Will and Nic allocated their budget on the things that were most important to them.

Sometimes if there is that one deal-breaking part of your planning – the item you just have to have, W-day can become an exercise of compromise in other areas.

Often though, compromise can lead to creativity… it forces you to think about things in different ways and often you can come up with unique and surprising solutions.

Today we are in Buckinghamshire and the genius with the lenses, kit bag and camera is Simon Fazackarley.

D.I.Y Chic

I’d seen Notley Abbey in the first wedding mag I bought and instantly fell in love with the lead windows and distressed brick work. It was of course our very own Mrs O’Shea’s spectacular affair that had been photographed and I imediately became an RMW obsessive. Seriously – even when we’d been on holiday I had to catch up as soon as we got back with a glass of wine and my notebook in case I’d missed anything vital!

After getting the pricelist through the post my heart fell though as we’d never in a million years be able to afford it, the brochure went straight to the bottom of our wedding box never to see the light of day again, or so we thought. Several very frustrated and no-winning-venue months later, I came across it again and thought sod it – this is an itch I’ve just got to scratch and we were getting desperate! As soon as we drove down the tree lined driveway we knew that we’d found the place. With a lot of help from mum and dad, adopting a DIY chic approach, a Thursday date and a significantly depleted guest list, the venue was chosen!

A Jenny Packham Girl

Finding my dress was by far the most fun part of the entire process. I tried on a lot of dresses but it quickly became obvious that I was a Jenny Packham girl. As soon as her new collection came out last year it was permanently on my web browser so I decided to go and see a local stockist when they had a designer day on. The wonderful Jo at Bridal Path in Sawbridgeworth was so much help, she had lined up all of the dresses that I wanted to try on and after getting through literally 10, I got to Gaia. Up to this point I thought that the whole teary eyed ‘this-is-the-one’ moment was a thing of legend, but I have to say that even I, hard-faced as I can be, filled up and knew that I’d finally found it! The Grecian style and delicate, one shouldered bodice suited me perfectly and my audience in the shop completely agreed. I got my mum and Chief B, Donna down a few weeks later for a reassuring second opinion, they couldn’t have approved more thoroughly (my mum mainly as I hadn’t gone for a strapless affair – what is it about mum’s and their straps?!) and I even think that they may have had leaky eyes too!

Vintage Peach

Bridesmaids dresses were a bit of a tricky affair as we had no particular colour scheme and the only real theme that we had going on was ‘vintage’ so when I saw the dresses in HANDM I thought why not give it a go. They were a perfect vintage peachy colour and at £25 a pop we could always go back to the drawing board. Thankfully the maids were happy and after several failed attempts by me, my amazing girls took the job of accessorising in hand and transformed a really simple dress, into an amazingly stylish outfit.

I think that in total the whole lot including jewellery and shoes cost about £100, which meant that I could splash out on treating them to getting their make up done and a special gift to say thank you for being such special, solid friends to me (and for being way better at accessorising!). The little flower girls dresses just about matched the colour of the grown-ups, but they came from River Island of all places, I didn’t even know they did kids stuff until I looked online. I also got the plane headbands from there and decorated them with various bits of sparkle and ribbon for the tiddlies to wear on the day (not that they lasted long!)

A Head For Style

As I couldn’t afford to stretch the budget to the JP headpiece that I’d had been pining for, I scoured the net for a similar one and finally discovered the amazing Jo Barnes. There were about 8 different styles that I could have chosen but I plumped for ‘Grace’ and was made up when she arrived in the post. It was exactly what I’d spent hours searching for and Jo clearly puts so much love into creating every single piece, it was an honour to wear it on the day.

Tickled Pink

I really wanted a pair of statement shoes and again spent what felt like months searching for the perfect pair on the internet. In the end I was so frustrated I ordered 15 pairs from ASOS and sent all but one back. The last surviving pair were pretty statement-y though, huge heels, bright salmon pink, with feathers!! As soon as I tried them on with the dress I knew that they were spot on, that was until I realised that Will would need a significant stack of Yellow Pages ready at the end of the aisle so I resigned myself to the fact that the feathers would have to be saved for the evening and a much lower, glitzy, silver pair would need to be used for the ceremony. It really didn’t matter when it came down to it on the day as I ended up kicking them off as soon as I got to Will anyway! Both pairs put together didn’t even reach £100 in total so I felt like I totally deserved the extravagance of having 2.

Glam And Gorgeous

I was blessed with having some serious plaiting talent in Lauren, one of my bridesmaids, so I knew that I didn’t need to worry about getting anyone in to do our hair for us. Even though my barnet is a bit mental and can be quite difficult (OK maybe I’m the difficult one!) we had a couple of practices and decided what was going to work with the one shouldered dress. On the actual day it took 10 minutes and stayed in for the duration, which I was mightily relieved about. She also did a wicked job of both her own and my maid of honour’s hair.

The amazing and beautiful Carolanne Armstrong was drafted in to make up the three of us and my mum, which in hindsight was a brilliant decision. Having someone to take care of the make up was something that I considered a bit of an indulgence but when it came down to it, having her there totally removed any stress from the entire morning and she was so lovely that chatting with her completely chilled me out. As well as managing my stress levels she did an amazing job and we all looked glam and gorgeous!

Mums The Word

I’m very lucky that my mum is a flower arranger so flowers were always going to play a huge part in making the day special. After a thousand conversations, I finally managed to pinpoint what it was that I actually wanted – unfortunately and to my mum’s utter irritation, I’m cursed with not actually knowing what I want until I find it. Once we’d cracked it though it was all go, she got one of her friends to help out with the heart wreaths and mum managed to finish all 30 vases for the table decorations in the last few days before the wedding. She’s also a genius with the glue gun and was able to prepare in advance the pew ends and also the flower girls little hand held hearts (which incredibly are both artificial!). When she showed them to me I couldn’t believe that she’d managed to create EXACTLY what I wanted with only my babbling and scribbles to go on.

As I wanted to be as eco-friendly as possible I picked seasonal flowers mainly roses, hydrangeas, gerberas and carnations, in loosely ‘valentine’s’ themed colours. Mum doesn’t do bouquets so our wonderful local florist Jane Maples took care of them and the buttonholes.

Floral Fancy

The lads were asked to wear their own grey suits as we weren’t fussed about them being all matchy but we provided them all with a tie to identify them as part of the wedding party. Once again trying to find ties in a vintage-y colour that would look good with the maids wasn’t an easy task but thankfully the good old High St came up trumps again and I bought them all from Tie Rack for a tenner each. Thanks to his deceptively broad shoulders, Will’s suit took almost as long to find as my bloody dress! After a very long day traipsing around London we found it in the Ted Baker sale. It was a lovely pale grey three piece that after a fair bit of alteration fitted him a treat. The tie we found at Marc Wallace and though it was rather floral, it worked perfectly with everything and he secretly adores it as much as I do!

Etheral Feel

We found our unbelievable photographer on these very pages. As soon as I saw Simon Fazackarley’s pictures I knew that there was no one else for the job. His pictures have such an ethereal feel and captured the relaxed, fun vibe of the day perfectly. It also helped hugely that he’s SUCH a brilliant person, someone that we could feel completely at ease being a major part of our big day, and he definitely didn’t let us down. We couldn’t have been happier with the results and to commemorate, Donna and I ambushed Simon and managed to snap a cheeky shot of him with his own camera!

Cake Array

Cake, cake, cake… Easily one of the best things EVER invented surely?? As I have a slight fetish for the sweet stuff it was important to me that we had lots of it on the day. Thankfully Will’s mum Coral is cake-maker-extraordinaire and after a little begging on my part she agreed to make us a three tiered fruit cake and lots of delicious little cupcakes to create my very own Cake Table – heaven!! I’m ashamed to say that the first tears of joy that I cried on the day were when I saw Coral laying it all out in the morning!

Coral also managed to create us a mountain of pickles and jams that we used as favours. We spent a lovely afternoon, while Will was on his stag weekend, bottling it all up and making them look pretty. I’m still trying to convince her that she should start up her own confectionary business!

Casual Vintage

Apart from the very casual vintage theme, I wanted to stick with a no-colour-scheme theme. It made it much easier for me when sourcing fabrics and choosing flowers, I honestly don’t know how some brides manage to colour coordinate everything. I think in my own mind I would drive myself insane trying to match everything perfectly so I abandoned this idea quite early on and stuck to anything vaguely Valentines-y; pinks, reds, peaches, creams, which resulted in a big mass of colour that I was so happy with.

My advice for brides-to-be? Do what you want to do; people will forgive you if you don’t spend the allotted 5 minutes talking to each guest. Don’t be afraid to ask, people will always be happy to help take some of the load. Take every possible second to relax; the time will slip through your fingers so easily. But most of all…cherish every single moment, you only get to do it once (hopefully).

Venue Notley Abbey

Dress Jenny Packham

Boutique Bridal Path

Shoes ASOS

Flowers Mother Of the Bride

Bouquets & Buttonholes Jane Maples

Photography Simon Fazackarley

Entertainment Glamour

Loads of D.I.Y inspiration for you today folks, and a great big dollop of old fashioned love.

Also, loving those shoes Nic. Featherlicious.

Adam.

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