Pool Party Weekend Long Wedding In Spain With Bride In Flower Crown

This party-loving duo settled on Spain for their weekend long wedding, complete with pool party, sets from various DJs, brightly coloured florals and the most delicious sounding Spanish cuisine... Jo and Jim are a creative, stylish couple through and through, Jo runs a vintage clothing company (as well as working as cabin crew for BA and having two children!), and Jim owns a party boat that operates on the Thames! So as you can imagine, their wedding is full of fun and gorgeous fashion choices. The beautiful images come from Adj at Travers & Brown, and they will absolutely have you booking the next flight to sunnier climes...

Pool Party Weekend Long Wedding

Jo & Jim: Our venue was La Palacete de Cazulas in Andalusia, near Granada in Spain. We found this dream of a venue online after setting our hearts on a big two day party somewhere sunny where all our families could stay together and this had everything we wanted - beautiful, historic, with a quirky little chapel, a converted olive mill for our evening party and a stunning pool and bar for our pool party. We decided that we wanted to make use of all the beautiful spaces so planned our day around this for our 90 guests – starting with the chapel, moving through the gardens to the lower terrace overlooking the valley below, then upper terrace for dinner followed by party in the olive mill. Then all about the pool area and outside bar for day 2. We laid on transport for all our guests, as we were tucked up high in the hills and most of our guests stayed down on the coast. 



Friends & Family Help

We wanted everyone to be an important part of our wedding and so asked anybody and everybody to offer up their own particular talent / services instead of a wedding present, this worked spectacularly and thank goodness everyone was more than happy to participate. It not only saved us ALOT of money but most importantly bought everyone closer and united all our families and friends even more. 

One of our biggest coups was Adj Brown (a friend for many years) - best photographer in the world who happens to be married to my best friend Lucy Jenner-Brown who designed our table layout ( collecting and painting vintage glasses for months in the lead up!) 
 Also, Faye Dobinson, another of our dearest friends who happens to be a celebrant - who gave a wonderfully funny and personal service which had everyone laughing with tears in their eyes, perfect! 

My mother in law Jackie Britton who is a florist, worked tirelessly to get the flowers perfect, I wanted clashing brights - coral, orange, shocking pink as I thought they would just pop out underneath the Spanish sun and the stunning palace walls. 

The cake was imported in from M&S (my family had a cake a piece as their hand luggage!) I wanted it gold and covered in fresh flowers so my mum and auntie in law spent hours the day before icing. 

My sister who teaches dance choreographed a last minute dance routine to surprise my groom!

 My sister in law to be and one of my best friends organised my dream of a hen weekend and also managed to sort out my hand drawn invitation and designed our "save the dates."

Spanish Wedding Planner

Our 

Wedding Planner was recommended by a friend of a friend who we found out about after booking the Palacete also got married there! Jennifer McCloy from Spanish Wedding Planner was a wonderful hardworking perfectionist who went above and beyond.

The Entertainment

Following our wedding in the beautiful chapel in the grounds of Cazulas, guests enjoyed drinks and were serenaded with a brilliant Spanish guitar player along with an artisan Jamon carver on one of the lower terraces which had spectacular views over the valley followed by dinner on another terrace

The entertainment - Jim and I used to be part time party animals (pre kids) so we wanted to throw a party to end all other parties and had the perfect space at the venue in a converted olive mill! We LOVE our music so more of our talented friends got involved! 
Our first DJ Andy Jones (actually a professional musician and music producer) agreed to dj first - he used to play at my vintage clothes pop ups, so I just love his eclectic music taste and he bought the house down, finishing up with Bugsy Malone “we coulda been anything” the place was rocking! 

After Andy our old friends Dave & Lee Grimshaw agreed to do the headline slot! They play a wonderful mix of northern soul/hip hop/disco/rock and nobody left that dance floor!! We took out with us thousands of different glitters and stencils and the older girls did glitter tattoos on all the younger kids, we bought balloons, miles of white bunting and heart diffraction glasses. As a complete surprise and a wonderful wedding present from my husband - he arranged everything - and flew out my favourite DJ from home BEN JAMIN, he rocked up at midnight and played till 5am where Jim & I were the last woman and man standing! Ben got his head down for a few hours then got up and started straight away djing on our wedding party day 2 pool party. It was very rock n roll!

The Food

We wanted a very relaxed and informal dining experience as so many of our guests have young children so we decided on a Spanish barbecue with salads. Day 2 we wanted something typically Spanish so had a giant paella which all our guests grabbed a bowl of with bread and flopped anywhere and everywhere to eat, it worked so well. We organised nannies - Creche Spain - and they were truly amazing. They arrived, set up and the kids all went into the palace for some crafts / soft play etc for the 3 hours during the speeches and the start of the party which worked wonderfully well and all the mums and dads were beyond grateful for some time out.

Toni Maticevski Wedding Dress

I love the Australian designer Toni Maticevski and saw a picture of this particular dress (exclusive gown) and knew it was the one, simple as that! Ordered it, tried it on and never looked at any other dresses, I wanted something simple but with a quirk which this dress had in spades with the big shoulder detail. I didn’t want a veil, just a flower crown which my mother in law got up at 6am the day of the wedding to make! Our children – Nancy (4) and Beau (2) wore outfits from good old M&S but I wanted us all to have bright red shoes so they wore red converse and me red mules, and they were fully involved in every part of the wedding