Dress
Adele the Bride: Try juggling 1st time mom hood with arranging a wedding… yeah maybe don't try that - I wouldn't advise it, but I would go as far as saying we pulled the perfect wedding day out of the bag! You can follow my story over on Instagram:
@just.isla.and.i
Bride
Let’s start from the smallest detail - my gorgeous diamond earrings were a gift from my husband to be on the morning of our wedding, I wore two bracelets - one my mother’s the other my late Nans. My shoes
Jimmy Choo (because if you can’t on your wedding then when can you).
My veil was from a local wedding boutique and my dress - well that is a whole other story - whilst lusting over a dress that was out of reach, trying on over 100 dresses that just didn't compare - the Australian company finally came to the UK and I got to try on what I thought was my dream dress and something just wasn't right - I ended up with a dress that was everything that I thought I didn't want but it was the one - it was perfect and it was a
Grace Loves Lace.
Grooms Attire
The Groom wore a three-piece suit Taylor made by
Gresham Blake. He also wore cufflinks and a tie pin personalised with the date of our and the initials of the bride to be and their daughter. The idea being he could wear this close to his heart.
Venue
Our venue was
Gate Street Barn - built in the traditional style using wood from oak trees lost on the farm in the 1987 hurricane. a beautiful venue set in the Surrey Hills, 5 miles south of Guildford. The barn is currently undergoing a huge re vamp to improve it even further.
Decor and Styling
We had a vision of simple and beautiful with us written all over it so we didn't go for a colour scheme as such. The venue was decorated with foliage and white chiffon, the aisle was laced with amber glass bottles filled with old roses and sprigs of greenery that would later go on to be used as our table center pieces. Our welcome sign was hand made by a dear friend of ours and decorated with eucalyptus.
Stationery
All our personal details were hand made by us, the name labels for the chairs, the order of service - even down to bagging the confetti and sticking them inside the folds - I was so happy with how they came out and I would be happy to share how we made them.
Florist
The only person to hold flowers was the bride, I believe our florist
Rosie Orr said it was the biggest bouquet she had ever made! The rest of the bouquets, button holes and wrist corsages were all made from foliage. The main feature arch was designed by the bride and hand crafted by the father of the bride using birch wood and dressed in foliage and chiffon for the final touches - the lights were also heavily dressed in foliage and greenery.
Wedding Party Fashion
All bridesmaid wore different white dresses from various highstreet brands - I wanted each dress to suit each girls style, age, shape and size. They all had matching light pink
ASOS sandals that matched the pink from the bride’s shoes. The groomsmen all wore
Marks & Spencer's suits with open collar shirts and white pocket squares from
TM Lewin. We also brought them matching cufflinks and socks to match the grooms blue tie.
Ceremony
Our ceremony was very basic but beautiful - quite a few mistakes were made by the groom, which made for a very giggly entertaining vow exchange! Our maid of honour read a beautiful poem chosen by her and it suited us perfectly.
Entertainment
We wanted to keep with the casual laid back theme of the day so we had vintage lawn games that everybody got involved with. We also had S’mores, sparklers, pizzas and a
DJ in the evening.
Food
Our Gorgeous naked wedding cake was made by a lovely neighbour of ours - she made a four tier Victoria sponge - two layers of strawberry and vanilla sponge, and two layers of raspberry and vanilla, it was decorated with foliage and roses.
The food at our wedding was catered for by
JustJane - we didn’t want anything fancy we wanted homely food that really had us written all over it:
Starter - antipasti with grilled veg & halloumi
Main - steak and ale pie or Leek and mushroom pie — and mash with veg
Dessert - cheese cake
Our evening food was catered for by
Wood Box Pizza - we hired their vintage pizza van and had a pizza party.
Photographer
For our photographer we used the super talented
Kirsty MacKenzie, as soon as we had our first Skype call with Kirsty we knew she was right up our street and exactly the person we wanted at our wedding capturing our day. Of course, she delivered on absolutely everything we wanted and so much more. She captured all the important moments and all of the candid shots that were so important to us - it’s so lovely looking back on the photos and seeing how happy everybody was.
Videography
We opted out of having a videographer - it wasn't for us - instead the brother of the bride and his friend used Go pros set up all around the venue to capture the most important parts of the day and used small clips to put together a small 1 min video of the day which was just perfect.
Advice
When planning your wedding make sure the most important thing in mind is you! It is so easy to get lost in trying to keep everyone else happy and focusing on the “right thing to do” — this is the one day of your life that it is all about you two - your love and the life you share and the promises you are going to make to each other — don't lose track of what’s really important and that is: you are marrying your love.