Nicola & Lloyd

Well hello there uber pretty bouquets with ribbon trailing down! I like you very much indeed. I'm also liking Nicola's simple but oh so pretty Elliot Claire frock which suits her down to the very ground and is the perfect ensemble for her marriage to hubby Lloyd. Equally delicious is where this twosome decided to celebrate saying 'I Do' at the wonderfully rustic Great Barrington Village Hall in Oxfordshire. And that's not all! We've also got the sweetest flower girls, a chic cheesecake, smiles aplenty and flower bedecked updos to gawp at too! Come and take a look!

Nicola The Bride: Lloyd and I have been together 14 years since we were 16, we knew we would one day get married but we weren’t in any rush and we had some things to do before we could afford a wedding. GCSEs, A Levels, Gap year 6 months working & 6 month travelling, University, another Gap year 6 months working & 6 month travelling, moving to London, both studying for 3 years and became chartered accountants and most recently a move to Germany. Neither of us had any set ideas about what we wanted our wedding to be like, no big themes or colour schemes. The most important thing for us was to have our friends and family around us and for everyone to have a great party.

The Bride's Fashion

I wanted my wedding dress to be simple, with sleeves, no train and most of all something that I would be comfortable in all day. This proved more difficult than I imagined. I had tried on about 30 dresses and found nothing, I had decided my only option was to buy a really expensive dress and then pay even more to add sleeves, remove the train, take out all of the underskirts just to get something simple. I had one shop left, Elliot Claire and to my surprise this is where THE dress was waiting.

The Groom's Fashion

A great piece of advice that was given to Lloyd was to use this as an opportunity to buy a really good suit that you will be able to wear again. Lloyd had always been tempted with designer suits for work but could never justify the price tag, now he had the excuse! One of the advantages of planning our wedding from Germany was that we were close to the Hugo Boss Factory shop. The tie and pocket square were from Reiss.

The Venue

Our reception was held at Great Barrington Village Hall which is set in the most beautiful Oxfordshire countryside (only 10minutes from where Lloyd and I grew up). The hall was the perfect venue for ensuring that the day was a relaxed, informal party.

Decor

The decoration we did by ourselves, fairly daunting for two accountants, but with the help of Pinterest, family and friends I think we pulled it off. The magazine hearts were an idea I saw in a little café in Dublin last year and all of the little heart details were borrowed from my sister-in-law's house.

Flowers

All of the church flowers were produced by Lloyd’s Granny. The rest of the bouquets, button holes, venue and hair flowers were created by my very talented bridesmaid Charlie who, with her business partner Jess make up oneflewover flowers, normally based in London. I love everything that they do so I was able to leave it all to Charlie with full knowledge that it would be beautiful and it was!

The Wedding Party Fashion

I wanted the bridesmaids to feel comfortable and love their dresses so they each picked their own dresses the only thing I asked for was that they were a shade of blue. Charlie and Steph both ended up with dresses from ASOS and Simone went for a maxi dress from coast. We were all pampered on the morning with hair from CD Hair and Make up from eyekandibeauty. The flower girl dresses were from Monsoon and the pageboy outfit was from Zara.

Entertainment

Lloyd loves music, his collections is so vast and varied so we decided very early on that he would create our wedding playlist. He spent over a year perfecting it and some of the best wedding planning moments were us dancing in the kitchen picking the songs.

Food

We had a delicious BBQ from NG Catering, Nick and Caroline also provided the amazing cheese cake which then became our evening food. Laura Urschel made us the thank you heart favours and cup cakes as although we wanted a wedding cheese cake, it wouldn’t be a wedding without cake!

Drink

We wanted everyone to be able to relax and have fun and for us a big part of this was making sure no one had to spend anything during the day, so we wanted to provide all of the drink. We really enjoy wine tasting and just so happened that where we moved to in Germany is very close to the Rheingau wine region in Germany. It turns out we are big fans of German Riesling and Sect so we just had to ship some over for our big day. We also love craft beer and wanted people to try some local ales, which we got from Wychwood Brewery.

Photographer

We found Frankee through some professional recommendations and as soon as we saw her website we knew she would be perfect. Lloyd, I and everyone who has seen them, love the photos, we think they really capture the informal, fun day that it was.