Suzanne & Wayne

Despite the rain making an appearance at this gorgeous classic wedding at Wasing Park, our fabulous bride & groom are still full of smiles and still had the best day ever. Especially our stunning bride in her lace Lusan Mandongus gown who has the most beautiful and infectious smile ever. I'm totally in love with the mint green & peach colour scheme, it's so fresh and summery and really lifts the spirit despite the great British weather! The pastel multiway bridesmaid dresses and rose bouquets look amazing together as does the delicious cake decorated with greenery & blush David Austin roses. There is also a truly fabulous guest book alternative, not to mention speeches sweepstake board. Which I'm sure you'll all be wanting to pin. I've always loved this mini challenge during a wedding and I bet it was made so much more fun with the winner receiving a magnum of Bollinger!

The Dress

Suzanne The Bride: I hunted high and low for my dream dress and I tried on everything from big puffy fairy dresses to vintage lace, fishtail and silk slinky numbers. 65 dresses later and many many trips dragging my mum and my bridesmaids around dress shops in and around London, I found the one! I instantly knew as soon as I stepped into it. I wanted something elegant, a little bit sexy and with a statement back. I also wanted something that had an element of princess but without being the big puffy dress which I thought would be too hot for a July wedding. This dress ticked all the boxes. I instantly fell in love with the slim fit, the low lacy back, the more modern delicate lace and the tulle overlay that gave it its gorgeous soft finish. I felt like a princess! Chambers tailors did all the alterations and they were excellent at creating a masterpiece that fit me like a glove. I added satin buttons on the seam of the zip at the back which they happily did for me to add that extra detail.

Beauty

Our Nails were painted by my friend Charlotte Chaffey who runs her own nail business local to where I grew up in Oxfordshire (Lotties Nails Oxfordshire). She spent the whole day with us at my parents’ house and worked relentlessly painting all 10 of us and did such a beautiful job! I went for classic French and the girls went for a pastel pink to match the pastel theme of pink, peach and ivory roses that were in their bouquets and decoration for the venue. For Hair and Make up I booked the K-Team. Their work is exceptional, precise and they made the atmosphere on the morning of the wedding so relaxed. Kasia Fortuna styled my hair. I wanted my hair down but in a style that would show off the detail on my back with the lace lined low cut of the dress. At the trial I fell in love with the tumbling curls swept over to the side – it was natural, lots of volume and flowed. Exquisite! Kristina Gasperas did my make up – I felt like a movie star! She listened to everything I wanted and the result was perfect – natural, glowing, definition on my eyes and a flush of colour to my cheeks. All my bridesmaids and my mum were styled by Kasia and Kristina too plus their two assistants; Amy Goode and Kasia Sister.

Jewellery

With the high neck on the dress and the embroidery sequins giving the dress some sparkle, I did not need much in the way of jewellery. I wore my diamond earrings that my now Husband bought me on our 1st Christmas together and the tennis bracelet that I wore was a present from my parents (Ruth and Paul) from Swarovski. Just enough glamour to complement the dress.

Groom and Groomsmen and Page boys

The men worse a classic morning suit with a Dove Grey waistcoat and a pastel pink and blue tie to match the pastel colour theme of the wedding. The Page boys wore grey trousers, light grey waistcoat to match the groom and his ushers and a light mint green tie to match the bridesmaids’ colour scheme.

Bridesmaids

The Magnificent 7! It was really important to me that my best friends, my sisters and my mum were with me the morning of my wedding hence the excessive number of bridesmaids! The bridesmaids wore dresses from In One Clothing in light mint green. The options for styles were endless with these dresses which was perfect for my bridesmaids. The flexibility that the dress gave the bridesmaids was perfect – they could each style their dress in the way that suited them best. With seven bridesmaids it was going to be impossible to find one dress that fit all. The dresses also came in a maternity version too which was brilliant for the two that were 7 months pregnant on the day!

DIY

We wanted to make our wedding as personal as possible. Signage detailing key dates and events from our time together was put up along the grand entrance to the venue. This helped tell our story and build excitement as guests made their way up meandering driveway. We also painted a wooden crate with the order of our day, we felt it fitted perfectly with the rustic feel of the day and helped to take some pressure of the ushers telling people what would happen when. A very good friend of ours kindly signed up to creating all of our stationery for the wedding. He made all the invitations, designed a stamp for our envelopes, printed all the name tags for the place settings, designed all the table names and the seating plan. At all the weddings we had been to in the past we always played a sweepstake for the speeches length, so we decided it would be fun to make it an official event at our wedding. We created a time board and guests signed up to a time of their choice with the prize being a magnum of Bollinger Champagne. For the castle barn we filled the room with tea lights which were placed in holders that I dipped in gold glitter. For the place settings I wanted to do something a bit different to just luggage name tags so I painted over 100 bride and groom pegs which attached the luggage tag to the napkin. Table names were printed by Neil in the theme of 80s films – we are 80s babies so seemed a good fit! Finally instead of a guest book, Neil created us a huge board of hearts which guests could write their messages in. Being able to have a bespoke guestbook allowed us to perfectly accommodate the wedding colour scheme. I knew that after the wedding a guest book would get lost under the sofa or put away up in the loft which seemed a shame to hide all the wonderful messages guests wrote to us. The board is now framed and hung up in our dining room on the wall as a reminder of all the kind words from our family and friends from our big day.

Food

Galloping Gourmet invited us for a tasting evening which helped us decide our menu, canapés and wine selection. For Canapés we went for mini burgers, chicken skewers, duck spring rolls and goats cheese mousse tartlets. The wedding breakfast was delicious and perfectly executed with a starter of smoked salmon and Bibury trout mouse, a main of Fillet steak and Dauphinoise potatoes followed by our favourite dessert; New York Cheesecake with a raspberry sauce. The wedding cake was assembled by the caterers Galloping Gourmet. We ordered three different sized cakes from Hummingbird Bakery in red velvet and carrot cake and it was assembled into a three tier cake. Decoration was all done by our florist Ann Laing with beautiful peach roses to match my bouquet and the colour scheme of the day.

Entertainment

For Wayne and I, the music at our wedding was one of the most important aspects of the day and so our focus was to put on the best party possible for all of our guests. Despite not having a church wedding, we wanted the procession for the ceremony to be just as grand and special so Mango Acoustic were a perfect choice for this. We struggled for a long time to decide on a procession song until we found ‘The Wonder of You’, a beautiful song with special words that was coincidently number 1 on our wedding day in 1970. Our acoustic duo kindly learnt the song for us and created such magical entertainment for the ceremony. They put on a tremendous performance after the ceremony too and played for several hours while guests sipped champagne and pimms. Our 1st dance song ‘Cant take my eyes off of you’ was sung by my sister with our band Hipster. The band then performed two 1 hour sets and the guests just did not stop dancing, the chemistry they had with the room was electric! They were totally exceptional! So good in fact, they even played a few songs totally off the cuff to meet the demands of our by now, slightly tipsy, guests.

Venue

Not even a chilly and wet summer’s day could spoil the beauty of our venue. Nestled in the Berkshire countryside we found our venue, Wasing Park. It was an excellent wedding venue and was our 1st choice due to the fact it had everything you could possibly need for a wedding all on one site. We had our civil ceremony in the light and airy Garden Room which was decorated perfectly with candles and all the flowers and chair tulle bows provided by events for you and our florist Ann Laing. The reception took place in the grand Castle Barn with its impressive outside structure, cosy interior and raised stage for the band to perform on. The big bonus for us was the accommodation on site where 60% of our guests could stay after the wedding. Over half of the rooms were brand new and decorated to a very high specification. All those on site were also able to make use of the Stable’s lounge area until the small hours, this was a perfect conclusion to our perfect day, especially when the cheese toasties and chips were brought out at midnight! But more importantly, to enjoy our 1st breakfast together as husband and wife with all of our closest family and friends was are really memorable thing to experience. And last but not least, the team at Wasing were brilliant. The accommodation team looked after us and the guests perfectly including packed breakfast for those that had to leave very early the next day. Gemma at Galloping Gourmet did a tremendous job answering all our questions in the lead up to the day and on the day itself. The day ran like clockwork and all very relaxed which was exactly how we had envisaged.

Photographer & Videographer

Guy Collier is simply the best photographer. After a lot of deliberation over many great photographers in the industry, Guy stood out a long mile. We got on with Guy the minute we met him over a Skype call – he has a great sense of humour and is very professional in his approach and preparation for the big day. We instantly knew he would blend into a crowd of guests and that the guests would enjoy his company as well as us. This really did make a difference on the day itself because he put everyone at ease and tip-toed his way around all our guests to take magnificent natural shots and capture some truly amazing moments in our wedding day. The photographs that he captured for our day speak for themselves and Guy did exactly what it said on the tin capturing every precious moment of our best day ever. The emotion, the laughter, the friendship and most importantly the love at our wedding just radiates from his collection of amazing photos. The documentary style of Guy’s photography was an absolute winner for us because we wanted to be able to re-live our special day every time we looked through the photos. Guy achieved exactly that and his photos brought back the day to life for us. All the feelings came flooding back when we looked through all the photos he captured which was an amazing feeling that not every photographer could achieve. Guy is exceptional at what he does, genuine and delivers. He was also incredibly flexible on the day as we dodged heavy showers on a number of occasions to get the pictures we wanted. Due to having elderly Grandparents who were unable to travel from overseas for our wedding, we also decided that a videographer was an important piece of our wedding puzzle. ‘Hint of Mint’ had a beautifully natural portfolio of videos and seemed to steer clear of the sometimes cheesy staged shots that some videographers do. What they offered fitted perfectly with our needs, they captured the ceremony, speeches and 1st dance in full and we’re eagerly awaiting the full highlights video to be able to re-live our day once more. Both the cameramen fitted seamlessly around the day, our guests and Guy.

Florist

I knew from the day we booked Wasing Park what the style of flowers for my wedding would be. Peach has always been a favourite colour of mine so I knew I wanted peach roses to feature. After choosing the colour of the bridesmaid’s dresses and falling in love with the light mint green, I decided to have pastels as the colour scheme for the day. For my bouquet I wanted something special and something different. My florist told me about David Austin peach roses which I loved so we put in our order for the stems. My bouquet was a mixture of peach David Austin roses, Ivory avalanche roses and pale pink spray roses. My bridesmaids had 4 peach roses set in a cloud of white gypsophila. I would recommend my florist Ann Laing to anyone – the bouquets and button holes were beautiful and she did an amazing job on the day decorating all the tables with jugs of hand tied pastel colour flowers, small cut vases and little ivory coloured buckets. The venue looked beautiful with the splash of pastel colours everywhere you looked.

Advice

Everything takes longer than you think!!! We found that lists and spread sheets were our saviour even if they were never ending! We were really keen to try and have everything done a few days before the wedding so we could relax with friends and family and really savour the build-up. When the day itself arrived, we both felt completely at ease that we had achieved everything we intended to do to make our day special and personal to us. It made the preparation on the day much more relaxing knowing that everything was ready. If rain is forecast for your wedding day don’t worry about it, prepare for it and embrace it. We all dream of a sunny day with comfortable temperatures but the British weather is one of the few things you can’t control so don’t let it stress you out. If anything it created a unique togetherness at our wedding that we wouldn’t change for the world. Savour every moment, it could be the only time you have everyone you love and care for in the same place, that is so special.