I am so excited to be starting the week with WWW real bride Kate’s wedding day! Yippee. We’ve seen her whole wedding planning journey from beginning to end and she even took on a modelling role for the WWW editorial in 2014.
Kate and James were married in September last year at Swancar Farm Country House in Nottinghamshire. They hoped for a day which was wasn’t OTT and just picked the things they found and liked.
Kate wore a vintage 1950s frock she found in Fur Coat No Knickers, teamed with sweet sparkly peep toes and a blue petticoat. Didn’t she look gorgeous? Meanwhile the gents wore dapper navy Reiss suits and the bridesmaids were very glamorous in flapper dresses. What a stylish wedding party.
There were romantic candelabra table centrepieces, pretty pink bouquets and fun bicycle touches. So much happiness.
Thanks so much to Kathryn Edwards for sharing these utterly wonderful images today.
THE PROPOSAL | In a Tipi near Hastings, we went away for the weekend and James popped the question whilst we were sitting by our camp-fire outside our beautiful tipi.
THE VISION | We didn’t have a specific vision in mind, we just knew what we liked when we saw it and we knew that we didn’t want anything OTT. I liked the idea of getting my craft on and tried to be hands on throughout the process.
THE PLANNING PROCESS | A mixture of Pinterest, online blogs (thanks Lou), wedding magazines and the cutting and sticking of things that we liked.
BUDGET | More than we anticipated but we definitely needed everything that we had haha.
THE VENUE | Both the service and reception were held at Swancar Farm Country House in Nottingham. I may have had a bridezilla moment whilst trying to find a venue without patterned carpets and curtains, not only was Swancar Farm a stunning rustic converted farmhouse, it was also ticked these very important boxes. Our wedding planner Louise was fabulous, as were all the staff at the venue. At the time of our wedding there were 8 rooms available at the venue but they were building more.
THE DRESS & ACCESSORIES | “Ruffle Bum” was a Vintage 1950’s dress from Fur Coat No Knickers, she needed a few tweaks here and there such as replacing a zip at the back for beautiful buttons, taking in, shortening, getting an underskirt made. I couldn’t have wished for a more wonderful dress experience.
FINDING THE DRESS | I found dress shopping super easy, FCNK was the second shop tat I went in to and I immediately fell in love with Ruffle Bum. Although I can’t fault the wedding dresses I tried on in the first shop, they just didn’t feel right and I tried every style imaginable on. I always envisioned having a short dress so that’s why I made sure to go to a traditional wedding dress shop beforehand. I knew I wanted to move around with ease so that’s why I wanted to go for a short dress as I didn’t want to be lifting it up to get from A to B as I am not the most coordinated individual.
GROOM’S ATTIRE | James wore a lovely blue 3 piece suit from Reiss. He has since had a lot of wear out of it at subsequent weddings and it looks just as lovely as it did on the wedding day.
THE READINGS & MUSIC | We had two readings; an extract from Les Miserables and “Oh The Places You’ll Go” by Dr Seuss. We stole the latter from a friends wedding as it’s a bit quirky. We aren’t really gushy types so it suited us down to he ground.
I walked down the aisle to “All You Need is Love” played by the Vitamin String Quartet, although I very nearly walked down to their version of “Don’t Stop Believing” I thought that I ought to be a little traditional, plus my Dad is a Beatles fan so it was sentimental as well as being upbeat.
Paul Martyn provided our wedding breakfast and reception music with a mixture of saxophone, singing and DJ. To sum him up in 3 words I would say; amazing, professional and fantastic. High praise indeed, we had so many comments from our guests about how great he was and I would highly recommend Paul to everyone.
BEAUTIFUL BRIDESMAIDS | Lorna, Victoria, Helena, Gemma, they all wore the knee length version of the Zelda flapper dress from Frock and Frill and nude Glenda high heels from Topshop.
THE FLOWERS | Jenny at Flower Barn created all the flowers for the bouquets, tables, corsages and buttonholes. Jenny has provided flower services at a couple of my friends weddings so I knew in advance that she was the right flower lady for us. Jenny knew exactly what I wanted and made my vision from cut out magazines and screen shots a reality. I’m not sure what the flowers were, I just gave her a colour pallet and let her go with it. We knew that we wanted a “thistle type thing” for the boys buttonholes and Jenny managed to incorporate some bike shaped lapel pins that I’d found at River Island into these too , which looked pretty cool.
THE CAKE | Yummy red velvet cupcakes by a family friend, Little Sally’s Big Cakes.
YOUR PHOTOGRAPHER | The lovely Kathryn Edwards provided our photography for our day. We found her whilst perusing online and after visiting her with my mum we knew that she was the perfect photographer for us. We couldn’t recommend Kathryn enough, we are thrilled with our photos both from the wedding and from our engagement shoot that we had a couple of months before in London. Kathryn’s style is relaxed and informal and she really captured the feel of our day perfectly.
THE DETAILS & DÉCOR | All the décor such as table décor, chair covers etc were provided in house at Swancar Farm which made things very easy. Extra bits and bobs such as wooden signs were made by myself and my mum.
We also hired a Photo Booth and a sweetie cart instead of providing favours we figure that people could munch on some sweeties and take a photo souvenir home.
THE HONEYMOON | Our mini-moon was a week in the Sensatori resort Tenerife where we just relaxed around the pool and recharged our batteries straight after the wedding.
Our main honeymoon was a trip around Chile and Argentina which was arranged by the lovely Becky at Audley travel. We travelled 5 months after our wedding which was great as it gave us something to look forward to. We fancied going somewhere a bit unusual and Chile is certainly an interesting country. We did everything from hiking mountains, cycling in the Desert (I fell off) , white water rafting beneath a volcano and of course sampling the wine and steak from the region.
MEMORABLE MOMENTS | All of it! Spending time with all our friends and family, laughing all day. The run up to the wedding was lovely as well as we got to spend quality time with our respective families before hand.
ADVICE FOR OTHER COUPLES | Enjoy yourselves as it really is the best day, don’t worry about the little things and just remember to have fun.
CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE |
Venue | Swancar Farm Country House
Dress | Fur Coat No Knickers
Brides Shoes | Karen Millen
Groom’s Suit | Reiss
Bridesmaid Dresses | Frock and Frill
Photography | Kathryn Edwards
Music | Paul Martyn
Flowers | Flower Barn
Photo Booth | Photo Crazy
Ahhh so lovely.
Thanks so so much to Kate and James for sharing their story today. A huge thank you also to Kate for blogging for WWW, it has been a complete and utter pleasure :-) xo Lou
