Dani & Jason

I imagine this woodland wedding at The Dreys in Kent is a far cry from how the Royal wedding between Prince Harry and Ms Meghan Markle will look today, but what I'm certain both will have in common is undeniable style and love oozing out of them. Have you seen bride Dani's Grace Loves Lace bridal gown? She looks an absolute vision. The geometric pattern and open back is to die for, as is the outdoor ceremony with Persian rugs and bunting decor. You can just tell a whole lot love and hard work has been poured into making this a day to remember. As well as their keen eye for detail Dani and Jason didn't loose sight of their guests enjoyment, throwing them one hell of a festival themed celebration with live music, late night pizza and a cheese tower wedding cake. Capturing all the magic as it unfolded was the lovely Fern Edwards, who fully embraced the couples desire to have smoke bomb portraits and the results are epic.

Photographer

Dani the Bride: We used Fern Edwards on our big day and she was incredible, we can’t thank her enough. We didn’t like the idea lots of staged photos and wanted a photographer who would capture the moment without being intrusive. Fern listened to every request we had and managed to photograph the day perfectly and all the love that surrounded the magical forest where we got hitched; the photos are absolutely stunning. She’s just fabulous!

Videographer

A very good friend of ours George Maguire filmed and edited put our wedding video. He’s an incredibly talented filmmaker with a great eye and captured the day beautifully so we were incredibly lucky.

The Bride

At the beginning I found looking for my wedding dress a completely daunting task as I didn’t know where to start and the price tags were also pretty daunting too. Thanks to Pinterest and Instagram I came across Grace Loves Lace and fell in love with so many of their beautiful gowns. They are an Australian based company so I was worried about ordering a gown online without being able to try it on. However, luckily for me, just as I started to look for dresses they opened up a new boutique in Shoreditch London – right around the corner from where I work! All the Grace Loves Lace staff were super helpful and very efficient with any questions I had. The Shoreditch Boutique is beautiful too - and their Rose tea...just yum. I got my shoes from Net-a-Porter – designer Loeffler Randall. So Comfy!

Venue

The Dreys is the venue we decided upon. We love being surrounded by nature and had always planned to have an outside / forest wedding. We love a festival and more to the point a good party so we filled our day with live music, games, and colour! The Dreys was the perfect Venue for this with its stunning Kent downs scenery and the organisers were just the loveliest couple who are conscious of the environment and made us and all our guests feel so welcome. With 300 guests it was like a mini festival.

The Ceremony

Jason and I had officially got married the the weekend before at Chichester County Hall as that’s where my parents live. So for the forest ceremony we had one of our closest friends Anthony marry us again, and what a fabulous job he did. He was such a great master of ceremony and had wrote the vows himself. We also had two other close friends Jade and Jannine do readings, both such beautiful poems and very fitting for the surroundings we were in. After the ceremony our friend Matt, who is also a bagpipe player called The Piping Experience, lead us out the forest and into the clearing with our guests following behind.

Decorations

Decorations were all homemade (I love that homemade feel) by myself and my lovely brides. Big shout out to Hanna, Sidi, Rhian, Holly, Krissy and Alex who spent hours on pom-pom making. And thank you Rio and Sophie for cutting out all the bunting for me to sew - it was never going to be an easy task when you’re decorating a whole forest! We had pink smoke bombs too as I thought they would look great in some of the pictures in the forest. I loved the contrast of the bright pink smoke next to the natural greenery we were surrounded by.

Food

Seeing as Jason and I are both vegetarians we opted for a vegetarian catering service. To our surprise, there aren’t a huge amount of them around but thankfully we managed to stumble upon Cashew Catering who were brilliant. The food was absolutely delicious, presented beautifully and all the staff were incredibly friendly. Leading up to the big day Jason and I had many questions and John who runs Cashew Catering was always more then happy to advise and put at us ease. I can’t recommend them enough.

Cake

Our wedding cake was made entirely of cheese, we used Wildes Cheeses who are a small award winning independent artisan cheese making company based in North London. Before the wedding we went to the visit Wildes Cheeses and taste all the different products they made. We were then able to decide what cheese we liked best and what ones we wanted for the wedding cake stack. They guys also explain how they make all the cheeses and offered us the chance to go back and make the cheese for our cake, unfortunately we didn’t have time to do this, but I thought it was a nice little touch.

The Groom

Jason’s suit was purchased from Paul Smith after a day spent with his friends roaming round the streets of Soho. He wanted something that was slightly different and that stood out. He took inspiration from a certain David Bowie (my favourite musician) with the double breasted jacket and overall it complemented who he is and our day beautifully. Jason’s suede chelsea boots came from Loake on Jermyn St near the Ritz in London. According to him they are ‘comfortable, cool and classy’ and went with his suit wonderfully well.

Entertainment

We had a brass band who welcomed our evening guest to the forest. They were called the Tuba Libres. They were great and really got everyone in the mood. Evening entertainment consisted of two DJ’s who are both close friends of ours and in my mind the best DJ’s in the world. They made the evening.