What was your color palette and your style vision?

The colour palette was inspired by the romance of the day, on the one hand we had very whimsical, natural and organic tones and later on introduced the rich reds, pops of pinks and pastel greens.

Our wedding ended up having two themes to story tell. The first was organic, whimsical, natural, elegant tones for our church ceremony. This was very much inspired from the organza of my dress and the stylish lead of our stationary. I wanted this to be a fashion-forward take on the traditional formality of this part of the occasion. Lots of beautifully abundant foliage, full of texture and interest but in an unstructured ‘un-done’ style. This was really full of romance yet retained a ‘garden gathered’ look from the meadow that framed the aisle. The colour palette was luscious creams, peaches, blush, nudes, a total contrast to what we had styled for the wedding breakfast and evening party.

The wedding breakfast featured a maximalist style, feminine, textured, layered with the romantic colourways – pink tones with cream and red accents. We had a lot of fun with shapes, sizes, textures and simply creating a thrilling, unconventional mood.

What unique elements or DIY details did you include?

I commissioned a good friend to do an illustration for me, based on a photo taken of Seamus and I in Santorini. I had planned to gift this to Seamus as his wedding present, I wanted something really personal and unexpected. We love collecting art and prints for our home, so I was very excited by the idea. When I saw the finalised illustration, I realised it was the perfect personal touch to our day. I found heart shaped labels and had the illustration featured on our wedding favours. Continuing the romantic yet playful theme, I found glass heart ‘Love Potion’ bottles and tied the artwork to each individual bottle.

Then there were the invites. I got lost in ribbons at VV Rouleaux in Marylebone, it is heaven on earth for stylish trimmings, ribbons and textiles. I stayed up all evening hand-tying each bow which would hold our invite, RSVP and info card together. I loved our friends joy when they finally received them.

We filled favours full of Buckfast, made cushions from left over Liberty fabric and tied colourful ribbon to just about everything! Even our family dog, who is 16 years old, played a part in the DIY. Making use of the left-over ribbon we tied this to his collar to perform the ever-important role of the ring bearer.

Many sleepless nights were spent preparing for the wedding but Helen from What Peggy Did Next helped us make the day run seamlessly and we will be forever grateful we chose her to support us in the creation of our special day. The day was simply magical thanks to all the wonderful suppliers we had the pleasure of working with and we couldn’t have done it without them all.

Talk about your flowers, your gown, your favours, your cake, etc.

To begin the story and set the scene for surprises we delved into the stationary. Everything was to lead to the creative direction of the day and with our perfect venue secured, our invites would be the first part of the puzzle. Jennifer Grant, founder of Romeo & Jules Bespoke, ticked every box. Her illustrations are playful, colourful and very artistic. Our stationery suite combined a feminine palette – creams and gold for the main invite with bows and swirling fonts, sitting next to the pink and red scallop framed RSVP cards and the candy-striped Info card. The story continued with elegant order of services, printed place mats to feature the menu, pink heart name cards and candy stripe bar menus on the day. We created a crest with our initials in a poppy red with a scalloped frame. The femininity of the scallops played a feature throughout, with the romantic red, pink and cream colour-ways flattering our floral design direction.

The stylish tones Jennifer created for our main invite and order of service, were soft creams and golds. These softer tones transitioned into the floral design for the ceremony. The Church florals were softer more neutral subtle tones of creams, peach, blush pinks and nudes. A beautiful deconstructed arch was made to frame the ceremony area, taller on one side it was a beautiful rambling, naturalistic arch climbing a meta. We then created a garden meadow, growing garden scenes in a softer palette of florals placed between the upper pews, the look was purposely challenging different shapes and sizes, not uniform. It was something of my wildest dreams, I’ll never get bored of reminiscing over the florals that graced the aisle and seeing Seamus stood before it.

The style continued with the pinks, reds and creams of our wedding breakfast stationery complimenting the bold characterful blooms in abundance on our tables. My vision was to create a very full, colourful and romantic look featuring luscious, clashing red and pink roses, delicate anemones and playful gypsophila which was magical! We had 48 arrangements in total on long trestle tables. This was paired with clustered groupings of candles and tealights nestled in, for real atmosphere and storytelling. On the tables we had an eclectic mix of clear pressed glass candlesticks and tealight votives paired with green Ester and Erik taper dinner candles.

For my bouquet I wanted something really elegant and ironically less eclectic and loud. With such a special dress and detailed veil, I wanted something equally as delicate. It was very natural, as Jenni Bloom described a beautifully gathered/undone style with delicate interest. It was tied with a beautiful nude silk ribbon handmade in the UK.

The flower arch was reused to frame the entrance to our wedding breakfast, along with the garden meadows to sit beneath the seating plan and later on they created a feature by framing our wedding cake in the tapestry room. The meadows accompanied family portraits and later on a ‘photobooth’ opportunity with a rustic bench seat and spotlights. With all of these beautiful flowers the idea was to maximise their use as much as possible. Moving the meadows, the arch and urn displays to add to the drama of the drinks reception and wedding breakfast was the best decision we made. Later on, the same florals framed the dance-floor, simply adding large bunches of gyp for added drama and styling.

My dress was Halfpenny, a designer that shares the same obsession with organza, florals and a romantic modern style. I toyed with ideas such as peplum features, shoulder pads, organza and then came the Mayfair dress. As soon as I found the dress, or the dress found me, it became a huge influence on the styling of the day. Halfpenny altered the design to have a removable organza skirt, revealing a slinky party dress for the evening. Paired with the dandelion veil, it was everything and more, I had so much fun wearing it and am still staring at it hanging up in our home. My mum and maid of honour were the only people to see the dress before the day, I think their words were - it expressed ‘me’ perfectly and tears were shed!

The dress then inspired the beautiful four-tier cake made by Little Mallow. A simple white icing with delicate frill detailing inspired by the frills on the organza of my dress. Our cake was carrot cake and lemon drizzle – all sorts of deliciousness!

The styling alone wasn’t enough to create the ambience we craved, and this is where the food and entertainment was so central. Alongside the floral design and styling features to set the mood, we were adventurous with our menu and perhaps a little extra with our entertainment. My favourite moment of the day was the surprise I had planned for Seamus. I booked a local pipe band to burst through the doors during the cutting of our cake as a total surprise! Two pipers led the procession and all of our guests into the great dining room where cocktail hour went off. I was totally elated to have pulled this moment off and still to this day I grin from cheek to cheek thinking about it.

What is one piece of advice that you could give brides-to-be?

Keep the details of the day a surprise! From entertainment, florals and styling, to the reveal of the dress! I kept this all one big surprise, so each part of the day was unveiled to not only guests, but the bridal party and in my case…the groom!

It created magical moments that I will never forget. Sit back and soak in those moments, it is rare you will have another opportunity for your most loved friends and family to all come together for such a special celebration.

Testimonial

Holly Clark Photography - There were simply no words. Holly was incredible from start to finish, she made our day so enjoyable and was the most calming, professional, perfectionist, more so than we could have ever wished for. Her eye for detail and creative direction has no limits to capture each moment. We will be forever grateful that we were able to story tell our special day through Hollys magical, wonderful and breathtakingly beautiful work. We still can’t believe it is us in the pictures and feel so incredibly lucky to have found her. Photography is so personal, and it is the only thing you have to look back on the day for years to come. It is an heirloom to be treasured and Holly exceeded all expectations. We were speechless when it came to be receiving our final album. Thank you from the bottom of our heart, you have captured our most cherished moments flawlessly.

What Peggy Did Next - If you have big ideas and are planning a lot of it solo, hire What Peggy Did Next! A voice of reason and solution where needed, Helen became a great friend I could trust throughout. Helen has impeccable professionalism and second to none experience. We will be forever grateful we chose her to coordinate our special day, it ran seamlessly! Out of the many weddings I have been to, the brides have always found something didn’t go to plan, I had prepared myself for that but needn’t have thanks to Helens impeccable attention to detail. She helped plan a day I could have only dreamed of and I couldn’t have done it without her.