Rebecca & Jamie

Not only are Rebecca and Jamie ridiculously beautiful, but you can just see from the emotional filled pictures captured by Lawson Photography that they are head over heels in love too. From start to finish this classic country wedding looks perfect in every way. Tears, laughter, magicians, bands, and flowers and fashion that will make your heart skip a beat. I simply adore the portrait of Rebecca entering the church under that floral arch of dreams, wearing her fabulous ruffled Ian Stuart Pracatan gown. And by her side beautiful maids in rosewater twobirds gowns which inspired the feminine colour palette of this beautiful celebration.

Planning

Rebecca the Bride: I think I had probably been planning my wedding day (minus a groom) since I was about five years old, so when Jamie finally got down on one knee and proposed I imagined wedding planning would be a piece of cake. However after we set a date with two years to go I suddenly became the most indecisive person ever and went into research overdrive with every wedding magazine and blog possible, which I'mm glad I did as it gave me so many fantastic ideas and inspiration to put into our day.

Venue

We knew we wanted to get married in our local church ‘Broughton St John the Baptist’ so that was an easy decision, however the reception venue was more tricky as no venue that we looked at seemed to tick all of our boxes. We then drove past a ‘coming soon’ sign outside a venue so went to check it out and as soon as we drove down the tree lined driveway to the ‘Villa Levens’ we knew it was the one. It was actually just an old, almost derelict manor house at the time, before any renovation work had been started but the manager was fantastic and talked us through every single detail of their plans. After booking it there and then, we visited the venue again several times before the big day to check in on the renovation project, getting more and more excited every time we saw the progress and it was so amazing to finally see it come together exactly how we had pictured!

The Dress

Dress shopping was something my mum and I were obviously most excited about in all of the wedding planning, so when I found my dream dress in the first shop although my mum was the first one to say that it was ‘the dress’, I think she was pretty disappointed the shopping would be ending so soon, so we went to a few more shops just to be sure! But after so much Pinterest research I knew what dress styles caught my eye so I hunted out these designs before choosing which dress shops to go to which I think really helped. I was obsessed with finding a dress with ruffles and ‘the dress’ which was from the fabulous Lotties Bridal Boutique in Lytham ended up being a custom design, as we discovered the designer; Ian Stuart was open to make changes to his designs. So after a phone call to his secretary and a personalised sketch from the man himself, we settled on a custom design of the ‘Pracatan’ dress, and it couldn’t have been more perfect when it arrived! They say when you know, you know and I really did – as soon as I put my dress on I felt like a bride and instantly pictured myself walking down the aisle to Jamie, whereas every other dress had felt almost like I was just playing dress up bride!

Photographer

Choosing our photographers was one of the easiest decisions. I had stumbled across the Lawsons from a list of wedding award winners, and as soon as I looked at their blog of all the stunning photos I was obsessed!! We didn’t need to look at anyone else as we loved their style of natural photography and how they just manage to capture every special moment and true feelings of the day. It was really important to us to have photos that represented how we felt, rather than just posed pictures and we couldn’t be more thrilled with all of the photos. The husband and wife team ‘the Lawsons’ are also the nicest people you could meet and were so unobtrusive on the day that we didn’t even notice they were there at times! My advice to brides to be would be if you are going to splash out anywhere then do it on the photos – you only get this day once so you want to make sure you get photos that you will treasure to always remember your special day!

Videographer

Booking a videographer was something we only looked into later in the wedding planning and Jamie wasn’t convinced we needed one as he thought we wouldn’t watch the video more than once so it would be a waste of money. However I got my own way, and as soon as he saw the highlights clip of our day he instantly took back everything he said and is so relieved that I managed to convince him! The day is such a whirlwind that you forget some of the details of what happened or what was said in the speeches etc, so being able to watch all that back is amazing - we have already watched the film about 1000 times so it was definitely value for money! Again choosing Tom at Silk Wedding Films was another easy decision as when I stumbled across his website I fell in love with every single wedding film I watched, his work is just incredible!

Colour Scheme & Decor

We decided on a theme right at the beginning of the planning which was an elegant and traditional country wedding with a touch of glamour. However, I hadn’t decided on a colour scheme until I set eyes on the Twobirds Rosewater dresses and instantly loved the colour, the fact that they were multi way dresses and so each of my fairly fussy bridesmaids could choose how they wanted to wear it was just a bonus! The colour really suited all the girls and they looked stunning in them on the day. We then chose rose gold sequin table cloths for the function room which complimented the bridesmaids dresses, along with ivory ruffle chair hoods to decorate the room and give it the glamourous feel.

Florist

The flowers were something that we stretched our budget for and it definitely paid off. We had a full garland framing the entrance to the church which was a beautiful photo opportunity and we chose huge tall flower centre pieces on each table in the function room with hanging candles which really gave the room the wow factor! The team at ‘Flower Design’ came highly recommended and I'm so glad I followed advice to go to them as Jane really did manage to turn my vision into reality!

Help

My mum was born to plan weddings as she is super organised and really creative so she was hired as chief wedding planner from day one and we really couldn’t of done it without her! For a bride and groom who both have busy careers, any help that you can get is amazing so definitely take it, as long as they remember that it's your day (which I think my mum did!!) and make every decision with you both in mind, which she definitely did. Mum hand made every bit of the beautiful stationery from the invites, the brochure to give out at church, table names, seating plan etc. If you are able to, it was great to have so much involvement in the stationery to give it a personal touch and made it much more special.

Ceremony

We wanted as many personal aspects in the wedding as we could so we also had my granddad and my oldest friend do readings in the church aswell as my friend singing ‘a thousand years’ just after we said our vows which was quite an emotional moment for everyone.

Favours

We also made our own homemade vodka favours, my step dad hand engraved every guests name onto charms to put on all the wine glasses, and we made our own ‘candy cart’ table for the evening, aswell as ‘hangover kits’ which was a great idea that I saw on Pinterest.

Cake

The lovely Kelly from ‘Pink Frosting’ made the stunning 5 tiered cake which incorporated the ruffles to match my dress.

Entertainment

Picking the entertainment was Jamies job and we wanted to make sure all of our guests had great fun all day and that the night was one big party so he spent a lot of time researching this. Sam Fitton was one of the first suppliers we booked to entertain our guests with his magic at the drinks reception. I can't recommend this guy highly enough, he is amazing – or as all of our friends and family have said ‘he's just magic’! He is so talented and knows everything there is to know about weddings so was also on hand throughout the planning to give us advice whenever needed. We chose the fantastic wedding band ‘The Rush’ for the music who did an acoustic set through the drinks reception and then the full band including saxophone played in the evening and had all of guests on their feet dancing all night long! If you want a party atmosphere I would definitely recommend booking a band rather than just a DJ as it really does get everyone up dancing! We had toyed with the idea of booking singing waiters for a while throughout the planning, to surprise our guests after the wedding breakfast, but it wasn’t until only a few months before that we ended up booking ‘The Best Singing Waiters’, and we were so glad we did as the looks on everyones faces when they realised they weren’t waiters was priceless! They had all our guests up singing and dancing and everyone said it was one of the highlights of their day!! To end the evening we had a sparkler exit and a firework display which was a really special and emotional time to reflect on the magic of the whole day surrounded by our friends and family.

Advice

My advice to all brides to be is to firstly start early! We booked the majority of our suppliers at least 18months before as I didn’t want to be disappointed if we loved someone and they were already booked. Also if you plan to do things yourself don’t leave anything to the last minute as the last few months really does fly by and everything will take longer than you expect! Finally when it gets to the big day just relax and take it all in – your wedding day will be perfect no matter what so just enjoy every second!