local suppliers; took a look in every single bedroom; sampled the wine; spent a good few hours in the local pub – and never wanted to leave. And now we have an excuse to return there every year for our anniversary!

Everyone will tell you how fast the day will fly by, and it really does – find a moment to take a breath, look around the room at all your amazing friends and family who have made your day, and pinch yourself that it has all come together perfectly. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Who cares if your napkins don’t match the particular hue of green you spent hours perfecting on your invites – none of that really matters – what matters is that you are marrying the man you love, so whatever you do, please stick to each other like glue throughout the day, and find a moment to be alone, to thank each other for the best day of your lives.

Click here & view all images from this wedding

Venue – The Rectory Hotel
Boutique – Caroline Castigliano
Shoes – Rachel Simpson
Flowers – Lizzie Moreton
Grooms Suit – Reiss
Photographer – John Day Photography
Cake – Hamish Johnston

How simply lovely is that! And if you take anything away from it I think it should be ‘what matters is that you are marrying the man you love’.

Nothing else in the world really matters.

Happy happy Monday to you all.

Becky
x

In the past we have been a little bit slated (One Jolly Girl – You know who you are!) for not showing enough kiltage on the blog… Well, today we turn the tartan table around. Not only are there kilts, but we will also be revealing what a Scotsman keeps in his sporran…

Kate and Gordon married in August 2012 at the intimate boutique hotel Sanctum on the Green in Berkshire.

Summer Sun

We were married in the school holidays as I am a teacher, Gordon is a policeman and had to have a full on meeting with a top bloke in the met to get the time off as it was the closing ceremony of the Olympics! I have to say, considering it was the wettest summer in 100 years we were incredibly lucky with the 30 degree summers day we had!! God knows what we would have done if it had been raining!?

The food at Sanctum on the Green was amazing and was cooked by a very talented 18 year old called Luke.

In fact, I heard someone say they were the nicest canapés they’d ever had… I just wish I had tried the deep fried quails egg with truffled hollandaise with edible spoon!!! So annoyed There was always a cocktail and flavoured fizz for me and the girls, it was too much fun!!! In fact, I hear that the mango cosmopolitan was a hit! So very sanctum!!!

Shopping Around

Well this is a bit of a long winded one…. In all honesty, I always knew what I wanted my wedding dress to be like, even before we were engaged! Tight fitting, fishtale, lace with a sweetheart neckline. However, as my friends know and would undoubtedly take the P.I.S.S out of me, I NEVER go shopping and buy the first nice garment I see. I have my own, very unique and probably very annoying technique to clothes shopping which involves shopping around and not feeling like I can buy something until I have seen all the alternatives!

So, I pretty much did the same with wedding dress shopping. I also made the mistake of trying dresses on before we had chosen the date and venue, which I wouldn’t recommend! After stupidly trying on all sorts of styles (which I pretty much knew before I took them off the hanger that they wouldn’t look right on me), in different countries (my mum lives in Spain!) AND in very different price brackets… A year after getting engaged I had it down to a Rosa Clara dress and a Lusan Mandongus dress. Both exactly how I had imagined my dress to look like but both rather pricey. However, on a visit to the national wedding show in Earls Court in September 2011, I found an even nice dress and at a better price. I totally knew it was the one (which was helped by more gushing BM’s! in toe..) and was the first one I tried on on the day (but of course I continued to try on others throughout the day). When I went back to the store I just knew… It was tight fitting and quite sexy but still had that pretty girly feel with all the tulle netting underneath and also had a big train which I was surprised with such a tight fitting dress.

The designer was Benjamin Roberts, which I knew a local store in my town stocked. So, one of my BM’s made a quick call to the store who luckily said they would match the price! So, that was the start of a lovely relationship with my wedding shop,

I tried on over 80 dresses… NOT recommended… But secretly I loved it all… Wedding planning is the BEST! X

The Puffed Look

I knew I wanted a veil which would sit high on my head, I was inspired by the 80’s puffed look! I also knew quite quickly that I didn’t want the veil to be full length as I thought it would take away from the train of the dress. So I went for a 72 inch (I think) fingertip length ala Kate Middleton! I thought it was a perfect length as it stopped just where my dress started to flair out and I just loved the way it fell down in a waterfall effect! It was from Rainbow Club.

My Dad treated me to my beautiful Jenny Packham haircomb and my Mum treated me to my art deco style earrings, also by Jenny Packham. I knew I wanted something in my hair but not a skull cap (think that’s what they’re called?), something more subtle, my hairdresser and I both agreed it was nice to have it sitting under my veil. As for my earrings, having looked at hundreds of looks, I knew I wanted quite big ones, I am a big earrings girl on a night out, so why settle for anything else on your wedding day!? I felt they completed the whole vintage glam look that was slowly coming into fruition and I was always saving the bling for my accessories, so why not a bit of Jenny Packham!? They can also both be worn again which I have already making the most of!!! My beautiful bangle was a present from G which was given to me on the morning of the wedding; it is from Swarovski and complimented my other bits perfectly! I was a very lucky girl!!

Muted Pink

I knew I didn’t want white shoes as I wouldn’t ever wear them again. My colour theme was muted pinks/nudes with bling!! So when I saw these Kurt Geiger heels I knew they would be perfect with everything else. I wore them loads on honeymoon and I know they’ll go fab with a pair of skinny jeans, so all in all a good buy! By the way, I kept them, along with a tonne of secret new clothes for our honeymoon under the bed in our spare bedroom. I thought I had been clever telling G they were wedding things he couldn’t look at… but little did I know, he knows me too well, that when it came to subtly getting out another bikini and saying it was old… He knew it had come from the bags of goodness under the bed!!! I so know I am not the only woman who says that! My mum does that all the time for a start…!!!

Relaxed And Personal

I discovered the business card of my hairdresser Jo Basten from Innovation Hair in amongst a wedding file from a visit to a wedding show at the Sanctum the year before. I had my first trial with her and really liked her relaxed but personal approach. I ended up having two proper trials as the first one I had gone for was a 1940’s look, which although was amazing, it was too formal. I deliberated having my hair down, but as I wear my hair down all the time, I wanted something different. In the end I went for an informal side look with plaits going into it, little ones in the bun, and then lots of lose bits down. I’ll never forget the conversations about the option of tendrels or no tendrels!!?!? I never knew so much thought could go into them! The things you discuss when planning you wedding!!!

My make up was done by a very talented friend Eve Coles who is a professional make up artists in London. It was all about the dark eyes, who says go demure and understated on your wedding day??

Garden Of Eden

Our florist extraordinaire was Anna from Eden. The only time on the morning of the wedding that I felt emotional was when I saw our bouquets! They were so beautiful and more than I had ever imagined! We had met Anna a couple of times before the day itself to talk through our ideas. When I first met Anna, I knew instantly that she was the florist for us and that she would do an amazing job.r outfits but also so they were all unique for the mummy!!!

For the ceremony she scattered roses around the lanterns down the carpet and on the table where we stood and on our top table.

We had a bit of mix n match of gypsophilia/crystal and candles for centre pieces. I was going for the whole vintage glamorous look but trying to keep it all elegant. The centre pieces were a mixture of table which had the tall vintage candelabra which then had three votives of gypsophilia and then on half the tables we had a ball of gypsophilia which were in a glass vase which had crystals and a rose head in with then 3 votive candles. I must say Anna is an awesome lady. She really went that extra mile for us and got really involved with the whole ‘themeing’ of our day. She is also a very cool, down to earth and funky person, I really would recommend her over and over again. x

Black Tartan

We had 4 Ushers and one Best man and two Dads who mostly wore the same as G who I’ll get on to in a bit. Some guys hired a black watch tartan kilt and they all looked soooo smart!

I knew from the start what colour I wanted the girls to be in. Something muted, nudey and not in your face. As with all my planning, I went around the houses…as you can tell, that’s just the way I rock! At first I had my heart set on a long coast silky number in pebbly colour. It went in the sale but in my attempt to get 4 I called Maceys in New York and even Dubai. At some point I had to let it go!!! And I am SO glad I did! This was defo FATE!

I knew when I saw the French Connection summer collection out that one of them would be perfect. They had lots of these blush/intimate pink/coraly colours and a couple of them were in lace… Amazing! I just loved the idea of all of us being in lace, it’s not every day you get to wear it and I wasn’t going to be the only one in it, I wanted to treat them too!

I bought them all a Swarovski bangle, they deserved a bit of bling walking down the aisle in those puppies! I also treated them to some diamante studs, got creative with blinged up personalised hangers and a picture of us on my hen do in Ibiza.

Gordon wore a Braemar grey tweed jacket, a grey braemar tweed 5 button waistcoat, a black Hugo Boss shirt, an ivory cravat, a Maclaren kilt (this is his family tartan) from Houston, highland dress shoes/sporran/socks and sock flashes and Sgian Dhubha which is the dagger in the sock! G kept the most important things close to his chest (or groin area more like), he had 20 marlborough lights in his sporran and the speech! He looked fab and really made an effort when planning his outfit to tie it in with the theme we had created.

An Easy Choice

Choosing Kelly at Lola Rose to photograph our day was such an easy choice to make. We met her at her home where she showed us some of her work which was beautiful; really quirky, fresh and romantic. Admittedly though, we are not experts in photography or wedding photography for that matter, so we didn’t really know what we were looking for. So it was really Kelly’s kind nature and informal approach that we liked. She was so easy to talk to and put us at ease about the insecurities we had at being photographed in front of people all day! We are in awe of the way she made our traditional photos fun and that little bit different.

Kelly is a such a fun and funky lady. She has continued to be in contact us through her blog and FB and I feel I have met a friend in Kelly. She is so unobtrusive but so professional, she made all our guests feel that they were at some sort of chilled out party rather than a highly organised and traditional day, and I guess so much of the way people felt could have been down to what Kelly was doing. I cannot recommend her enough, she is very talented and has those special people skills which is so important for a wedding day!

Not A Dry Eye In The House

Bagpiper-Graham was piping away when our guests were beginning to arrive at the sanctum and he played them to their seats. He then piped me down the aisle to Highland Cathedral. I hear that when it was first being played there wasn’t a dry eye in the house… Apart from mine, I was just kiddy with excitement! He then piped us out to Cock O the North and then played sporadically throughout the canapés. He also piped us into the marquee for our wedding breakfast where Gordon had to do a shot of whiskey from a Scottish Quaich! Tradition I here! Graham was amazing, especially as he was sweltering in his amazing traditional Scottish outfit.

I had always wanted Ibiza chiil out music playing during our canapés. I thought it would suit the venue, but also would be a nod to the chilled out abroad theme we wanted and nearly flew thousands of miles away to, but had it right here in the UK! However, G was having none of it. He thought it would be too much. However, on the day before as we could see it was going to be a hot weekend, I thought it would be such a shame if we didn’t have them. And the only way we would have been able to have them was through the venues speakers, which G wanted for his speech. In the end, the BMs were telling me to make an executive decision! And the manager was getting ready to tell a white lie to Gordon and say that the speakers could be wired up to the marquee, however all I mentioned were the words chill out music and he admitted, his nearly wife was right! In the end, my brother just put on what he had on his I-pod, literally an Ibiza chill out album and it played throughout the afternoon whilst there was canapés, cocktails, champers and confetti. I have to say, just taking that all in was probably my second favourite part of the day…just one of those moments. Second to marrying G of course!

It also had happy memories of our Ibiza henny! X

Rock On

My Dad and step mum helped us with the band and they also suggested a band through their rock choir teacher Glenn! They were absolutely brilliant! They totally rocked! They played so many good tunes, we wanted a real mix of party classics to suit different tastes. There were a couple of funny moments with my inebriated BM. One of them grabbed the microphone and helped Glenn with a couple of the songs and another sat on the drummers knee and grabbed his drum stick and started rocking out!! One of the band members also DJ’d inbetween their sets so I think there was a hardcore few who never left the dancefloor!

Nothing Soppy

We knew we wouldn’t have a soppy number and definitely wanted something to get our guests involved rather than all eyes being on us. So, after dancing around our kitchen to Everywhere by Fleetwood mac (my fav song ever) and Sally Cinnamon by the stone roses (his fav band and G’s first and only nickname for me), we thought we’d surprise people and go a bit left field. So we had an interlude song from the Killers album Sams Town first, the lyrics ‘ we hope you enjoy your stay, it’s good to have you with us, even if it’s just for one day, outside the sun is shining, seems like heaven isn’t far away’…seemed very apt on the day iself…it was really beautiful. We couldn’t resist an 80’s love ballad, so afterwards in kicked in Fergal Sharkey, A good heart!!! Seeing everyone sing the chorus in rapture and slamming their fists in the air simultaneously was one of the most memorable parts of the day for us! Such fun. 

13) Favours – did you have any and what made you decide?
The simple things in life make us happy…so alcohol was always going to make up part of our favours! We went for bottles of Sambuca on every table and bought everyone a shot glass and put a ribbon around it. When we have been away for weekends with some of our friends, Sambuca shots always get a look in, usually in some sort of rusting old kettle found in the house we’re staying in!! So it was awesome to see all our guests loving the ritual. This made up another of those really memorable moments, once when everyone stood up together and toasted the day with a shot of ‘sambo’! And another when the tables started singing infamous lines from their band’s songs…I quite liked it when the Groove Armada table started it off with a rendition of ‘I see you baby, shaking that arse….’!

Sanctum were lovely to us and ordered us an ivory carpet as I wasn’t too keen on the red one they have! Once I arrived at the sanctum, having stayed away the night before, I had a little sneak peek through the conservatory when I was having my meeting with our registrar. And OMG it looked beautiful, more than I had imagined. This was thanks to G’s mum, our sisters, my step mum and other guests staying at sanctum (you should have seen the list I had left for them!!), the staff at the sanctum were amazing, but particularly Mrs Lawson, the owners mother who really pulled out the stops for us when things had become a little stressful a few weeks before the wedding (to say the least)…. She even arranged two massive pots of flowers at the entry to the marquee and 5 lovely bay trees, just for us. So good of them.

Basically the garden looked so pretty and chilled out, it was like being abroad in an idyllic sanctum!! I guess the look they are going for hence the name!
-Lanterns – I saw Shannen Doherty’s wedding in one of the mags and loved the outdoor vibe. She had a long aisle which she lined with different sizes of lanterns, so I nabbed that idea for ours and got 6 lush lanterns from confetti. Roses were then scattered around them-adore

We hired 6 beautiful crystal vintage candelabra and a selection of votives from Wedding Day Hire. Deborah’s company is one of the only I could find that had such wide variety of décor to choose from of a high quality and standard. I was like a magpie in her showroom, magical!

Our stationery was designed by Sarah Zammit of Elvis and Marilyn. She was amazing! I just contacted her via e-mail and she was happy to do anything we wanted even though she was only just starting out doing weddings!

Gordon made the amazing table plan! He really wanted to get involved and get creative. So he put together a table plan of our favourite bands all of which we have been to and have fond and happy memories from. This is now hung up in our kitchen and looks fab! He also thought of the CD covers for the table centres.

I made my two nephews mini official photographer signs and gave them polaroids. I then had heart black boards which guests could write ‘words of wisdom’ on which they held up for a photo which the boys then took. I just thought it was a nice way of getting something memorable from the guests which wouldn’t keep them away from the fizz for long, but also of keeping the boys busy. The boys then attached the polaroids to a black board with ribbons on so we could see what people had written. We now have lovely memories to look back at and will put this up somewhere in our house.

Click here & view all images from this wedding

Venue: Sanctum on the Green
Dress: Benjamin Roberts
Hair: Innovation Hair
Blooms: Eden
Veil: Rainbow Club
Maids: French Connection
Photography: Lola Rose Photography

I love the idea of mini official photographers… What a great way to keep the little ones entertained (whilst also providing entertainment for the adults too) and at the end of it you get a snazzy piece of decor that you can treasure forever.

Adam.

The title of this post says it all.

Louisa and Richard’s wedding has Autumn completely wrapped up. An orange colour scheme, fur, hessian, yurts and classic glam. One of my favourite elements? The chairs. So very, very pretty.

Louisa is such an elegant bride and watch out for the last picture in the post…she looks like some sort of princess/hollywood star/goddess.

Amazing.

Louisa The Bride: Neither of us had a perfect wedding venue in mind but Dewsall felt like the place we had been waiting for. Until recently it was a private family home and from the moment you walk in the door you are passed a cup of tea, plonked down in the kitchen and treated like an old friend. The house is beautiful and filled with quirky antiques, huge open log fires, a beautiful conservatory and (to our guests’ delight the night before the wedding) a hidden games den with an antique pin-ball machine! It is a gloriously romantic house and the views over the black mountains and the Duchy of Cornwall estate are stunning.

We loved getting excited with the Dewsall team about our wedding weekend. Despite the fact our wedding was in November, we didn’t think to bring our wellies with us. On the morning of the wedding Jemma left two little pairs waiting for us as a gift. We didn’t need them in the end, but Samantha, Jemma and Amanda were always prepared to go the extra mile.

Satisfying My Inner Princess

The wonderful Hilary Bufton from Hilary’s Wedlocks did my hair and makeup. She set my hair in heated rollers before pinning it up with a wave – I loved the big curls from the heated rollers so much I bought some for myself for Christmas! My earrings were little art deco crystal drops from the Jenny Packham Accessories Boudoir in London and were a 30th birthday present from my mum. Every girl wanting to satisfy her inner princess needs to visit this shop! The surfaces are laden with tiaras, lace, sparkle and pearls… I think I tried on every headpiece going. I picked up a pretty brushed-silver bracelet of daisies by Belle & Flo from a shop in Harrogate called Bijouled. My perfume was Jo Malone White Jasmine and Mint . I had my nails done at a local salon in Harrogate using bio-sculpture gels – brilliant because they’re rock hard and last for ages. Despite decorating a yurt, they still looked fresh on the wedding day.

A Simple Satin Gown

My dress was a 1940s style satin gown from Angelica bridal in Camden passage one of their own designs. It had a cowl neck and dropped back with a little satin boater. Other than knowing I didn’t want a poofy dress, I had absolutely no idea what sort of dress to go for. I thought I would want some lace, but when I tried it on I felt glamorous and elegant and it somehow made me hold myself differently.

The dress was quite a simple style, without any lace or embellishment, so I chose a floor length veil edged in Spanish lace from Pronovias (No. v2716) to add a bit of detail. I loved the way the lace fell over my arms but you could still see the open back of the dress through the veil.

Richard had a bespoke suit tailored by Rhodes Wood in Harrogate, the service was excellent, he really enjoyed the experience and I was so proud to have him by my side. The suit is beautifully made so it will last him a lifetime and he’ll be able to wear it again on special occasions.

Textures And Style

Being a November wedding, I needed something warm for outside and some of the wedding looks I loved the most were those in which the bride had mixed different textures and styles. I found an amazing fake-fur coat from River Island with beautiful brown and yellow tones and lots of luscious fur. It was pretty realistic – my friends thought it was an antique heirloom passed down through the family. For something old I wore my mum’s sapphire ring and had a beautiful handmade lace garter from Attelier Rousseau.

My two bridesmaids were my best friend Jess and Richard’s sister Elizabeth. They wore midnight blue maxi-dresses from Phase Eight, with white fur wraps knocked up by Jess’s mum Marie. They were a constant source of fun and support and helped calm my nerves on the day.

Eclectic

We are extremely lucky to have a number of hugely talented friends and family who all pitched in to make our wedding special. It was a bit eclectic in the end – we wanted it to be warm, fun and to make people smile, which I think it did. My friend Charlie suggested using the orange Penguin book covers for our invitations and the ideas just rolled from there.

I wanted to go for romantic autumnal colours and spent a few weeks in haberdashery shops surrounded by spools of ribbon, bringing the colours together. They weren’t traditional–marigold, sage, pale grey, blackcurrant and gold, but I loved them.

Dewsall House is beautiful but we needed something a bit larger to accommodate all our guests for the ceremony and reception. Samantha had the ingenious idea of having a couple of Yurts on the lawn by the side of the house. We’d never set foot inside a Yurt, so it felt quite adventurous but they were beautifully hand cleaved by her brother and a friend and provided exactly the informal, laid back atmosphere we had been hoping for. We joined two together – an enormous 36ft yurt for the reception dinner and evening drinks and a slightly smaller 30ft one for the ceremony and dancing in the evening. We were very conscious that we didn’t want our guests to get cold in yurts in November so we made sure there was plenty of heating and we hung festoon lighting around the trellis and little fairy lights up into the rafters to make it extra cosy. The yurts had wooden floors as well and we had flaming torches and matting leading the way from the house to the yurt.

It Was Magical

We actually had two wedding ceremonies. The legal ceremony was conducted in the house in front of our closest family and friends and then we went straight out into the yurt with our registrar for a ceremony in front of everyone else. Our registrar made both ceremonies feel special and important and as the bride I got to have two entrances. My Dad is rather creative and handy with a bit of DIY, so we asked him to make an archway underneath which we could get married. It was a true labour of love. He used fresh green bamboo, which he drove from London to Herefordshire a few days before the wedding to keep it green and then somehow managed to make a wooden structure to slot the bamboo into, which made an arch. The floor had some fake grass and on the morning of the wedding he went out and collected beautiful red maple leaves to scatter on the ground. He wound little fairy lights through the leaves which twinkled away. One sensation I remember from the ceremony was standing under the bamboo and feeling utterly peaceful listening to the swish of air through the bamboo leaves, surrounded by loved ones. It was magical.

Baby Boo

We wanted to create an informal and inclusive atmosphere, so we had trestle tables and benches in a circle formation, with us on a round table in the middle. The benches were covered with sheepskin rugs and we got a local upholsterer to make some hessian runners for the tables. I spent a few weeks before the wedding tying strips of coloured ribbon in the wedding colours onto rope to tie on the back of chairs at the top table. On the tables we had mini white pumpkins called “baby boos”. Amazingly our florist managed to source them for us in the middle of the UK’s worst pumpkin crisis for decades. I made little flags for the place names out of brown Kraft paper and toothpicks and wrote people’s names on them. The pumpkins were a huge hit – people took them home as favours and told us they mashed them, roasted them and had pumpkin soup, pumpkin stew… all sorts! Richard made larger flags with the table numbers on them. We began to feel that there was a bit of a circus theme emerging, so we went with it by making a suitably theatrical table plan! Etsy was my also my friend. I ordered all sorts of bits and pieces from it, including a beautiful paper garland to hang round the chalkboard wedding menu.

Love And Hard Work

For the guest book, we bought a cheap photo album from Boots and covered it with some New York wrapping paper. We got engaged in New York and celebrated at Coney Island, so I ordered reproduction vintage postcards of Coney Island online. We left the postcards out with a few pens and asked people to write us a message and slip them in the album. I collected some vintage books for the table display and painted letters with our initials.

My mum, my bridesmaid Jess and her wonderfully talented mother Marie each made a tier of our wedding cake (chocolate of course!) and decorated it with orange flowers to match my bouquet, and some very smart ribbon. The penguin theme was carried onto the cake, with two little emperor penguins made entirely from sugar by another friend of the family. It looked better than anything I could have imagined. I was thrilled with it on the day and so touched at all the hard work and love that went into making it.

Exceeding Expectations

Our flowers were put together by the creative genius Emma Lynch at Love Lily. I showed her some samples of the coloured ribbons I was using for the other decorations and gave her a general theme, but she exceeded my expectations in every way. I was keen on textured foliage with dashes of bright colour and nothing too structured. We had little glass votives and jars down the centre of the trestle tables, with berries, grasses and beautiful orange, white and purple blooms. She made a stunning feature in a tall glass vase for the centre table and the bouquets were simply gorgeous. We were so grateful to have her.

Conga Lines

Our band was called the New York Brass Band. We first saw them busking in Leeds several years ago and just after we got engaged we saw them play again at the Spiegeltent in Harrogate. They’re an eight-piece brass band with a massive sousaphone and play a mix of New Orleans style funk and pop classic covers. We got them to march into the house and play a set in the lounge before leading all our guests in a conga line into the Yurt for the evening entertainment. We had a full dance floor for the entire evening, which was fantastic.

Starfish

We didn’t really have a first dance, but one of our favourite songs is a Prince song called Starfish and Coffee. I tied in little starfish references where I could. The favours were mini starfish biscuits made by a lovely woman called Charlotte at Sugar Therapy in Harrogate. We had a stamp made which said “For your coffee” and stamped it onto Kraft card, which we stapled to the biscuit bags. A few people got the reference – everyone else probably thought we had a thing about sealife.

My amazing friend Charlie designed our wedding invitations in the form of little Penguin books. We made little wedding programmes for the ceremony in green Penguin books. There was a bit of to-ing and fro-ing inbetween the house and the yurts throughout the day, so I asked Charlie to design bookmarks for inside the wedding programme with the timings of the day so people roughly knew when things were happening (and most importantly, when the pies were coming out!). We got the invites and the wedding programmes printed at a local printer in Harrogate for a very reasonable price and the quality was superb. Top tip: we sent all our invites out by second class post – they all got there in 1 or 2 days and saved us a tidy bit.

Click here & view all images from this wedding

Venue – Dewsall House
Hair – Hilary’s Wedlocks
Boutique – Angelica Bridal
Groom – Rhodeswood
Flowers – Love Lily
Band – New York Brass Band
Caterers – a2zest
Photographer – Laura Babb Photography

How much do you love the layout of the wedding breakfast? Trestle tables around a circular centre table? Absolute perfection.

Are any of you having 2 ceremonies? I love the thought of two entrances…nothing like making the most of the one day you get to do those things.

This wedding also goes to show that it doesn’t need to be winter for you to have a penguin theme. Fact.

I’m off to decorate my dining room chairs with ribbon.

Becky
x

We all know a marriage lasts for a lifetime, but a wedding doesn’t usually last for a whole weekend! This is so so cool. The venue lets you hire it for the entire weekend so you can really make the most of your nuptuals.

This is rustic romance. It’s countryside cute. It’s laughter and love. It’s hessian heaven. It’s brilliant.

You’re going to love it.

Oh and by the way, the dress is awesome. You will have serious back envy. It is HOT.

Bring Your Own Booze

Nicky The Bride:We’re an outdoorsy couple and knew from the word go that we wanted our venue to reflect that. We also liked the idea of a ‘bring your own booze’ wedding. Nether Burrows Farm turned out to be perfect. We hired the whole place from Friday until Monday and stretched out the wedding all weekend.

We held everything in the party barn which we decorated ourselves. After the ceremony, we had fizz outside in the garden while our fantastic caterers turned it into an eating/dancing area.

We were so lucky with the weather; it was exactly what we had hoped for, cold, crisp with blue skies. The down side was also the weather, the barn wasn’t exactly insulated and although we had hired a heater by 10pm it was dance like mad or freeze!

Fizz And Girly Time

I absolutely loved the getting ready bit of the day, we didn’t say I do’s until 2pm so we had a good amount of time to drink some fizz and really savour the girly time.

I don’t normally wear much make up and didn’t want to walk down the aisle looking like a totally different person. My best woman did my make up; I wanted my eyes to stand out so she sorted me out with striking smoky eyes. As I’m not normally one for lipstick either, she also bought me a new pot of Vaseline as my something new which was just so me! A friend did hair for me my bridesmaids and my mum.

My little bit of girly beauty was my perfume. I wore Prada, a lovely grown up and romantic scent.

1st Trip, 2nd Shop, 7th Dress

I bought my dress on my 1st trip, 2nd shop, 7th dress. I wasn’t even going to try it on but my Mum picked it up so I thought I’d give it a go. By the time the shop assistant had put a veil in my hair, everyone was crying and so the dress was chosen.

It was a simple satin dress with a low back and some detail on the straps by Tara Keely. I wore a lace bolero which left a lovely heart shape on my back. I felt fabulous in my dress. I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t feel like a bride as it was so simple but once I had my veil on (which was my something borrowed) I definitely felt the part.

I saw the Vivienne Westwood lady dragon heart shoes on another bride on RMW but the colour I wanted was last season. I thankfully eventually managed to get some from eBay; they were just right for tramping around the field in.

Too Busy Dancing

The only piece of jewellery I wore (other than my engagement ring, which was I put on my little finger until my wedding ring was securely in place) was my Grandmas pearl necklace. It was especially nice to wear as she was too ill to come to the wedding so it was a little bit of her there on the day. I decided not to have anything other the veil in my hair. I had thought that I would like a pretty slide or something to put in when the veil came off at night but it was just one of those things that got put to the bottom of the list and I never dedicated the time to finding the right thing. In the end I was too busy dancing and having a good time to even think about my hair.

Two Suits, One Groom

Russell actually bought two suits. His first was a vintage 1970’s Mod suit that we painstakingly sourced and had shipped from the USA only for him to buy a brown tweed style suit from Next which was the one he ended up wearing. His best man and my dad also wore brown but we decided against matching suits. They all wore Army class two ties which was a nod to Russell’s military days. I had four bridesmaids and a best woman, so called as she was to do a speech just like a best man. I had originally planned on them all being in the same coral dress but there was, let’s say, a small problem with the seamstress and five days before the wedding we were on the hunt for new adult bridesmaids’ dresses. As you can probably imagine, this is not what a bride needs so close to her big day but with three days to go we ended up with a dress from ASOS which fit all three of my lovely ladies and lovely they did look.

The little bridesmaids were Russell’s daughter and niece. They wore coral dresses from Rare and shiny hi top trainers from Lipsy which everyone commented on.

Ooh You Make Me Live

We wanted the wedding to have a romantic, relaxed, rustic feel; the theme was loosely hessian brown, cream lace and coral. The only constant throughout the whole thing was brown twine that was used on everything from the invites to the favours and even hanging the lanterns up. My mum made the most amazing bunting, something I wasn’t keen on at first, I was scared of the school fate look but it looked great.

Russell made signs that we put up around the barn and in the garden. We got married in front of the ‘ooh, you make me live. You’re my best friend’ sign and walked back up the aisle to the Queen song.

I spent hours decorating jars for tables and for hanging on the chairs to line the makeshift aisle and we put up plenty of fairy lights to make the barn feel a bit cosier.

DIY Blooms

I had very specific ideas for flowers and just wanted Gypsophila with sprigs of Rosemary for the bouquets. As money was tight and flowers weren’t a priority, I ended up making a VERY early trip to the flower market the week before the wedding and ordering a whole load of Gyspophila. My mum then made an equally VERY early trip to pick them up the day before the wedding. My Dad had been nurturing pots of rosemary since the summer and so there were our flowers. We put them into every jar, can, vase, pot we could find and my Mum whipped up the bouquets and button holes with a little help from a you tube tutorial.

Tying The Knot

When I think about our ceremony I still get a little heart flutter. We had a Humanist ceremony which was really personal but relaxed and funny too. The service included things we loved about each other, right down to Russell remembering I eat left handed and him admiring my reverse parking skills to the fact that he makes me laugh every day. We wrote our own vows and also had a hand fastening which involved having ribbon tied around our hands, when you take your hands out, the knot stays. Hence ‘tying the knot’. The words that go with the hand fastening were lovely…’these are the hands that, when old and wrinkly will still reach out for yours…’

We had two readings. Russell’s friend read a lovely love story by Edward Monkton and my mum read a quote by Louis de Bernières, from Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. It had everyone in tears, especially her; she struggled to get her words out.

The First And Last

We toyed with the idea of having a band at the reception but we were pushed for space and the logistics of setting up would have been a nightmare. We decided that we would just set up a playlist and ask for requests from guests when they RSVPed.

Russell is in a band so we had access to proper lights and speakers and we simply started with the first dance and then let it play. The only rule was you had to dance to the song you requested.

Our first dance was The Who, Blue Red and Grey. We didn’t practice before; we just got up and enjoyed the moment. After the first dance, Russell handed me to my Dad and I danced with him and Russell with Jemima, his daughter, to Foreigner before the Weather Girls kicked in and we all got a bit giddy.

We ended the night with Etta James, At Last. The song I had walked down the aisle to. The first and the last of the day.

Taylor Made

Our caterers were Tailor Made Catering of Doncaster. We had a kind of afternoon tea but with things like cured meats and pickles. We of course had scones with jam and cream and other lovely cakes for dessert. The caterers were fantastic, the food was great but they also made everything run so smoothly. I can’t thank them enough. The cake was also made by Tailor Made Catering, the rubber duck cake toppers were given to me on my hen do.

In the evening we had pie and peas, home made by Russell’s Mum and Dad and around 11pm we cut the cake which was layers of different cheese and served it with port.

Favours for the guests were different chutneys and jams. Homemade of course. My sister made the majority of them. She spent hours slaving over a hot stove making batches of apple chutney and red onion jam but it was worth it, they went down a storm and people were even ringing up after the wedding to see if they were any left over!

Rock Stars

We named our tables after rock stars/bands who we like. The top table was Cher and Right Said Fred, people who Russell and I have been a likened to in the past. The table plans were simple chalk boards in frames that Russell had bought me for my 30th birthday. One of my favourite DIY things were the booze baskets. As there was no bar at the venue, I made up a basket of drinks, personalised the specific tables. I just wanted everyone to feel that we had thought about them rather than just plonking plonk on the table.

It’s impossible to pick a favourite part of the day. I just remember feeling elated all day and when I look at the pictures all I see are people smiling and enjoying themselves. It was everything we wanted. I do like remembering the bit when everyone settled into their tables and fell into chatting and laughter, Russell and I looked around the barn and at each other and just appreciated that everyone we loved were in one room and we had just become Husband and Wife. It was perfection.

A special mention should be made of our photographer Tony. He did a fantastic job, I hardly noticed that he was there but in fact he was everywhere and captured so many special moments.

As for advice, all I can say is enjoy every minute and don’t be afraid to do stuff yourself or at least delegate it family and friends; it’s all part of the fun.

Click here & view all images from this wedding

Venue: Nether Burrows Barns
Dress: Tara Keely
Groom: Next
Maids: ASOS
Photographer: Photography Thirty Four

Hessian brown, cream lace and coral…how perfect is that. Oouff I just love it. The ‘Ooh you make me live sign’? And then walking back up the aisle together to the song? What is not to love. Seriously.

I love that the only flower was gypsophila. Are any of you having one single type of flower?

How beautiful does the ceremony sound as well.

I just love it all.

Congratulations on a gorgeous day.

Becky
x

Are you hungry? If you’re not I promise you will be by the time you have finished with this wedding. Seriously. The levels of food immensity have reached new peaks with Ali and Cams ‘Love Feast’.

They both poured so much of themselves into their day and the results are spectacular.

There’s not much else for me to say. I’ll let Ali do the talking.

So Much Pressure

Ali The Bride:I really didn’t enjoy the whole dress shopping experience. I just felt so much pressure to find ‘the one!’ along with the additional pressure of shop owners telling me I had to order before Christmas if I wanted it ready for June.

Early on in my search I’d tried on a dress of a similar style to my final choice and it just stuck in my head. As it was literally the first dress I tried on I felt compelled to keep searching but throughout the process I kept coming back to that style. Eventually I found the one in a little shop down in South London called London Brides by designer Winston near to where I was born and near to a ‘proper’ Pie & Mash shop which my family had been visiting for generations. I did have a little wobbly during my first fitting and wasn’t 100% sure I’d made the right choice although once the alterations had been made it fit like a glove and I felt amazing in it.

Sparkly Skyscrapers

I didn’t think that I wanted a veil until they made me try one on with my dress. I felt transformed in to a bride and at that moment knew I wanted one. It had beautiful droplet detailing around the edge that complimented the detailing on my dress. I had been eyeing some Jenny Packham finery but with the wedding budget looming I just couldn’t justify spending a fortune on something I was only going to be wearing once. I purchased the jewelry from John Lewis simply because it was the simple style I was looking for and it complimented my dress.

Skyscrapers! The designer was Benjamin Adams. I’d seen them early on in my search and basically they were super sparkly, peep toe and I love love loved them!

Leaving It To The Professionals

I chose Amanda Marsden Salon in Totnes for my hair and make up. They seemed to be the most up to date and professional down in sleepy Devon. I knew that I wanted a a relaxed look although always normally wear my hair down so wanted either half up or neatly pinned to the side. I was pretty relaxed and just let the professionals do what they thought would work.

I let my bridemaids chose whatever style they wanted on the morning and they both chose lose curls. The make up brief was that I wanted to look like me with a little added glamor.

Old World Glamour

We wanted our flowers to reflect the rest of our wedding, country garden style and super chilled out. The florist we used was Emma Vowles in Tontnes. Our color scheme was pale pink and sage green. My Mum also spent the morning of the wedding picking some extra flowers at dawn! By picking some of the local flowers from the surrounding meadows I felt it really pulled everything together and added a sort of seamless tie to the beautiful Devon countryside. To present the flowers we spent ages collecting old jam jars and perfume bottles to uses as centre pieces and vases. We decorated the bottles with vintage lace given to me by my grandmother. On the centre of each table we laid down a massive slab of English wood collected for us by my brother Chris who is a tree surgeon. We were aiming for a rustic, organic, farm house feel and all the wood and natural colors, old glass and lace really fulfilled our vision with the lace giving a touch of old world glamour.

A Very British Feel

We wanted to tie the colors in, especially when it came to the Bridesmaids. The dresses we bought at Coast and the shoes were from Debenhams. The color of the dresses again tied in with our rustic farmhouse feel and matched the flower arrangements. With the guys we really struggled to find a neutral color that would tie in with Cam’s idea for his blue suit. In the end we hired a neutral grey suit and bought some knitted pale pink ties from a cool independent tailors off of Portobello Road called Adam. The ties meant a lot to us as the shop is very near to where we live in London. The pink tie was so instrumental in bringing all the colour schemes of the wedding party together.

Cam wore a navy blue 3 piece tailored suit that we bought from Reiss. It had a lovely fitted Italian style cut but with the navy blue color adding a very British/60s London feel to it. He had a slightly different pink tie than the other guys but the colors still matched and came together and it gave Cam a slightly different look without standing out. Cam’s shoes were made by the classic English shoemakers Barker’s and were simply a classic brown leather brogue. He offset his brown shows & belt with a set of bright pink socks matching his tie and adding a little flair and personality.

An Opportunistic Eye

We made the amazing discovery of Andy Squires through many hours of on-line blog searching. We liked the look of his photos and the natural style they exuded. You could really tell he had a creative mind and wasn’t just another point and shoot photographer. The last thing we wanted was to just be made to stand still and put on a smile. Andy captured the wedding in a photojournalistic style that encapsulated the day naturally and just the way we wanted. His opportunistic eye was perfect for all those sometimes unforeseen moments you most want to remember. We also indulged in the photo booth option which was loads of fun and laughs. Andy took the time to meet up with us months before the wedding to discuss our ideas and just generally get a feel for us as people. It was this sort of extra special commitment that really came through in the final pictures. We were over the moon!

The Chef Groom

Cam is a chef in London so in the early stages of our wedding planning we made the decision that Cam would do 90 percent of the catering himself. He literally made the cake the night before the wedding and decorated it the morning of! We went for an English original: ‘The Victoria Sponge Cake’ with an amazing vanilla buttercream and a cascade of English strawberries.

Next to the wedding cake he also built a huge ‘CheeseCake‘ surrounded by fresh figs, walnuts, prunes & apples. We had a load of lovely bread for an English master baker who only uses bread recipes that are 100 years old or older! Cam sourced all the ingredients for the ‘Love Feast’ from local English suppliers. He was even specific on the exact breed of pig we roasted.

The inspiration for our menu choices were the seasons and a laid back, organic, slightly retro style of food, cake & snacks. When it came to the big day Cam utilised all his chef mates to plate up all the food buffet style on massive retro platters which we spent months collecting from second hand shops and car boot sales. He even planned a ‘do it yourself’ starter that could be laid out on the table before everybody sat down giving a real family style to the Love Feast, which meant everybody had to dig in and pass the food around. Cam used old floor boards and massive cutting boards elevated onto old tin cans. On the boards he put home made terrines, pates, English butter, and other goodies. He also got a hold of a load of pheasant eggs and soft boiled them in the shells then put them into little easter baskets full of hay with a little sign that read, ‘pick me, peel me, eat me’ celery salt and mayonnaise on the side of course.

The Secret Cinema

Cam’s best man is a filmmaker so as we stayed at Worden House for the week leading up to the wedding setting up, cooking, hanging out, organising and everything else under the sun. Adam documented it all on his camera. The plan was to film all the preparations so those guest who couldn’t be there for the build up to the wedding could still be part of the experience and also see what exactly we had been up to (working!). We then had faux cinema tickets printed and handed them out to guests as they arrived to spark a little interest. Inside Worden House we were privilaged enough to have a cinema room which we decorated with popcorn in popcorn boxes and penny sweets. After the ceremony we invited ‘ticket holders’ into the cinema to view our journey and hard graft leading up to the big day. It was a way of sharing the special week with the guests that couldn’t be there to share what an amazing time we had. The best man also added a few of his own embarrassing flourishes and everybody was just in stitches!

Original And Sweet And Lovely

Our first dance was probably one of the hardest decisions we had to make. As two faithful festival goers and huge music fans we both had such strong opinions on the subject. Cam wanted Tom Waits for example and I can’t stand him! In the end we were on youtube in bed together and we listened to Ellie Goulding: Your Song. We just felt this soft version of a classic song was original and sweet and lovely and in the end we just felt it made us feel good when we listened to it and that was enough.

Aeroplane Fight

On the tables we had toy foam retro aeroplanes that everybody put together themselves and we had a massive aeroplane throwing fight in the middle of the marquee! I also but a basket of flip flops down by the dance floor for all the girls so they could get out of those heels. This proved to be an absolute life saver seeing as our last guests left at 9am!

Luxury House Party

The general decor of the venue was so unique that it fit in with our ideas. We were the first couple to be married at Worden House and literally found it as a potential venue when Cam googled ‘luxury house party”. Before we approached them they didn’t even have a wedding license. We travelled down to Devon and took a look at the house and realised straight away that it fit our brief and would be super original! All we had to do was fill in the blanks…

We spent hours of our lives sourcing out old school serving plates from charity shops to serve Cam’s food on. We got hold of a load of old material prints and made 100 meters of bunting in our little London flat. We went to wedding fayres, car boot sales & charity shops for over a year collecting anything and everything we thought would add to the feel of the wedding. Our artist friend Tom Hovey sketched our invites based on our vision and we worked with him until the design was perfect. A printer friend helped us decide on the card and printed them off.

My brother Chris spent months collecting old wood that he could carve into presentation pieces for us and collected the old floor boards that Cam used for his buffet. My other brother Mark made for us the now infamous ‘Love Box’ which was basically a hollowed out painted box with the word ‘Love’ carved out of it, then stuffed with loads of funky lights, being the coolest non disco ball, disco ball, ever! He also made a massive wooden sign post that we used to direct our guests around the property upon their arrival. The sign covered all bases: Loo, Ceremony, BAR, Love Feast & Wrong Way!

A Labour Of Love

What made it all so special other than the obvious reasons was the fact that it became a monster labour of love. All the organisation and work we put in shocks even us when we look back on it. BUT, we just did it because we had to! Simple as really! We had a really defined vision and we kept pushing on. In the end, we are so proud with what we achieved and that adds another dimension to the whole experience. When we look back on it all we just smile and think of all the ‘layers‘ of preparation, the actual day itself and even planning the honeymoon. Such massive achievements akin to running a small business!

It really was an expression of who we are as people. Of course we would want all our loved ones to experience that. We both work in the luxury hospitality industry so luckily we had a lot of experience & contacts to help us along the way. The final push and the hard graft of setting up a wedding is immense and luckily we were surrounded by our close friends and families to help us endlessly. They have all said since, that being part of such an undertaking really added to the experience for them as well, enhancing the whole thing and adding a lot of emotional heavyweight involvement in a super good way. As well, by doing so many things ourselves we saved a lot of cash and got exactly what we wanted.

You can’t really put a price on that.

Click here & view all images from this wedding

Venue – Worden House
Shoes – Benjamin Adams
Hair and make-up – Amanda Marsden
Groom – Reiss
Maids – Coast
Flowers – Emma Vowels
Photographer – Andrew JR Squires Photography

Such an honest account of wedding dress shopping. It’s wonderful to hear when brides thoroughly enjoy every second of it but it can be daunting for some so its nice to hear that you may not be alone in this area right? But look how well it all turned out in the end *inserts happy smiley face*.

How about the food peeps?? Epic or what? What are you doing about food for your day? Sticking to more traditional sit down 3 courser or are you putting on a spread similar to this extravaganza? The cakes look amazing as well don’t they? What a clever Groom!

There’s just so much to love about this day. The aeroplane fight – win. The film showing the run up to the wedding – win. The centre pieces – win. I could go on for quite a while.

Please look through the gallery for more couples shots and food gloriousness.

Fabulous day and massive congratulations on all of your hard work and effort. Truly worth it.

I’m off to eat some sort of delicious homemade grub to satisfy my now rumbling tummy.

Becky
x

This is rustic…but done a little differently. Karla and Pat married at Stokbridge Farm in Sherborn, Dorset. It was the first venue Karla looked at and it ticked all the boxes. She wanted something magically rustic and she got it.

There are so many sweet details and I love the seating plan and cute lavender favours.

Karla tells the story better than me…so here goes…

Hollywood Glamour

Karla The Bride: I saw one of Patrick’s friends get married in a blue sequin dress and knew at that moment that I didn’t want to wear white. I decided that I wanted a timeless look reminiscent of 1940′s Hollywood glamour. I have a pear shape and wanted a dress that hugged my hips and made me look like Jessica Rabbit! My dress was the Winter Kate Limited Edition Nicole Dress in Pink, designed by Nicole Richie. I got it for a quarter of the price on Outnet.com. It was a dusty rose colour with tailored paneling. A distinctive feature was the fishtail. I wanted my dress to be catwalk moment. 

A Little Lace

I wore a lace cover from Etsy. I wanted something white for the ceremony. I had a quicksand dusty pink rose in my hair. I’m half Latin-American so I wanted to have a slightly Hispanic look. I wore a third generation Rose gold bangle, my mum’s pearl earring and a necklace my dad gave me.

I’m nearly 6ft so wore flat shoes from Kurt Geiger. They were white lace.

Distinctive

My hair and make-up were done by Annabel Hornsby and her team. I cannot recommend them enough. She totally embraced the idea of creating a 1940′s glamour look. I wanted someone who also worked on TV to create something distinctive.

English Countryside

Our florist was G Lily. She was recommended to us by our caterers. What I loved about Sabine is that she also hires out various decorative items for your day from candelabras to vintage bottles. She picks little things out that people would love and lets you borrow them. We have her to thank for an unique idea we created. We saw a picture from an event she did where their guests had to find a bottle with their name and the table they were on on it. She suggested we collect the Schweppes bottles free from the pub, which we did. 90 of them! We filled them with lavender from Somerset Lavender and bought wooden tags for the bottles from Cox and Cox.

Both Sabine and I couldn’t have been happier with the bouquet. It was a mix of in season country flowers and included quicksand roses and rosemary. The labels were a rose and rosemary wrapped in twine like the bottles. I asked for “strong look” flowers for the bridesmaids that had a high-fashion look. The table centres were square glass Kilner jars filled with wild summer flowers. The tables were named after types of trees to fit with the our theme of ‘English Countryside’.

Nothing Too Matchy Matchy

I decided to dress my bridesmaid in white. My maid of honour and I found white applique lace dresses on ASOS boutique and lace white wedges from Aldo. One of my bridesmaids was 15 so had a messy fishtail in her hair. My maid of honour wore a low side bun with red vintage lipstick. They both looked stunning. The best-man and ushers wore their own suits. We didn’t want it to be too matchy matchy!

Patrick wore a blue suit from Reiss. His shoes were from Dune. My Dad passed away three years ago, so he wore his Paul Smith cufflinks that had women whose clothes come off like the pens that do the same when you turn them upside down!

Flashes Of Light

I cannot tell you how many people have told us that we have the best wedding pictures they have ever seen. Sam Gibson is nothing short of a genius and an absolute delight to have around on our day. Our photos do more than document our day. They make it seem like we were in a movie. He is a true talent, reasonably priced and a first class professional. We especially loved it when he took us away at one point in the evening “to try something different”. He created a photo were all you can see is our silhouettes surrounded in flashes of light.

Cake Cake Cake

One of our friends made the cakes. We had several different flavours. Carrot cake, peaches and cream, raspberry and lemon curd and chocolate and hazelnut all covered in white chocolate butter cream icing and decorated with lavender. We’re so, so sad that we only got to have a small bite each!

One Day Like This

We had a DJ in the evening. A couple of our friends are really good singers, so we asked them to sing some of our favourite songs. One of the singers husbands accompanied them with a guitar. It was supposed to be a suprise for our friends and family but we were the most surprised when all of mine and Patrick’s friends shocked us by singing Elbow’s ”One Day Like This” to us. It was a truly magical moment. Our first dance was to Cat Power’s “Sea of Love”. 

Dutch Courage

Our favours were the bottles filled with lavender. We also gave bottles of ‘dutch courage’ to the maid of hour, father of the bride and best-man, which were filled with whisky.

We spent a lot of time on creating what we felt was original decor. One of our friends made us hessian bunting with lace trimming to complement the bridesmaids dresses. I wanted bunting that we could keep for future family occasions. We fell in love in Brighton so we had sticks of rock in jars with wooden chalk hearts sticking out of the jars that read “Love rocks” and “We fell in love in Brighton”. Outside on the tables we had arrangements consisting of old silver cider mugs, glass bowl lanterns with twine around them, an old sewing box and wicker baskets; all filled with lavender, a rose or candles.

For the ceremony room the aisle chairs had bunches of lavender tied with twine. We had white balls and white bunting hanging from the rafters of the barn. We had wooden apple crates at the entrance of the barn which were filled with glass bottles that were filled with lavender and had people’s names and tables on them. Each napkin was wrapped with twine with a piece of lavender on it to tie everything in.

Outside, we hung jam jars from a tree and filled them with tea lights. Under the tree was a wooden apple crate with a wooden sign on it that read “All you need is love”. My husband is an artist and part-time graphic designer so he created the invites.

A Posh Ploughmans

What made our wedding special was that we refused to conform to any of the traditional ideas of weddings that didn’t feel “us”. We had Prosecco, not champagne. We had scotch eggs for a starter with English mustard, a posh ploughman’s lunch with country desserts and in the evening local cider in a barrel and Cornish pasties served in wooden apple crates.

Without a doubt the most special thing about our day was having all of our friends and family in one room. All the cliches are true. It goes so fast. The one thing I’d recommend people not to scrimp on is the photography. The day goes so quick, but the photos last forever.

Click here & view all images from this wedding

Venue – Stockbridge Farm Barn
Dress – Nicole Ritchie
Shoes – Kurt Geiger
Hair and Make-Up – Annabel Hornsby
Flowers – G Lily
Groom – Reiss
Photography – Sam Gibson

Karla absolutely acheived the Jessica Rabbit look with that stunning figure of hers! And how gorgeous to see a coloured gown…and at 40% off?! A girl after my own heart.

I love when a couple find suppliers that they really connect with and who are willing to work with them to create their vision and willing to hand over all of their knowledge and experience. The lavender bottles are such a lovey idea and who’d have thought to ask your local pub to collect perfectly sized schweppes bottles! Brilliant.

Are any of you having alernative table plans on your big days? Share share share! Or coloured gowns? I want to know everything!

Happy Friday you lovely lot.

Becky
x

Julie’s hair is immense. A half up, half down beehive. It looks incredible, I am more than a little jealous.

With a grey colour pallette and subtle accents of yellow – the shoes are so cute – this wedding is so fresh and inviting.

It brings you awesome wedding transport, a delicate daffodil within a beautiful bouquet and a ruddy lovely story of a joyous wedding planning experience. Oh, and there is a bit of butt grabbing…we all know how I feel about this. Such a super in love couple! Julie also gives you a great list of suppliers that she worked with to make her wedding dreams come true.

So, without further ado…

A Fairytale Venue

Julie The Bride:I did some research on the internet and made a shortlist of possible venues. The first venue we looked at was Sandhole Oak Barn and it was just beautiful. A wedding barn on a farm…overlooking a lake! The barn itself was huge with so much light and stunning views. It was simply perfect for our rustic country wedding. It felt as though we were miles from nowhere, so peaceful apart from the geese on the lake! The venue was completely exclusive which is exactly what we wanted and another big plus for us was having accommodation on site for guests to stumble back to after the party!

18 B&B rooms and a gorgeous bridal cottage, with breakfast served in the farm house over looking the lake- we knew we wanted to spend time with our guests the morning after the wedding. We knew as soon as we saw it that it was everything we wanted and would just be perfect… but I have to say, it was the beautiful church of St James and St Paul’s in the village of Marton just down the road, which sealed the deal. As soon as we pulled up in the church car park we knew we had found our wedding venue. It’s the most beautiful church I have ever seen. A tiny black and white church sitting on top of a hill like something out of a fairytale!

A Half Beehive

I knew I wanted my regular hairdresser to do my hair on my wedding day. Lianne, was able to carry out hair trials at home for both me and my bridesmaids. I had 6 bridesmaids and let them choose their hair style as long as it wasn’t too time consuming! I knew that I wanted a bit of a 50s do, more specifically a half beehive. Lianne added curls to the look and I loved it! My best friend Danielle, who happens to be a very talented make up artist, flew over from Australia for the wedding and did a make up trial 2 days before the wedding. She knows me well and knew that I wanted a natural look. She did a fantastic job!

Swishing

My dress was designed and made by Sherry at Fairytales by Sherry, in Stoke on Trent. I must admit, I was a bit of a nightmare bride when I was choosing my wedding dress. Indecisive at the best of times, I changed my mind 4 times before sitting with the Sherry and describing what I wanted. I went from a huge meringue to a fitted fishtail dress! During a visit to the shop, I explained to Sherry what I wanted and she ended up sketching my ideas there and then until I was happy with the design. The finished dress was everything I could have wished for! I didn’t want lots of bling or sparkle so I chose a delicate beaded lace which was used for the bodice of the dress. I loved the fishtail style as it wasn’t too restrictive but had a gorgeous swish to it and the train wasn’t too long but definitely gave it the wow factor! Finally I knew I wanted to show off my shoulders and the little off the shoulder straps with lace edging were really unusual.

Old, New, Borrowed And Blue

As our colour scheme was yellow – Dom’s favourite colour – and grey, I decided from the start that I wanted some funky yellow shoes and searched for ages until I saw the Kurt Geiger pointed shoes with little bows on the front. They were also in the ASOS sale and so I got the perfect shoes for half price! The little flash of colour was such a fun addition to the outfit! Getting married in a church, I thought a veil was fitting and loved the idea of a floor length veil, the little diamantes added just a touch of sparkle to the train of my dress and made the whole look a little more dramatic.

My jewellery was a mix of something old, new, borrowed and blue! A vintage blue and silver bracelet which belonged to my mum’s mum, a pearl necklace borrowed from Dom’s mum, new blue pearl earrings – a wedding present from Dom and a beautiful vintage inspired lace and pearl headband from the Rainbow Club range which finished the hair do perfectly!

A Touch Of Yellow

We had an army of 6 bridesmaids and 4 groomsmen. The girls hired a cottage on a farm in Congleton for the night before the wedding and had en evening of dinner and speeches from friends followed by champagne in the hot tub – it was how I always imagined the build up to my Big Day and the location was fantastic for photos in the morning! The boys hired a converted barn with a pool table – a great base! Both the bridesmaids and groomsmen wore shades of grey.

The boys wore the Langfield suit hired from Moss Bros and we sourced the yellow ties separately as we wanted the little bits of yellow to be really bright!

The bridesmaid dresses were bought from Nordstrom and sent from America. They came with a delicate, chiffon stole and straps which could be added if needed. They were perfect and we teamed them with white fur shrugs and silver/grey shoes and bags. The girls had delicate yellow hair pins in their hair.

The Decor

As well as yellow and grey, I really wanted to bring in hessian and lace and it all worked really well together. My mum and sister lovingly made 60 hessian and lace jam jar candles for the tables and I hired hessian and lace chair ties and table runners from Truly Scrumptious Weddings.

My best friend Hannah, hand made all our stationary including the order of service and used hessian and lace in the designs. They were beautiful. Dom’s mum spent weeks making our wedding cake, which was also decorated with yellow hessian and lace and a ribbon and topped with a cake topper from Sarah at Miss Cake which read Mr and Mrs Satur.

I knew I wanted a rustic vintage wedding and had the idea of using a vintage record player as our table plan. We ordered 7” vinyls of all of our favourite songs and printed labels for each record to show guest names for that table. The record covers/sleeves were used as table numbers/names. Guests had fun looking through the records to find the song title for their table and the table names and record covers were definitely great conversation starters! I also hired a vintage typewriter for our guest book from Jennie at Hansley Beard in Sheffield, as well as vintage dressing up props for our DIY photobooth. My sister and her mother in law hand made bunting to hang along the top table and a gorgeous yellow and grey gingham cushion for the rings. I also ordered yellow confetti for the church from Shropshire Petals. To finish the retro look I ordered retro champagne saucers for the drinks reception – my personal favourite decorative touch!

The Blooms

I came across The Traditional Flower Company when I was looking through online wedding blogs and was delighted to discover that their farm was based just 10 minutes away form my parents’ house! I met with Sam on her farm and we discussed the style and venue etc. The Traditional Flower Company has a natural, rustic, country style which uses seasonal flowers. I wanted bouquets and centre pieces which didn’t look too ‘done’ and had a ‘just picked from the field’ look to them. The colours were predominantly yellow with tiny narcissi, with a touch of whites, pinks and blue. I loved the ranunculas added to my bouquet and the pussy willow used for my sister’s headpiece.

The table centre pieces were a selection of vintage tins, some supplied by The Traditional Flower Company and some were ones I had spent time collecting myself. I loved the mismatch look. The tins were also a great talking point for guests and were something our guests had not seen at a wedding before. From old devonshire toffee tins to Wilbur cocoa and old Coleman’s mustard tins.

The Bare Necessities

I always wanted a church wedding and both Dom and I wanted it to be personal and upbeat. I always knew that at my wedding I would want my dad to play the hymns on his guitar, something he always did in church when we were younger. The hymms chosen were old school hymms, which everyone knew and sounded great. Everyone commented on how personal the ceremony felt, I had so many friends and family playing important roles within it. Dom’s best man had also flown all the way from Australia and was excellent at his role, particularly as I kept Dom and the guests waiting for 45 minutes – due to bridesmaid dress malfunction. Dom’s mum read a bible reading while my friend Bryony read a beautiful passage from my favourite book Captian Correlli’s Mandolin by Louis de Berniere.

My two oldest nephews read a poem dring the blessing – this was a rather memorable moment as Matthew, the oldest had kept the poem safe in his shoe and when asked to stand up and read, the congregatation had to wait for him to take his shoe off and retrieve it! We also had a string quartet for the ceremony Adagio Strings from near Macclesfield. Laura from the group had asked for me to send her a list of songs from their repertoire which we would like them to play. They were fantastic and the modern songs we chose definaitely made a relaxed and jovial atmosphere for our guests as they arrived. I had 3 page boys all my nephews who looked very cute in their matching grey suits. During the procession down the isle the 2 youngest page boys led the way as they held the ring cushion, followed by the oldest who walked my mum down the isle. This was really important to me, that my mum felt part of the whole ceremony and it was really moving to see her linking arms with my oldest nephew.

Behind followed my 6 bridesmaids. They all walked down to Pachebel’s Canon and then my father and I walked down to the traditional ‘Here Comes the Bride’. During the signing of the register the string quartet played our favourite song from Madness ‘It Must be Love’. But the best moment was at the end of the ceremony, as for the recessional music we had requested ‘The Bare Necessities’. Our guests loved this and everyone was laughing and cheering as it played.

Baby I’m Yours

During the drinks reception we hired a pianist to play in the background. We also booked a helium balloon release. Lisa, from Daisydoos based near Macclesfield arrived in the afternoon with 125 yellow helium balloons. Guests had all written messages for ‘the happy couple’ on arrival at the venue and these were attached to the balloons. All guests were ushered outside in front of the lake and we released the balloons. They looked amazing against the clear blue sky and it was great fun! Guests have told me since how lovely the balloon release was. We have also received emails from people who have found the balloons and one got as far south as Dorset whilst another went north to Northumberland!

In the evening we hired a band – Children of the Revolution who we found one night whilst googling wedding bands. They did not disappoint and had all our guests up dancing all night! Our first dance was ‘Baby I’m Yours’ an old song which had more recently been covered by the Arctic Monkeys… and Dom being from Sheffield – meant it was a great choice. The lyrics were so apt for the occasion. Rob Bull from the band said that he would be able to sing and play the song acoustically, not the whole band, just him and his guitar. His acoustic arrangement was beautiful! Following the first dance I did a bride and father of the bride dance – to one of our old family favourites – Xanadu by Olivia Newton John. It was a really special moment for me and it also meant that my dad got his dance in with me before anyone else!

A Real Feast

Our caterers and organisers for the day were Top Table Weddings who did and amazing job all round. For the drinks reception I wanted an afternoon tea feel and not traditional canapés, so we had a mix:

Smoked Salmon Knots with Cream Cheese and Dill on Rye Bread, Chicken Caesar Brushetta, Spinach & Feta warm Filo parcels, Asparagus and parma ham and Cucumber and cream cheese mini sandwiches, mini scones and cupcakes to give that afternoon tea feel.

For the wedding breakfast we always knew we would be having roast beef and Yorkshire pudding but the starter and desserts were chosen at our tasting afternoon which was a lot of fun. Both sets of parents came along for the day and we designed a menu which incorporated everyone’s favourite bits:

Caramelised Shallot, Roasted Pepper and Brie Tart on a bed of Sauté Warm Potato Salad to start, followed by: Sirloin of Beef Served with Yorkshire Puddings and Rich Gravy accompanied by Roasted Vegetables and Roast Potatoes

And for dessert we had a Trio of Chocolate Miniature Desserts; Crème Brulee – our parents’ favourite, Chocolate Torte with Raspberry Coulis Topped with Mascarpone Cream and a Strawberry – Dom’s favourite and Sticky Toffee Pudding Serve with Custard and Toffee Sauce – my favourite!

Booze Glorious Booze

In the evening we hired a retro crepe van from Crepe Lucette. Lucie who came with another colleague provided a sumptuous crepe menu and was happy to ammened it to our specification! She made both savoury and sweet crepes and this was something really unique and different about our wedding. Crepes are our absolute favourite food and we knew we wanted to incorporate them into the wedding at some point and I have to say they were the perfect evening snack. I enjoyed a cheese and spinach crepe! In addition to the crepes we had a cheese cake from Simon Davidson in Chesterfield accompanied by biscuits and an apple chutney made by my sister!

The favour for all of our adult guests was a miniature bottle of lemon schnapps, this added to our yellow colour scheme and was something that people could have on the day – my dad enjoyed his just before his speech! For the children we gave reto dip dabs, sherbet and lollies! I think these were eaten before dinner! There was prosecco on arrival and for the toast and this was definitely flowing. One thing we didn’t want was a lack of booze at our wedding!

Special Moments

Definitely walking down the isle and seeing Dom there waiting. The church was completely full with all of our family and friends. It is quite moving to see everyone who has come to see YOU! Signing the register was lovely as it also gave me time to have a little catch up with Dom and tell him how happy I was! Another of my favourite moments of the day was travelling to the church in the Beetle with my dad. The roof top down, the sun shining, it was just wonderful- I will NEVER forget that moment! Also on entering the room for the wedding breakfast, Dom and I high fived everyone who lined the way, such fun!

The wedding was such a special day and even more so as a month later, Dom and I moved to New York for Dom’s work! So the wedding was a huge party where we got to celebrate with all our friends and family and have, what was in the end, a fantastic send off! In fact the last song of the night was ‘New York New York’ where all the guests – still dancing, formed a huge circle whilst Dom and I danced inside! Just the perfect NYC ending to our wedding day and the perfect start of our NYC married life!

Worth Every Second

When organising suppliers, types of flowers, decorations etc don’t settle! Go out of your way to do your research and make it happen! At the time it can seem like a nightmare trying to find the things you want. It can be very stressful and the easy options are very tempting. However, in my experience the stress, time, money and research invested into making it your perfect day, are well worth it and on the day you will be so happy when you look around at what you have made happen. And you might think that your guests won’t understand or notice the effort which has gone into it all but believe me they do! My guests, family and groom were amazed by the décor and all the surprises on the day and it was worth every second!

Also invest in a great photographer. It was really important to me that we found the right photographer. I wanted someone who would snap all the little details – which I love, as well as the day, exactly as it unfolded. I searched for hours on the net for THE photographer and none came close to Claire. When I saw her vintage styling I knew I wanted her to photograph my wedding, it was in keeping with the theme of the wedding and is simply beautiful. Claire did not disappoint – she captured moments that I shall cherish for ever and some which I didn’t even see on the day!

Click here & view all images from this wedding

Venue – Sandhole Oak Barn
Dress – Fairytales by Sherry
Shoes – Kurt Geiger
Maids – Nordstrom
Groom – Moss Bros
Flowers – The Traditional Flower Company
Photographer – Claire Penn Photography
Assistant Photographer – Jay Mountford Photography

The Fraggle Rock table?! I was born to be a guest on that table. They used to call me Fraggle at school…we’ll leave that story for another time though.

The hessian and lace beautifully encapsulates the vintage rustic feel that Julie was aiming for. And I love the choice of Daffodils and yellow tulips used in the centre pieces.

Also the dress. That elegant off the shoulder is just perfect. I love the idea of having a designer sketch my ideas infront of my eyes. Are any of you having a bespoke gown made?

Becky
x

They say you should never have any regrets…and I very rarely do, especially when it comes to W-day. I see so many beautiful things on literally an hourly basis that it would be fairly easy to “wish I’d thought of that” or planned certain aspects differently “had I only known this” etc etc

The thing is, in reality, I wouldn’t change a thing….because then it wouldn’t have been my day, and if that was the case then Rock My Wedding possibly wouldn’t be here at all.

Can you imagine?!

However, there is one thing I would change. And that would have been the fact I would’ve worn blue. I was always going too – my Mum wore blue for her big day, it’s my favourite colour, it’s the colour that suits me the most…so why wear ivory?

Why indeed.

I guess just like a million other brides out there, sometimes you just conform, regardless of that slightly disconcerting niggling feeling that you are making the wrong decision.

Today’s bride Liz wore what I consider the perfect shade – a super flattering blue/silver with an equally stunning feather-inspired statement headpiece. I love this gown. I also love the scaffolding, the Hong Kong influences and the immense dancing imagery.

Enjoy lovelies.

Tempting Temperley

Liz The Bride: Our big day was on Friday 1st June 2012. We are called Liz & Ozzy. The spectacular ceremony venue was Hanbury Hall, Worcestershire and the reception was in tipi’s in the garden at my Mum’s house in Barnt Green, Worcestershire.

My dress was by Alice Temperley. I originally fell in love with it well before I officially started looking for “the dress” but I didn’t feel comfortable spending so much money. I am a thrift-obsessed shopper preferring charity shops, vintage clothes markets and jumble sales so it felt strange to be lusting after a designer frock but it haunted me and I kept seeing it at wedding fairs, in bridal mags, in shops and finally at Bicester village when I finally decided it was fate! White didn’t feel right so I went for a soft silvery-blue. Ozzy was with me when I bought It so he saw me in it before the big day but it didn’t matter. We aren’t rigidly traditional so I didn’t mind!

Make A Statement

My dress had a lot of diamante and beading detail so my accessories had to work with that which made a veil out of the question. I umm’ed and ahhh’d for ages looking for the right head piece and I finally found a second-hand Victoria Mary Vintage piece at a bridal exchange event. My dress was art-deco in style and this piece worked perfectly. My other jewellery was a vintage diamante and pearl bracelet bought for me by my little sister for my 30th birthday which I saved for the big day, a simple silver bangle on the other wrist which my Dad gave to my Mum on her 21st birthday and a pair of plain stud earrings. Nothing too fancy as the dress did the talking!

Dance Until Dawn

I don’t do high heels normally as I am 5’9” and being disorganised I literally left buying shoes to the last minute (not advisable) but it worked out pretty well! I found a pair of t-bar silver dancing shoes from a shop on eBay. They were seriously comfortable, worked with my dress and it meant I could dance until dawn… (which I did!)

Beauty Investments

I love experimenting with make-up normally but I wanted a simple and natural look on the day so I did my own make-up as did the bridesmaids. I work with models and make-up artists for a living so I got plenty of advice from the experts on what is important. My make-up was Laura Mercier which was an investment (I don’t splash out on expensive brands normally) with an old eye shadow my bridesmaid had in her bag… as you can tell, I am not good at planning!

My hair was done by the fabulous team at Michelle Griffin in Barnt Green who did a phenomenal job – particularly on my sister Alice who went for a full on 60’s style bee-hive!

Scottish Roots

I was really keen to do our own flowers in the tipi’s. I love wild flowers so with the help of my maid of honour Susie, my Mum and a lovely neighbour, Pauline, we set to creating an English Summers garden look. On the morning of the wedding we picked lots of wild flowers like cow parsley and fox gloves. I then bought a selection of English garden flowers from an online wholesaler (Triangle Nursery) including masses of stocks, hydrangeas, love-in-the-mist and delphiniums which we then mixed with the wild flowers. They looked stunning!

My aunt, Felicity Hall (from Exeter) is an incredibly talented florist and she very generously did the bridal party flowers for us as a wedding present. My bouquet was a mixture of calla lily, thistle and hydrangea. The button holes were thistles, harking back to my Scottish roots. She also did a heart shaped wreath for our front door – bless!

Thai Silk

The ushers wore electric blue suits that we bought for them as a gift with a tie, scarf or cravat of their choice. My parents lived in Hong Kong while we were planning the big day so we got waist-coats for the ushers and close male family members like my Grandpa and uncles made in Hong Kong by a tailor we have been to for over 30 years in thai silk in the same colours as the bridesmaids dresses.

My bridesmaids were my two sisters, Lucy & Alice and my best friend, Susie. They wore dresses which I designed inspired by a dress I had seen in magazine years ago which I cut out and kept in scrap book. They were made in Hong Kong by the same tailor. We bought the material from the lanes in Hong Kong too – haggling as much as we could!

Mis-Match

Ozzy wore a slick grey suit from Gieves & Hawkes with a simple white shirt and a funky tie picked up from a charity shop. He completed the look with a bright blue waist-coat. He looked gorgeous, even if he was wearing odd socks!!!

The One

As soon as we landed on Chris Barber’s website, we knew he was the one. When he said he was available I actually screamed! He is funny, irreverent, relaxed but totally professional, very stylish and knows how to capture the moment perfectly. He did an ace job!

Double Delicious

Ozzy is a massive cheese cake fan so nothing else would have felt right. We got a free sample at The English Cheese Cake company, tested it on some unsuspecting dinner party guests (who gave it the thumbs up without knowing why they were trying it) and ordered two party sized cakes – one summer-berry fruits and the other full-on toffee and chocolate profiterole.

Blasting The Tunes

Both of us love a good dance so asked a friend, Simon Grigg and his wife to DJ. Simon blasted the tunes out until dawn – I can’t believe there were so many of us still on the dance floor at 4am!

A friend recommended the students at the Birmingham Conservatoire who played while the guests drank champagne and ate divine canapés made by our caterers, Aubrey Allen.

Loving Every Second

I loved every second of planning our wedding!

We wanted a fairly relaxed, chilled vibe. being big festival goers we had seen a tipi tent at Shambala Festival a few years before. We vowed that was what we wanted when we got married. The Stunning Tent Company were perfect.

I am a vintage and thrift blogger in my part time (www.charitychic.wordpress.com) so it was really important for me to weave this style into the overall look and feel. We begged, borrowed and steeled where we could asking family and friends to lend us vases for the flowers, contribute to to the meters and meters of home-made bunting and lend us napkins. We also asked people to concoct home-made liqueurs to make champagne cocktails which we served from vintage cordial bottles I found in a charity shop.

I grew up in Hong Kong and wanted this big influence to feature so we hung a Chinese bird cage over each table which displayed the table names which we called after our favourite places in Hong Kong.

My Mum and I made a selection of favours; guests had the option of home-made honey and vanilla lip balm or tiny Chinese bamboo steamer which contained a fresh-water pearl bracelet which we bought at a market while on holiday in China.

Click here & view all images from this wedding

Brides Gown – Temperley
Hair Styling – Michelle Griffin
Grooms Suit - Gieves and Hawkes
Ceremony Venue – Hanbury Hall
Cake – The English Cheesecake Company
Catering – Aubrey Allen
Photography – Chris Barber

May have told a small fib.

I also regret not having a giant toffee and chocolate profiterole cheesecake…..that is possibly the best wedding dessert I have ever seen. EVER.

Big Blue Love

Charlotte xxx

Victoria and Richard live in Northern Ireland but decided to make the trip across to Scotland so that they could be married in Inverness, the place they had first met seven years previously.

Embracing the great Scottish outdoors Victoria opted for an outside ceremony and they celebrated their nuptials with a back garden replica of the Highland games. If you have never seen a bride tossing the caber before then this just might be your lucky day. Beautiful Alan Hannah dress, super scottish kilts and a record player… There is something here for everyone.

Victoria The Bride: We both live in Northern Ireland but I (Victoria) wanted to get married in my home country and Richard was up for it so we made the journey to Inverness in Scotland – which is where we both met originally 7 years ago. Bunchrew House is in a stunning location on the banks of the Beauly Firth and we knew that we wanted a venue that was exclusive to us so took the hotel for two nights and made it our own – kind of like the ultimate house party. The staff were incredible at Bunchrew and couldn’t do enough to help us. Really couldn’t have asked for a kinder more helpful bunch of people.

The Beauty

I wanted to go for a really natural and relaxed look for my hair and makeup on the day. I didn’t want to look completely different so kept my usual curls but styled them up with my blue feather hairpiece all the way from Australia. Make-up was done by my sister-in-law and she did a great job. I used Dior products and my perfume was Lady Million by Paco Rabanne.

Alan Hannah

My dress was by Alan Hannah and it was from Blush Bridal Boutique in Belfast. It was actually the first dress I had tried on during my hunt – I then went to about 15 other shops but of course came back to this one. I had originally wanted to go for a short style 1950s type dress but everything changed when I tried on this dress. The style seemed to really suit my curls. I was surprised at myself for picking such a ‘bride-y’ dress. But I don’t regret it for a second.

The Choos

Richard bought me my bridal Jimmy Choo shoes as a surprise for my Christmas before the wedding. It was a total shock and I couldn’t believe he had picked them out himself and got the right size – massive brownie points and one very happy bride-to-be!

Of Maids & Men

The overall colour scheme was a light blue. Richard’s suit was a light shade of blue along with his blue tartan bowtie from Etsy. I matched my blue feathered head piece with him – also from Etsy.

I had a bit of an entourage as my wedding party with my 2 sisters as bridesmaids, 4 flower girls and 4 page boys who were all of our nieces and nephews. Yikes! All of the dresses were handmade in Aberdeen and Dubai (bestman’s family live there) and the boys wore kilts. Richard had his eldest brother as best man and his two other brothers and my brother as ushers.

Highland Games

The theme and feel for the day was really important for us. We wanted a relaxed summer fete feel to the day with a vintage twist. We created our very own Highland Games as we were really conscious of our guests having something fun to do in-between the ceremony and the wedding breakfast. The Highland Games was a labour of love for Richard – ordering all the games online, getting signs made by friends and setting it all up on the morning of the wedding. We even had one friend make us a caber to toss – along with our not so traditional pineapple and haggis shy. The sack race and tug of war were the most fun parts and I was so happy everyone got stuck in.

Hey Mr DJ

We had gramophone DJ’s supplied by the amazing Butler & Taylor that played old gramophone tunes on the lawn after our reception which added a really relaxed atmosphere. Everyone drank their pimms from their vintage tea cups and enjoyed the games in the sunshine. Bliss! Butler & Taylor also helped us decorate the ceremony area and reception area creating a beautiful wedding scene – they really helped us realise our vision. We also hired various items from Grace & Saviour in Belfast.

There were also quite a few DIY projects on the go for our wedding – scottie dogs handmade by my mum hidden around the venue for the kids to find – although I think the adults ended up doing most of the seeking. Mum also made some bunting and put together the favours – tablet/fudge in wee bags with bespoke labels.

Both Richard and I made the table plans and seating cards – a joint effort. We bought loads of extra flowers ourselves to pop in jam-jars all around the venue and hang from the tree so spent the night before sorting all the containers out and sorting the flowers.

A Bike Of Blooms

Our florist was the amazing Angela Hunter from Inverness that created our bouquets and table centres to go in the vintage tea pots. Ivory Roses, blue roses, spray roses, Bouvardia, Thistles, crystals Bound with Organza and secured with diamond clasp – just gorgeous. Angela also did a great job of decorating our vintage bike frame.

The Great Outdoors

I loved the ceremony outside under the beautiful cedar tree – known as the loving tree. We had a Scottish Handfast section to the ceremony where you have the symbolic act of our hands being tied together with a ribbon – representing the union.

We had a reading from The Velveteen Rabbit and it was by chance that as I was walking down the aisle a hare bolted across the lawn. It was really surreal and guests weren’t sure if we had set it off on purpose or not. We hadn’t – but it was pretty magical! Other readings included an Irish blessing and These I can Promise by Mark Twain.
We had Sigur Ros to play us up the aisle and bagpipes to pipe us down the aisle.

Vintage Tunes

We had bagpipes for the guests arriving. I loved the sound of the pipes lilting across the Beauly Firth. We had Butler & Taylor as gramophone DJ’s while we had our drinks on the lawn. This was brilliant and the old and young loved this mix of vintage tunes.

Maximum Bob – a local Inverness band – provided the music for the evening with a ceilidh and cover songs. They were fantastic and I think everyone got roped into the dancing at some stage.

We also set off sky lanterns later on in the night which was really funny. We had bought biodegradable lanterns as Rich had read about wildlife getting caught in lanterns once they landed BUT they didn’t seem to work very well and it was epic trying to get them all to float – with lots going into the nearby tree. It was hilarious!

Glorious

The food provided by the hotel was tremendous. We had a trio of Salmon to start, followed by steak with Blueberry Crème Brulee for desert. So delicious.
We had found an image of a wedding cake on a blog and asked a local baker – Harry Gow to replicate it and we bought our cake toppers from Etsy.

The favours were bags of tablet from a shop called The Starry Rock Shop in Kirriemuir where my mum and dad live and Richard’s most favourite thing in the whole world. My mum put the bags together and we put bespoke labels on them.

Paper Pieces

Our place names were handmade by me and Rich. We also bought a load of picture frames and created the table plans ourselves. Our invites were designed for us by a local designer in Northern Ireland called Shelly Moore. They were incredible! She even created our very own logo for the day.

Don’t Stress

Try and enjoy your day when it comes and don’t stress the little things. Remember your guests are there because they love you and are there to see you get married. At the end of the day that is what is important.

Click here & view all images from this wedding

Venue: Bunchrew House Hotel
Photography: This Modern Love
Vintage Event Hire Specialists & gramophone DJ’s: Butler & Taylor
Wedding hire service: Grace & Saviour
Flowers: Angela Hunter
Cake: Harry Gow bakers
Chair Hire: North of Scotland Marquees
Dress: Alan Hannah
Boutique: Blush Bridal Boutique
Shoes: Jimmy Choo Band: Maximum Bob
Hair: Hairworks

Good to see a bride putting a bit of welly into it.

This is one of those weddings that you look through and wish you’d been invited to.

Any of my friends out there who are planning on getting married soon, can we please have the highland games please. PLEASE.

These images by This Modern Love have captures the fun and frolicks perfectly. Not only do they have a kick ass name but they also seem to live up to it – creating some seriously eye popping picture candy.

Adam.

As soon as I read Iola’s musings about the sea mending the soul I was hooked. It was almost as if she was reading my mind and I instantly felt a connection even though we’d never met.

And then I cast my peepers over her glorious wedding; my jaw dropped and remained open for the entire time that I looked through her big day photographs. Because lovelies they’re beautiful. Full of love, laughter, passion and soul.

There’s oodles of DIY and amazing wedding decor – just check out the stationery and wedding favours – immense hair and florals, actual dancefloor rules, a monster of a wedding cake and genius centrepieces.

And have I mentioned just how beautiful Iola is? She and Steve are made for one another…

Sea Soul

Iola The Bride: We both live for the beach, it’s where we’re happiest and love the way it mends the soul after life’s stresses. Steve proposed at Kynance Cove, the most beautiful beach in Cornwall and there was only one main criteria for our wedding venue – to be able to see the sea. Boy, did we get lucky on that one! We originally wanted a yurt, high on a headland but we kept looking at Tunnels Beaches and wondering whether this was in fact our yurt/headland reality.

So on a rainy September day, weirdly exactly a year before our wedding date (and yep, it was raining!), we stepped out of the tunnel, and were blown away by what was in front of us. After a few sleepless nights about whether I could handle the worry of rain we just couldn’t say no to our dream venue. It was everything we wanted – to be married outside, overlooking the sea, a bbq dinner, a roof terrace, deckchairs (!), décor we’d want in our home (people thought it was ours!)…the list goes on and on!

Beautiful Braids

I was over the moon with my hair and make-up; in fact my hair was one of the first things Steve commented on at the end of the aisle. I don’t wear my hair up very often but I knew I wanted something loose and ‘pretty’ to show off the dress. I also really wanted a braid and real flowers and used Pinterest to find the perfect style.

I’m lucky enough to have a very talented and lovely friend Amy who runs her own business – Amica – and created the masterpiece exactly how I imagined it. My gorgeous bridesmaid also made a gypsophila and daisy hair comb which finished it off beautifully. Julie from Changing Faces did my makeup on the day and I was so so pleased with it. She also did my mum’s makeup which was simply stunning – I couldn’t get over how lovely my mum looked.

Grace Kelly

My dress was ‘Kelly’ by Stephanie Allin. I had huge dress dilemmas – a 50/50 battle between Kelly and a Jenny Packham number. I did cry over not being able to have both (yep, real tears were shed over that decision). But my dress had pockets! You can’t really beat that can you?!? I loved that it was classic (modelled on Grace Kelly) but had a girl next door twist. Steve loved it, and that was so important for me, I thought about Steve with every dress I tried on. Gayle at The Mews in Bristol made the whole process a joy; I could spend hours in that shop just sighing at all the stunning dresses.

I kept my accessories simple – I wanted the dress to be the statement. I love swallows, and all that they symbolise so I wore a simple bracelet from Not On The High Street. Also some small heart studs from Accessorise to finish the look. My shoes were Mimi by Rachel Simpson, they were a perfect height (I’m not good with heels!) and so so pretty. They looked great under the bell shape of my wedding dress.

True Blue

My three bridesmaids were my besties from university. Hannah and Rachel were the first people I met as I waved my parents goodbye on the first day, all teary eyed. Emma and I bonded over some crazy dance moves during fresher’s week. I searched high and low for duck egg blue dresses and in the end Boden came up good and they suited the venue perfectly. The girls were really comfortable and that was important to me.

Steve’s suit was bought from Lugets Tailors in Exeter and he looked absolutely gorgeous in his blue cotton get up. We bought the best man a two piece suit from House of Fraser and both wore ties from Topman. Steve’s shoes were Banana Republic and got a lot of compliments (I think most people expected him in a pair of Vans!).

Rustic Appeal

I was really indecisive over my flowers, I knew what I liked (hydrangeas, daisies – ‘pretty’) but apart from that I was quite clueless. In the end I gave my lovely florist Sharon Mesher a couple of pictures and said ‘something like these’ and she did her magic.

I wanted something quite big and a bit of a statement you might say and they were perfect. For the table centre we wanted natural pots of daisies which tied in with the natural cliffs and wildflowers surrounding us. These looked great on the hessian runners. Steve and the men had craspedia and daisies for their button holes – very cute!

The bridesmaids and I also spent the afternoon before making lots of pretty jamjars to fill the venue – from the toilets to the aisle!

Dominique

We found Dominique on Rock My Wedding through another blog post that featured her work. We loved the feel of the photographs and know that even when we show our grandchildren these photos they will be just as beautiful as they are today. Dominique was lovely to work with and having met on our engagement shoot we felt really relaxed when it came to the day.

I Do

We loved being outside to say ‘I do’ and it was by far the best part of the day. I walked in to the ‘arrival of the birds’ by the Cinematic Orchestra and managed to hold it together, much to everyone’s surprise! Our friend Lydia read beautifully ‘A Lovely Love Story’ by Edward Monkton and our three bridesmaids composed a gorgeous reading complete with some Welsh language for my family, some ‘surf speak’ and messages from friends in Australia – truly stunning. We signed the register to Higher Love my James Vincent McMorrow and then walked out the Halls and Oates You make my dreams come true for a bit of fun.

You Are The Best Thing

Our friend Al Jones kept the good times alive for the evening with an acoustic sunset session as the evening guests arrived, followed by a more upbeat set later on. He did a sterling job a judging the lunge contest too. Everyone was up on the dance floor – we love you Al! We also had a DJ for the later part of the evening – we chickened out of the iPod session after hearing so many different stories from other couples.

Our first dance was on the roof terrace in the last orange wisps of sun. We don’t really have a ‘song’ and if we’d been braver we would have danced to something we could have crazy danced to but in the end chose Ray LaMontagne You are the Best Thing – not too slow and with beautiful meaning.

A Victoria Sponge Monster

Steve and I love to travel so we used ‘vintage voyage’ as a loose theme; using blues and yellows and naturals to complement the sea and surroundings. We had vintage postcards of Devon and Cornwall as well as a world map for our seating plan. Table names were places we visited on our year away in 2010. I took a lot of inspiration from these very pages as well as Pinterest but I can’t say I stuck to an exact theme, just tried to make sure things looked good together.

The cake was something we both chose pretty early on. A Victoria sponge monster was the only cake ever in the picture. YUM! We decided to double it up as desert too which helped save money and we served it with extra berries and cream. The talented Creative Baker did an amazing job and everyone commented on how tasty it was.

Steve’s a designer and also runs a tea business so he designed a gorgeous and fun tea towel which we gave guests as a wedding favour. I love using it at home now and having flash backs of our day.

It’s The Little Things

Steve designed all our stationery – save the date luggage tags, our invites, quizzes for the tables plus lots of little details for the day. I was really keen to completely DIY the day but kept reminding myself that the venue was stunning just as it was, so we chose the most important things to concentrate on – bunting, photos, sweeties and the little extras.

People say that the little things aren’t noticed but everyone loved the flip flops (including the guys), the girls thought the hair clips and plasters in the toilets were amazing and the dance floor rules were adhered to!). Do what you want and people who care about you will notice the effort you’ve gone to.

We had a Polaroid camera plus props for our guest book and everyone loved it. We have a bundle of photos from the end of the night that look like something from the credits of The Hangover! Such good memories.

Don’t Rush It

Enjoy the aisle, don’t rush it. You will never get that moment again. Although I think my dad and I ‘handled’ it well I remember being at the end, standing in front of Steve and not really remembering how I got there!! Don’t feel bad about not seeing everyone. I was upset for a couple of days after for feeling like I didn’t get enough time with everyone, especially those that travelled a long way to be with us. They understand, and they don’t think badly of you, so don’t beat yourself up. If you like to dance (guilty) then dance, it’s your day and people will love seeing how happy you are.

Click here & view all images from this wedding

Venue – Tunnels Beaches
Dress – Stephanie Allin
Boutique – The Mews, Bristol
Hair – Amica
Make-up – Changing Faces
Maids – Boden
Groom Lugets
Favours – Love Tea
Florals – Sharon Mesher
Cake – Creative Baker
Entertainment – Al Jones
Photography – Dominique Bader Photography

That sparkler image right at the end folks brings a lump to my throat.

I mean it’s just gorgeous; a beautiful day finished off with a little bit of sparkle. Frankly I can’t think of a better way to start a new chapter as Mr and Mrs.

Congratulations you two – we loved being along for the ride.

All my love Lolly xxx

Did everyone have an enjoyable and relaxing bank holiday? I hope so, wasn’t it lovely to see some sunshine….I put my “holiday” lipstick on and everything.

Maintaining the summer fun vibe I thought I would share the rather epic wedding of Amber and Alex, one of my favourites of the year so far. A pretty and timeless ceremony followed by a Mexican themed reception. Yes Mexican – the bride was even surprised by a Mariachi band springing from the bushes on her way to the venue (!)

The blooms and outdoor wedding breakfast are nothing short of spectacular and every single guest appears to be having the time of their lives.

I want to wear a sombrero. And after you’ve had a butchers at this colourful affair so will you.

Enjoy lovelies.

Quirky English Charm

Our venue was the stunning Maunsel House in North Newton, Somerset. It was the perfect mix of quirky English charm and beautiful outside spaces. We were certain our guests would enjoy the library with its roaring fire, stuffed bear and hat collection as well as the country style bar/pub, luxurious rooms and spacious cottages.

What topped it off though was the outdoor pergola eating area – it really did feel like you were in the middle of Italy!

Dramatic And Soft

Hair was important for me as I wanted to feel completely comfortable on the day. I chose my local hairdresser who I really trusted and we decided to go for a ‘soft’ look with hair down to compliment the strapless dress. During the trail we flicked through photos on a google search until we discovered what we were after.

My makeup artist was recommended by one of my bridesmaids and she was local to Taunton (Helen Reid – Makeup-artistry). I am a total eyeliner girl so we went dramatic around the eyes and Helen recommended a deep purple eyeshadow to match my eye colour.

Princess

I had a Ellis Bridal Dress with a veil by Mallis Henderson. The dress was actually chosen for me by the lady in the wedding dress shop as she recognised that it would suit my shape. I would never have picked it myself but she was right! It gave me shape and had a beautiful rouching on the back of silk flowers.

It definitely made me feel like a princess as soon as I put it on!

Shiny Chandeliers

I’m a huge Jenny Packham fan so was delighted to discover that she’s sold through Debenhams at bargain prices.

There was no excuse not to wear some sparkly chandelier earrings on the day! I do love a bit of bling and Dune supplied me with some peep toe mid heels with a diamante detailed bow to match my earrings.

Persian Plum And Panamas

As the grooms suit was kept secret from me until the day, we were pretty relaxed with the ushers. We knew we didn’t want traditional morning suits but instead wanted their own characters to shine through. My brother made sure our granddad’s tie and panama hat was worn with his CK suit and one usher had his suit tailor made.

Our bridesmaids were wearing chiffon Dessy dresses in a Persian Plum colour to match the ‘Mexican theme’ and flowers.

Go Mexico

We’d spent two years together in Mexico together just before the wedding so wanted a bit of the Latin spirit we’d experienced together to come through on the day.

We’d collected a lot of brightly coloured bunting whilst we were out there which worked perfectly in the pergola. In such a beautiful sunny setting, the venue did not have to do much to offset all the colour as we were surrounded by rose bushes and lush green gardens.

Deep Pink

We wanted flowers with rich tones to match our bridesmaids dresses and also to add colour to the day as we had a slight ‘Mexican’ twist at the reception waiting to suprise all our guests. Luckily, we were able to hand pick beautiful deep pink hydrangeas from mum’s garden to add to our florists beautiful selection of deep pink roses, carnations and Lisianthus.

I totally trusted our florist who was a family friend and simply showed her my bridesmaid dresses and she did the rest surprising me on the day with my bouquet.

Sea Of Love

I have to admit I almost broke down walking down the aisle but seeing my handsome groom at the end so calm and together made me determined to take in and enjoy it! There’s something pretty incredible about being greeted by a booming voice saying; ‘God is love’ to start everything off.

My brother sang us two songs which totally echoed the spirit of the day. They were, Cat Power’s version of The Sea of Love and Magnetic Field’s The Book of Love. You could have heard a pin drop when he sang – it was magical!

Surprise!

I was taken by surprise as I arrived to the venue by a Mariachi band springing out from behind the bushes! Nobody could not dance!

They certainly added to the joy of the day. In the evening we had a brilliant band who kept everyone rooted to the dance floor called Area 52 who are local to Somerset. We requested that they mainly played funk which went down a treat.

Posh Nosh

Canapes were hand selected to suit our Mexican twist and enjoyed with prosecco before the wedding breakfast. Due to the fact we were eating outside, we opted for a light, fixed three course Summer menu through local caterers, Posh nosh.

Our cake was designed and made by a local cake maker and it was exquisite! Covered in white chocolate icing and individual chocolate truffles, the three tiers were mocca and chocolate sponge (baked by Sarah Brown, Bakelicious, Taunton).

A Work Of Art

Whilst living in Mexico before the wedding we approached a local artist to paint individual wedding invitations for each of our guests. Each painting was of a Mexican wedding scene complete with piñatas, brass bands and colourful churches. The artist also signed each piece as well as painting us place names for our guests to keep as their own mini pieces of art!

Our table names were inspired by the Mexican card game ‘La Lotteria’. The images on the cards had always struck us as beautiful and worked perfectly with our bright colour scheme.

Room For Groom

My main piece of advice would be….Include your groom in the preparations! It makes the day so special when your joint efforts come together!

Venue - Maunsel House
Brides Gown – Ellis Bridal at Frox Bridal Boutique
Brides Earrings – Jenny Packham at Debenhams
Bridesmaids Dresses – Dessy
Mariachi Band – Mariachi Jalisco
Evening Band – Area 52
Caterer – Posh Nosh
Photography – Debs Ivelja

You want to wear one too right?

Big Mexican Love

Charlotte xxx

Whatever you are doing today and however you are feeling, I promise that this wedding will make you smile.

There are sunflowers for a start – possibly the happiest flowers of all time. And the biggest, most fluffiest rabbit that I have EVER seen. And lots of lovely yellow things – yellow socks, yellow ties, yellow wellington boots and a yellow VW Camper van.

Ali and Ian held their joy-filled ceremony and reception at Ian’s parents’ house. The effort that they all put in is phenomenal. Ali created her own jewellery bouquet from vintage brooches collected by her and her family. They also made the bunting, the too-cute yellow gingham stationery and the rustic signage.

The Father of the Groom spent months preparing the lawn (This must be a Dad thing – I know mine would be envious of those perfect green stripes) and Ian the Groom rigged up generators, power cables, microphones and speakers.

But the hard work was definitely worth it – this wedding looks like it was an absolute blast.

Personal & Warm

Ali the Bride: We got married in September 2012, in Ian’s parents’ garden in Nottinghamshire. We had a humanist wedding, as we wanted the freedom to have the ceremony where we wanted, with words that meant something to us. This was a great decision, as Ingrid, our celebrant, did a fantastic job, creating a service that was so personal and warm. It also meant we got to have two weddings, as we did the ‘legal bit’ a few weeks before at the local registry office, which was a great excuse for a slap-up meal, plus a second wedding dress!

Polka Dot Tulle

I always knew I wanted a shorter-length dress, so that narrowed my search quite quickly as they are relatively thin on the ground. I did try on a whole range with my mum and aunt, just to be sure, but they agreed with me that the 1950s-style dresses worked the best.

The assistants kept trying to put me in lace, and, much as I like it on other brides, it’s not me at all – I wanted clean, simple lines. I never thought I’d find a dress that met my ever-growing criteria (not strapless, no lace, with polka dot tulle…), and was about to settle on a perfectly nice dress, when one day I was working over near Manchester and finished early.

A few weeks earlier I’d found a place near Liverpool, that was the only UK stockist of Fancy New York dresses, but it’s so far from my house, I couldn’t justify a special trip. But when I found myself nearby, with a spare couple of hours, I thought it was worth a try. I rang Emma at Look Darling and she agreed to see me straight away. I dashed over, tried on the Madeleine dress – and that was it. It was just what I wanted. Emma was so helpful, and arranged for me to get polka dot tulle, that featured on another dress, added to the Madeleine. To top it off, it was less expensive than others I’d been looking at. So well worth the drive!

Petticoat Perfection

I got my petticoat made by David at Petticoat Perfection, who was absolutely lovely, and spent a great deal of time on the phone to me working out what I needed. I never realised there was such a science to petticoats – layers, tiers, weight of fabric, binding…but it arrived a week later and suited the dress perfectly.

The dress alterations were done by my friend Zoey at the brilliant Iris Bartholomew Couture. She is very used to dealing with stressed out brides, and did a fantastic job of calming me down at my final fitting two days before the wedding, as well as making my dress fit perfectly.

She also made my veil, from an extra piece of polka dot tulle I’d bought with the dress. Originally I’d wanted a proper birdcage, but they are normally made from very loose weave net – with my fabric, I wouldn’t have been able to see a thing. So she created something close to that, which allowed me to not trip over! She also made me an ivory 1960s-style shift dress for our civil wedding a few weeks before.

Sparkling Jewels

Although normally I’m a fan of big dangly earrings, I decided with the veil there was enough going on, and went for simple pearl earrings, my ‘something borrowed’ from my mum.

As soon as I saw a brooch bouquet, I knew that was what I wanted. I know 99% of brides won’t agree with me, but I’m really not that fussed about flowers, whereas I LOVE jewellery, so holding a bouquet of sparkly jewels really appealed to me! I started collecting brooches from charity shops, with a vague idea I’d make the bouquet up nearer the time.

Once friends and family found out I was collecting, they gave me pieces too, which was lovely. Even my dad got into it, and found me some costume jewellery that had belonged to his aunt, so it felt like every piece had a real story. In the end my mum and I made the bouquet 3 days before the wedding. She came to the rescue with a flower holder and lots of wire, and we spent the evening weaving it all together. I actually had tiny scratches all over my hands on the wedding day!

Whilst browsing for brooches, I came across a lovely 1950s set of white jewellery – a big brooch and matching clip-on earrings. I wore the brooch on my dress, and the earrings as shoe clips.

Shoes For Something Blue

I really struggled to find the right shoes. I wasn’t sure on the style, but definitely wanted them to be blue. I always thought I’d treat myself to some Manolos or Louboutins for my wedding, but as we were having it on a field, I knew I’d ruin them within 10 minutes, and really couldn’t justify it. In the end, I found two pairs and couldn’t choose between them, so I wore them both!

For the ceremony I wore pale blue suede shoes from Faith, with the earrings as shoe clips. In the evening I changed into some bright blue shoes from Rachel Simpson. They were in the sale for £25, which for her beautiful shoes is an absolute bargain.

A Neater Version

I went to Mac with my sister for a make-up lesson and treated myself to a load of new products, so on the day I did it myself, with Kate reminding me what we’d been taught.

I wanted my hair like a neater version of its usual wavy self, probably a nightmare brief for a hairdresser. But Tim from Catherine Carter did a great job. He had me in rollers overnight, which caused much amusement when we all went to my local pub the night before the wedding. It worked though, and on the day itself, the big 50s waves stayed in all evening.

My bridesmaid Andrea lent me her lovely sparkly pearl hairband she’d worn at her wedding, which I wore after I’d taken the veil off.

Happy Sunflowers

As I said, I’m not that into flowers generally, but I do love sunflowers for their yellow, cheery disposition. Luckily they were just about still in season. So we ordered 40 sunflowers from a local florist, and dished them out. My bridesmaids held three each simply tied together with ribbon, and the rest of the wedding party had a sunflower each as an oversized buttonhole. We put the last sunflowers in the wedding cars (our campervan, and Ian’s sister Helen’s campervan) and around the venue.

I liked the idea of having plants rather than cut flowers on the tables, so in theory they would last (not sure why I thought that, as pot plants only last about a week longer than cut ones in my house, but I live in hope!). Chilli plants are my favourite, so we potted them in Heinz tomato soup tins – I’m a big fan (my perfect hangover cure!) so had plenty of the tins around.

Bright Blue Skies & Sunshine Yellow

Of my four bridesmaids, two live outside the UK, so a joint shopping trip was never going to work. Plus they are all very different, and all have good taste, so I simply asked them to pick a bright blue dress of their choice. There were a couple of changes in the lead-up (one due to pregnancy, one due to an incident with hair dye!) and on the day, they all looked brilliant and complimented each other perfectly.

I got them all the Vivienne Westwood Melissa shoes in different colours, which are so cute anyway, and having plastic shoes on a field seemed a sensible idea. George even wore hers again a few months later at her own wedding.

Ian asked the groomsmen to wear a suit of their own, and he gave them a yellow tie each and a pair of yellow socks. He didn’t want a formal look for them, so they all looked individual and themselves which was great. We also gave our dads the yellow accessories.

Tailor Made

Ian always, always wanted a brown 3-piece checked suit with a blue thread. After searching the high street, he realised he was not going to find it, and went to a local tailor to enquire about getting one made. He was happy to make it, but only had Harris-type tweed which is far too heavy for the style Ian wanted. But, after a trip to a mill shop in Bradford, we finally had the fabric and a tailor. Ian’s best man Ali decided to go for it as well, so the tailor made up the two suits. After a bit of debate around the cut (they wanted slim-fit, not standard ‘farmer’ tweed fit!), they turned out spot on.

Ian also upped the ante and got a matching cap made out of the fabric, so he ended up with a 4-piece!

A Video Surprise

Anna Clarke was the first thing we booked. She has a way of using light and colour that is really distinctive. We met Anna and her husband Simon at our engagement shoot, and we all got on really well. They got photos of Ian smiling, which no-one before has ever managed to do, so I knew they had special talents! On the day itself they fitted in seamlessly, and we are so thrilled with the final pictures.

Simon is a videographer and he did us a ‘mini’ wedding film, which was a complete surprise and cheered us up immensely when we returned from our honeymoon feeling rather flat. I never thought I wanted a video, but I’m so glad we have it now.

Picnic Feast

We went for a cake-of-cheese, which was really an excuse to visit The Cheese Society in Lincoln several times for tasting sessions. We chose delicious local cheeses and it didn’t all get eaten on the day, meaning we had a ready supply in the freezer for several months.

Ian’s mum also made us 2 cakes as a surprise, one with tractor cake toppers as a nod to the farm setting, and one with bunny cake toppers, to represent our two pet rabbits who I reluctantly admitted couldn’t be there on the day. So in the end we had a cake table with 3 cakes!

Our catering was by Black Peppermint, and we can’t praise them enough. Food and booze are very high on my list of things that make life worth living, so we wanted a proper feast, and that’s exactly what we got.
Adam came up with the idea of a mini picnic as a starter, which perfectly suited the picnic-benches-in-a-tent feel of the day. We wanted everyone to dig in and share. We also ended up with a fourth course, a ‘pre-desert’ of lemon brulee, because we couldn’t chose between that and chocolate tart for pudding – so we opted for both!

The Perfect Soundtrack

Everything else about the day was relaxed, but we wanted something to be formal to signify the importance of the day. So we chose The Heyes Ensemble to play during the ceremony and drinks. Ian knows them through work, and it was lovely to have a classical touch to the day. Our friend Nick is a great musician, and he played and sang ‘Your Song’ for us during the ceremony, which was beautiful.

In the evening, we had a band called the Hijackers who we found through an agency. They were fab, and played just the right mix of songs. After they finished, DJ Ian took to his decks and it turned into a bit of a 90s club for an hour or so! Our friends loved it, our parents less so!

Ian installed the sound system in the tent. There is nothing worse than not being able to hear the speeches, so we wanted a system that could be used by everyone from my dad to the band. It worked a treat for us as we had all the different performers use the one system, including everyone doing their bit on iTunes into the small hours.

We chose ‘You’ve Got a Friend in Me’ by Randy Newman, from Toy Story, because the lyrics are adorable, and it’s short, and because we like Buzz Lightyear!

Festival Feel

As our venue was Ian’s parents’ garden, they did tons of work to make it look special in the months leading up to the wedding. The flowers in the garden were lovely, and Ian’s dad mowed the lawn twice a week all summer so it was perfectly striped on the day.
Our venue was two giant teepees from PapaKata, who were so professional and helpful. The teepees are beautiful structures, which look great in the day, and get even cosier at night if they are lit properly.

The music and lighting were really important to us. Ian has now set up a company doing music and lighting for weddings, because we realised it’s so hard to get what you want.

For the ceremony we had bright lighting so everyone could see, and then as dusk fell, put on the fairy lights we’d strung up everywhere. We installed pin spots in the roof structure to light up the tables – we wanted a cosy ambience for the meal, but you still need to see your food.

For the evening, we lit up a mirrorball which filled the tent with twinkles, and changed the atmosphere using colour washes of blue and purple. To give it a real edge, we hung scanner lights to get the party going.

Outside, Ian installed festoon lighting, which made the site feel like a proper festival. Helen and our friend Kati made what seemed like miles and miles of bunting, which we used inside and out. It really gave the whole venue a ‘decorated’ feel and we are eternally grateful to them for doing such a mind-numbing job, which neither of us would have got around to.

Helen also made us yellow gingham napkins for all the guests, and a table cloth for the cake table, which added to the picnic theme. What a star.

We made the wedding stationary ourselves, based around the yellow gingham. Ian drew a cute annotated map for the invitations, and I did matching menu cards and orders of service. They were printed up by Lefaprint, who turned them around in 48 hours which was excellent, and very necessary as like a lot of things, we left it to the last minute!

There Is No ‘Should’

During the planning, we got sick of people saying ‘should’ – you should have this, you shouldn’t do that – so the only advice we can offer: there is no ‘should’. Do what you want, because no-one else will notice at the end of the day apart from you two. They will all have a good time regardless.

As we had the wedding at home, we had to deal with all the boring stuff that a venue would normally takes care of – loos, generators, power lines – but it was worth it to get the sort of day we wanted. We were also lucky that all our wedding party and partners turned up the day before to help out with all the last minute stuff, which was so kind, and we couldn’t have done it without them.

Click here & view all images from this wedding

Catering – Black Peppermint
Cake – The Cheese Society
Sound and light – Clarity Audio
Dress – Look Darling
Petticoat – Petticoat Perfection
Dress Alterations – Iris B Couture
Tepees – Papakata
Ceremony – Humanist Nottingham
Music – The Heyes Ensemble and The Hijackers
Stationery – Lefaprint
Photography – Anna Clarke

How amazing does this whole wedding look?! I love the sheer excitement on Ian’s face as he and Ali cut into the cheese.

Ali’s petticoat swishes so well on the dance floor!

And yellow definitely makes people happy…I told you it would make you smile!

Lots of love,
Fern x

Today’s wedding is so pretty and delicate – all fluffy bouquets of gypsophila, china tea cups and pastel tones.

But the vintage tea party theme didn’t mean that they didn’t have a massive knees- up in the evening, the Groom re-formed his band for the occasion, Granny Norm baked a massive naked Victoria sponge and the guests got to munch on Pie and Mash!

Also, in true British style, the lack of sunshine didn’t stop the day from exceeding all of Charlotte’s expectations – just don a pair of wellies, grab a massive brolly and you’re good to go.

The day was captured perfectly by Claire Penn and Shutterbox films.

The First One

Our venue was the first one we looked at! My sister found it online and we went to see it and fell in love with it! We knew we wanted something relaxed and in a nice setting and the Ashes was just everything we wanted! The two beautiful barns provide everything you need and are in such a lovely pretty setting come rain or shine (rain in our case!)

Simple and Sophisticated

As my dress was quite simple I wanted my make up to be simple too. I was extremely lucky as my friend is a trained make-up artist so she worked her magic on the day! It was lovely to have Michelle do it for me, as she knows me already I trusted she would do exactly what I had in mind. We did have a little trial a few weeks before which I would recommend as it just makes the day much easier and run more smoothly.

My old hair dresser from home did my hair which again was so lovely! We did also have a trial which I would definitely do as what you say and think doesn’t always mean the hairdresser fully understands and once your hair is done it’s tricky to take out and do it again. I knew as with my make-up – I just wanted something natural and simple that still looked like me.

When You Know, You Know

Again as with our venue it was the first and only shop I went to! I knew I wanted something a bit different and simple; the one thing I wanted was to feel comfortable and be able to dance easily.

The minute I stepped into the Vintage Wedding Dress company I loved everything about it, the lovely ladies working there, the beautiful shop interior and then I saw the DRESSES! They are all so beautiful I loved that they offered both original vintage and inspired vintage. It turned out every dress I picked to try was original vintage, I loved that they were all so unique. My dress was 70′s and the second I put it on I loved it!

Vintage Accessories

I got most of my accessories from the Vintage Wedding Dress Company as they had such gorgeous things. I love headbands and really wanted something vintage in my hair. I loved the simple delicate flower headband and felt it just finished off my look perfectly.

My veil was also from the Vintage Wedding Dress Company. At first I didn’t think I would have a veil but when the lady in the shop popped one on me I loved it and thought it gave my dress a more bridal look. My shoes were also from there – I loved the simplicity of them and thought they went so well with my dress. Plus I wanted to dance all night and these meant I could do that!

Relaxed Vintage Feel

We didn’t have a strict colour scheme but wanted something relaxed with a vintage feel. The Bridesmaid’s dresses were from Warehouse, I loved the colour and style and they fitted really well next to my dress. I also had a little maid – Rob’s niece, and as she is 11, she wore a slightly different dress from ASOS but we still kept it within our vintage look and feel.

Rob knew he wanted something relaxed and fun so we decided waistcoats and bow ties would be good for the Best Men and Ushers! The waistcoats and bow ties were all from Topman. Rob’s suit was Topman and brogues from Ben Sherman.

Pastel Tones

As we didn’t really have a strict colour scheme as we wanted everything to be relaxed and a bit mix and match. Our invites we’re really simple, we used bunting which we then translated into the venue decor. We spent months collecting jars and pots and bunting to decorate the venue. We tried to use vintage pastel colours throughout the outfits and venue decor.

Thrown Together Flowers

The flowers were really important but I knew I wanted something simple and thrown together. I decided I would have gypsophila for my bouquet and for the 5 bridesmaids. I loved the vintage look of gyp and how pretty and simple it is. The button holes were all gypsophila too.
We were really lucky and had a friend of a friend do our flowers which was amazing as I totally trusted her to do an amazing job which she did! We collected jars and hampers for months to display the ceremony room flowers and table arrangements. I loved them – they were exactly what I’d hoped they would be and more.

Dancing Queen

Our ceremony was very simple, we chose our own vows and my Granny Norm did a reading – ‘Us Two’ from Winnie the Pooh. It was really lovely and exactly what we wanted.

Our biggest wish for the reception was that it was fun fun fun! We just wanted everyone to dance drink and have a good time. We knew from the beginning that we wanted to have a band as I just love how a band makes people get up and dance. My sister found our band as she had seen them at a friend’s wedding and they were ace.

Rob also used to be in a band and they reformed for a quick showing which was so much fun – he even got his Dad up on stage! After the band had finished we played a selection of our favourite songs from over the years – both old school and new.

The Perfect Photographer

I searched and searched for a photographer that offered the vintage relaxed style we wanted and when I came across Claire Penn I was so thrilled. She is so amazing and completely captured our day in the most wonderful fun happy way. From the moment we met Claire she was so much fun and totally understood what we wanted. It was an absolute joy to have Claire as part of our day and we are so happy with all the photos!

Capture Every Moment

After seeing Shutterbox on Rock My Wedding I knew we had to have them! We hadn’t thought about having a film but when I saw what they could do we booked them straight away. Lee and Dawn are so lovely and so talented I am so pleased we decided to get a film. It’s amazing to watch it back and remember the day. Together with Claire Penn they have an incredible ability to absolutely capture every little moment of the day without you ever realising that they are there.

Guess Your Pie

Food was a big part of our day as we both love food – especially me! As we got married in March we wanted to have something warm and tasty. We decided to have pie and mash and were thrilled when we found out that Pieminister could provide the delicious pies. As it was National Pie week it also fitted in very well.

We had a selection of 4 pies on the day and you just got what was popped in front of you so it was a surprise. Pieminister provided us with loads of info on the pies which we displayed on the tables so people could guess what pie they had. We also had pie badges and tattoos which were extremely popular.

Vintage Tea Party

I wanted to do favours that tied in with our whole day so decided that I would hunt down vintage tea cups for all the girls and make marmalade for the boys. Along with our lovely family we hunted around charity shops and flea markets for tea cups. I also searched for some fabric for the tops of the marmalade jars that tied in with the Groomsmen’s outfits.

My Granny Norm is a fabulous cake maker – I was so pleased when she said she would make our wedding cake and it was fantastic. As it wasn’t a huge cake Rob’s mum also made some extra cakes to ensure there was enough for everyone and I loved how the cake table looked like a vintage tea party.

Bottle Collecting

We didn’t use a huge amount of stationery but decided we would use a vintage type writer with the table plan on. We searched the internet to find one and were so pleased when we found it! For the table names we just did numbers as we felt there was already enough detail on the tables with all the pie information and tattoos.

We wanted real old school milk bottles with wooden numbered spoons inside and we finally found some from Rob’s lovely Nanna and Grandpa who kept some from their milk delivery.
We wanted to have something more than a guest book that we could keep forever so we decided to have a bike picture which people then put their thumb print on that acted as a balloon tied to the bike! It has made such a great picture and will always remind us of our day!

Everything We Dreamed It Would Be

As all Brides say the best advice I can say is enjoy EVERY second as it goes so quickly! Also make sure you don’t get too tied up with planning and actually try and enjoy the planning stage and getting excited. Don’t be afraid to ask people to help and get involved, it was so special to have home-made cakes and marmalade! The best thing Rob and I did was make sure it was exactly what we wanted and it was, it was our day and everything we had dreamed it would be.

Click here & view all images from this wedding

Venue – The Ashes
Dress and Brides Accessories – The Vintage Wedding Dress Company
Bridesmaid Dresses – Warehouse, ASOS
Groom and Best Men – Topman, Ben Sherman
Invites – Wedding Chicks
Guestbook – Wedding Chicks
Food – Pie Minister
Videographer – Shutterbox Films
Photographer – Claire Penn

Doesn’t Charlotte look radiant in the wedding video as she and Rob walk through the confetti?!?

Lots of love,

Fern x