Happy Bank Holiday Monday! Today’s wedding is relaxed and fun – with the loveliest DIY styling touches and a vintage vibe – oh, and the prettiest bride! It’s a fabulous wedding and I love it all the more for the fact that Will made all the paper flowers. What a superstar! (I love anything that stomps on the myth that grooms don’t get involved with wedding planning.) This is seriously special, and I just know you’re going to find some brilliant ideas for your own wedding in here. Images are by lovely Katie Winter Photography. Have a wonderful day everyone!

With love,

Wedding photographer’s website

https://www.katiewinterphotography.co.uk

How did you choose your photographer?

We had seen Katie at a few of our friends weddings and when we saw their pictures we knew she was the right person for the job. When we met Katie for the first time it was like chatting to a friend and the communication with her from that point on was brilliant. She really listened to the sort of photography we wanted and completely took that on board.

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

Katie was fantastic – we could not have asked for better. When Katie arrived to take pictures of us getting ready in the morning it was like having another friend there. She snapped away but was never in the way or intrusive in any way. She continued to carry on like this throughout the day. Her second photographer Tom was also brilliant. Katie went above and beyond and by the time we went to bed in the early hours of the morning the next day she had already sent us two of our beautiful photos over email. We could not recommend her more.

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

We got married at Winchester Guildhall. We both love Winchester and when we were researching venues it seemed to tick all of the boxes. Good location, pretty room and enough space for all of our guests! For our reception we hired Soberton Village Hall. We had hired the hall for the whole weekend so with lots of help from family and friends we managed to set up the hall on the Saturday, have the wedding on the Sunday and then clear it all away on the Monday. It was such good fun!

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

Absolutely! I loved dress shopping – it was one of my favourite things about organising the wedding. I thought it was going to be difficult to find something that I liked but in actual fact it was really difficult because I loved them all! I went shopping with my Mum and she was brilliant at not giving her opinion until I had given mine although I knew she liked my wedding dress because she cried the first time I walked out in it! My shoes acted as my something old as Wil had given them to me on my birthday the first year we were together.

Wil knew that he wanted a brown suit so he looked online and found one that he liked. He then set about finding a hat to match but as luck would have it he already had a hat in that fabric – it was like it was meant to be! He then found some brown and white brogues to match his suit.

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

Wil made all of the flowers. He had decided that he wanted to make his own button holes out of old sheet music (he is a music teacher and has a love of music) and when I saw how awesome they looked I asked him to make my bouquet as well. He also made four bridesmaids bouquets, flowers for in the bridesmaids hair, the petals that were scattered by the flower girls and all of the table centrepieces. I cannot even begin to think how much time he spent making them all but they were perfect and can be kept forever!

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

Laura’s sister Emma made the cake. Although she doesn’t have any qualifications she had made cakes for family occasions in the past so we knew that she would do a fantastic job. The cake was a three tier sponge cake with a chocolate sponge, lemon sponge and classic Victoria sponge. It was delicious.

We also had a cheese cake made by Laura’s cousin Dan as we are both cheese lovers! It had seven different cheeses and was used as the centre piece for the evening buffet. Everybody loved it and some people even took a bit away with them for the taxi ride home!

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

We wanted to do as much as we could by ourselves so that it was unique to us. Wil is really creative so he made lots of different bits such as screen printing the invitations and making the wooden signs used inside and outside the hall as well of course as all of the flowers. We made our own photo booth and sweet table and our friends made brilliant L&W initials to stand in front of the stage. As lots of our friends are musicians Wil organised some of them into four different bands and they all played at the evening reception. Some of them had never played together until that day so it was a miracle that they sounded so good!

Did you personalise your vows or have any wedding readings? What were they?

We wanted to keep the ceremony as lighthearted as possible so we chose readings that we hoped would make people laugh. Our first reading was by our sister-in-law Charlie and was ‘Yes, I’ll marry you my Dear’ by Pam Ayres. Our second reading was by Wil’s old friend Rob Summers called ‘Dinosaur love’ by Harry Baker. We asked our three nephews to be a part of the reading too by helping Rob with the Dinosaur roars! What we didn’t know was that Rob had got the three boys Dinosaur hats to wear for the performance which was such a great touch and made all of the guests laugh. When we were signing the register our friends had organised to play an acoustic version of ‘One day like this’ by Elbow. It was so lovely and was a really special part of the day.

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

We didn’t have a first dance as such because Wil was playing the keyboard in the band! I had to take to the dance floor with my bridesmaids instead! We did have a last dance at the end of the night though to ‘Belongings’ by Clock Opera. It was the same song that I walked down the aisle to. It is such a beautiful song and the lyrics are just perfect.

Favourite wedding suppliers

Photographer – http://www.katiewinterphotography.co.uk/
Make up artist – https://www.facebook.com/charlieloumua/
Hairdresser – https://www.facebook.com/karenclarkehairstyling/
Caterers – http://www.hampshirefeast.co.uk/
Dress shop – https://www.anyabridal.co.uk/
Suits – https://marcdarcy.co.uk/
Car – http://www.splittyweddinghire.co.uk
Beer – http://www.suthwykales.com

We will forever be in debt to all of our family and friends who went above and beyond to make our wedding so special. We feel completely blessed to have so many wonderful and generous people in our lives.