Stacey & John

This lovely pair got married at the beginning of this year's beautiful long hot summer, which feels like a distant memory on this icy cold day. Stacey and John filled their barn wedding venue with elegant white linen and lots of foliage, which is such a timeless, classic look and works perfectly with the incredible wooden beams. Images come from the lovely Paul & Nanda, who have captured the day just perfectly.

Our Wedding

Stacey the Bride: We were so lucky to have the perfect wedding day. Instead of April showers we had beautiful sunshine and it was such a hot day – our guests enjoyed drinking Pimms and playing cricket on the lawn in a rustic country setting.

The Ceremony

John & I both thought that our ceremony would be the brief formal part of our wedding that we would quickly get out of the way before the celebrations could begin - but we were incredibly wrong. Our ceremony was the most intimate and emotional moment of our lives. It was perfect from beginning to end – though it went by so quickly for both of us. John could barely see through his tears (*cough* hayfever *cough*) and we both laughed and cried the whole way through. We were able to choose our own words for the ceremony and we both wrote our own vows which meant a lot. It made our ceremony so personal and unique to us. We also had two readings that we chose – John’s father read Union by Robert Fulghum and Hannah, one of the bridesmaids, read the poem Rings by Carol Ann Duffy. They were both perfect.

The Food

We used Crossway Farm caterers as they were recommended by the venue – and they did not disappoint! Tina from Crossways was a delight to deal with from beginning to end. She lives locally to us and invited us to her house to discuss our menu choices before the wedding. Tina also gave us a sample of the vegetarian dish to try – a Mediterranean vegetable and mozzarella lace plait. It was so good that I requested it as my meal for our wedding day.

The Flowers

Helen Newman is a local florist that we met at a wedding fayre in Suffolk. I had seen some of her work and loved it – it was a perfect blend of rustic greenery, soft flowers and pale hues. I had a brief discussion with Helen about the sort of flowers I wanted, and I sent her some example images. Helen delivered beautifully fresh flowers that were exactly what I wanted.

The Cake

My beautiful and talented Aunt very kindly made our wedding cake – it was stunning and delicious! It was 3 tiers – vanilla and strawberry; lemoncello; and chocolate. Our guests devoured it and we had so many compliments. Our florist provided some flowers that matched our bouquets to go on the cake.

The Décor

The barn at Haughley Park is so beautiful and rustic on its own that it didn’t need much in the way of decoration. I asked my mum and mother-in-law to grow some ivy in their gardens for us to use to decorate the barn. We hired some gold candelabras as our centrepieces for the tables and decorated these with ivy, too. We did a lot of the minor details ourselves. I handmade all of our signs and place names. One of our friends (Nigel – father of one of the best men) kindly made me a wooden board, on to which I painted our welcome sign. We bought copper cutlery for our wedding. It’s such an easy to way to add décor with minimal effort! It looked lovely in the rustic barn and with the antique candelabras. I did look around to hire cutlery but it was cheaper to buy it, and that way we could keep it or sell it on after the wedding. John is an engineer and he designed our table plan. We had it printed A1 size and used masking tape to fix it on to a wooden board. It looked fantastic and had the feel of an architect’s drawing. My favourite part is in the detail – drawn by John and signed off by Stacey!

The Bride

My friend Bethany who is a hairdresser kindly did my hair and the bridesmaids hair on our wedding day and it looked beautiful! I think because Bethany is my friend and knows how I like my hair she knew exactly what I wanted, and I was so pleased with it. It was also nice to have Bethany with us the morning of the wedding getting ready. I did go for a make up trial but found that I didn’t really feel like myself, so in the end I decided to do my own make up on the day and am glad I did – I looked and felt like myself on the day and in our photos. My advice to brides would be to not feel pressured to look a certain way on your wedding day – it is more important to feel happy in yourself.