We’re starting the week off in the tropical climes of Solihull.

Yes, you read that right. Although it may look like today’s wedding was held in the heart of the African jungle, it actually comes from the Akamba Garden centre in Solihull.

Hayley and James were concerned that people just wouldn’t ‘get’ the combination of a traditional church wedding, followed by a reception at an African Heritage Garden centre.

Well, they needn’t have worried.

Their wedding looks seriously, seriously fun. A riot of colour, shots, fire dancers and a guinness swigging Vicar. Yes, you read that right too.

Hayley The Bride: We’ve been eating at Akamba for a few years now. We love it because it is such a magical place. A real bit of escapism in England’s second city! When we finally decided to tie the knot, Akamba was James’ first thought. We’ve travelled the world together and ideally would have liked to get married somewhere exotic. As this was not in our budget, Akamba was the next best place!

One of my close friends, Sophie Jones, styled my hair for me. I loved the detail she created. I decided to apply my own makeup. My primer and brow highlighter were Benefit…the primer was good…my make up was still perfect after a glass of chardonnay was (accidently) thrown in my face!

A friend from Church made my bird cage veil for me. Kindly, my Mum gave me a delicate gold watch to wear. She had it for her 21st birthday when she was pregnant with me. I also borrowed my mum’s blue garter that she wore on her wedding day.

James and I are quite laid back people and wanted a wedding day that reflected that; so our efforts went into making sure everything was relaxed and fun for our guests. We were a bit worried at first about having a traditional village church wedding followed by an informal reception at an African Heritage place. What about if our guests didn’t like it or think it was weird!? There was no need to worry, it went down a treat.

Entering Akamba is like entering a tropical paradise. You really do feel as though you are in Africa! The outdoor area is immense…..Exotic plants are all around whilst African animals made from wood and recycled metal peep out at you. African artefacts adorn the wooden walls…all of this coupled with some African beats, creates an atmosphere that you have to experience to believe!

Two of my very creative bridesmaids put the cake together at Akamba. I really would recommend doing it this way. I spent ages looking on line at different companies that make wedding cheese cakes for you…they were three times the price that we paid!

For the artwork on our invites, we used a graphic designer Digi Buddha Paperie. She designed the invites and RSVPs for us and sent us the file. I took them to a local printer to get them printed. I dressed them up with twining and a love heart cut from card.

Making invitations is not as fun as you think it might be. It took a lot longer than we first thought it would and ended up being quite a pain. Get someone to do the hard work for you if your budget allows!

For favours, we asked Kris at Akamba to bring some tiny wooden giraffes back from Kenya for us. We put them in little hessian drawstring bags.

We had a fabulous wedding day and hopefully achieved the informal, relaxed, different, fun wedding that we dreamed of. The effort that our family and friends made to make sure our day was special and memorable was unbelievable. A big fat thank you to each and every person who was involved. We love you all!

Photography by Babb Photo
Venue Akamba | Dress Mori Lee | Boutique Red Rose Bridal | Groom Topman | Band Killerstream Covers| Cheese Coopers Farm Shop| Stationery Digi Buddha Paperie

There is nothing I love more than fresh colourful flowers against a crisp white background.

The simplicity of the combination, especially on a glorious summers day, is a difficult one to beat. And today’s wedding completely proves why.

Lovely Bride Lucy, who I think looks very much like Princess Catherine, chose blue hydrangeas and hot pink peonies. They will instantly transport you to a happy, warm place.

The fabulous florists responsible for the pretty were, of course, one of our recommended suppliers, Flowers By Passion.

As is The Rectory Hotel – the beautiful venue for today’s wedding.

If you are new to RMW and haven’t already checked out our hand picked supplier directory – The Love Lust List – what are you waiting for?? Your dream wedding suppliers are waiting for you!

You too could have a wedding as wonderful as this…

Lucy The Bride: My dress was made by Lolly, a fabulously talented dressmaker based in my hometown of Cheshunt in Hertfordshire. Lolly made gorgeous wedding dresses for both of my sisters so I knew that she would make me a beautiful dress that fitted me perfectly.  She painstakingly sewed every bead onto my dress by hand for which I am eternally grateful as there were a fair few!!

I wanted the flowers to be really vibrant. The Bridesmaids and I had gorgeous bouquets filled with brilliantly vivid blue hydrangeas, shocking pink peonies and lysinthus.

My four ‘big bridesmaids’ (my sisters Kate and Sara and my school friends Mandy and Vicki) all wore lovely hydrangea blue dresses which were designed and made by Lolly. The dresses were finished off with a plaited diamante belt that I bought from the aptly named Lucy Bridal Boutique on Etsy.

Our niece Rose was flower girl and Lolly made her a beautiful dress fit for a princess-it had a dressmaker top in white and blue toile fabric with a full white net skirt and a big blue bow. I realised that toile fabric was pretty expensive (£150 per metre) so Lorna used a pillowcase from Marks and Spencer for the top of the dress and you couldn’t tell the difference. Rose wore a crown of gypsophila on her head and she looked gorgeous (she thought she was the bees knees and kept twirling around in the mirror).

In lieu of favours we decided to make a donation to a fund set up in favour of our pageboy Thomas to continue his life changing treatment at the Bobath Centre in North London. Thomas has cerebral palsy and the Bobath provides him with specialist physiotherapy and occupational therapy session which have and will continue to positively impact Thomas’ quality of life.

One thing that worked really well is that we asked people to travel down on the Friday night. Chris had dinner with his ushers in the pub over the road from and owned by The Rectory, called The Potting Shed and I had a dinner with my friends and family at the Rectory.

We all then walked over to The Potting Shed and had a good old knees up together! I think having the opportunity to see people on the Friday evening was really nice as the wedding day itself goes really quickly so you feel like you have spoken to everyone!

We tried to reserve spaces in the local guesthouses and hotels in advance so that the vast majority of our guests were able to walk back home at the end of the evening  instead of faffing around with cabs and coaches. We also hired babysitters to entertain the kids in the evening to give the parents a rest!

Enjoy the day as it seems to go by in a flash. Try if you can to steal two minutes together alone to catch your breath and take in the day. We hope you all have as fabulous a day as we did – we will certainly never forget it!

Photography by Especially Amy
Venue The Rectory | Dresses Lolly Couture | Hair & Make Up Kate Kelvin | Groom & Groomsmen Jack Bunneys | Florist Flowers By Passion| Page Boys Tommy Hilfiger

Seriously pretty prints. That’s what first struck me about today’s gorgeous marquee wedding. I do love a Bride who is brave enough to use print on her wedding day. Georgie gets it bang on too…

From the cute floral 50s style Bridesmaids gowns, to the paisley print on the stationery, to the lining of the marquee which is covered in birds and foliage – this wedding is FULL of covetable print action.

The beautiful wooden pergola where the couple held their ceremony is also a permanent feature at Georgie’s family home, so they can sit there and relive the memories of their wedding day whenever they chose. How lovely is that?

Georgie The Bride: We married at my parent’s home. It’s a very special, peaceful place full off extraordinarily happy memories; it was the perfect setting. We got married under a specially designed wooden pergola which was built in amongst the trees. Since the wedding we have been lucky enough to sit in the pergola as a family and reminisce about the day.

Chris’ mum is a hairdresser so she helped me with a number of pre-wedding hair trials. I was lucky enough to have her on hand as my hairdresser on the big day. I then had a very old friend (and trained make up artist) do my make up; she always looks beautiful, and since we were little I used to ask if she would “do my make up when I get married” so it was amazing to have her there!

The marquee had the most beautiful lining of wild flowers and birds on the inside, so it meant you didn’t need/want to do too much inside. We went for dove grey cloths and a mix of coloured flowers for the centre pieces. We spent the months leading up to the wedding, sourcing vintage/second hand cut glass decanters, bottles, glasses, bowls etc. for the flowers to sit in, surrounded by candles – it was just beautiful as each piece was different and every table varied. Most of the finds came from a little vintage shop in our village.

My Mum created the flower arrangements in the marquee. Our bridal party spent a few hours the day prior to the wedding tying flowers and coloured ribbons to the ceremony marquee legs (drafted in last minute due to rain so it was a last minute creation); and they absolutely made the aisle. Right next to where we took our vows, Chris’ granny prepared some old war time chimney pots which she filled with lavender – they had such history and were so special to have as part of the day.

We had a bit of a disaster right before the ceremony in that the music stopped. By the time I got to the top of the aisle, the whole congregation started to sing. It was a moment we, and our guests, will never forget and one people are still talking about.

We had Chris’ brothers’ band play after dinner, then our friends DJed. The dance floor was heaving all night. Our first dance was a song by the Stone Roses called Tightrope which initially meant more to Chris than me. The more I listened to it in the lead up and absorbed the lyrics, the more it felt right.

As Chris is a barber, we opted for gold moustache place cards. We borrowed some lovely wooden room dividers from friends and used these as a way to hang our table plan, decorated with fake hydrangea heads that I bought from Covent Garden Flower Market.

The table plan design was created in line with the invites by our brother in law, who is a very talented graphic designer. We went for paisley patterns and the overall theme of the table plan was Glastonbury where we spent our “mini-moon” a week later!

Savour the moments that you enjoy with each other and your loved ones; they are incredibly precious and will stay with you forever – our families and bridal party put their own hearts and souls into our wedding day and for that we will always be grateful.

Photography by Samuel Docker Dress Jenny Packham | Accessories Fur Coat No Knickers | Bridesmaids Hobbs | Cheese The Cheese Box

Hannah and Gav’s wedding is the perfect slice of wedding pie for a Friday morning. Simple but oh so stylish, absolutely bursting with romance AND full of unusual ideas to inspire you.

I’m particularly loving the gold Bridesmaids gowns from Hobbs with the navy suede courts from Whistles, a fabulous choice from bride Hannah.

It’s not a surprise really that Hannah runs a super-duper new floristry and styling company Bloom Fleuriste, as you’ll see, she has a great eye for detail.

The romance part was provided by groom Gav, who not only lovingly hand-crafted the giant LOVE letters, but also surprised Hannah by performing an acoustic version of ‘Make You Feel My Love.’

I know – what a sweetheart.

Hannah The Bride: We toyed with a church ceremony for a while (I wanted it, Gav didn’t) but I realised it was for all the wrong reasons… I love the aesthetic of churches but am not at all religious. So we decided to hold the whole event at Shustoke and it was perfect in every way. Intimate, cosy and full of character.

We did our own make-up with top tutelage from bridesmaid Carly. I gave her a moodboard of rose gold eyes, light rosy cheeks and nude lips and she sourced great products from MAC, Benefit, Nars, Chanel and Barry M.

My biggest beauty tips? Use a good primer on your face and eyes to help your make up last all day, and try Model’s Co Fibre Lash mascara if you don’t like falsies or extensions.

Gav wore his great grandfather’s silver pocket watch, which his mum had got mended especially for the wedding.

Flowers were a very important part of the day as I launched a floristry and event styling business this year – BLOOM Fleuriste – with my friend Melissa. My own flowers felt more challenging than any job so far – I was like a kid in a sweet shop trying to choose what to have. I choose hydrangeas, roses (Amnesia and Quicksand), Amaranthus, Astrantia, Astilbe, Brunia, Scabiosa pods, succulents and a pop of colour with hot pink Celosia.

The LOVE lights were the result of an on-going design project for our reclaimed furniture business, Ruby Rhino. They were a huge hit on the day. Everyone was blown away by Gav’s handiwork and my Dad mentioned in his speech that they were the ultimate love token from Gav to me…it was so obvious but we hadn’t even realised it.

I used a nifty little gadget called a Cricut Machine to make some crafty accessories for the day. It looks like a printer and connects to your computer, and the inclusive software allows you to design shapes and fonts for the machine to cut out of card or vinyl. We used it to personalise the table plan, place and table names, cocktail menu and guestbook (from Paperchase). It’s a great gadget that helped make our decorations really unique.

Gav is brilliant on guitar and has a beautiful voice so I really wanted him to play on the day. However, he’s really shy and hates the limelight, so I had to stop pestering him and let him decide if he could do it. After his speech, Ben brought his guitar over and Gav surprised everyone with the most amazing version of Bob Dylan’s (and Adele’s) Make You Feel My Love.

The whole place was in tears – very few people have heard him sing before so everyone was blown away by his talent (even his own family) and gave him a standing ovation. I was bursting with pride, it was definitely the highlight of the day for me.

I turned to Etsy for the invites, menu and order of service. I chose PDF files from Amy Adams Printables, filled in with our details and printed them off at home on white and brown Kraft card – a simple and super affordable solution. We decided to include a sort of timetable for the day so people knew what was going on. We didn’t want it to be too formal but have been to a few weddings where people are a little confused at times, not sure what’s next, so this helped to prevent that.

We discovered Ellie Gillard on Rock My Wedding. We were instantly drawn to her creative and natural style, and after a friendly Skype chat, decided to book her straightaway. Ellie worked SO incredibly hard on the day and we couldn’t be happier with the pictures. Ellie just seemed to understand our style and what we are about, and it was fantastic to work with someone that shared our creative eye.

After the wedding, Gav and I realised that we had laid ourselves quite bare to our guests… giving them a peek into our private lives, creative ideas and dreams for the future. Everyone told us that they felt the whole day was welcoming, intimate and beautiful, which was lovely to hear and made all the hard work worthwhile. Our friends and family are very important to us so we wanted to make them feel special and loved. I think we achieved this and more.

Photography by Ellie Gillard Dress Jenny Packham | Venue Shustoke Farm Barns | Hair Anthony John Salon | Headpiece Vintage Headdresses | Bridesmaids Hobbs | Groom Moss Bros Bespoke | Florist BLOOM Fleuriste | Prop Hire Ruby Rhino | Band The Midnight Rebel Band | DJ Gav Jones | Stationery Amy Adams Printables | Catering Cripps Kitchen

Sometimes at RMW HQ we come across weddings where the bride has a dream book of wedding contacts. And this is definitely one of them.

Jenn literally has a plethora of talented friends and family around her who helped create her wedding vision.

Which, by the way, was classic English, meets rustic, meets bohemian, meets quirkiness – and I think it’s fair to say that together they definitely achieved it.

Jenn’s beautiful gown was worn by her Mum AND her Grandma on their wedding days. With a bit of love and care from the wonderful ladies at Agape Bridal, it was reborn for the third generation of the family.

Jenn and James married at Liverpool Cathedral (obviously THE perfect location for an epic cathedral length veil) and held their reception in a barn at Owen House Farm which had previously never been used as a wedding venue.

The lucky couple witnessed the Daniel family transform their ‘shed’ into a truly unique and beautiful venue – knowing that they would be the first couple to use it.

Jen The Bride: My Dad has been an Anglican Minister for almost 25 years now and in 2004 he was made a Canon of the Church of England for his years of service. This ‘qualified’ James and I to marry at Liverpool Cathedral.

James proposed to me at the top of the bell tower of Liverpool cathedral. After we were engaged we visited the cathedral’s chapel for a moment of peace and fell in love with it. The decision to marry there was very easy and obviously my family were delighted.

My wedding dress was also my Mum’s and Grandma’s wedding dress. My Grandma married in the 1930’s and wore a dress made of 2nd world war parachute silk. My late Great Uncle was in the RAF during the war so sent the silk for her to get the dress made.

When my Mum married in 1979, being an accomplished seamstress, she made her own wedding dress on top of the parachute silk underskirt of my Grandmas. She used cream silk crepe, as the original dress has yellowed with age. A professional dressmaker helped her fit the bones of her dress, but she sewed every stitch herself. Overall it had a slightly ethnic, romantic style.

For my gown, my Mum and I went for a wedding dress viewing at Agape Bridal Boutique. Mum asked whether Agape had ever made bespoke wedding dresses. The answer was that they hadn’t thus far but were very open to the idea. We explained my vision to one of the designers, Alex Donovan.

Alex produced three design options she and dressmaker Karen had come up with. Karen and Alex had clearly appreciated my slightly bohemian and romantic personal style. What Agape accomplished for me was not only the fulfilling of a now three generation long legacy but they created a dress that was true to who I am and that I felt simply wonderful in. My dress is the first vintage bespoke gown the Boutique has ever made.

I asked two of my oldest friends and James’s sister to be my maids, but I couldn’t bear the thought of dictating to them how to dress. It felt just wrong to me (personally) to tell them how they had to look, on a day that was important to them as well.

In terms of colour, my favourite colour is deep red, but I love all shades of reds and plums and pinks. So I suggested a gradient spectrum of everything from deepest red to the palest pink. We piled all of our mutual ideas onto Pinterest. Their dresses were from Ted Baker, Wtoo Maids and bespoke by Agape.

We were so, so fortunate to have my sister in law, Anna Potter, of Swallows and Damsons in Sheffield as our florist. My bouquet was spectacular. A wild array of a variety of red roses (Piano rose and David Austin), dark berry astillbe and deep red peonies, which thankfully were still in season. It was big, bohemian and wild, but still classic and structured.

We had a number of really special contributors to our wedding ceremony. I asked the choir I teach if they would sing one of my favourite John Rutter choral arrangements at our wedding. They couldn’t have been more enthusiastic. The students sang ‘The Lord Bless You And Keep You’ by John Rutter and had me in tears at the altar.

We also asked my old singer teacher and now friend and her husband, Kate and JP, who are both professional opera singers, to sing a duet during the signing of the register. The sound reverberating around the walls of the chapel and even into the cathedral was epic.

I had commissioned a musician contact of mine with sourcing and arranging a band back in October 2012. We had a seven piece jazz set up – sax, drums, piano, double bass, acoustic guitar, violin and vocals. The style of music got every age up dancing.

In the evening we didn’t want a cheesy run of the mill DJ, and were recommended a more retro alternative in Vintage 78 DJ. Matt Nickson is a saxophonist and has vast experience as a professional musician. He and his wife Annabel DJ a broad selection of records, including old shellac 78rpm discs and the music ranges from the 20s through to the late 50’s.

My brother, Dan Potter, illustrated a personal ‘logo’ of a tree and two birds for use across all of our wedding stationery. Dan has drawn for the boutique Collard Manson in Sheffield, designed the logo for Sheffield Antiques Quarter, and recently the album and single artwork for the Fratellis. I have always been so proud of him for his work and was over the moon he agreed to draw for us.

I’m glad to say that the majority of my crazy visions came to life and that our guests felt valued and welcomed. But there were also countless occasions where I really lost sight of what was important, and that really is that I got to marry my best friend, who patiently bore by my side as I drove myself mad over this one day. But I don’t regret my efforts, because James got the wedding he wanted too.

James Melia and Jo Bilham have been an integral part of our journey to getting married. From meeting James for the first time to our wedding day he has been a calming, cool influence who helped us to feel ourselves. I’m particularly grateful to James and Jo for managing my stresses on the day so well! And of course for the stunning photographic memories we have.

Photography by James Melia
Dress Bespoke From Vintage At Agape Bridal | Hair Electric Hair | Headband Eliza Vale | Earrings Knutsford Antiques Centre | Venue Owen House Farm | Florist Swallows And Damsons | Cars Red Carpet Wedding Cars | Jewellers Geralds Of Knutsford | Catering Barretts Event Caterers

We’ve got such a pretty wedding for you lovelies this morning. The Flower Appreciation Society did Liz proud with a beautiful array of pink blooms and the Bridal party look very pretty in pink too.

In fact, this whole wedding just reminds me why pink is the BEST colour.

In true London style, Liz and Chris transported their wedding guests from the ceremony venue to the reception in big red buses. Each guest was given a mini bottle of champagne and a bag of popcorn for the road. Don’t you just love that idea?

And I think Groom Chris definitely wins the award for ‘person most excited by confetti EVER.’

Enjoy the fun, the huge smiles and of course, all of the pink pretty…

Liz The Bride: We fell in love with Loft Studios immediately and when we found out how flexible they were – you can pretty much do anything you want to the place – that sealed the deal for us. And they’re licensed until 6am!

In terms of a colour scheme, we wanted it to be very simple and neutral- light pinks and whites, which would look beautiful against the brick walls of the Loft.

For favours we had little jars of honey from the New Forest – me trying to bring a small part of my home to this London setting. My Father keeps bees so the honey was from a local source near his hives. We made the jars look pretty and rustic with some gorgeous stickers supplied by Russet and Gray and some very colourful material, which we tied around the top with some twine.

The Flower Appreciation Society did our flowers, they use beautiful English flowers that they hand pick from the local market and are extremely adept at creating striking bouquets and beautiful table vases.

We chose Stoke Newington Town Hall for the ceremony as we love the art deco building and also adore nearby Clissold Park. We were very lucky with the weather and so were able to have our photos taken in the park afterwards.

Chris’ Mother chose a beautiful piece to sing, “Plaisir d’Amour” during the signing of the registrar and my oldest school friend Tara accompanied her on the flute. That made it very personal to us having them involved.

Chris also decided that he would write a poem, which one of his ushers read on the day. This was a really special moment as no one knew Chris had written it (we said it was By Anonymous on the program). By the end it was obvious he had written it for me – I think there were quite a few tears during this!

The reception started on the buses for me – as the ceremony and reception venues were on opposite sides of London, we had the problem of how to get everyone from one to the other. The solution: two big red London buses! The journey took around 45 minutes, so we gave every guest their own mini bottle of champagne and a bag of popcorn as refreshments for the journey.

We wanted our guests to have as much fun as possible so we brought in a table tennis table, table football, an ice cream tricycle and we hired a photo booth from Say Fromage which was a huge highlight for all! 

We had a fabulous band to play to us throughout the evening- we really wanted a band from day one as this has always been our favourite part of the night at other weddings! You just can’t beat a live performance- everyone loved it!

We also had a DJ playing when they had finished into the early hours of the morning; Chris and I spent a long time working out a playlist of all our favourite songs.

Food is very important to us- it really is our favourite thing, so picking a caterer that could supply wonderful food was essential. The decision was very easy though – as soon as we met with Alex from The Social Pantry and tasted their food we knew they were perfect for us.

Our first dance was very special. We were both very nervous about dancing in front of all our friends and family and initially we had no intention of doing one. But then my nieces told us they would love to sing us a song at the wedding, and we had a brainwave. If they were to sing the song for our first dance, the guests would partly be looking at them singing and the attention wouldn’t be completely on us!

We all decided on Ho Hey by The Lumineers and the girls sang it beautifully with the band. It made it much easier knowing they were up there with us too – it was such a great moment and I am so glad we did it.

Our advice would be don’t stress and take in as many moments as you can. Everyone you love is there and they are all so happy for you so there is no need to be nervous or worried- and definitely have a first dance!

As soon as we met Kate and Kev of Depict Photography, we knew we wanted them to capture our big day. We especially loved how they used film for their beautiful photos. They were both very relaxed but clearly very focused and we loved how excited they were about our wedding too! On the day it was lovely having Kate at the hotel with us while we were getting ready, she fitted in perfectly and helped me relax on quite a few occasions!

Photography by Depict
Dress Louise Selby | Shoes Kurt Geiger | Bridesmaids Reiss and John Lewis | Hair & Make Up The Painted Lady | Groom Paul Smith | Stationery Russet And Gray | Venue Loft Studios | Caterers Social Pantry | Florist The Flower Appreciation Society | DJ Eight Tray Music | Decor Vowed & Amazed | Photo Booth Say Fromage | Bus Hire Ensign Bus Hire

Today’s wedding makes me very happy indeed.

I love that Candy made sure she had a dress appropriate for running around after her little boy in. I also love that because they couldn’t find any confetti bright and happy enough, Candy and Craig made their own. I ALSO love the mini-me cake decorations made by Candy’s Mum.

AND I love the giant balloons – they always make me happy.

But do you know what I love the most??

It’s how the gorgeous photography from Tori Hancock captures the true essence of the day. Nothing is too posed or formal.

It’s just a one big happy family having the time of their lives, which is exactly what a wedding should be!

Candy The Bride:Craig and I met 10 years ago, and 3 years after having our little boy, Teddy, Craig proposed at the tiniest church on top of a rock in Skopelos (for any ‘Mamma Mia’ fans it was that church!) Having already started our own family, we always knew we wanted our wedding to be a celebration of just that, cementing our family unit. A relaxed, informal affair was what we desired and Stone Barn in the Cotswolds exceeded all our expectations of a wedding venue.

As a glasses wearer, it was never a question of not wearing them for our wedding, and saw it as an opportunity to treat myself to some new Fendis!

My hair was tricky, I had originally wanted to wear it down with an enormous floral crown, however lots of people thought the crown would clash with my glasses, so I was persuaded to go for an ‘up do’. Charlotte Pike is another amazing friend; she is also a fantastic hairdresser. I wanted something not to ‘done’, so she created a loose chignon to which we added fresh flowers.

My dress was from Charlie Brear. I’m not going to lie, I had spied it on their website a while before getting engaged, so it was one of the first shops we visited. I loved it as soon as tried it on, it fitted perfectly with our laid back vibe, and on a practical note I felt I would still be able to run after Ted if I needed to.

I did have a slight dress wobble about five months before the wedding, so asked the lady altering my dress if she could make a top I could wear with it. Rachel Harris is a local wedding dress designer, she created this top for me and it was exactly what I had envisaged. I loved being able to change my look for the evening, and would definitely recommend this to other brides.

After purchasing my dress I had popped into Selfridges shoe department where I saw the gold, peep toe Jimmy Choos. I loved them, but I couldn’t justify the price tag. So I brought a very good copy pair from Dune. Much to my surprise the morning of the wedding, the Jimmy Choos appeared outside our room, a wedding present from Craig!

My best friend Georgia was my Bridesmaid, we met at school when we were 4, she knows me inside out, I loved having her by my side. Georgia’s beautiful yellow dress came from Boho in Bath. She looked amazing in it and I know she has worn it since!

Craig and his Best Man, Max wore bespoke suits from Marc Wallace. Always keen to break the mould, they made the controversial decision to wear a Bass Weejun shoe with no socks (my grandmother asked me several times if they had forgotten to put them on). I have to mention what a fantastic support Max was throughout the entire wedding process, despite having a job that requires him to travel a lot, no request was ever too much and even when in a different time zone, he always replied to my many emails on the same day!

The lanterns came from The Hanging Lantern Company. I was so happy with how these turned out, and spent a large portion of our wedding day just staring at them. After seeing the giant ‘COCO’ used in one of RMW editorial pieces I checked out Doris Loves and made the very easy decision to hire a giant ‘LOVE’.

We chose grey candles after seeing Lolly’s wedding… I loved how the bottles looked, and it was definitely worth the hours of scrubbing off labels.

The giant balloons were also another RMW inspiration, I loved the idea of using them in the photographs and they also doubled up as great entertainment for the children.

The flowers in the barn were provided by Beth Cox; she is a recommended supplier to the barn and is brilliant. She created two enormous hanging baskets for the barn where the ceremony took place and all the ‘wild’ flowers for the tables. My lovely friend (and witness) Amy Langdon, qualified as a florist last year, so she made my amazing bouquet, Georgia’s posy, and the button holes. They were all beautiful.

I walked down the aisle to ‘Make You Feel My Love’ with my Dad and Teddy, seeing Craig waiting for us was one of the most special moments of my life. We had two readings, ‘Sunscreen’ the Baz Lurnham classic read by our friend Kitty, and ‘An Apache Blessing’ read by my Aunt. Both were perfect for us. I loved our ceremony, seeing the room full of all the people we love, watching our family officially unite was without a doubt the best feeling in the world.

My Mum is an artist, so made figurines of Craig, Ted and I to sit on the cake, my shoe is actually the shoe taken from my Grandmother’s topper from her wedding cake. The cakes were eaten in the evening along with bacon baps and a huge cheese board.

For favours, we brought everyone a lottery ticket, which we rolled and tied a luggage label to with their name so it could double up as a place setting. The numbers were read out by Craig during his speech, no big winners but a few people won £10.

All our stationery was designed by our good friend Jon Ashford, a graphic designer. We have known Jon a while and love his style, we knew he would create something really simple but beautiful.

The day goes by in a flash, but having embraced the lead up I really felt we had made the most of our time. Craig was amazing throughout; he took an interest in every aspect and was brilliant at keeping me calm in those slightly panicked moments.

My advice to other brides is enjoy every single minute, from the minute you get engaged, it’s not often you have the opportunity to have all the people you love in one place, so laugh, cry, dance and if possible sing!

Without a doubt choosing Tori Hancock to photograph our wedding was one of the best decisions we made, she is amazing! I discovered Tori through her blog Wellies and Vogue and developed a bit of a girl crush. She is so relaxed; it honestly felt like having an old friend with us on the day.

We are so lucky to be surrounded by a hugely talented group of friends, our wedding would not have been what is was without their incredible gifts, support and advice, it really felt like every aspect of the day was filled with love and we could not have been any happier.

Photography by Tori Hancock
Dress Charlie Brear | Hair Charlotte Pike | Bridesmaid Boho Boutique | Groom Marc Wallace | Venue Cripps Stone Barn | Florist Beth Cox & Amy Langdon | Ushers Mrs Bowtie | Lanterns The Hanging Lantern Company | Catering Cripps Kitchen | Prop Hire Doris Loves | Stationery Jonathan Ashford | Band Bandeoke | String Quartet Ardeton Quartet | Magician Andy Gladwin

Living in San Francisco, expats Lara and Alex craved the log fires, roast dinners and the beautiful light of a crisp Winters day in Britain.

They used their wedding as an excuse to bring their families together and have a massive Christmas house party.

The lovely couple wanted guests to feel like they’d been invited to a dinner party…just an extremely elegant and classy one. With Lara looking beautiful in a fishtail gown and Alex channeling his inner Bond in Burberry.

Theirs is a story of fate too – the pair met after Lara randomly applied for a job with Google, where Alex worked…and now six years on, in her words, she’s marrying ‘her own tech geek.’

Make sure you read to the end of her lovely write up – a very fitting start to married life. Congratulations Lara and Alex.

Lara The Bride: Having gotten engaged in December, we knew we wanted to get married at Christmas in a chocolate-box village in the Cotswolds. We wanted to create the feeling of having our friends and family over for dinner and (lots of) drinks. Given we are British exports living in San Francisco, its rare for us to have everyone together in one place so we wanted our guests to feel relaxed and to create a laid back atmosphere where we would be able to spend time with everyone.


We found our venue by accident (literally – we took a wrong turn) and by golly it now has an important place in our hearts. Barnsley House was an incredible wedding venue – old England meets boutique chic. Gorgeous rooms, a foodie’s delight and wonderful staff. Special touches like our own letter from Santa for the kids to the homemade Christmas decorations really add a touch of magic to this place. It truly is like you are a member of their family for the day and not a guest at their hotel.

Our outfits were simple-ish (well I am the bride right?!) Alex wanted to look like James Bond (or as close as he can without being Daniel Craig), so a British Burberry black suit sorted that out. For me, I wanted something fitted and classic with a bit of flair but not too bridal.

We had a very simple, neutral ivory colour scheme combined with a bit of Old Hollywood glam. Our table settings (and cocktail hour) gave a nod to our new roots in San Francisco but the rest was a very traditional British affair – roaring log fires, Christmas trees, holly wreaths, mulled wine, roast beef and apple crumble and custard for dessert.

We were a bit unconventional in our procession song – we had two. The night before the wedding, we had hired the onsite cinema at Barnsley House and watched one of our favorite movies – The Wedding Singer. So, to get things started we played “Grow Old With You” and then the doors opened and I walked down the aisle to “She” by Elvis Costello.  

For readings we looked at a ton, but they all felt a little forced or not very “us”. We ended up picking one of our favorite Edward Monkton books – A Lovely Love Story. For our trip back down the aisle we played Paulo Nutini’s “Pencil Full of Lead” to get the party started. 

Our table names were on vintage wooden postcards and represented some of our favorite places in San Francisco. We bought them at a card shop in San Francisco and we now have them pride of place in our kitchen. While we sat on the Golden Gate Bridge, our little guests were held captive with colouring books and bubbles on Alcatraz!

For invites and our save the date we opted for something more modern from Craftypiepress on Etsy. Rebecca was great to work with and we were able to customise an invite to get exactly what we wanted. We did make our table plan using a handy old vintage picture frame and some wedding themed wrapping paper. We also printed our placecards ourselves.

Our photographer, David Jenkins, really brought our day to life. I wouldn’t describe David as a photographer, but an artist. We wanted a very natural feel. After a few less than ideal phone calls, we stumbled upon David and his work. He felt more like a guest throughout our day and has created memories of our day we will cherish forever.


I wish I could name our favorite bit of the day, but I really can’t – the whole thing went by in a blur and really blew our expectations away. Every time I look at our pictures I want to marry Alex again. I guess we’ll settle for a trip back to visit Barnsley House to celebrate our first anniversary with our own little memory from our wedding – our first baby!





Photography by David Jenkins
Dress Lazaro | Shoes Christian Louboutin | Hair Chris Fordham | Make Up Sophie Chamings | Groom Burberry | Stationery Crafty Pie Press | Venue Barnsley House | Florist Aqua Flowers | Jewellery Earrings Nation and Haute Bride

It’s Friday afternoon. It’s the end of January. The weather is absolutely abysmal, and that’s putting it mildly. Fancy planning your escape to sunny shores???

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We provide honeymoons to every region in the world – Cultural city honeymoons, romantic honeymoons, relaxing honeymoons or honeymoons for the adventurous. Our destinations include the Maldives, Mauritius, Seychelles, Caribbean and Hawaii for a more traditional feel, or tours of the Far East, African safaris, Australia and even South America for those wanting more excitement.

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It doesn’t matter what your heart desires, tell us and we can help put together the perfect honeymoon. We also have a gift list service, where family members and friends can add funds to your account. This money can be spent toward activities or given as cash for you to enjoy on your holiday. The average gift list gains around £1,000.

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Good morning lovelies…I really, truly, honestly do not know where to begin with today’s wedding.

Quite frankly, it is the impossible made possible.

There are bonfires, pizza vans, fire dancers, floral crowns and wristbands.

Jaclyn and Ben started with a field. And somehow they finished with a weekend long festival-family-reunion-wedding which is – in one word – EPIC.

The couple decided to recreate their ideas of a perfect day – Ben’s being Saturday at Glastonbury and Jaclyn’s being bringing the film version of Mamma Mia to life. What awesome inspiration for your wedding!

So whatever your wedding dreams are, today’s wedding really does prove that you CAN make them a reality…

Jaclyn The Bride: Ben and I were legally married in Vegas a year before our wedding (so that I could sort out my VISA – I did not want to plan a wedding long distance – oh no!) Because of this we felt that we didn’t need to stick to the traditional wedding itinerary, and we didn’t want to either.

We wanted our wedding to look like a Festival and feel like a family reunion. Since my friends and family were flying over from the States, we wanted it to be more than just one evening, one day didn’t seem like enough time to celebrate something so hugely important and exciting!

Ben and I thought of our perfect day and then tried our best to recreate it. For him that day was Glasto Saturday, and for me it was a day out of the film version of Mamma Mia. Junk food, drinks, camping, music, whisky, bonfires, great people, relaxed good times and no curfew.

Ben was super stoked to do a festival website for the wedding. He put his design and programming skills to work and he created the coolest wedding website imaginable. THE COOLEST. We spent the time on our website instead of doing paper invitations – we kept it all digital.

We had a giant team of suppliers which was headed up by our magnificent wedding planner Jessie Thomson. Without her our wedding would not have been possible. Every supplier was wonderful – timely, respectful, professional. To top it all off the entire wedding weekend was rain free, it was a Christmas miracle!

Since it was a DIY wedding we had so much to do. Everyone chipped in on the workload. We completely underestimated how much work it would be to decorate the venue. We had friends building, hammering, fluffing, cooking – it was such a group effort. My Bridesmaid Katie and her mother single handedly did all of the flowers and flower crowns and they ended up looking better than I could have ever imagined.

All of the decor was found on Ebay and in charity shops. Ben and I had ourselves a few weekends in the garden just the two of us painting signs. This was probably my favourite part of the wedding planning – those times of R&R with beers and paintbrushes in the garden.

We painted an old headboard and used it to display our name tags and we collected jars for the flowers. To top off all of the decor Ben and his parents made the giant JONES marquee sign that topped the dome. They did a ridiculously amazing job, their skills are still blowing my mind. And just to show how wonderful the venue owners were, the morning of the wedding the owner Ian whipped out his lawn mower and mowed a giant JONES into the lawn on the hill. The energy was really wonderful all weekend.

Friday night we had a BBQ instead of a rehearsal dinner, and even though we planned to run through the ceremony it just didn’t happen.

We wrote our ceremony from scratch which looking back, it was very hard. We wanted it to reflect our journey as a couple and who we have become – and writing it ourselves seemed like the only way to do that.

We met in New York when Ben was on holiday and were long distance for two years. I wanted the ceremony to explain the importance of us coming together in front of everyone we cared about and touch on why we chose to make everyone a Jones for the weekend. Ben’s good friend Matt agreed to be our officiant and he NAILED IT. After we said our vows we did a short handfasting ceremony (I needed to have something witchy as Ben wouldn’t let me have a coven themed wedding!)

My favorite moment of the day was getting ready in the morning. It was relaxed and fun and girlie, we drank champagne and ate breakfast and it was a perfect moment in time. I know it may sound weird that my favourite part of my wedding day didn’t involve Ben, but it felt good to miss him again and being reunited with my friends was a priceless moment in time.

If we could give some advice to those planning it would be to think logically about what is most important to you. Stay true to your ideas, you can truly make anything happen and still have it feel very much like a wedding.

You’ll have SO much fun planning your wedding – soak up every waking minute AND hire a wedding planner to help you. And if you are in England – hire Jessie Thomson, she is a wedding mastermind.

Photography by Camera Hannah
Dress Blue Willow Bridal at Malindy Elene | Make-up Jodie Hazlewood | Groom Asos | Venue Out To Grass | Florist Katie & Liz Theofilos | Flowers Triangle Nursery | Catering The Coffee Camper Cotswold Pizza Co & FW Catering | Bouncy Castle Golden Valley Inflatables | Cake Marie Green | Yurts Wedding Yurts | Festival Decor Festiflags | Face Painter Cheltenham Face Painting | Glamping Cariad Canvas | Wedding Planner Jessie Thomson

Jess and Matt’s wedding is a real breath of fresh air for a Friday.

They came across their venue, South Farm, by chance and breezed through the wedding planning process, making sure that they had fun times along the way. Perhaps that’s what happens when you discover you’re expecting a little one mid-way through proceedings?

The couple’s relaxed and laid back vibe created an equally relaxed wedding, and that really shines through in the gorgeous images from Caroline Hancox.

Ready to enjoy the blissful peace and quiet of an Autumnal day in the Cambridgeshire countryside?

Jess The Bride: My dad was cycling home from work and found a set of car keys at the bottom of the long drive up to South Farm, so he whipped them up there and came home to tell us about a lovely wedding venue we should go take a look at.

So that Sunday we went and were shuttled around the entire estate by tuk tuk. We fell in love and knew it was absolutely perfect for us. Within two weeks the deposit was paid and date reserved for the following October. A week later we found out we were expecting!

Makeup wise I just went for a natural look, Tori used a few individual false lashes which I loved and also ment that there was no running mascara for the rest of the day so cannot recommend them enough.

I choose a mermaid style dress with lace detailing. I didn’t set out to have anything like it but once I had tried it on I loved it. I had the dress ordered with extra length as I am a tall 5ft 11…I was worried that being so tall I would struggle to find a nice floor length dress, I was wrong!

The Bridesmaids wore small scarves from a local boutique in Royston, Hertfordshire. The Groomsmen wore matching suits hired from Burtons.

Because we had an October date we wanted to make things Autumnal. We choose pumpkins for our centre pieces, which we hollowed out two days before the wedding and used a drill to make patterns. Once filled with candles they created a lovely warm glow.

On the morning of the wedding we ran round and stripped ivy from a wall near my Mum’s and used that to wind around the pumpkins.

I had met our florist lots of times before, and over the years seen all of her beautiful window displays – so was absolutely sure she would create something I’d love. I went in to see her a couple of weeks before the wedding and told her the colours that I needed in my Bridesmaids bouquets (blue, green, orange and white) and that I wanted mine just white, but a little rustic. She really did a lovely job.

We were extremely lucky that they had just had the Church decorated for the harvest festival with beautiful flowers and would you believe a great big pale pumpkin at the altar.

We walked down the aisle to a piece of music called ‘Photos Everyday’ that my Dad chose. A friend of my Mother-In-Law was our DJ, and a brilliant one at that. Mark Daniels (a DJ on Soul Groove Radio) did a great job. Our first dance was a song we had heard a week before, John Legend – All Of Me. It was perfect for us and we both knew it was ours when we heard it. I hated our first dance in all honesty, it was extremely awkward as we did not think to have any kind of practice and ended swaying around like two old biddies.

On arrival we had warm winter Pimms to greet our guests, which went down an absolute storm! Our wedding cake was made by The Cake House. We had 3 tiers, one carrot cake, one fruit and one vanilla. It was lovely to have a selection to choose from once cut.

Try not to get stressed out over anything, as it all comes together on the day. We had real fun choosing our bits together and because we had such a laid back approach. Things go wrong but as long as you are marrying your best friend, who really cares about the rest?

Have someone film your day. The only thing I regret is that I missed so much, not being able to be everywhere all the time. I would love to watch our day over and over but we never thought to have a film made.

Our photographer Caroline Hancox made both of us feel incredibly comfortable. She was there with an extra pair of hands when needed throughout the whole day and we really couldn’t have asked for more.

The amount of stunning photos we have is incredible. She really managed to capture every aspect of the day telling a story with her photographs. Not only was she perfect on the day (and the lead up to the big day, even braved our crazy boxer!) she has continued to keep in touch.

Photography by Caroline Hancox
Dress & Veil Fleur De Lys Bridal | Hair & Make-up Tori Harris | Bridesmaids Asos | Venue South Farm | Florist Barbara’s Flowers Royston | Groomsmen Burton | Cake The Cake House

Kirsty and Tom’s village hall wedding is absolutely brimming with gorgeous vintage and handmade details, and there’s not a scrap of bunting in sight.

I’m particularly loving the table plan, which was created with an old door and some glass paint.

The flowers in soft pastel tones are also exquisite – the lovely couple are lucky enough to have a whizz florist as a friend.

These colours were reflected in the outfits for the wedding party, with the Bridesmaids looking fresh and pretty in dresses from the high street, and the boys totally nailing their self-proclaimed ‘English Country Gangster’ look.

The whole wedding was a proper family affair too, with Kirsty’s Mum and Dad helping to either grow, collect or make most of the decor.

Kirsty The Bride: I found my dress at Glory Days Vintage in York – it was first dress I tried on – a silk jacquard, 1940s dress with a beautiful leaf pattern and a bow at the back.

I loved the train and the fabric but the dress had long sleeves and didn’t feel summery enough. Hayley at Glory Days Vintage removed the sleeves and reworked the back to incorporate a stunning V back to meet the bow.

We wanted a blank canvas in a beautiful countryside location – therefore, village halls seemed a natural fit for our search. However, finding a village hall that can comfortably seat 125 people for dinner is no easy task.

Our google searches for ‘the largest village hall in England’ kept bringing up one result – Wistanstow Village Hall in South Shropshire.

On New Year’s Day we were driving to see my parents in Shropshire from London and decided to take a detour to see the village hall. The doors to the hall happened to be open so we walked in and knew instantly that we’d found our venue. The village setting was beautiful and it had its own field at the back (usually used by the local primary school for sports days).

When the wonderfully laid back and flexible caretaker, Carole, told us that hall could be hired for the days preceding and the entire weekend for a standard community rate (no increase when you mentioned the ‘w’ word) – and that the field would be thrown in for free – we were sold.

The decor for the outdoor part of the day was a village fete theme (but with bunting banned!) My dad grew about 20 types of herbs in terracotta pots which we scattered around the marquees. We made all the signage with reclaimed wood, blackboard paint and white paint pens.

Inside the village hall, it was a more formal look with rows of tables decorated with vintage crockery – sourced painstakingly by us and my Mum from charity shops. She also starched white sheets to use as tablecloths, helped me to make 125 napkins from old vintage tablecloths and made over 100 pom poms. We simply couldn’t have done it without her.

We used books with fun titles as our table names and our table plan was written with paint pens on an old glazed door that we found at a car boot sale. We wrote our guest’s names on wooden lolly sticks and placed them in the teacups.

Our lovely friend and brilliant florist Adam J Knights was the only choice. Adam is amazingly creative and has a passion for classic, antique designs.

Our assumption that it is possible to get legally married in a location of your own choosing proved to be wrong. It seemed that if we wanted to get married in a field, it would have to be a humanist ceremony with a legal service to take place later.

We began researching celebrants but soon decided that the best person to perform the ceremony would be someone who knew us both as a friend and who we knew would do a great job of conducting a special service. My university friend, Owen Glyndwr Parry, now a performance artist, sprang to mind immediately and were we proved so right.

Even though the threat of rain turned me into a meteorological obsessive in the weeks leading up to the wedding, I would have an outdoor wedding again in a heart beat. The location was so beautiful, it was a lovely sunny afternoon and it felt really special having the ceremony in such a unique setting in front of a huge tree.

We legally married four days later on our honeymoon at San Francisco City Hall with my Uncle and his family as our witnesses. The ceremony only took three minutes and was a bit of a formality but it was a lovely occasion and gave us another excuse to wear our outfits!

We knew we wanted an accordion player to play during the afternoon but finding one proved a bit of a hard task. In the end, we persuaded a local and very talented accordion tutor, Ed Moseley, to entertain our guests and he didn’t disappoint.

Tim at Shropshire Hog Roasts pulled out all the stops and laid on an afternoon tea with sandwiches and scones in the afternoon followed by a three course, sit down meal with a hog roast main (of course!)

In the evening, the remaining hog was barbecued alongside hot dogs and ribs. Mum and I made a cake of cheese and our M&S three-tier cake was decorated with fresh flowers.

Bethan Jones of Haywood Jones Photography was absolutely phenomenal. Her ability to capture natural moments so perfectly really bought our wedding to life.

One tip for beautiful, handmade programmes – don’t tie them with string, sew them down the centrefold using a sewing machine. It’s much quicker and they’ll look really neat. No danger of the pages falling out either!

Photography by Haywood Jones
Dress Glory Days Vintage | Hair & Make-up Sarah Russell | Shoes Kurt Geiger | Groom Reiss | Brogues Grenson | Florist Adam Knights – ajknights@googlemail.com | Drinks The Wood Brewery | Catering Shropshire Hog Roasts

Awww just look at those happy little faces!

Yes, it’s finally here…the wedding of the wonderful, bubbly, ball of energy that is RMW Real Bride Rebecca.

We’ve watched her slave away over fabric flowers, complete mission-impossible by finding Bridesmaids dresses with proper straps and drink her way (along with her girlfriends) through countless bottles of Prosecco.

Was it all worth it? Hell yes.

Congratulations Rebecca and Dave. Rebecca you have made us laugh AND cry, you’ve made us embrace excessive use of the exclamation mark and you’ve generally just made us get really excited about weddings!

Enjoy part one lovelies – please leave lots and lots of love for Rebecca.

And don’t worry, we’ll be back tomorrow with part two, where you can see the glorious Art Deco venue and fellow RMW real Bride Hannah’s stationery in action.

RMW Real Bride Rebecca: Firstly I should probably explain about a little surprise I arranged for Dave! A month or so before the big day I may have just tweeted the comedian Ross Noble inviting him to our wedding! Long story short, he was filming for a new TV show and wanted places & events to visit. Obviously our wedding day would be perfect for this crazy new show, so why wouldn’t I tweet him?!!!

So Ross Noble came to our wedding and some of our big day was on TV!! All those years studying drama, dreaming of getting myself on the tellybox and all it took was a tweet to a comedian! To say it was a bit crazy would be a ridiculous understatement…..it was absolutely bonkers!!! BUT it was also absolutely amazing. It is possibly the best surprise I will ever be able to pull off for Dave!

Anyway, back to our big day…So, it’s the evening before the big day and it finally dawns on me……I’m getting married! I know I had been planning our day meticulously for 18 months, but it wasn’t until Dave & I were stood in church rehearsing our vows that I really got it. I was so thankful for that moment, just Dave and I (& the Vicar), as I think we both got to see how important this day was to each other and how much we truly love each other- there may have been a few tears!

Then, almost as quickly as the emotion had come over me, we were back at the flat running around like loons trying to sort the last few bits before we parted for our final nights as single people. I’d like to say I spent that evening in a serene state of relaxation, but in true Rebecca style I was frantically putting the finishing touches to the last few things (including my bouquet!! haha).

Previous Real Bride Amanda said she didn’t have any nerves the morning of her wedding and spoke of how her mum explained this as being ‘because you’re doing the right thing’ – well I now completely get this!

I really didn’t feel nervous at all, what was there to be nervous about? I have known I wanted to marry Dave for so long, and now I was finally getting to do just that!

The morning of the wedding was a bit crazy – it was a whirlwind of a morning BUT the best ruddy morning ever! Having all my lovely family and gorgeous girls with me was THE BEST! They made me feel a million dollars, and seeing my mum’s (slightly teary!) face when I came down the stairs was amazing.

And all the while my poor future hubby, along with his best man and a lovely group of friends and family, were frantically trying to get The Gatsby set up with my boxes and boxes and boxes of decorations. Oh & he had to cope with Ross Noble turning up to surprise him!! Haha! I don’t like to make things easy for him! 
A humongous thank you to everyone who helped out that morning and who turned my vision into a reality, the venue looked absolutely fabulous.

First up my dress! Oh how I loved my dress! This giant beauty was an Ellis Bridal dress from Signature Brides in Kent and I have to admit she wasn’t quite what I had imagined I would be sauntering down the aisle in. I was so certain I would be in a slinky, lacey fishtail number, but for some reason this stunner ended up in my pile and, well, as soon as I had her on I knew she was the dress for me!

My veil was from Queens & Bowl paired with a gorgeous feather headpiece from HT Headwear.

I also need to say a huge thanks to Tasha for my amazing hair bow! I LOVED it…how she got my fine, wispy hair into such a giant bow I will never know!!! It was Magic! Also, a huge thanks must go to my fabulous friend Helen, who knew exactly how to get my face looking it’s best. I said on these pages before that I may not be a huge make-up wearer but do love dressing up, and really wanted to go a quite glam on my big day. Thanks to Helen, I did just that. She was an absolute star, who spent the day checking my lippy and even changed my eyelashes in the evening!! (I’m such a diva!)

Now the flowers….as many of you probably remember mine & my bridesmaids bouquets were actually fabric flower bouquets made up of flowers made by myself, along with a fair amount of help from some lovely friends and family!

The reaction from the bridesmaids when they saw them was amazing. They were so pleased with them, and it was such an amazing feeling knowing that something I had created was good enough for other people to be impressed by! My lovely flowergirl had a wand of fabric flowers with a long ribbon tail, and seeing her running around swooshing it at people was fantastic. I really wanted her to enjoy it and for people not to worry about her playing with it, and I am so glad she did, and still does now – occasionally when I pop round to say hello I sneak a peak of it among all her play stuff!

My bouquet was slightly different, as I had scattered vintage brooches amongst mine to give it a little more glitz! I’d like to say this was easy to do, but it wasn’t. There were a few times where I nearly threw the bouquet through the window, but I persevered and I’m glad I did as I LOVE it. I can honestly say making that bouquet is one of my proudest moments!

My grandparents were absolutely lovely and organised a car for the day for me, a Rolls Royce – obviously! So off my brother and I went….heading to the church. The rain came down all morning, but I wasn’t letting that get me down, I had my huge heart shaped umbrella to keep me dry!

But as we made our way through town, in true clichéd fashion, the rain stopped and Mr Sunshine decided to show his lovely face! I was met at the church gates by my gorgeous girls, who helped me get my monster of a dress up to the church, and then there I was stood in the church doorway with all the people I loved around me. AND a wreath!! (Lolly, I got a wreath! whoop, whoop!)

A few last minute words with the vicar and he and my mum were heading back into the church. My heart was pounding! Even as I write this now, I can still feel all the emotion (including the shaking hands!!) I felt then.

On came Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major and off went my bridesmaids (at breakneck speed! Note to all – rehearse your bridesmaids’ walk to the music, especially if they are a little shy and you have a very long song! Love you girlies!) Now, my gorgeous flowergirl had found herself a little shy on the day and was quite scared about walking down the aisle without her lovely mummy. So I did the only reasonable thing I could do…..got her to walk down the aisle with me & my brother!

Apologies to the congregation as it was a bit of a slow walk in…but we did have my monster dress to get down the aisle and now a gorgeous little flower girl to squeeze in too! But we got there in the end, and I can honestly say it was lovely having her there with me. Being quite a shy person, having her there helped me to forget that everyone was staring! And there he was….my gorgeous hubby to be.

Dave wore a lovely grey three-piece suit with dark trim and a purple paisley tie from Debenhams. I had already seen the suit as I was with him when he chose it, but to see it all together with his snazzy new shoes (and the scrabble cufflinks I bought him for his birthday) was fab and I have to say he did look rather dapper!

His boys all wore matching suits and ties, with the best man also wearing a waistcoat, and the fathers and my brothers wearing ties to match the groomsmen. They had their snazzy hand-made fabric flower button holes made by yours truly! (I also made slightly girlier versions of the button holes for all the Mums and Grandmothers!)

The church looked beautiful. A couple of lovely ladies from the church did the flowers for us, and all I said was that I wanted them to be simple and white with some of my lace ribbon, with a wreath on the door. Well, the wreath was more beautiful than I could have imagined, and the church was filled with so many gorgeous flowers I didn’t know where to look.

Our service, although it seemed to flash past, was wonderful. We chose to have two readings and asked our fabulous mothers to read these, which they did beautifully. The readings we chose were 1 Corinthians 13 – The Gift of Love. A beautiful passage which ends with my favourite line “And now faith, hope and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”

Our second was Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres – Love is a temporary madness. This was chosen after seeing it featured as a print on these very pages. I sent it over to Dave and of all the readings we looked at after this, none quite matched up and so it was to be.

As for hymns, we wanted them to be upbeat, fun and easy to sing along to. So we looked to hymns we remembered from school days and ‘One More Step Along The World’ and ‘Give Me Oil In My Lamp’ were chosen, plus Jerusalem (for Dave!). They are fun and nearly everyone knows them meaning our family and friends had no excuse not to sing along!

And that was that….we were husband and wife…..I was leaving the church as Mrs Moore!!!! Eeeee! 
After a quick dash to visit Dave’s grandma, we pulled up to the gorgeous Gatsby, to be greeted by all our family and friends cheering…

Photography by Hannah Mia
Dress Ellis Bridal @ Signature Brides | Hair Tasha Vandepeer | Shoes Karen Millen | Headpiece HT Headwear | Veil Queens & Bowl | Feather Cape Biba | Flower Girl Monsoon | Bridesmaids For Her & For Him, Miss Selfridge, Bing Bridal & Debenhams | Groom & Groomsmen Debenhams

Afternoon lovelies! Thank you SO much for the love yesterday on part one of RMW Real Bride Rebecca and Dave’s wedding.

I know you’re all more-than-ready to see the photo booth, LOVE lights, feathers and The Watling Street Band, so let’s just dive straight in.

We left our lovely pair just as they arrived at The Gatsby…

RMW Real Bride Rebecca: We pulled up to the gorgeous Gatsby, to be greeted by all our family and friends cheering! We immediately found ourselves with a welcome cocktail each (apple strudel martinis for Team Bride & strawberry margaritas for Team Groom!!) gazing at the amazing work our lovely family, friends and the staff at The Gatsby had done. My vision had come to life! There was my photobooth, the step-ladder of chocolates, the cocktail stirrers, the light up-signs, the tables full of candlesticks, the vodka favours, the feather place-setting, all of it perfect! I loved every thing!

Chatting to all our guests was fantastic, and seeing them so happy was the best thing ever. After doing the rounds, Dave & I, along with Hannah, our photographer, snuck off while no-one was looking!! We had a lovely meander into the town, chatting about our day so far and how excited we were and wondering what on earth Ross Noble was going to say at the speeches!

We had a good giggle at how my humungous dress had now given me the power to stop traffic, and then we had a little break and found the lovely garden to Berkhamsted church and let Hannah snap away while we giggled and chatted some more. The photos from this time, well, they are some of my favourites and we’re really going to struggle to decide which ones to print out! We really will treasure them all forever.

By the time we came back we had enough time to do a few quick pictures with the bridal party before Ross Noble re-appeared ready to introduce us to the dinner table as Mr & Mrs!!!

The speeches provided some of the funniest moments of the whole wedding, Ross was hilarious (as expected) and had everyone in stitches. It may have taken a good 10 minutes or so for him to actually get round to introducing us, but we didn’t care as we were too busy bent over double, laughing harder than we ever thought possible!

In between Ross entertaining everyone and presenting us with our wedding day trophy (!!!), we had some lovely speeches from the Best Man and my Step-Dad. My Mum even presented us with a lovely book of recipes from all our guests and read out a message from my Dad who couldn’t make it over. It was lovely hearing such touching words from them all, as well as the obligatory embarrassing stories! One last lovely speech from my new Hubby and we were clinking our glasses and tucking into our gorgeous wedding breakfast!

The food was absolutely stunning, The Gatsby really did an absolutely outstanding job, all the food was so well presented and tasted divine. You would never have guessed they were having to feed 90 people all at once! We were very lucky in that we were able to give all our guests a choice of 2 meat main courses, something that I think helped ensure everyone enjoyed their dinner fully. To start there was chicken liver parfait, red onion marmalade & toast, followed by either slow roast belly pork, crackling, mustard mash & red cabbage or stuffed chicken breast with tarragon mousse, sweet potato puree & tomato salsa (obviously there were some equally yummy vegetarian options too), and this was finished off with toffee apple & spiced pear crumble with creme anglaise.

Surprisingly, even with the addition of Ross, the staff at The Gatsby somehow managed to keep everything spot on time and so we finished dinner just in time for our next wave of guests to arrive. Another round of chatting, hugging and reminiscing about the rest of the day and then it was time for us to cut the cake…..of cheese! Yup our gorgeous cheese cake was wheeled out and again the guys had made it look amazing, and even worked around the fact that I clearly hadn’t checked the size of our cute topper against the top layer of cheese! Oops! Cutting the cheese was, in true us style, a rather comical moment….cheese is a lot harder to cut when there is a large mountain of it!!

I also took a moment to throw my bouquet! I had always said I wanted to be able to throw my bouquet as catching a bouquet at a friend’s wedding had a large part in Dave finally plucking up the courage to propose! (I have always been adamant that I wasn’t trying that hard and it kind of just fell into my hands but the picture certainly shows a different side to the story! ;-)) But as I began making the fabric flowers and collecting all the brooches for my bouquet I started to worry about throwing it. For starters, no one wants to be hit in the eye by a brooch! And secondly, after putting so much hard work into the bouquet I really didn’t want to let it go, I wanted to keep it for all time as a testament to what I had achieved!

So I began thinking up ways around this and in the end I decided to make a smaller bouquet (a bit like the flower girl’s wand) that would be held into my bouquet using a ribbon. That way it had still taken the journey down the aisle with me and would bring luck to one of my lovely friends! So in the end I was able to throw this little bit of my bouquet and hopefully it will bring us a new wedding sometime soon!

By this time the band were set and ready….it was time for our first dance! I think I can safely say we were both a little nervous. We had decided upon a more upbeat song as we both dreaded the nervous first dance shuffle! So what upbeat song did Dave and I choose? Why of course Pencil Full of Lead by Paolo Nutini! We heard it way back at the beginning of our planning and hadn’t been able to get it out of our heads. We searched through so many of our favourite songs but pretty much every single one had some slightly worrying lyrics!!

When it came down to it, this was the song that always got me excited about our big day, and whenever I heard it a huge grin would appear on my face. So it was settled, this was our first dance song. When I say Pencil Full of Lead is a fast song, I am not exaggerating! I had no idea how we would manage to dance to it, especially considering we had not rehearsed it at all! But we did and it was an amazing feeling. I may have nearly gone flying when Dave swung me around the dance floor like a rag doll, but it was so much fun and once again I was grinning like the cheshire cat! Thanks to our lovely friends and family we weren’t left spinning around too long before they all got up and had a good old boogie!

Now this is the bit where I get a bit over the top and tell you how flipping awesome The Watling Street Band were, because quite frankly they were! I am so, so chuffed that Dave managed to find them. They learnt Pencil Full of Lead especially for us, they played a ridiculous number of amazing songs (including some pretty awesome mashups), they had even agreed fairly last minute to do a longer set and stay right up until the end of the night.

The icing on the absolutely wonderful cake that was our wedding day was when my new hubby suddenly appeared alongside the band!!! Yup, he had secretly arranged with The Watling Street Band to sing with them! It was amazing, he sang I’m A Believer (a song that will forever remind me of some amazing times with my lovely Folkestone girlies), and he was awesome! All I remember is everyone dancing around me while I just stood there stunned, in floods and floods of happy tears.

This really was THE BEST DAY EVER!

And that, you gorgeous lot, is where one chapter ended and another began! I am now a Mrs and enjoying every moment of it. Yes it is true that nothing really changes, but at the same time it kinda does. Just saying I have a husband is one thing I never really thought would excite me as much as it has done. Knowing that we have pledged ourselves to each other for eternity is a wonderful, wonderful thing. Yes we had been together for over 10 years, yes we knew that we were meant to be together, but to hear your love utter those immortal words in front of all your friends and family is something you’ll never understand until you are there.

My advice to all your gorgeous brides-to-be? Well it is that of every other bride who has graced these wonderful pages, but I’ll say it anyway…Enjoy EVERY minute. Be as creative as you want to be! Don’t sweat the small stuff. Accept help from family & friends – they really wouldn’t offer if they didn’t want to. Wear red lippy if you want to!

Big OH MY GOODNESS I’M MARRIED love,

Rebecca xxx

Oh and if you want a little giggle, here’s a link to the Ross Noble show featuring our wedding!

Photography by Hannah Mia
Dress Ellis Bridal @ Signature Brides | Stationery Love Doodle | Venue The Gatsby | Light Up Letters Doris Loves | Band The Watling Street Band | Feather Cape Biba | Flowergirl Monsoon | Bridesmaids For Her & For Him, Miss Selfridge, Bing Bridal & Debenhams | Groom & Groomsmen Debenhams | Cheese Cheese Stall | Pork Pies Samphire | Cake Topper Miss Cake

Claire and Joseph’s Cambridge wedding couldn’t be more quintessentially English – classy and sophisticated, yet modest and wholesome.

Clare College Chapel is a beautiful ceremony venue – with it’s ancient wooden pews facing the aisle and the sound of the choir creating a magical atmosphere.

The reception was held at Claire’s parents house, in a marquee filled with blue and white details, candles and flowers.

If you’ve never been to Cambridge – please go. Just breathe in some of the history of our country, go punting along the River Cam on a summer’s day and have a Pimms picnic on the riverbank. I promise, you won’t regret it. Claire and Joseph’s wedding will show you why…

Claire The Bride: My dress was from Browns Brides and by Dephine Manivet (the dress design is called Lubin). My mother and I went to her trunk show at Browns and Dephine was actually there and helped me try the dress on!

We nearly missed the dress because someone else was trying it on but as we left my mother caught sight of it on someone else and we asked if I could nip back in to try it on. It was the first day we had been dress shopping and only the second shop but it just felt so very me.

I wore some blue diamond and sapphire earrings my Grandmother lent me and a full length veil from Browns. One of my friends, a shoe designer, Charlotte Staniland, designed me the most beautiful pair of shoes. I was very lucky!

One of my friends, Miriam, very kindly came with me to do a Bobbi Brown free make-up session and then she did it for me on the day. She is very talented! And it was an excellent way to bring costs down slightly as I wanted a very natural look so was keen to remain light on the make-up. I used Bobbi Brown products as well which I am still using everyday which you wouldn’t get from a professional make-up artist.

I also used a lovely hairdresser based in Cambridge, Heike Martin, who did both my hair and the bridesmaids. She was excellent and such a calming influence on the day. We went for plaits in all of our hair with mine down and the bridesmaids up.

Our florist, Tolly Considine, was AMAZING!!! He did everything from my bouquet (lily of the valley) to the button holes, cake topper, chapel flowers and table centres (which were amazing). I could not recommend him more highly and he was also so much fun!

Joseph wore a lovely navy blue three piece suit from Jaeger and he looked very handsome! It wasn’t too much of a surprise though as I made sure I helped him choose…

Amy of Especially Amy was our photographer. We actually found her via Rock My Wedding. I love her photos and she could not have captured the day more beautifully. My favourite photos are the ones of everyone laughing and just enjoying themselves.

My Mum made our cake from scratch – it was a fruit cake and she was feeding it booze for months in advance! It was delicious and all her fears about not being up to the job were dispelled. She always makes the family Christmas cake but I think the sheer size of this made it more of a challenge. I also insisted on her making the icing from scratch because it tastes so much better than the bought stuff!

We had a great band called Wandering Hands who wandered around during the drinks reception playing requests. They were brilliant and I think one of my favourite parts of the day. We booked them through Sternberg Clarke. We also booked our DJs Freight Train through the same company and they were also great.

Our first dance was called ‘I Love You’ by the Bees. We asked the DJs to only play a little bit of this and then launched into ‘Chicken Payback’ also by the Bees to kick off the dancing which was really fun!

As favours we ordered personalised seed packets from Not On The High Street which had little motifs on them and the date of the wedding.

My mum also made hundreds of pieces of fudge which we bagged up for each guest. This went down a treat! We decided to have favours people might actually use and I think most of the fudge was actually eaten on the night!

I have always loved blue and white stripes and although there wasn’t a theme exactly things were slightly centred around this. The most amazing thing was that my Mum (again!) handmade hundreds of metres of bunting! She really was a wedding machine but it made everything so amazingly personal. She is one of a kind- I am very very lucky to have such a talented mother who actually enjoys being exploited by her demanding daughter!

I think the best piece of advice I was given was to make sure my hair/make-up and dress were very ‘me’.

I also really wanted there to be a very relaxed vibe throughout the day with everything as personal as possible and I think we managed this – I travelled to the church in my Dad’s 20 year old Volvo that he refuses to get rid of and has been the family car most of my life (and is a running joke in the family) and Joseph and I travelled back from the chapel on the back of a bicycle!

Photography by Especially Amy
Dress Delphine Manivet | Boutique Browns Bride | Hair Heike Martin | Venue Clare College Chapel | Florist Tolly’s Flowers | Bridesmaids Ghost | Groom Jaeger | Band Wandering Hands | DJ Freight Train

Bride: The Wedding Show at Ascot Racecourse is the perfect way to plan your perfect day and we are giving away five pairs of VIP tickets which include fast track entry for two people, a glass of bubbly, goody bag and reserved seats at the spectacular catwalk show.

The event on the weekend of March 15-16 has everything a bride needs to organise her perfect wedding with the help of the region’s finest suppliers.

There will be more than 70 exhibitors from venues to bridal boutiques, florists to photographers, caterers and cakemakers to entertainers, competitions and prize draws, workshops and entertainment, refreshments and a champagne bar.

The highlight of the weekend is the three-times-a-day catwalk show which is acknowledged as the best in the business and worth the ticket price alone. The choreographed presentations with the latest in bridal and bridesmaids’ gowns, men’s wear and mother of the bride outfits are guaranteed to have the audience laughing and clapping and combine entertainment with great music and fantastic ideas on what to wear.

Copies of the best regional bridal magazines, packed with inspirational stories, real weddings, advice from brides and professionals and the latest wedding trends, will be given away.

Bride: The Wedding Show Ascot is on Saturday 15th and Sunday 16th March at The Pavilions, Ascot Racecourse from 10am to 4pm. Advance tickets priced £5 are available from www.theweddingshow.co.uk
Admission on the day is £7.50 on the day.

To enter the competition to win one of five pairs of VIP tickets please leave a comment in our comments box below the post, telling us who you’d take with you to the show and what you are most excited about seeing.

The competition closes at midnight on 7th March 2014. The prize cannot be redeemed for a cash alternative; each ticket admits one person only on your choice of either Saturday March 15th or Sunday March 16th 2014. Only one entry per person.

This is a sponsored post. For enquiries regarding sponsored posts please contact fern@rockmywedding.co.uk

We’re starting the week with a wedding EXTRAVAGANZA. Seriously – I’ve never seen anything like it.

Yes, the gorgeous wedding elements are there…Alexis has a swirly to-die-for Jenny Packham gown, a dreamy bouquet filled with pink roses and green foliage, and there’s the obligatory London wedding transport – a big red wedding bus.

But that wasn’t enough for theatrical pair Alexis & Nathan, OH NO.

They’ve taken weddings to a whole new level.

There are also magician acts, live bands, sparklers, performance artists, hula hoops AND a flash mob first dance. You have to see it to believe it. But it looks like SUCH FUN.

Alexis & Nathan – all I can say is that you guys really know how to put on a show.

Alexis The Bride: A London wedding surrounded by some of the most romantic London landmarks seemed like a magical prospect. The wedding room at Trinity House has a huge window with beautiful views of Tower Hill.

For the reception, Hackney Round Chapel was one of the few venues that allowed us the freedom to DIY everything from the décor to catering. Perfect for a big yet affordable party in London.

I’m used to styling myself for shows, so hair and make up was another DIY job. We wanted to nod to the classic vintage looks of the 30s: old Technicolor movies, vintage circus as depicted in Water For Elephants, Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire in Top Hat. For stay-put red lips and nails, lip inks and Gel nail varnish were a must.

I had one priority with my dress: I wanted to be able to dance! The Jenny Packham dress I chose was huge on me at first. The lovely Brides Room of Birkdale performed wonders and in the end it fitted a dream! I spent half the wedding swishing the billowing silk skirt around on the dance floor.

All our rings were created by Maria at Tyrrell Blois. She makes unique pieces for each of her clients, works earnestly toward your budget and makes creating your perfect ring a joyful experience. I gave her the challenge of finding a bi-coloured Sapphire. Not only did she find my dream stone, it came with a happy, ethical, story.

Nathan’s nephews and nieces were ring bearers. We wanted them to be comfortable and have elements they might wear again before they grow too big! Everything was from high street shops, apart from the braces, bows and bow ties, which were from Etsy and Not On The High Street. They all wore vintage-style sneakers. Sandy-coloured Converse All-Stars worked surprisingly well with sweet denim dresses from The Traditional Children Company.

I wanted to be given away by my family, not just my father, so was escorted down the aisle by my Mother, Sister and Father, all of whom planned their own outfits (according, loosely, to the style ot the venue and wedding).

So as not to be a slave to a colour scheme, but still tie things together, we had a tonal colour scheme. This was a palette of washed-out aged shades. Likewise, we allowed ourselves to be inspired by a 30s design scheme rather than strictly adhere to it. A combination of lanterns, fairy lights and bundles of Baby’s Breath made it feel like a Baz Luhrman set. Combined with theatre lights on the architecture, designed by our amazingly talented friend Luke Gledsdale the space was transformed.

The buttonholes and bouquets were made by Mat at The Urban Flower Company in Crouch End.

The decorative flowers were a DIY job. We sourced them from Covent Garden Flower market (they were collected the day before the wedding, and ordered one week in advance). On the wedding eve we had a flower shower where the flowers were arranged by a few helpers, before being taken to the reception venue for decoration.

The music was played by our friend Guy Connelly from Clock Opera. He played his version of Dance Me to the End of Love (originally by Leonard Cohen), as well as this acoustic version of his song Lifeboats.

Our readings meant so much to us. They were ‘Let Our Scars Fall In Love’ by Galway Kinnell, ‘The Irrational Season’ by Madeleine L’Engle and ‘We Are Made One With What We Touch And See’ by Oscar Wilde.

Nathan is a Theatre Director and I’m a performer so we had lots of talented friends and colleagues providing all of the entertainment.

The first dance was a recreation of the night we got together, directed by Nathan. I was part of a flash mob with confetti canons, dancing live to Clock Opera’s Once And For All. Our usher, Mario’s band called Mr Cova Lova, provided most of the music and created a real party atmosphere.

I got a couple of my fellow variety performers down to join me on stage in between the bands sets. I was joined by Miranda Keeling, Craig the Incredible Hula Boy, and Jon Hicks Adult Prodigy. Nathan even performed a surprise serenade along with his beautiful backing singers, The Stags.

Our best man Charlie Urry and Scott Forte joined chef forces and created a fabulous on the table buffet of huge gammons and a range of salads. As well as the benefit of not having to queue for the buffet, sharing a tabletop feast got people talking.

In the evening we had the spicy treats of Dosa Deli, a light Indian snack which worked really well. As well as the usual alcoholic and soft drinks we got in some great local beer from The Kernel Brewery.

We handwrote the guests’ names on a luggage tag, which we placed on the back of each chair, alongside simple table labels on white card in a handwritten font. For things that could not be done by hand, designers like Mans Greback created gorgeous fonts that are free to download for personal use. We particularly liked Made With B!

Tarah was simply a joy to share our wedding day with. She caught the atmosphere of our day and engaged with it. She was easygoing, lighthearted and fun. All this whilst working incredibly hard to get us the best pictures. In the more formal (obligatory for your granny) shots, where it was necessary to coordinate everyone, she was gentle yet commanding.

However; when it came to the reportage style pictures she kept an understated and light hearted presence. The pictures she created show how at ease all our guests felt in her company. We will always treasure the images she has given us.

Photography by Tarah Coonan
Dress Jenny Packham | Shoes Rachel Simpson | Venue Hackney Round Chapel | Bridesmaid Ghost | Children’s Outfits The Traditional Children Company | Theatre Lights Luke Gledsdale | Florist The Urban Vintage Flower Company | Stationery Willow And Lark

Say Fromage started over 7 years ago. Our photo booths were born from an individual’s photography background and the desire to bring the photo booth back into the 21st Century. It’s safe to say we were one of the first.

With several years behind us be safe in the knowledge that we can give you piece of mind that we will provide a service of exceptional quality and allow you to concentrate on other things.

This year we’ve elaborated on what we can provide the discerning bride and groom. We’re at a great time in the wedding world where Bride and Grooms are choosing some fantastically unique venues, more often than not they’re left with some space to play with. That’s why we’re offering more than just photo booths, recently we’ve launched several more products and set-ups for the contemporary Bride that wants something that little bit different.

We strongly believe in the quality of the image, photographs are undoubtedly a massive part of the way we remember special events in our lives. Therefore we have continually strived to improve what we do, in our photo booths you will find a unique combination of studio quality equipment. From our cameras, lights and printers we want to make sure that you can remember your day with perfect resounding quality. Our photo booths themselves are original to us, they are sleek, user friendly and don’t take a small army to assemble.

Rock My Wedding readers are relentless in looking for something unique, something that can be original to their day. Our photo booths can be customised to their liking, from a message or detail on the print, how the photos will look and even the photo booth itself.

Rock My Wedding readers want to create a wedding to remember, with our photo booth their guests will have a fantastic souvenir to take home, as well as a great way to create a guest book of all your friends and family along with great natural and relaxed photos of you and your best friends.

It’s not a replacement for a photographer but Say Fromage offers something completely different…

Say Fromage is A Rock My Wedding Sponsor.

Shooting a wedding on film ALWAYS creates a beautiful, dream-like quality to the images. Weddings shot on film by Peachey Photography? Well they are EXTRA special.

And Annie and Dickie certainly thought so, as they chose Katharine from Peachey Photography by observing her work on these very pages.

Dickie is Scottish and works in advertising. Annie wore a 50s style gown. The couple married at Annie’s parents house in the beautiful Buckinghamshire countryside. So naturally, the theme was Scotland meets Mad Men meets English Country Fete. It worked a treat too.

Annie’s parents genuinely put their hearts and souls into preparing the garden for their daughters wedding – they had the garden landscaped, grew flowers from seed and even built the summerhouse where the ceremony was held! They did an excellent job, I’m sure you’ll agree.

And if you’ve just come along for a gander at a man in a kilt – you’re in for a treat. Dickie is sporting some very fetching Douglas tartan.

Annie The Bride: I had tried on various dresses in some lovely boutiques, but it was when I visited Helena at Heavenly Vintage Brides that I knew vintage was the way for me.

There was something very special about finding a vintage dress that hardly needed any alteration, I liked to think back to the dress’ first owner and wonder about them, if they were at all like me. So when a white lace 40s dress fitted me almost perfectly, I had my ‘it’s the one’ moment. I also fell in love with a 1952 buttermilk dress Helena had dubbed her ‘Betty Draper’; and with two wedding days it was clear I needed two dresses! The fact that the two vintage dresses came to less than one modern boutique dress was all the additional persuasion needed.

Being Scottish, Dickie knew he wanted to wear a kilt in the Ancient Douglas tartan worn by his family. Dickie chose the blue-grey tweed jacket for an informal and summery feel. His granny bought him a very smart new kilt, a big upgrade to his schoolboy one! (There are a lot more pleats in a wedding kilt apparently). Sadly Dickie’s granny passed away before our wedding day, so it was very special knowing that his kilt was an important gift from her.

We decided that we couldn’t think of anywhere nicer to get married than my parent’s garden. Having decided we wanted the large celebration in the garden with family and friends, we knew we’d have to do the legal stuff elsewhere.

Instead of a quick dash to the registry office the day before, we decided to make it a very intimate celebration for our very closest family and best man and woman. The Compleat Angler in Marlow was somewhere my Grandmother had gone courting, and with its beautiful riverside setting and attentive staff, it was a perfect venue. It helped it was the hottest day of the year, and we enjoyed a sun-drenched boat trip up the Thames after lunch.

Our décor probably ended up being a bit vintage, a bit country fete, a bit literary and a nod to the world of advertising (Dickie’s world)! We wanted bright colours and lots of our favourite colour coral. Dickie first came up with the idea of branding the wedding with PepCon (a combination of our surnames) and ‘anniedickiemarrie’ and designing the invites in the style of a 50s advert. He got hard to work with my brother Ben who is a graphic designer. Ben came up with the logo design, and with the help of illustrator Tim King, designed the most amazing invites and stationary. We also used the PepCon logo to brand the handmade fete games and drinks jars for Pimms.

Having seen Green and Gorgeous’ handiwork at a friend’s wedding, I was pretty keen to secure them for myself! I loved Rachel and Jo’s philosophy of growing seasonal British flowers. Green and Gorgeous made up the tricky stuff of bouquets and large displays, but for the table centrepieces, they provided buckets of cut flowers and a selection of their beautiful vintage crockery. A troupe of mums, bridesmaids and friends had great fun putting these together on the morning of the wedding. I absolutely adored my bouquet and refused to put it down for the whole day! It had big dahlias, roses, nigella, orange alstroemeria and lots of other beautiful things!

Once we were clear we wanted the ceremony in the garden and would have to do ‘the legal bit’ elsewhere, we loved the freedom it gave to do and say only what was meaningful to us. We wanted a humanist ceremony, and then decided to go a step further and ask our friend, Alex, to conduct it for us. We wrote our own vows together and repeated the words to each other. They were very simple, expressing our values of honesty, trust, fun and ‘To stay curious about you, to keep asking questions about who you are, who you’re becoming and who you want to be.’

For the evening dancing, we had wonderful jive band Juke Joint Jump. Our first dance was a jive to ‘Boney Maronie’. Not the most romantic song in the world, but a hell of a lot of fun!

We came up with the rather mad idea of trying to source ingredients for the wedding breakfast that had a personal connection to us. Most caterers we approached said this was impossible, it would be a nightmare for prices and ‘health and safety’. Lucky for us, Jo at Hibiscus was fully willing to pursue our mad plan and worked with us to make it a reality.

So for canapés we had mackerel (caught by friends in a place where I had spent my summers growing up), as starters haggis bonbons drenched with Arran Whisky (a Scottish island very close to Dickie’s family’s heart), lamb kleftiko made with lamb reared by our local friends, Greek salad made using my Dad’s tomatoes, and a lemon tart accompanied by berries also grown by my Dad. The speeches were helped along with Nyetimber, an English sparkling wine.

We saw some of Katharine Peachey’s work on RMW and fell in love with her style and the softness and colours of her all-film photography. She suggested a great bar for us to chat and get to know each other, and put up with Dickie’s questions about a photographer’s dress code. This convinced us fully of her impeccable taste! She was funny and charming throughout and was so incredibly skilled at seeking out that natural shot of people just having a great time, and attending to all the little details that made the day special.

My advice would be to give yourself time at the beginning to have some good long chats about what’s important for you as a couple… thinking about the ceremony we wanted and writing our vows got us to concentrate on what married life would mean to us. Then, get everyone involved! We could not have had such an amazing day without drawing on the extensive skills of our nearest and dearest and it was so special to see all their hard work come to fruition.

Check out secondhand internet sites and see if you can source scrap wood/materials. We got all that bunting for a fraction of the price of buying it new, and then dyed it to the colour we wanted. The fete games were made from scrap wood, breeze blocks, old tables, broom handles etc.

I’d also say don’t be afraid to have too many speeches! Dickie and I did a joint speech, the best woman (aka ‘superior maiden’) and best man did their own personal speeches which everyone enjoyed immensely, and my dad did a wonderful father of the bride speech. Yes, the speeches lasted a while, but we look back and remember them as one of the finest parts of the day and become overwhelmed with all that love and laughter. That’s what you’ll remember for years to come!

Photography by Katharine Peachey
Dress Heavenly Vintage Brides | Shoes John Lewis & Rock My Boutique & Rachel Simpson Outlet | Hair Accessory Lily Bella | Jewellery Baronessa | Bridesmaids Warehouse | Groom MacDonald Kiltmakers & John Morrison | Venue Compleat Angler Hotel | Marquee Hire Joseph Benjamin Marquees | Decor Pom Pom Studio & Preloved | Table Names The Literary Gift Company | Florist Green & Gorgeous Flowers | Macarons Pierre Herme | Band Juke Joint Jump | Catering Hibiscus Food

Tide times dictated the date for Zoë & James’ big day. The couple chose to hold their wedding on the banks of the estuary at Salcombe – so the timing of the water was key in creating the beautiful backdrop they wanted.

Boat trips, an American Deep South inspired sharing menu, golden wheat fields and lots of blowsy blooms in whites & blues made for a day that looked so pretty AND like such fun.

By marrying James, Zoë inherited a Mother-in-Law who used to own a Bridal Boutique – this meant that she could save on the dress and buy a lovely pair of Louboutins instead.

Zoë also accessorised with a pretty veil from the wonderful What Katy Did Next.

All of this wedding loveliness was captured by Love Lust List Members, SD Photography.

Zoë The Bride: The idea of planning a wedding had always filled me with fear. After looking at 100’s of wedding blogs I was overwhelmed with inspiration for colour schemes, style choices and decor ideas. We wanted to plan a wedding that would reflect us and one thing we could agree on was a relaxed and informal wedding that above all was a great party.

Having been brought up in South Devon I had several ideas for a venue for our wedding. We decided on Pool Farm Meadow as is a picturesque spot on the Kingsbridge/Salcombe estuary which is particularly pretty when the tide is in. After looking at the tide times our wedding date was set. Our ceremony took place in the beautiful St Mary’s church in West Charleton that overlooks the estuary of the reception venue, I also attended as a child.

My dress was kindly donated to me by my Mother In Law who used to own a Bridal Boutique (jackpot!) The design ticked all the boxes, it was simple, elegant with vintage applique. As the dress was unfussy and minimal I went to town with the 1950’s style veil from What Katy Did Next and splurged on some 1950’s style glitter Louboutins.

As a present to James I bought him a tie clip in silver and he wore brown brogues with his Next suit.

The Bridesmaids wore 1950’s prom style dresses from Coast. I wanted the girls to have a 1950s feel to their look and although the dresses were last minute purchases after an issue with the original dresses made to order from Etsy – they looked perfect on the day.

My advice is to order Bridesmaids dresses early! Dresses can always be tailored to fit at the last minute to account for any weight loss.

We really wanted the wedding to look a bit different, not too formal but still elegant. When the marquee arrived we were blown away. Adrian and his team from Devon Party Marquees worked tirelessly to put it up in the heat (and down again in the driving rain). We wanted a contemporary marquee design that could open up to make the most of the view over the estuary.

We enlisted the help of graphic designer Emily Fisher to design chalk boards for the table plan, drinks menu and signs. We had a rough idea of how we wanted them to look and they definitely exceeded our expectations.

Our Wedding favours were small jam jars filled with chilli jam kindly made by my Father In Law, covered with brown paper and string. My Dad created the fantastic picture board styled with retro wallpaper as we wanted something original. He did an amazing job and it was well received by the guests at the end of the evening, lots of photos were taken, along with some I would like to forget!

The wonderful Emma Vowles created the beautiful bouquets and button holes. I had seen Emma’s flowers before at a friend’s wedding and loved the style. After a couple of emails we met with Emma, as soon as we met I knew that we would end up with the most amazing flowers and we weren’t disappointed. Emma completely got my vision and was so helpful all the way through the planning! I wanted a loose bouquet with flowers that would look like I’d picked them in a garden.

My bouquet had vintage roses, scabia and greenery in a hand tied posy with grey velvet ribbon. The girls had a similar bouquet to mine but with slightly more blue flowers. I loved that the all the button holes were different and individually beautiful. Emma also arranged two large zinc buckets full of flowers that we used outside the church and then again in the marquee.

Choices were limited in terms of catering companies in South Devon. James is a very keen chef and likes to experiment with food ideas we’ve gathered from travelling. He had specific ideas of what the menu should be. He wanted to go along the lines of Mexican/American Soul food/Pulled Pork/Slaw/BBQ etc. We came across Liz from The Dinner Service who understood exactly the theme we were going for and was able to suggest additional ideas to work with James’.

What was produced was an amazing banquet that was shared family style on each table. Everyone commented on the quality of the food which was completely unique and unlike any wedding they’d been to before. Hot sauce on a wedding table is not a common theme but went down a storm.

We went on a booze cruise a month before the wedding which meant we had stacks of excellent French Wine for the big day. The Globe Inn (opposite the wedding venue) supplied us with barrels of Otter Ale and a bar as well as being super helpful in offering accommodation for most of James’ family and supplying all of the necessary equipment for the beer barrels at no extra cost.

My father in law offered to make our cake as a wedding present for us. It was such a generous offer and he did an amazing job.

Our photographers were Darren and Sarah from SD Photography. I really dislike wedding photos that are posed group shots with everyone having fixed smiles on their faces. I wanted most of the photos to be candid shots of everyone enjoying themselves, which they did absolutely brilliantly, along with some lovely shots of James and I. They were with us the whole long day from start to finish and they took some absolutely beautiful shots.

The whole day was incredible and everything went smoothly. I loved seeing James stood at the end of the aisle. I loved our first dance, the band and dance floor shenanigans. The boat trips up the estuary were amazing. The weather was perfect. The day went so fast and everything came together. The little details that I thought would make or break the day paled into insignificance with all the wedding day emotions.

Photography by SD Photography
Shoes Christian Louboutin | Veil What Katy Did Next | Marquee Hire Devon Party Marquees | Make Up Finishing Touch | Hair Louise Alway | Groom & Groomsmen Next | Caterers The Dinner Service | Florist Emma Vowles | Chalk Boards Emily Fisher | Stationery Elinor Rose | Bridesmaids Coast | Transport Devon Vintage Car Club