away, Bay Tree, who already provided the hotel’s flowers. Our
colour theme was navy, grey and white, with accents of
yellow, which we incorporated throughout the wedding, from
designs to flowers.
We are fortunate to know a very talented graphic designer,
Maxine Gregory, who designed our bespoke wedding logo along
with all our stationery, from invites, patterns, address labels,
favour stickers, place names, seating plan, table cards – the lot.
She did an incredible job considering I was very indecisive and
would throw a million ideas at her that I had found from
Pinterest! We also commissioned a calligraphy artist, Bonjour
Laura J, who has had her work featured in bridal magazines such
as
Vogue
, to create us blackboards to place around the venue,
gift tags for guests and our card box.
It took me ages to decide on wedding favours and gifts for
the wedding party, but Etsy was our saviour and we had
handmade soy candle wedding favours made for guests by
Amber Watkins, who was an absolute delight to work with and
did an amazing job. We also had engraved hipflasks for the
ushers and customised swarvoski and silver plated compact
mirrors for the groomsmaids. I made some paper fans
following our colour theme – small ones that were scattered
on the tables at the wedding breakfast and as wall decorations
behind our wedding cake.
It was decided from the start that Paul and I would wear
matching morning suits, and we chose navy suits with silver
waistcoats and lemon yellow cravats. For our shoes, I wore
versace and Paul wore Gucci, and we both had matching
Swarovski crystal cufflinks. Our ushers, best man and my father
were dressed in grey morning suits, with the same silver
waistcoat as us, and lemon cravats. The groomsmaids wore full
length navy maxi dresses with decorative beaded collars.
We surprised each other with gifts before the ceremony,
as we decided it would be nice to get ready together in the
morning so we could capture some really great photos
helping each other with cravats and cufflinks. My gift to Paul
was a Michael Kors watch and his to me was a vivienne
Westwood watch.
As our guests arrived at the ceremony, we had a string
quartet playing, and they continued afterwards in the gardens
as we came out for drinks and photos. We walked down the
aisle to them playing
Can’t help falling in love
by Elvis Presley
and the recessional song was
Signed, sealed, delivered
by
Stevie Wonder.
We had four ushers selected by Paul on his side and a best
man, and I chose my best girlfriends as groomsmaids. (Our
friends had played a huge part throughout and had organised
our separate stag-dos – I had a weekend in Cambridge and also
Amsterdam, and Paul had a party at our local rugby club as well
as a weekend in Benidorm.) Our groomsmaids walked two by
two before us and then we walked down the aisle together,
which was very emotional and daunting as everyone was looking
at us – but just felt right. It was great to see the room filled with
so many smiles though, and the whole place looked beautiful.
We held our evening reception at the hotel and another 60
guests arrived, on top of the 80 day guests. The night began
with our first dance, an acoustic version of
Yellow
by Coldplay,
a song that we both very much like for its lyrics and meaning.
All the lights in the room were also turned to yellow and it felt
magical. We then cut the cake and greeted our evening guests.
pink weddings magazine » 37
NOEL ANd STEvE
AdRIAN ANd PAUL
