Hannah & Jon
Photography by Chris Barber Photography
Venue
Hannah the Bride: We live in a sleepy village called Alderminster, I have done for 22 years & Picky (Jon) for 7 years, so being able to get married in the village was an absolute dream come true. I walked from my house, to the church – waving to locals in the village and having tractors beeping their horns as they drove past! From the church, we walked to the pub next door – The Bell. The Bell is a stunning, a 5 star gastro pub with beautiful grounds. We are lucky enough to walk our dogs round the church and pub grounds every day so to be able to get married and celebrate our day at both of these places was just something else. The Bell could not have done any more to make our day perfect, the food was out of this world and the 11.30pm run to the supermarket for more Tequila, Jaeger and Sambuca was done with a smile on their faces!Photographer
Chris Barber was always going to be our photographer, he shot my sister’s wedding and the photos were unreal. No other photographer came close, and to say he met expectations would be an understatement. Chris exceeded at every opportunity, from a ridiculously fun pre wedding shoot, to being the most fun to have around on the day itself, it really did feel like having a great mate with us. A seriously talented guy, my favourite compliment so far from a work colleague on our wedding pictures “I didn’t ever want to get married, until I saw your photographers work. I want to get married just so I can have Chris take epic photos!”Videographer
We had Blooming Lovely Films, and Rich was brilliant. He was so passionate about his job, and to be honest, at times we forgot he was there. We were worried about having too many people with eyes on us, but it couldn’t have felt further from that. We cannot wait to get our video back as we have no doubt it is going to be an amazing reflection of the day and bring back all the memories of our day.Brides Gown
I was dreading dress shopping, so wanted it to be over as quickly as possible. I visited two shops, and found the most beautiful ‘Sincerity’ dress from Chantelle at Shakespeare in Love. Chantelle was unbelievable, so reassuring, and made me feel like the only bride in the world, despite the fact she was having two weddings herself in the same few months! I ended up completely falling in love with my dress, it was so comfortable and I really did not want to take it off.Shoes
I am not into shoes, and it was never a huge deal for me buying my wedding shoes, however when I stumbled across these Dune pair of heels I fell in love with them. They matched the colour scheme perfectly, were my something blue, and I got so many compliments on them... 6 people asked me if they were Valentino’s so I loved being able to say no and tell people what a bargain they were!Veil/Headpiece
I borrowed my Maid of Honour’s veil who is my sister so it meant a lot to have something borrowed, and to be able to look back in both sets of wedding photos to see how beautiful the veil looked on us both on our wedding days.Florist
Sophie at ‘The Stow Flower Shop’ is a close family friend, and she was just superb from the get go, I am not a flowers girl, well, I wasn’t. Sophie took two pictures I had found on Pinterest that I ‘kinda’ liked and made the most stunning set of wedding flowers ever. I am officially now a flower kinda girl!Decor/Styling
Homemade, homemade, homemade! All of our décor was homemade, jam jars, twine, wine bottles, corks and wood to name a few! Picky’s younger sister is extremely talented when it comes to arts and crafts and she really bought our wedding to life. Place names, signs, centre pieces, and everything else in sight was made by Katie’s fine hands over the last year and it could have not been more perfect. It really bought everything together and gave us a real style we had hoped for.
Stationery
Where possibly, the wedding as homemade as we could, two main reasons, firstly because of our budget, and secondly, to have the personal touch. My uncle works as a printer, so designed our logo which followed on all pre and post wedding stationery, and also had the most perfect design his team just seemed to whip up!
Cake Maker
Picky’s sister’s made our cake and it was EPIC! They are great at baking, only doing it as a hobby but my goodness it was a real show stopper, and it tasted as amazing as it looked!
Entertainment
Drew Hall and his guitar were the spectacular day entertainment, acoustic music all afternoon and through dinner was superb. Drew has the most relaxing, chilled aura and it could not have been more perfect for the setting. We had Richard Young Magic as an additional part of the evening as entertainment, Richard could not have received more compliments from our guests if he paid them! He was the most jaw dropping magician and months down the line people are still attempting to work out how he did some of his tricks. Finally, we had Ade from Jam Productions as our DJ for the evening and he had the dance floor rammed all evening, great choice of music all evening, and boy do the photos reflect the sweatiness of that dancefloor!
Advice
Take some time with your new husband / wife! The day flies and we took three of four moments throughout the day to have a hug and a kiss, and really just soak up the huge amount of love that was in the room for us both that day. We really have walked away the happiest we could ever have imagined and a bank of unbelievable memories.
