Jade & Thomas

Pinterest overwhelm is a common ailment that many brides-to-be suffer from, but can you imagine how bad it is when you actually WORK AT PINTEREST?!?!? Yep, Bride Jade works at Pinterest. Very cool job - probably a little much when it comes to wedding planning! But Jade tackled it like a pro, keeping her cool and using it to organise her ideas and pull off the beautiful wedding you see below. Naturally RMW had a little role to play (not ones to blow our own trumpet, but we have a reach of 9 million on Pinterest ;) #justsaying) and our gorgeous couple found their venue, photographer and videographer using real weddings right here. Smug faces all round because it genuinely brings us so much joy to help people have the best day ever. We're so lucky to share these weddings with you all and Jade and Thomas' big day by Modern Vintage Weddings is an absolute stunner. Enjoy everyone!

The Bride

Jade The Bride: Thomas and I live in California and he sensed I wasn’t looking forward to the prospect of dress shopping without having my UK based bridesmaids for advice. One evening over dinner, when I still hadn’t gone to try anything on, he presented me with a plane ticket to New York for the following morning where he’d also flown out my maid of honour for a surprise weekend of dress shopping! It was so thoughtful of him. We had a wonderful time exploring the city and amazing boutiques and, best of all, I found my dress! I wore Reem Acra ‘She’s Mine’ on the Friday for our black tie pre-wedding supper. It had a blush waistband which I changed to ivory. Saturday I wore an Inbal Dror that I had first seen on my Pinterest homefeed. I fell in love with the train of the dress, how comfortable I felt wearing it and the beautiful gold strappy back. I wore simple pearls and my engagement ring which Thomas designed himself. My shoes were Valentino which I then wore all honeymoon and my veil was church length with two tiers and a lace trim by Britten - something British!

The Groom

The wedding was black tie and after trying on all the classic brands Thomas fell for an Alexander Mcqueen tuxedo. His shirts were custom made at Tailors Keep in San Francisco. He wore a winged collar on Friday evening with a Thomas Pink white bow tie and a classic dress shirt on Saturday with a Barneys New York black bow tie. His shoes were from Versace and wedding band from Cartier.

The Venue

No surprise we found our venue, Brympton House, on RMW. Given we live abroad, the main criteria for our wedding was to maximise the time we had with our friends and family. Brympton was perfect as we were able to have 60 guests stay on the estate, especially nice for those that flew in from the US, the Netherlands and Turkey. Brympton is exceptionally beautiful and provided the ‘Englishness’ I so wanted for the wedding after being away from home. The American guests loved the history of house and refer to it as a castle to this day! We hired Natalie Berry to coordinate the weekend which was one of our best decisions. She knew the venue inside out and solved the problems we never thought of and I’m sure some we’ll never knew occurred.

The Decor

I am the UK product specialist at Pinterest and therefore a big advocate but despite what you might guess I didn’t have a wedding board before getting engaged! I used Pinterest to find inspiration for the day, how it should feel, and to set the themes that flowed from invitations to favours. I can’t imagine how people used to discover and plan before Pinterest! I am not a big ‘DIY girl’, but we did create our own wine label which we put on bottles of Prosecco which we gave as wedding favours. We still get messages from guests sharing stories of where they drank them. We also used a pair of traditional wooden skis as our guest book which we hope to hang in our house one day. We used gold accents throughout the weekend which came about from our beautiful letterpress invitations (which could be my favourite piece from the wedding) printed by Bella Figura, with calligraphy by Sarah Hanna. My maid of honour Danielle illustrated a timeline of where Thomas I met (Bangkok), got engaged (Napa Valley) and would get married (Somerset) for the Save the Dates. We wanted a slight masculine feel to the wedding rather than anything too twee or feminine as the day reflected us both. We had afternoon tea in the great hall on Friday (very me) followed by Cricket outside (very Thomas). We kept the cricket theme going into the evening with cricket menus and name cards for a formal pre-wedding supper in the candlelit State Dining Room. The menu was seasonal soup, slow roasted duck and treacle tart for pudding catered by Wellies and Garlic.

The Flowers

We used two florists, Flowers by Passion, for our wonderful floral arch, bouquets and boutonnieres. We chose green and white flowers (which coincidentally Pinterest named as the top trend that year) as we wanted the flowers to blend into the English countryside. Emily Jewsbury provided the flowers within the venue including centrepieces on gold candelabras for the wedding breakfast.

The Bridesmaids

My maid of honour suggested Maids to Measure from Sophie Likes in Harrogate for bridesmaid dresses. I wasn’t able to go with the girls so I sent them a choice of 20 dresses in three colours and said they could choose their own. In the end they all chose the same dress ‘Amy’ in the colour ‘blossom’. The wonderful Gemma Sutton did our makeup and my hair (Gemma actually had to wake me up as I slept in!)

The Ceremony

Our friend Andre officiated for us which was extra special. We sat down together and wrote the ceremony which enabled us to make it very personal. We also wrote our own vows and there were a lot of tears as I looked out on our guests. Our readings were I Do, I Will, I Have by Ogden Nash (with a couple of edits to modernise) and A Lovely Love Story by Edward Monkton. The readings were light hearted and brought lots of laughter.

The Entertainment

The Bristol String Quartet played at the ceremony and drinks reception. They played Canon in D by Pachelbel, J for the processional down aisle and My Girl by the Temptations for the recessional. Our evening band were Hipster, who were phenomenal and who our guests still talk about. Everyone was bouncing, lots of men lost their shirts and we didn’t want the set to end. Highlights included my Dad and Thomas having a press up competition on the dancefloor at midnight.

The Food

Clever Chefs provided our wedding breakfast and canapes, including mini roast beef and Yorkshire puddings as a nod to my home county. We had a starter of cured meats, cheese and olives. Our main was New York strip steak and chips with Bearnaise. Eva Moon Press illustrated the table names after our favourite San Francisco neighborhoods and Classic Crockery provided the gold rimmed dinner and glassware.

The Cake

Our cake was by Sandra Monger who baked our ideas to reality with four different layers of vanilla sponge with jam and buttercream, lemon drizzle with lemon curd, Belgian chocolate sponge layered with ganache and sticky toffee with salted caramel. We served it as our pudding as is tradition at American weddings.

The Evening Food

We served a hog roast, also by Wellies & Garlic, at 10pm outside the stables where the evening reception was held.

The Photography

Our photographer David from Modern Vintage Weddings was a dream. He captured the story of our weekend beautifully. He was laid back, funny and knew all the right locations to get wonderful photos with perfect light in minimal time. We couldn’t imagine having anyone else with us, he let us dance around and be ourselves and I think his photos show how fun our day was.

The Videography

For our film I also found Ben Walton on RMW from an outdoor wedding I’d seen. I love how he embraces the outdoors and captures light and mood. He was the only videographer I looked at and I pestered him until he was ours for the weekend. We are so happy with our film, he captured moments we didn’t experience ourselves.

{Watch The Film}