Chloe & Glenn

Chloe & Glenn married in Autumn, just as the leaves were beginning to turn and it's made for some gorgeous portraits - look at that bower of leaves overhead, it's so beautiful! And the grey skies and chill in the air made their venue, South Farm, feel even more cosy, with it's exposed wooden beams and twinkling lights, it looks like somewhere you'd love to spend a cold Autumn evening with family and friends. The menu Chloe and Glenn opted for sounds absolutely delicious too. We feature lots of weddings from South Farm and I have to say it looks like a fabulous wedding venue all round. The couple share a huge love of music and so decided to decorate their wedding using vinyl records, which is such a fun idea. The whole wedding is full of careful chosen, personal details,including the Bridesmaids outfits which were put together by a stylist friend of Chloe! Lucky ladies. Their big day has been captured by Matt Penberthy who is always fabulous at capturing light, whatever the weather or season throws at him.

The Bride

I wanted to surprise everyone with a different look. Something that they wouldn’t usually expect me to do. I decided to go down the glamorous route rather than subtle and natural! Big lashes, lots of lovely autumnal eye shadow colours and a lovely pale pink lippy. Gorgeous (and rather big) vintage earrings leant to me by a wonderful friend. I also had a fur shrug (which belonged to another friend of mine!) for the photos outside as it got very chilly after an hour and a half of trying to continue smiling for the camera!  I bought a designer sample of my dress from an outlet shop for £550 and had it altered (lowered the back and altered neckline and size).

The Venue

It was the variety of eclectic spaces that made South Farm stand out. The old cottage, the barn, the old dairy, the gypsy caravans and stunning surroundings. It was a no brainer and gave our guests loads of areas to explore.

The Decor

I saw an image on Pinterest and fell in love with the colour palette - grey and apricot. It was all about soft pastels to match the cottage/barn and the time of year (Autumn/Winter). In order to reflect our personalities and highlight a common interest of both of ours, we decided to used our own collection of Vinyl records to create a seating plan, table names and place mats. After all, we met on a clubbing holiday in Magaluf (!) when we were 18 and went to Ibiza together a few years later to bounce around the clubs and buy the latest tunes too. Glenn also used to be a DJ so he regularly waded through the latest tracks in his local vinyl shops. Instead of favours, we collected 100 pinecones from my best friend’s back garden in Hertfordshire, dried them out and attached brown paper luggage tags with a personalised note on the back for each guest. We were keen to write to and thank each individual personally, rather than providing a generic item of food or drink etc. 

The Flowers

We went for fragrant and farm-esque loose arrangements of field daisies, roses, herbs and foliage.

The Wedding Party

A friend of mine is a Fashion Stylist and image consultant so she styled us all, she provided the bridesmaids dresses in the form of a luxurious French grey silk. All of her designs and styles are effortlessly classic and sit beautifully on all shapes and sizes. I can’t recommend her highly enough! My bridesmaids and I then went shopping on Oxford Street one evening and managed to find the shoes and accessories from the high street.

The Ceremony

We chose specific readings from the message version of the Bible and had friends read them out. We also had a close friend of ours write and pray a prayer over us during the ceremony which was a very special moment for us 

The Entertainment

We hired a local DJ and gave a list of all of the tracks that we were keen for him to play. We are huge fans of house, R&B and hip hop so the mix was quite eclectic! Before the DJ kicked in, we had our friend Jessie Gibbes, aka MALLiE perform. She is about to make it big in the music industry any minute now so watch out for her! We also hired a local photo booth which went down a STORM! 

The Food

South Farm’s in-house team were incredible – catered for all manner of food intolerances including lactose, veggies, coeliacs etc! We chose three main course dishes which were served as a buffet style to the guests. They included locally grown organic produce. We had a vegetarian lasagne, a thai green curry and a seafood paella accompanied by in-season warm salads and vegetables. Desserts were a mix of seasonal cheesecake, chocolate and cointreau truffle torte, lemon tart, creme brûlée and very berry jelly.  after dinner, we had a cocktail happy hour before the evening party to pick everyone up out of the food coma! We had the choice of a mojito and a dark and stormy.  Evening buffet consisted of the following - Warm Mini Mediterranean Vegetable tartlets, Lebanese Lamb Filo Parcels with a raita dip, Chicken Satay & Satay Sauce, Tomato Risotto Bonbon with goats cheese, Mini Venison Burgers, Haddock Fishcakes with tartar sauce & Sweetcorn Fritters. Rather than spending a lot of money on a ‘shop cake’ which neither of us are particularly fond of, we decided to have a cake buffet. Guests were encouraged to bake what they fancied with some inspiration from suggested recipes we’d put on our wedding website. To add a little competition, we said that we would choose our favourite one to be the official ‘cutting of the cake’ moment. 

The Stationery

We designed a website which was so much easier and saved us a lot of money that we otherwise would have spent on stamps and envelopes, not to mention all the time it would take to write out everyone’s home addresses! 

The Entertainment

Glenn’s cousin happens to be a fabulous jazz pianist, so he played during High Tea after the ceremony where guests dived into the cake buffet with endless bottles of Prosecco or an array of herbal teas and coffee. 

The Photography

Photography was an important one for us. We really wanted to achieve something less conventional, a reportage style rather than loads of posed images. We were so thrilled with the results. Matt Penberthy is a good friend of ours from our local church, Hillsong London. We can’t recommend him highly enough! 

The Videography

We didn’t have enough money in the budget for a videographer but all of our friends said it was a ‘must’ as the day itself is such a blur that you want to be able to watch it again after the occasion. My sister’s fiance and Glenn’s step dad set up two cameras at the front of the barn in two different locations. They then very kindly edited it for us! 

The DIY

We had our closest friends and family come to the venue the night before to get decorating! We had a factory production line going whereby some family tied ribbons around the orders of service, others tied luggage tags to the pine cones, laid out the vinyl on the tables and pegged up old photos of us, friends and family around the reception venue. Instead of a guest book, we got an old vintage suitcase and filled it with postcards that we’d collected over the last year or so from places that we’d visited. People could then choose a postcard and write a message to us and pin it on a cork board which we put up. In the lead up to the wedding, we asked a few friends and family to collect interesting looking jars and bottles which we then used to dress all of the spaces at the venue. we filled them with candles and decorated with ribbons etc. We also ordered a huge role of hessian from amazon and measured and made table runners for each of the tables too.

Advice

We were the wedding planners...but if you want a stress free preparation process, I would highly recommend getting one if you can negotiate a reasonable rate!