Alice & Alex

Can we just take a moment to admire the back of bride Alice's Rose & Delilah gown. I love that the gorgeous cowel back could easily removed to reveal the prettiest lace low back detail in the evening, giving the illusion of two gowns. Her best girls look just as effortlessly chic in different styled gowns, but the same beautiful pink blush shade by Maids to Measure too. The whole country wedding was blessed with sunshine, and was the perfect opportunity to enjoy a drinks reception and Mediterranean canapés on the lawns overlooking the Somerset countryside, with all the love, fun, fashion and florals captured beautifully by David Jenkins Photography

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Dress

Alice the Bride: As Im sure is the case for many brides, the dress I ended up choosing for the day was very different from what I first pictured I would wear. I knew I didn’t want a puffy dress – key for me was comfortable and classic. After visiting many bridal shops in London, and trying on practically every dress style out there, I came across Luellas Bridal in Wimbledon which has a beautiful collection of dresses in a lovely relaxed setting. The dress is by an American designer, Rose & Delilah and it was one the friendly team at Luella’s suggested I try it on. I coupled the dress with a lace trimmed floor length veil for the ceremony and gold sparkly open toe shoes from Jimmy Choo (a sensible heel being high on the priority list in choosing shoes!)

Grooms Attire

Alex wore a Donegal green wool three piece suit from the very cool East end London tailors Beggars Run. Beggars Run have a great mix of bold suits which lend to the big occasion. You can view all the suits online before you go and can try them on at the shop before yours is made to measure. It’s a great service they offer and being able to see how the colours work against skin tone etc is a really nice touch. Something you don’t get with the more traditional bespoke suit tailors. Cian and Edward are top blokes and across the three fittings you will certainly have a lot of fun with these guys. Alex buys all his suits from Beggars Run now and attended the launch party of their new Shoreditch location. Alex’s grandad’s gold pocket watch, burgundy brogues and Persol sunglasses completed the outfit.

Venue

When choosing a venue, we knew we wanted somewhere beautiful in the countryside, that could sleep our family and close friends. Most importantly, we wanted somewhere we could have a big party for everyone to enjoy! We found the perfect venue in North Cadbury Court in Somerset - a huge 16th century country house set in stunning 1500 acre grounds. The owners have kept the traditional character but updated it with some quite amazing additions including rooftop golf, a swimming pool and underground disco in the old caverns. There is also beautiful church next door too, which was a huge attraction as Alice always wanted a church wedding. We hired North Cadbury Court from Friday to Monday and made it a long weekend of celebrations with our nearest and dearest. Georgia is the amazing event planner at the venue that helps guide you through what, at first, is the rather daunting process of throwing a three day party and ensured the weekend went off without a hitch.

Colour Schem & Decor

We didn’t have a specific colour scheme in mind, although it was a summer country wedding which naturally drew us towards pastel shades. When it came to décor, we wanted it to feel rustic, homemade and casual. My dearest Mother spent several months collecting everything you could imagine. Jam jars, logs; vintage jars for a sweetie stall, baskets, fabric – you name it, she collected it – and we made a lot of things ourselves. We decided against favours in the end but we did have several pregnant friends at the wedding and we left each one a hand-knitted pair of baby booties (again knitted by my dear Mother) on their place settings, as a small surprise.

Florist

I loves flowers and wanted flowers everywhere! We used the wonderful Emma at Brompton Buds for most of our flowers and she was truly fantastic. In particular, we had two beautiful old fireplaces in the venue and Emma created stunning countryside flower arrangements to show-case them perfectly. The bouquets were large, rustic and string-bound, and the groomsmen wore simple buttonholes to complement their suits. Me and my Mother also did a trip to Bristol flower market in the days leading up to the wedding and bought tonnes of gorgeous flowers which we used to create our own mini arrangements in jam jars, pew ends and which we just generally scattered around the venue!

Bridesmaids

For the bridesmaids, I wanted to make sure that the girls could try on and choose dresses that they felt comfortable wearing (apart from one that wasn’t quite so lucky because she lives abroad!) We used Maids to Measure in London which has a great range of styles and colours to choose from. It was just aswell because each of the bridesmaids chose a different style that suited them best!

Groomsmen

The groomsmen wore navy suits and brown shoes, with yellow ties to match Alex’s. Our young nephews were the pageboys and they stole the show in very cute pinmstripe short sets from Marks and Spencer.

Ceremony

We got married in the stunning Church of St Michael the Archangel, set next to North Cadbury Court, We both love our music and decided to incorporate some of our favourite songs into the ceremony. We had a string quartet (with a difference) welcoming guests into the church with songs by Coldplay, the Beatles and even Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’”. One of the best men did a reading of David Bowie’s ‘Absolute Beginners’ - a great love song that, to us at least, speaks to starting out on the journey of marriage. After the ceremony we walked out of the church to Paul Simon’s ‘You Can Call Me Al’ to let everyone know the serious stuff was over and it was time for the party.

Entertainment

We’d recently attended a friend’s wedding where the London Function Band had everyone dancing all night so it was an easy steal for us. A great 9 piece band that start the party with a bang and kept the dancefloor full all night with a great mix of classics, modern and our own requests. The band’s DJ then took us to 1am when we moved into the underground disco until the wee hours

Catering

Food is very important to us so we spent some time researching this one. After a tasting at Cherry Picked Catering it was an easy decision for us to go with them. Antipasti sharing boards on the banquet tables to start got everyone chatting followed by an amazing rare beef course and a light summer pudding for dessert. Caroline at Cherry Picked Catering ran the show and was absolutely brilliant from start to finish. Faultless.

Cake

I love nothing more than a cheeseboard so, for us, the cake had to be cheese. We got a scrummy cheese cake from The Fine Cheese Company which we stacked on a log and decorated ourselves with flowers. Guests feasted on the cheese all night, together with a great selection of toasties to remind us of our childhood and to soak up the alcohol of the day. My mum and family friends backed up the evening spread with a selection of different tray bakes. A trolley of hand selected Malt Whiskies was wheeled out in the evening for those in need of a night cap!

Photographer

David Jenkins came highly recommended by our professional photographer friend and we knew David was our guy from the moment we saw his portfolio. We loved his journalistic style and the way he caught the emotion of the weddings in his portfolio perfectly. His images are authentic and genuine which is very rare and not something we saw in the other photographers’ portfolios we viewed. We’d much rather have photos catching those little moments between us or the emotions of our guests than the standard big group shot. From our first meeting with David we felt completely comfortable with him and had a really fun and worthwhile pre-shoot in Oxford (with a drink too). As we knew he would, David captured all those little moments that are so special during the day and what the wedding was – loving and a lot of fun. The final product is outstanding and something we will always treasure. Cannot recommend him highly enough. David is now more a friend than our photographer (he may think otherwise….).

Videographer

Alex was firmly against a videographer at first as he didn’t want “a video camera in his face all day” but now firmly admits he was wrong (doesn’t happen often) and it has become his key recommendation to people getting married. We were extremely lucky to get Confetti & Silk who had won the 2016 Experts Wedding Industry Awards at such short notice. Stu and his team were amazing. We absolutely love our video and have watched it more times than we’d like to admit - they captured the day perfectly. Most guests at the wedding did not even know we had a videographer so Alex’s fears were well misplaced!