Amie & Jam

This lovely pair, with their big smiles and highly personalised wedding day are guaranteed to get your Sunday off to a fabulous start. Amie and Jam chose the wonderful Dewsall Court to host their celebrations, and as always, the Wainhouse Barn there looks utterly magnificent. It's such a gorgeous space, and I love how truly unique it looks for each couple lucky enough to get married at Dewsall. The wonderful Chris Barber took the photos, full of joy, emotion and natural moments - he always captures the day as it unfolds in his signature style. There really is only one Chris Barber...

Adele Dress By Augusta Jones

Amie the Bride: Finding my dress wasn’t as straightforward as I thought it was going to be...in my head I thought I’d be walking down the aisle in a full flowing boho hippy number but after hitting several shops I realised my normal go-to style didn’t feel ‘enough’, I surprised myself with how bridal I wanted to feel. Eventually, I found Perfections in Worcester and it was amazing, I fell in love with all the lovely ladies who worked there! When I put the Adele dress on by Augusta Jones my first thought was Jam has to see me in this dress and that was that. Ultimately, it had elements I knew I wanted like full sleeves and a bardot top; it was the fitted element that was a surprise but I loved being in something that was a bit different for me, it was finished off with long veil for a bit of wow factor. My shoes were my ‘something old’ I’ve worn them the last two times I’ve been bridesmaid for my best friends who were two of my bridesmaids on the day. I loved knowing I was wearing shoes that were comfortable and had already been part of some epic partying and happy times! I went for minimal jewellery other than a pair of emerald earrings which were a wedding present from Jam the morning of the wedding.

Groom In Green Suit

Jam is so laid back and I bravely left him to sort out his own suit. However, I remember off handedly saying one day ‘if you really want to nail it then try and find a green suit’, that night he went to one of his groomsmen’s houses and hanging up was a green suit his groomsman had ordered from ASOS which was weirdly perfect so Jam hijacked it and ordered it for everyone! The Groomsmen wore the three piece suit and Jam finished his off with a slightly different waistcoat from Moss Bros and ties from T.M Lewin; we left the groomsmen to choose between brogues and loafers from Kurt Geiger. My dad bought Jam a pocket watch which he gave him the morning of the wedding and it finished off his outfit a treat!

Dewsall Court Wedding Venue

Dewsall Court had my heart as soon as I stumbled across it online, when we went to view it in person it was even more incredible. It really is home from home and we were able to stay there the day before so we had a huge rounders match and dinner all together which felt like an extension of the day; I loved every second. Laura, our event planner and the whole Dewsall team were just amazing, they accommodated all our DIY requests and really made the whole day faultless. So many guests on the day commented on how relaxed and intimate the venue felt which was exactly what we wanted.

The Decor

We didn’t really intend to have a theme, I love green and Jam is really creative and is always making something from wood so we just threw the two together and hoped for the best...Jam sourced and made everything, he’s pretty awesome and has his own designs @Jam.Made he even spent hours putting together our floral circle as our ceremony backdrop from a piece of hosepipe! We had help from Jam’s mum who was very handy with a pyrography pen for the place names and my amazing bridesmaids Katy and Katie who calligraphed the signs for us. Everything came together better than I could ever have imagined. The only thing I really did was encourage everyone I knew to drink a lot of gin and I went round collecting gin bottles for months to act as candle holders and line the aisle and decorate the tables. I also created a family tree with wedding pictures of our parents and grandparents which was really special to us.

The Flowers

Kat from the Great British Florist absolutely nailed the flowers. All I knew is that I wanted ALL THE FOLIAGE and she made my dream bridal bouquet a reality. She made smaller versions of my bouquet for the bridesmaids along with foliage flower crowns and a half crown for me. We had the Wainhouse Barn beams decorated with foliage and foliage runners to line the aisle to really bring the outside in.

Short Dessy Bridesmaids Dresses

I loved the bridesmaid dresses from Dessy, I wanted something that was fairly simple but fun and I knew the girls would look amazing in shorter dresses, especially for a summer wedding. My biggest obsession were their pom-pom shoes from Topshop, they were such a find! I gave the bridesmaids a rose gold Kate Spade monogram necklace for them to wear on the day to finish off their outfits. Rebecca Frances Make Up painted all our faces and she did such an incredible job, we all felt amazing!

The Ceremony

To be honest, when we started planning the wedding this was the part I was least looking forward to, I just wanted to get the formalities out the way and party! However, it ended up being the absolute highlight for me, and I will remember it forever. Our closest friends did readings for us: Pardoe, read an extract from ‘I Like You’ by Sandol Stoddard Warburg, a children’s book I bought for Jam as an engagement present. Our other reading was a complete surprise! Dan wrote a poem all about us and our time together as a couple, it meant the world to us both; we’ve since had it framed and it’s now hanging up at home. I walked down the aisle to an acoustic version of Stor- mzy’s Blinded By Your Grace and we danced back up it to Hall and Oates You Make My Dreams. The whole ceremony encapsulated us both perfectly and nothing can prepare you for declaring your love in front of the people who know you the best, it’s unbelievably special.

The Entertainment

We had the amazingly talented Flow Duo for some relaxed acoustic vibes after the ceremony and for the evening we had Deckheds, Karl and Kate were brilliant, our dance floor was constantly full and they played such an eclectic mix of music which suited the varying tastes of everyone, I never wanted it to end! We also bought our table tennis table from home with us, table tennis in the day, beer pong at night...

The Food

The Dewsall Court team are really proud of their food and rightly so, we are big foodies so it was really important to us and we loved how everything was locally sourced. Loads of brides said how they forget to eat most of the day, I think it’s testament to how amazing the food was that Chris has got several photos of me stuffing my face and having the best time at various points! We had canapé’s ranging from cauliflower cheese croquettes to sausages and we had the traditional three courses of Spanish croquetas to start, free-range chicken breast with courgetti ribbons, potatoes and a creamy tarragon and white wine sauce for main. As we didn’t want a cake because we aren’t huge cake lovers, Dewsall created a huge Eton Mess that we cut in front of all our guests before they tucked into their own Eton Mess for dessert. Also, on the evening we had Fluffy Puffin because Jam and I are both obsessed with ice cream. Chris is amazing, guests could create their own ice cream and it was made right in front of them, he is a flavour genius and we had so much fun on our tasting with him. The white chocolate Pina Colada flavour was a thing of beauty! While this was going on Dewsall bought out some amazing pizza because who doesn’t love pizza and ice cream after all the alcohol!?

The Photography

Chris is probably sick of me leaving him gushing reviews but he was the best decision we made. We aren’t ones for posing and for PDA so the thought of wedding pictures terrified us - until we found Chris. He made us feel totally at ease and captured every moment of our day perfectly, the emotion, the love, and all the laughter! He also stayed and partied with us until the bitter end which earned him the title Minesweeping Legend...we have a lot of love for him and we will be forever grateful for his amazing pictures.

The Videography

We knew we wanted a videographer because so many of our friends said it was their one regret, Chris recommended Leanne from Blooming Lovely Films and, because they have worked together on several occasions they made such a great team on the day!

Advice

My biggest piece of advice would be to DO WHAT YOU WANT! The looks on some faces when I said I was having green nails and Jam wasn’t going to wear socks on his wedding day was absolutely priceless but we stuck to our guns because it was ‘us’. All we wanted was a day that was about all the weird and quirky things which make us as a couple and ultimately, to spend a day celebrating with the people we love the most in the entire world, which is exactly what we had and it was truly the best day of our lives. Enjoy. Every. Second.