Georgie & Jack

Uh oh. I have another new favourite wedding. It's getting a bit out of control really and I know I'm biased, but I just can't help it! We really do feature THE best weddings!!! Georgie and Jack's big day has put a huge smile on my face and I've had to stop myself from sending a million sneak peaks to the rest of the team. I LOVE weddings that are held at home, there's just something so relaxed about everything, people are really carefree and happy. That sentiment just pours out of these images from Ben at Millar Cole Photography. The couple portraits are particularly special in this wedding, so make sure you look out for those, as well as the rainbow tassel bunting made by Georgie and her family and friends. Who also happened to do the beautiful flowers too! What a talented and creative bunch they are. Right, let's dive in shall we...it's a veritable feast for the eyes and you'll want to savour this one slowly.

The Venue

Georgie The Bride: It was a fairly easy decision as we got married at the house I grew up in, in Dorset. There's a lovely garden, which seemed perfect for the ceremony, and then a field where we put the marquee. It was a lot of work for my parents getting everything sorted in the garden and field, they seemed to spend every weekend sitting on a petrol powered lawnmower (!), but it was special getting married somewhere with so many memories attached to it. We were also keen not to have restrictions on how late the music went on, and this allowed us total freedom to party until the early hours and choose and buy our own booze. We got legally married the week before at Chelsea Registry Office in front of our families, but we wanted to have our own ceremony in Dorset in front of all our friends.

The Ceremony

We wanted to create our own ceremony for the main wedding in Dorset. We were married by Gerry, a priest who had also presided over the marriage my parents. He was fantastic and allowed us to pretty much write our own ceremony, our vows took the form of answering two questions about one another, what do you love about the other person? And what are your hopes and promises for your future together? It was really nice being able to think really carefully about the meaning of getting married when we were writing those, we tried to keep them honest rather than idealised. Our friends, Matt and Jon played Ave Maria on the piano and cello as aisle music, which was beautiful. My dad made a big arch out of silver birch which her mum's friends decorated with loads of foliage and flowers and we got married just in front of the house, with the guests on the lawn. Some of my parents' friends lent us an amazing little vintage car which we literally drove around a hedge because it was too cute not to have photos in!

The Reception

In the photos everyone is smiling, everyone just seemed to have a lot of fun, which was the best thing. Our friends and family made it, especially with their love of dancing! The key things for us were to ensure that everyone had a really good time, that it had a relaxed atmosphere and that it looked great. We began with champagne and canapes in the garden, and once in the marquee we had a buffet of BBQ lamb, BBQ monkfish with various middle eastern style salads. The caterers were fantastic and flexible and basically made the salads we wanted. We made a speech together, which was nice, we didn't want to talk about equality without putting it into action! My Dad and the best man, James did a great job and my friend, Matt also made a speech - he read out one of my cringe teenage poem which was mortifying but went down well!

The Music

Music was a real priority for us, as was a well stocked bar. Straight after the first dance, three of our friends sang 'Down To The River To Pray' a cappella, which was gorgeous. Then we had the Swing Unlimited Big Band playing, they're a 17 piece swing band run by one of my bridesmaid's dad's and they were insanely good, such a massive sound! For later we hired a Funktion One sound system and had our friends and Jack's brother DJing. Then between 11pm-1am we had Arran Kent playing the saxophone over the top of house music. The moment he played Laurent Garnier's 'Man with A Red Face' was incredible! We also hired a laser and haze machine which people loved later on! We had a free bar all night and opened with Aperol Spritzers and our friend Sim at The London Beer Factory kindly donated a couple of kegs of ale which went down really well.

The Decor

We wanted the look to be eclectic, and colourful without being overbearing. Sophie, Jack's sister is a set designer for films so she managed to get hold of loads of beautiful props which we used, bird cages, wooden crates and antique Indian parasols. We had a vague bird theme, and we managed to source some really beautiful old paintings and prints of pairs of birds. I sourced lots of paper decorations off eBay and Etsy which we hung on fishing wire along the sides and down the centre of the marquee. My pride and joy, though, was the rainbow coloured tassel bunting of which myself, Jack, my mum and my bridesmaids made about 150m of in the four months before the wedding. It looked as lovely as I had hoped, although was incredibly time consuming to make! I had seen a picture of something similar on Pinterest and liked the idea of having tassels rather than traditional triangular bunting. Sophie was really helpful in arranging the marquee and we had a few 'areas of interest' where we arranged some of my grandmother's old furniture, pictures, flowers, crates. We also had a wall of poetry, where we strung up poems about living and nature amongst some fairy lights. We used the lovely old oak tree in the centre of the field as a focal point to run festoon lighting to and placed hay bales, the antique parasols and cushions around it for people to chill out there. Later on we lit a fire pit for people to sit around, between the marquee and the tree.

The Flowers

We went on a few scoping trips to New Covent Garden Flower Market and then we ordered from David Salter flowers, a local wholesaler, the week before the wedding. We did all our own arranging using coral peonies, blue delphiniums, pearl avalanche roses, babe spray roses, king arthur roses, eryngium thistles, astrantia, succulents, veronica, eucalyptus and asparagus fern (and lots of other flowers we can't remember the names of!) We also collected lots of foliage, ferns and wildflowers from hedgerows. We arranged all our own flowers and bouquets the day before and myself and the bridesmaids made the button holes and floral head pieces on the morning of the wedding. We borrowed flower buckets from a friend and then had a team of about 12 people (family, my mum's friends and bridesmaids) who did all the arranging. I made my own bridal bouquet. It was a lot of work but the only way we could afford to have such gorgeous flowers on our budget. It was also a really fun way of bringing people together!

The Photography

Ben, our photographer, was brilliant and his 'documentary' style was perfect for our wedding. He was really professional, arrived early to get a sense of his surroundings, and made everyone feel really comfortable. He was a calm, smiling and softly spoken presence throughout the day and the fact he is also an artistic photographer really showed, especially in the photos of Jack and I in the woods, which was his idea. There was nothing stilted or formal about the way Ben works and our friends and family absolutely love the final selection of photos which really take us through the emotions of the whole day. We really appreciated him asking to meet us beforehand to talk through what pictures we wanted and he sent the edited online album through to us only 2 weeks after the wedding. We would highly recommend Ben and wish him all the best for his career!

The Bridesmaids

The brief was to go for 'emerald' green. They bought their own from the high street and I liked how they all had slightly different colours and styles.

The Beauty

My hairdresser Brendan came to do my hair, I've been seeing him since I was 13 so it was awesome to have him there. He even got out his hairdressing bag and made me crouch under a table half-way through the night to re-straighten my fringe! I did my own makeup and went to Bobbi Brown for a practice session before hand. The lipstick was MAC.