There's huge excitement here at the Before the Big Day studio, because there's nothing we like more than a Before the Big Day bride. Beautiful Jude regularly read Before the Big Day in the build up to her wedding, and we even bumped into each other at the Designer Wedding Show! As you can imagine, this makes every detail of Jude and James' wedding extra-special, and I'm hugely grateful to Jude for filling in our Bride's Questionnaire, listing all her wedding suppliers. There are so many beautiful wedding details, it's hard to choose which one to mention first. I love the dusky pink and grey colour theme, Jude's stunning romantic Jenny Packham wedding gown, and the complementary Dessy dresses she chose for her bridesmaids. With the elegant vintage car, super-cool jazz trio, and resident wedding artist, Jude really thought of every wedding detail. Just wait till you see the reception pictures in Part 2 this lunchtime! Fabulous wedding photographs published with thanks to Mike Legg Photography.
We celebrated our wedding day on 26th May 2012, with a service at St Andrew’s Church in East Hagbourne in Oxfordshire where I grew up. Our reception was held in the gardens at Basildon Park, a beautiful National Trust property in Berkshire.
My dress was the 'Minerva' design from Jenny Packham, and my headband was also Jenny Packham. My veil was from a separate bridal shop, it was a single tier veil, studded with tiny crystals. My shoes were Christian Louboutin - I wanted to splash out, but buy a pair I knew I could wear again, so went for silver peep-toe heels. They were so comfortable despite having a huge heel!
I gave my bridesmaids jewellery as thank you presents – long vintage style earrings, and a brooch from Oliver Laudus to pin on their dresses.
My bridesmaids wore long, floaty chiffon dresses from Dessy in 'platinum' - a silver, blue grey colour, which made for a lovely contrast to all the dusky pink flowers. The dresses tied in with my softer dress style – anything structured wouldn't have really matched.
Our florists were Stemtation in Henley-on-Thames for the reception venue flowers, and a local village florist for the bouquets. Both did an amazing job. The bridesmaids bouquets were peonies, sweet avalanche and amnesia roses, with gypsophila, so soft romantic dusky and very pale pinks. My bouquet was slightly bigger and had ranunculus, spray roses and astilbe in as well.
James wore a slate-grey morning suit with a dove-grey double-breasted waistcoat, hired from Austin Reed. We organised hired morning suits for the Best Man, the Dads and all six ushers as well. James wore a silver-grey flower-patterned tie from Thomas Pink to match the bridesmaids' dresses, and all the groomsmen wore a dusky pink tie from Jaegar.
A year before I started planning my wedding it all felt very daunting, with all the decisions that had to be made. But I definitely got more into it as time went on, and a few months before my big day everything seemed to fall into place. It’s a very fun time, but can be overwhelming as well!
Our wedding theme centred around our wedding colours. Our flowers were all soft and dusky pink colours, and the bridesmaid dresses and ushers waistcoats were dove grey, so those were the main colours of the day. If there was a theme, it was 'romantic' and 'soft' to match my dress style, with some glamourous touches at the reception with the the candelabras and cocktail bar.
We chose Basildon Park as our wedding venue because of the beautiful and relaxed style of their gardens, and the views from the back lawn. The house itself is stunning, but that wasn’t what drew us to pick Basildon Park, it was more the beauty of the landscape around it that we loved. We were lucky enough to have a beautiful sunny wedding day, so the whole drinks reception was outside on the back lawn. We entertained our guests with a jazz trio called The New Orleans Footstompers, and garden games.
The flower girls wore floaty chiffon ivory dresses from Monsoon, which were a similar shape to my dress, with flower detailing at the shoulders. I also bought them flower headbands from Etsy shop The Red Magnolia to tie in with the bouquet flower colours.
Our photographer was Mike Legg Photography based locally in Berkshire. We found Mike online and met him a year before the wedding, we loved his style of photography which seemed focussed on capturing the emotion and atmosphere of the day. The pictures he took are beautiful.
♥ Want more garden wedding ideas? ♥ Or how about vintage wedding ideas? ♥
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