Cerys & Duncan

This family are just the sweetest and their classic white wedding is very pretty indeed. Cerys wears a stunning Anna Campbell gown which she found at one of our favourite boutiques, the gorgeous Coco & Kate in Warwickshire (find out more about Coco & Kate here on our wedding supplier list). As soon as they had booked a venue, Cerys and Duncan knew they wanted the infamous Chris Barber to shoot their wedding. His images are always full of fun and raw emotion, and he was the perfect photographer for camera shy Cerys. Which you'd never know, these images are so natural and lovely. Let's take a look shall we?

The Bride

Cerys the Bride: I started my wedding planning journey around a year after getting engaged. We were engaged for three years before finally getting married! We had a 10 month old (when Duncan proposed) and knew we wanted another quite close together and so decided to take our time with all things wedding and see what happened.

The Venue

We chose Warwick House as our venue as it had a homely feel to it, and had 15 rooms for our close family and friends to stay on the wedding night which was so convenient, as my family are from Wales and Dunc's are from Essex and it made sense for both sides to come to us (we live in Warwickshire) for our big day. It was also a great choice for us as the venue included catering, decor styling, and evening entertainment with a DJ.

The Decor

I've always wanted a classic feel so gold, white and neutrals in terms of a colour scheme. We wanted to add some personal touches in our decor and placed some small black and white pictures in gold frames of us as a family of four (our second child came along in 2016) alongside our version of a guestbook which was a message in a bottle. I wrote on a demi john bottle with a white Posca pen with my own handwriting and pre cut some twine next to some paper for guests to write their messages to us. I also wrote a sign on a glass frame for our 'unplugged' ceremony so our guests could be fully present on the day. I'm actually quite camera shy so it was important to me that our guests knew not to film or to take pics during the actual ceremony. We chose not to have a videographer for this reason and I'm so glad we didn't as I'm not a fan of looking back at videos of myself and I would have clammed up knowing there was someone filming me.

The Photographer

Professional pictures on the other hand are a different story as these are the memories we want to look back on and will last which leads me to our wonderful photographer Chris Barber. He was the first supplier I booked after the venue, as I had been following his work via RMW as well as Instagram and knew he was the right choice for us. His work is simply amazing and I was so excited when he was available, but then again I did book him over 2 years in advance. He understood completely about my camera insecurities and I needn't have worried, for as soon as we met him he put us at ease and made us laugh during our engagement shoot, so much that it felt like we were just with an old friend. It actually felt exciting to have a photographer at our wedding after that and I was so, so happy with our wedding pictures! I will forever be grateful that he was our photographer.

The Dress

I was not in the head space for looking for the dress at all when I saw it. My little boy was 8 months old and we still had over a year to go until our wedding and so it was not on my radar. I hadn't even started to try to get back to my pre baby weight as I wanted to give myself plenty of time with no rush. While scrolling through Instagram one day I saw that a local wedding dress boutique, the wonderful Coco & Kate in Hatton advertised a sample sale for two Anna Campbell dresses and I just couldn't resist the opportunity! I contacted them straight away and booked an appointment with no time to arrange for my mother and sister to come up from Wales. I brought a lovely friend along and bought the first wedding dress I ever tried on there and then.

The Flowers

My flowers were a large mix of white blooms and lots of foliage. I was desperate to have at least one peony as they are my favourite flowers, although being as peonies bloom in Summer and our wedding was in April it looked like it might not happen, but my lovely florist was able to get two for my bouquet alongside the roses etc which made me so happy!

The Wedding Party

My bridesmaids, who were my sister and niece wore long gold sparkly dresses from Laura May Bridal in Cardiff. I gave my bridesmaids free reign to choose their own dresses as long as they stuck to the colour scheme, then I was happy. My daughter Lillie was flower girl in a white John Lewis dress and my son Bowie's outfit from Mamas & Papas. The Groom's suit was a semi-tailored service from Moss Bros. and he had our initials and wedding date sewn into the jazzy inner lining of his suit jacket.

The Ceremony

We had our ceremony and reception all in the same place, as we have children we wanted everything to be as easy as possible. I walked down the aisle with my dad to an instrumental cello and piano version of A Thousand Years which was quite emotional. One of the best moments of the day were the speeches. Duncan (the groom's) speech in particular went down a storm! He wrote a poem about me which has us all in stitches and crying with laughter that then lead us to tears of emotion as he got quite choked up while talking about our children and future together. Every person in the room was willing him to get through his speech through his tears which resulted in a standing ovation! I had to then follow with my speech, so that was quite a task but I was determined to do so as I wanted to reciprocate my feelings. I've since been told that our wedding has been called the 'love fest' by some of our guests and we've been told off for ruining their make up from all their tears.

Advice

My advice to anyone planning right now is to try not to let the whole process overwhelm you. It can be challenging and it's ok to feel a little disheartened when things are out of your control ie. the weather, it was the only weekend in April that it rained but overall it really didn't matter. It was the best day and the only opportunity to have everyone you love in the same place at the same time. Just remember it's all about you as a couple so try to relax and most importantly have fun!