Rebecca & Kris

There is just so much prettiness and elegance to enjoy at this relaxed wedding at Gaynes Park, Essex, I don't know where to begin. White Stag Wedding Photography's light and airy style couldn't be more perfect to capture all the love and country vibes, I really feel like I'm there celebrating with the gorgeous couple, basking in the delights it has to offer. Bride Rebecca looks mesmerising in a lace gown from Blackburn Bridal, and the bridesmaids sweet in blush pink and grey multiway dresses. Plus the groomsmen three piece navy suits with horseshoe waistcoat are both stylish and timeless. I'm not sure what the weather is doing in your neck of the woods, but it's currently grey and dismal where I am, so this wedding flooded with light is brightening my day no end. Enjoy lovely ones.

Wedding

Rebecca the Bride: As a couple, Kris and I are really laid back people, with huge amounts of love for our family, friends ….and food. This is something that we were very keen to portray at our wedding. We also didn’t want to be tied to too many traditions and our wedding truly reflected this.

Venue

We chose Gaynes Park, as is a truly beautiful venue with lots of green and open spaces, it also had this wonderful romantic feel to it, which was just perfect for us. Gaynes Park also was so versatile as a venue, with lots of freedom to create the look that you wanted. The whole theme for the wedding we wanted to be light, elegant with a touch of class, so we chose a light blush, light dove grey with a dash of gold thrown in.

Dress

When choosing my dress, I loved the idea of a romantic boho style and a friend recommended a bridal boutique in Blackheath (London). I booked a VIP appointment with the owner of the store and was completely in love with the style of dresses on offer. The dress I picked was a very light mocha colour, which was very unusual with the most stunning lace material and embellishments, being a huge fan of shoes, my dress wouldn’t have been complete without the nude Jimmy Choo’s I had my eye on for years. I chose not to wear any accessories, as the dress was adorned with so much incredible detail, although I did have the most beautiful light and flowing veil, which was a gift from one of my bridesmaids as my ‘something new’

Photographer

We spent almost half a year researching photographers and when we came across White Stag Weddings we knew that they were exactly what we wanted. They are the most genuine, fun and lovely people and captured everything and more as we wanted.

Beauty

Huge. credit to our incredible make up artist Lara (Make up in London) and Pip (Pip Hair Art) our hair stylist for just nailing everything on the day (and keeping us relaxed and calm). If I could offer any advice, it would be to choose suppliers carefully, our hair and make up stylists had worked together numerous times, which made everything seamless before hand and on the day.

Florist & Cake

Our florist, Claire at Lily and May has worked at Gaynes Park numerous times and therefore was able to guide us on exactly what we needed and had lots of photos and examples to show us too! Luckily she had also worked with our cake maker, Abbie at Egg and Moo, who made us the most delicious 5 tier buttercream wedding cake (our fav tier was the strawberry and coconut!) As we wanted fresh flowers on our cake, and they had both knew each other and I was able to leave them to it and not have to worry (and trust me I worry).

Groomsmen

Ever one for sharp suits, Kris and the Best Men and Ushers wore matching dark blue three piece suits, with a horseshoe waistcoat, crisp white shorts and blush ties, nicely finished with a boomastic rose with twine button hole.

Bridesmaids

Our bridemaids wore a combination of blush and dove grey multiway dresses in different style, with hair loosely tied back in a loose plaited boho style. The flower girls and page boys complimented our colour theme perfectly, with the little boys in matching navy shorts and braces with the cutest blush bow ties and the flower girls in white and blush, with pretty pink and gold little ballet pumps.

Food & Drink

With Kris and I being lovers of food and wanting to ensure our guests were well fed, for our wedding breakfast we wanted to be different and so this consisted of 2 huge sharing boards served to each table, one containing a fore rib of beef and the other a lemon and herb rotisserie chicken, both with sides and sauces/ jus to die for. As we mixed our guests up on the tables, some people didn’t know each other, so as an ice breaker, some guests when they took their seats were greeted with a white chefs hat and Kris revealed during his speech that the people with hats were the designated ‘cutters and servers of the meat’ our guests really embraced this and found it so much fun! We had great fun selecting the drink – as we wanted drinks flowing throughout the day, we covered all drinks for our guests throughout the day and night of the wedding, so along with some fab wines, we also ordered huge beer drums of bottled beers for the boys and lots of mini bottles of prosecco with straws for the ladies, there were also signature cocktails and a gin bar in the evening – with a huge variety of gins and different tonics. The wedding breakfast was full of laughter and tears, with my dad kicking things off and giving a heartfelt and beautiful speech, having many in tears, which went completely 360 when the two best men did their speech, bringing out two large plasma screens and lots of crazy embarrassing photos (and stories) about Kris

Entertainment

We had the lovely Lucy from Lula Weddings sing at our wedding ceremony (before, during and drinks reception), she has the most insane voice and really puts her own spin on her songs, her voice compliments the feel of the ceremony in the Orangery at Gaynes Park so well. In the evening, being lovers of funky soul, we had the talented Harry Cambridge ( A Luther Vandross amongst others tribute artist) kick off the evening party celebrations, he got everyone up on the dancefloor, belting out some classics. We also had a gin bar for our evening reception, with lots of different gins and tonics for p

Little Touches

We wanted everyone who attended our wedding to know how much they mean to us, so Kris and I spent months finding old photos of us with each and every one of our guests. We then, to add to the rustic feel of the mill barn at Gaynes Park had them printed ‘polaroid style’ and mounted onto wooden crates and a very old beautifiul barn door, which Kris parents sourced through a salvage yard. It fitted perfectly in with the venue and our guests loved looking back at old photos and living past memories. We also had a huge box of flip flops for those aching dancing feet, luckily I sourced quite a few large sizes as quite a few of the gents utilised these too. The toiletry baskets were a big hit in both the ladies and gents toilets, with everything from a sewing kit, to blister plasters. We had really cute little personalised confetti pots from The Confetti Cone company which our flower girls gave out, which also made a great keepsake as they had our names and wedding date on there.