Hayley & Charlie’s joyful Isle of Wight wedding, with Holly Cade Photography

Published by Claire Gould on July 10, 2020July 10, 2020

Happy Friday, lovelies! Today we’re sharing a wedding full of love and laughter, a party to end all parties and some beautiful styling touches and fabulous DIY ideas. (Table plan goals start right here!) Hayley is stunning in a gorgeous dress from Forget-Me-Not Designs and Charlie’s handsome as can be in a Marc Darcy suit with knitted bowtie. The flowers are fabulous, the cake looks amazing… and the topper is simply brilliant (you’ll have to scroll all the way down to see Hayley & Charlie riding their cats!) All in all, a fun and love-filled wedding perfect for a Friday! Grab a cuppa, and scroll SLOW so you don’t miss anything!

With love,

Wedding photographer’s website

https://www.hollycade.co.uk

How did you choose your photographer?

Holly was recommended to me by a friend at work. I looked up her website when I got home and me and Charlie loved her style. It just screamed out at us. Her photos are less about the formality and more about capturing the joy and happiness of the people and the atmosphere. Charlie and myself aren’t really into the idea of formal photos so it was a match made in heaven. Holly’s photos also have a gorgeous colour and vintage feel to them and I knew our colour scheme of copper, teal and mustard would work perfectly with. Holly also included an engagement photo shoot and a second shooter called Lana in our package. The engagement shoot was brilliant as it makes you relax in front of the camera and is a good trial run before the big day. Having Lana as a second shooter meant she got loads of photos of Charlie, his best men and family all getting ready which I adore.

Were you pleased with your wedding photographer? Do tell… we love a brilliant review!

Me and Charlie are so happy with Holly and Lana. They got some absolutely amazing photos and just captured our day perfectly. I loved getting our photos back and being able to see Charlie’s morning of the wedding. Our photos are everything we could have wished for and more. Holly helped us out so much and answered so many of our questions that were not photography related and just wedding related. I loved the fact Holly and Lana were up for our ideas, I even got pictures of me in my wedding dress with my cats.

Videographer details if applicable – and any thoughts for other couples about having a wedding video?

We didn’t have a videographer. If we could have financially afforded it we would have because even now our wedding seems a lifetime ago.

Tell us about your venue – what made this place special for you?

We got married and had our reception at Haseley Manor in Arreton on the Isle of Wight. This was our second venue we viewed and both fell in love with it immediately. It’s got so many aspects that we love such as the grandeur of the manor house and courtyard, the beauty in the huge grounds and lake and then the intimacy in the barn. My husband is also quite passionate about history and Haseley Manor has a background going all the way back to Saxon times which is just incredible. Haseley Manor was everything we could have wished for and was perfect for our big day.

Did you love wearing your outfits? How was the dress / suit shopping experience?

There’s a wedding dress boutique near my parents called Forget-me-not designs and i’ve walked past them countless times since I was a little girl. I’ve always known that I wanted to get my dress from there and that’s exactly what I did. On the day of dress shopping I took my mum, mother-in-law and 2 of my bridesmaids with me. I let them all choose dresses for me and my consultant picked out a few. I loved so many of the dresses but in the end the one that made me feel beautiful and bridal was one my consultant picked out. As the dresses are made to measure I made a few tweaks such as a lower lace neckline and a lower V on the back.
My shoes for my wedding were some lace, handmade, vintage mid-heeled boots from a company called House of Elliot. They were so gorgeous and comfortable and I managed to wear them for 12 hours on the day (I don’t do well in heels!).
Charlie and his bestmen all got their 3-piece suits all from Marc Darcy online. He went for a striking blue colour which looked brilliant with our colour scheme of copper, teal and mustard. He got their knitted bow ties from Asos and all their shoes from Goodwin Smith. I did get them all braces to wear but none of them would stay put. Lana got some great shots of them wrestling with these!

Did you hire a florist? Tell us about any floral amazingness

We hired a local florist called Nic who has a wonderful shop nearby. I’ve been using her for years for bouquets etc and her style is just gorgeous and romantic and exactly what I could envisage for our day. I knew I really wanted succulents and big flowers like peonies included and Nic went above and beyond. She created succulent button holes, a succulent hair comb for myself, plus a gorgeous flower crown for my parents cockapoo Monty. Everything that Nic and her team made for us was perfect and lived up to my imagination.

As cake lovers here at English Wedding we’d LOVE to know who made your cake, and how delicious it was?

A local lady called Ellie has an incredible bakery called Frostbite bakery. I knew I wanted Ellie as soon as we got engaged. We had a meeting where we discussed ideas whilst tasting a selection of 9 flavours of cake with a cuppa. The cake was more my domain rather than Charlie’s. We went for a 3 tiered cake with the bottom tier being chocolate with oreo buttercream, the middle tier was lemon and raspberry with white chocolate buttercream. Finally the top tier was biscoff with salted caramel buttercream. The entire cake was coloured teal fading to white at the top with homemade macaroons and chocolates covered in edible copper paint. Flowers by Nic added some beautiful flowers and succulents to our cake. Our cake topper was made by Shiny Creations. It’s made of clay and it’s Charlie and myself in our wedding outfits riding adult sized versions of our cats. I love it so much and so many of our guests loved it too!

Tell us about any special personal touches, or creative projects you made yourselves

I never set out to have a DIY wedding but as time passed that’s exactly what happened. Our theme for our wedding was our favourite sci-fi/fantasy book series with little hints to music as Charlie is a music teacher and play a few instruments. Our table numbers were a different book series such as The Dark Tower (Stephen King) or His Dark Materials (Phillip Pullman). Each table had the relevant books on it with a vase full of succulents, moss and lights and a sign made by me.
For the table runners I bought old sheet music books from ebay and glued the pages together to make these. They worked amazingly well and looked so good, all for less than £10.
The seating plan ended up being a huge labour of love. I decided to draw the maps from each book series onto a huge canvas and have everyone’s names by their relevant map. It took me easily 40+ hours to make but it looked brilliant. I upcycled a chest of drawers for our cake to sit on. I really wanted our cake to be a feature and to stand out. I found an old chest of drawers online, sanded and chalk painted the top and sides. I then wall papered the front of the drawers with a teal and copper geometric wall paper. I changed the drawer handles and papered the inside of the drawers with some more sheet music pages. I made a massive mobile type thing to hang over our cake. I glued old book pages to card and cut out hearts with a heart template puncher. I then glued these on fishing wire and hung them from a hula hoop I sprayed copper. This ended up looking so good and striking above our cake.
Our order of the day sign was made with help by my step-dad. I got 6 clocks all set at the correct time (e.g 3pm – I do’s) and drilled them to a large piece of stained wood. I then added vinyls around each clock stating what was happening at that time and added loads of fake flowers around the edge. This sat on an easel that was also stained the same colour.
Me and Charlie made loads of homemade fudge for our sweet table. Trying out various recipes at home 2 weeks prior to the wedding was not the best diet plan. Still it tasted lush though!
In the end I did end up making quite a lot of stuff. I was really worried that I had all these ideas in my head and that they would look terrible in reality when all together, but actually it all looked amazing and i’m so happy I made the effort.

What was your first dance song? Why did you choose it?

Our first dance was Luther Vandross – Never Too Much! I remember it playing in the car about 6 years ago and we both said how much we loved it. We decided then and there it was going to be our first dance song. Charlie proposed 3 years later! At our wedding we had a 7 piece band called Soul Lounge play soul music all night. They played Luther for our first dance. It was brilliant!