Sarah & Elliott

There is a lovely richness to this elegant wedding at Ramster Hall in Surrey. I think the beautiful scarlet and blush blooms mixed with gold accents and twinkling fairy lights makes for one heady combination. Add Sarah's stunning minimalist Pronovias gown with diamanté encrusted belt and you have one very beautiful, regal bride and wedding indeed. Matt Penberthy has captured all the elements beautifully, with an abundance of gorgeous shots of the bridal party and their blush multiway dresses from Coast as well as all those fabulous flowers, love and happiness.

The Dresses

Sarah the Bride: My dress and accessories were from Pronovias, from their New Bond street store in London. I had a great experience buying my dress from there. I had a panic after placing my order and looking at photos on my phone, I totally went off the belt I had chosen. They were very accommodating and let me go back and try it on again and change the belt. I would recommend deleting photos of you in your dress as I spent so long looking at the pictures and doubting it, however I loved it on the day. The Bridesmaid dresses were from Coast and our makeup was done by Sarah Hale.

Grooms Attire

Elliott’s suit was tailored by Segun Adelaga, and his shoes were from the same designer. As someone who wears a suit everyday to work he wanted something a bit special but one he would also be able to wear again. The usher’s ties were from Hermes however they wore their own suits.

Venue

The venue was Ramster Hall in Chiddingfold. We were told about the venue through a friend and loved the area. The venue was great for keeping guests altogether as you could shut off areas after a certain time. It also has a beautiful courtyard for the drinks reception and cocktails after dinner. We decided to use the venue to choose the colour scheme as it had a tudor style with lots of red and gold on the chairs and walls. We had lots of flowers in reds, blush, burnt orange and pinks with a lot of foliage. We had an amazing florist called Sandra Short who is a friend of ours. We went to New Covent Garden market with her to buy all the flowers, which was a really fun part of the preperation. Originally we thought I could do the flowers myself, this made me realise I definitely couldn’t have, for one the quantities required were much more than I had envisaged.

Decor

All other decorations I did myself with the help of my now Mother-in-law, Helen Ford. I spent weeks buying vases and candlelabras and storing them in our flat. This allowed me to spread the cost over time and also hunt round for items. I made the votives by spray painting jam jars, which I also used on the table numbers. The first and probably most useful thing I bought was a stamp from Etsy with our names and the date of the wedding. I used this for the save the dates, invites, ceremony booklets and sweet bags. Making the save the dates and invites was time consuming and probably didn’t cost any less than buying them but it was fun to do and made them personal. I decorated the courtyard with gold cushions which Elliott’s step mum Vivienne had made for us and we had A1 gold frames with pictures of us from when we first met up to today. As we met at 14 and 17 these were a bit of entertainment for the guests. I got a basket and filled it with flip flops for the ladies to swap their heels at the end of the night which was probably the most popular addition. The favours were homemade limoncello that I made months in advance. It helped to get things done as early as possible so I could tick things off the list. I also didn’t want to see lots of favours left at the end of the night.

Stationery

I used the ceremony booklet to introduce the Bridesmaids and Ushers to the guests that included a photo of each of them, I also used this to give them the times of the day and also thank them for coming. It added as something to read as I was unintentionally half an hour late!

Ceremony

The ceremony was made extra special as Elliott’s younger brother and sister, Claudia and Oliver, did a reading that they had written. It was addressed to me and they had memorized it word for word which was incredible. The other reading we had was by my friend Emma and she choose ‘The Art of Marriage’ which was lovely. The registrar actually got my name wrong at one point in the ceremony calling me by my friend who had done the readings name. It was awkward at the time but was quite funny afterwards, with many guests referring to me as ‘Emma’ for the rest of the day.

Entertainment

We had a great duet, who sang during the drinks reception and the most incredible seven piece Motown band in the evening, Motown Gold, both from Earcandy. The band had our guests dancing all night and were loved by all ages from the nans to the teenagers.

Food

The catering was provided by Jacaranda, they also provided all the bar staff and help on the day. We decided to be selfish and just order our favourite food so had prawn cocktail followed by steak. They made it look and taste incredible. For dessert we had our wedding cake which was a chocolate cake. This was made by a family friend of ours, Caroline Percival. Having it as dessert gave more attention to the cake which was important to us as we knew how much effort Caroline had put into it.

Photography

At the end of the wedding we felt a bit gutted it was all over and found it hard to remember everything that happened. That is when the arrival of the video and photos was so exciting. Our photographer was Matt Penberthy. We heard about him through looking at photos of our venue so we knew he had been to the venue before and knew his way around it. It was by far the best photos we had seen at the venue and his style seemed relaxed with more of a focus on capturing the day then posed photos, which is exactly what we wanted. I was nervous to see the photos however we were so happy with them, especially the natural ones of our guests. He also captured everything we had made which was nice given how much time we had spent. Looking through the photos allows us to relive the day.

Videography

Our video has the same effect and is a short montage of the day capturing all the moments you miss. Our videographers were from Fitzroy Productions. It was especially nice to watch our vows and listen to the speeches again, it is amazing how much you have to take in in one day. Both the photographers and videographers completely blended in so we didn’t really notice them on the day.

Best Bits

The highlight of our day was our first dance, which was strangely the only bit of the day we didn’t really plan or rehearse. It was quite nice to leave one thing to chance.