It's taken me far too long to put up the second half of this amazing detail-filled wedding, {I've had horrible flu}, but believe me, it's worth the wait! Bride Amy read Before the Big Day while preparing for her wedding, and took her decor details to the next level. We're talking 250 meters of hand-sewn bunting, homemade fudge wedding favours, and carefully painted dog food tin can vases. The result is a perfectly rustic English country garden theme, with a pretty green and blue colour palette. I love all the Colefax and Fowler fabrics, and the DIY'd table flowers, picked from Blooming Green Flower Farm. Look carefully at every picture for the little extras, including the twine-tied jam jar lanterns, the blackboard paint table names, menu cork stands and burlap table runners. Huge thanks to Amy for submitting her wedding, and filling in the Before the Big Day Bride's Questionnaire, and to Kate Murrell Weddings for her beautiful wedding pictures. Don't miss the two fantastic wedding videos at the end - one by
We got married on the 27th July at St Michael and All Angels in Withyham, in Sussex, and we hosted our reception in my parent’s garden ten minutes away from the church.
As I work in interior design I was very into the visual side of the wedding planning, and I had a scrapbook full of sketches, pictures and fabrics! I wanted to go for a very traditional English country wedding look, with bunting, a pole marquee, trestle tables and country garden flowers.
It was actually a small scrap of fabric which inspired my theme, a pretty blue and green floral print on a cream background, and I thought these would be the perfect colours for an English country wedding!
Our wedding photographer was Kate Murrell Weddings, and she works in the photographic department of the hospital where my Dad works, and she does weddings at weekends. We felt at ease with her straight away, she did a fantastic job on the day and we love our photos!
I have always enjoyed doing crafty projects so I tried to make almost everything myself, with the help of my family, bridesmaids, friends and even Alex at times...!
I have always been passionate about fabrics and during the run up to the wedding I was working for a fabric company called Colefax and Fowler, so it made sense to use as much fabric as possible for the decorations, especially as they kindly gave me lots for free!
My mum and I made 250 metres of double sided bunting using hundreds of different fabrics, plains, stripes, checks, florals and geometric patterns, all in blues and greens. It was a huge task but it saved a lot of money on other decorations, brought lots of colour and pattern into the marquee and created the rustic country feel that I wanted. We were also hoping that other people might like to hire it out for their weddings afterwards!
I wanted to have quite rustic looking blackboard table plan, so Alex made it out of MDF and we painted it in blackboard paint.
A friend of ours, who has far nicer writing than me, wrote out all the names in chalk pens. The brilliant thing about this, is if there were any last minute changes, it wasn't too much of a disaster, as it could be painted over!
We named our tables after places in Verbier as that was where we met and got engaged. Alex proposed to me at the top of the highest peak, Mont Fort, so that was our top table! We had a Verbier piste map framed with photos and descriptions explaining the stories behind each table name! We also had Jaeger bombs as a toast after supper, as a reminder of après-ski in Verbier!
My Mum and I and a team of family and friends did all the flowers in the marquee. My Mum spent months saving dog food tins and we painted them all in blue and green Farrow & Ball colours and did the table arrangements in those.
We picked the majority of the flowers at a flower farm in Kent called Blooming Green Flower Farm and used flowers from our garden and friend’s gardens too. My Mum also did the garlands on the poles too; she put them all up herself on the morning of the wedding!
Our airing cupboard became a confetti factory and we dried lots of blue, green and cream petals, which we used for confetti at the church and sprinkled over the hessian table runners too.
I wanted to have very traditional invitations so I had them printed at Gee Brothers in Clapham in black thermographic script, on oyster wove card. For the actual day itself I stuck with the rustic theme and had stamps made by the English Stamp Company with our names and the date.
I printed the menus on manilla paper, and backed them with different blue and green wallpapers. I also made the menu stands with corks, sticks and mini clothes pegs!
Again, making the most of having access to beautiful fabrics in my job, I used small samples of blue and green prints from Colefax and Fowler to make little bags, which contained fudge made by Alex's Mum. We then tied them with raffia and added a luggage tag name-tag, killing two birds with one stone!
I wanted to have a very rustic, country feel to all the flower arrangements, and obviously wanted to use all blue, green and cream flowers, particularly hydrangeas.
I loved planning our wedding, especially the creative side of it! It was quite an emotional rollercoaster though, lots of highs and a few lows – during the more stressful moments! But generally it was such a special time, both for Alex and I, and our families, and it brought us all closer together.
Now it is all over we are quite relieved not to have to do wedmin all the time, but we would love to do the day all over again as it really was the happiest day of our lives and it went far to quickly!
We had a fantastic band called The Ruby Tones, who are a five-piece band with brilliant female lead singer. The dance floor was packed all evening and I hardly left it!
We used a company called MB Productions to do our video. They filmed a friend's wedding and when we saw their video we knew we had to have them. They did a long video, and a short highlights as well. Although they weren't cheap, it is the best money we spent! The day is such a blur already and they captured it so beautifully. It is such a lovely memory, that we can share with all our friends and family too on Vimeo!
My cousin Georgia Rothman also did a fun video set to Robin Thicke Blurred lines, with us and our guests mouthing to the lyrics, it is brilliant and she is now in demand for friend’s weddings!
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