Nell & Duncan

The light in this afternoon's wedding is like something from a fairytale - there's just a magical golden glow to everything and it has been captured beautifully by Sandra at Divine Day Photography. Bride Nell looks gorgeous in a simple but elegant gown by Charlie Brear, with a pretty up-do adorned with fresh flowers - the perfect look when you're getting married outside in a meadow surrounded by wildflowers. This is such a gorgeous wedding with a really lovely, positive vibe to it - probably because it was such a team effort as you'll see...

The Fashion

Nell The Bride: I wanted a dress that was relaxed, simple and unstructured and that was going to be fun to wear. The earrings were borrowed from my friend, Lycia, and my bracelet was a birthday present from my brother, Jamie, and my sister-in-law, Onya. And for my shoes, my mum painted some of my old wedges ivory! Duncan wanted something that was classic but with a modern cut, and Mr. Start fitted the brief perfectly!

The Venue

Nell’s aunt and her family kindly let us get married at their place in Kent, which is usually a centre for sustainable living and a charity supporting refugees (frequently working with refugee youth https://www.refugeeyouth.org/). It's a really meaningful place for us. Getting married here also meant we were supporting this really important charity and we asked our guests for donations to refugee youth for our wedding presents.

The Decor

No colour scheme really. The main thing is that it was all very homemade. We just used lots of stuff that was already at The Quadrangle (hay bales, old baths for the alcohol, random furniture for the food stations, trailers) and then for the rest we wanted a simple but rustic look so had Japanese lanterns, wildflowers, lavender, hessian and lots of tea lights/fairy lights. Nell’s stepdad, Steve McColl, printed and designed all the invitations and orders of service.

The Flowers

My mum, Sam, and her friend, Monica Wylie, who is also a florist in Edinburgh, did all the flowers which were wildflowers, mostly picked from around The Quadrangle. All flowers, bouquets, flower girl headbands, and buttonholes were wildflowers. We had big pots/baskets/cans of flowers all over the place! We collected and dried all our own rose petal confetti.

The Ceremony

We wanted our ceremony to be fun and relaxed as well as have some more traditional elements. It was outside (my mum built the altar and did all the big buckets of wildflowers around it) and our very close friend, Nick Gall, was the Celebrant. We had friends and family doing readings, including Dr Seuss ‘Oh the Places You’ll Go!’ and ‘Love is’ by Adrian Henri, and all the guests sang ‘You’re the One that I Want’ from Grease, with the girls singing one part and the boys the other (with words in the order of ceremony). Everyone got very into it!

The Entertainment

Again we wanted to involve friends as much as possible and were so touched that our friend Richard offered to play the Cello during the ceremony. Nell is Scottish and wanted this to be a big part of the day, so our friend Alec played the bagpipes at the start of the reception and we had Scottish Dancing in the evening. We both love music, so had a good sound system set up outside for the reception and a playlist, and then a band for after the Scottish Dancing too. Our reel caller for the Scottish Dancing was John Carver and Chameleon Sounds were our band for the evening.

The Food

Food is so important to us both and my sister is an incredible chef (although is a school teacher in her day job!), so we all did the food ourselves, led by her. We wanted the canapes to be fun and a big part of the reception so we set these up as food stations, so people could wander around and help themselves. We had seven stations including gorgonzola and sundried tomato arancini balls with hollandaise sauce and roast tomato sauce, smoked salmon and truffle honey station, homemade focaccia station with eight different oils and vinegars to dip, tapenade and poppy seed biscuit station, homemade fennel and apricot sausage roll station, and shots of Gazpacho). These were set up on different things like barrels, chest of drawers, old cabinets etc. For the main, we had hog roast with homemade apple and fennel sauce and chili jam, butternut squash tarts, and three different Ottolenghi salads. For pudding we had grilled peaches with a vanilla & basil syrup, served with cheese cake cream, raspberry coulis and lemon shortbreads with Jars of lemon curd served separately on the table because Duncan loves it! We made caramelised oranges in chocolate for the coffee table, and our close family friend made our wedding cake (which was Ottolenghi carrot cake on the bottom, then chocolate, then Victoria sponge on the top, garnished with berries picked from the Quadrangle). We served pies for evening food. We also made our own rosemary syrup for the cocktails! We also did breakfast for all the campers in the morning and lunch for people the following day.

The Photography

We wanted our photos to be really natural and to capture the stories and emotions of the day, as well as being a fine art style. We looked at so many photographers and Divine Day really stood out, as well as offering a really good all-round package and being so nice to work with and so quick at replying to initial emails and answering all our questions. We spent more on photography than any other part of the day and Sandra and Jerri really understood how important it was to us. They were really fun to work with and made us feel relaxed.

The Videography

This was a recommendation from a friend. Dagmar from Cine Weddings was really fun to work with and makes really beautiful videos.

Final Thoughts

Overall, we wanted our wedding to be really homemade and did pretty much everything ourselves (with a lot of help from family and friends).