A beard full of confetti, the biggest smiles ever, a backdrop buzzing and twinkling with nature, and the loveliest, gorgeous couple – today’s blog comes from South Farm in Hertfordshire, with beautiful images by lovely Shell O’Toole Photography. Lucy & Brad celebrated with fabulous thoughtful touches to welcome guests and make them feel a really big part of their wedding celebrations.

Check out Lucy & Brad’s glowing supplier reviews for talented South Farm wedding photographer Shell O’Toole, for their gorgeous venue – South Farm ticks all of our boxes! – and for florist Sam at Violets & Velvet, content creator Chloe (The Relaxed Bride), make up artist Beth Mills, and hair stylist Becky Nathan.

As always, there’s more on instagram @englishweddingblog because I had so many stunning images to choose from – I couldn’t even fit them all in here!

Wedding photography

By Shell O’Toole Photography, a Norfolk & London documentary wedding photographer with a relaxed and candid style

Photographer’s website

https://www.shellotoole.photos

Wedding photographer review

We couldn’t have asked for better. As we had booked a full day package with Shell, we were also offered a pre wedding shoot. An idea that we thought would be a no for us turned into a one of the best things we did. To be able to meet Shell in person before the wedding and get a sense of how she would photograph us on the day and just what she was like in general meant that we had absolutely no doubts or concerns about our wedding day! And god did she deliver and more! Not only are we completely in love with our photos, she managed to capture the essence of our day so perfectly and our guests will not stop talking about her, they loved her almost as much as we did. Shell made us feel so calm and relaxed and in all honesty made us forget that we were actually having our photos taken at all. We were able to be fully present in our day, soaking up all the moments, knowing that Shell would be doing her thing and capturing it all.

Lucy & Brad’s Wedding Story

Best wedding moment or memory

Our wedding entrance was so much fun! Our guests were all standing, singing and waving their napkins whilst we did a loop of the barn. Someone even handed Brad a mic to sing along to and honestly, the boy didn’t need any encouragement!

Tell us anything you did differently – any NEW traditions (or if you had none at all!)

We hung the wedding photos of our guests in a tree in the garden – we wrote individual notes to each guest that they read when sitting down for dinner. We also did a photo dash which meant that we got a photo with every single guest.

Wedding suppliers

Wedding venue name + review

Award-winning Hertfordshire wedding venue South Farm.

From the moment we arrived to see the venue it really did feel like us. It didn’t feel like we were stepping into any wedding venue but OUR wedding venue. The venue itself is stunning but the staff are incredible. Every single person we met were so helpful and kind and simply couldn’t do enough to ensure we had the most perfect day. No ask was too big and they really made us and all of our guests feel like we were the only people to get married there. South Farm have the running of a wedding down to an art but still make you feel like you’re incredibly special. We can’t thank them enough.

Florist name + review

Our wedding flowers were by Sam from Violets and Velvet. I found it really hard to describe the type of flowers that I wanted since I’m useless with that kind of thing. But with my Pinterest boards and Sam’s amazing knowledge she was able to make us the most stunning flowers that were even better than I had imagined. The bridesmaids and I all had matching bouquets, the boys had their buttonholes, our pew ends had single flowers attached to them and the aisle had two meadow flower displays sitting on the back which framed the ceremony perfectly. Sam created a piece to go on the front of the summerhouse were we had our ceremony and we had bud vases as our centre pieces.

Hair + makeup name + review

Make up – Beth Mills: again I couldn’t recommend Beth enough. She is incredibly talented, made us all feel amazing but also kept us so calm throughout the morning, helping me with getting into my dress and staying until the moment I walked down the aisle.

Hair was by Becky Nathan, owner of The Hummingbird Salon: Becky was amazing too, she did an amazing job with our hair. We all had different hair styles and our hair all lasted all night! She helped us feel incredible and I couldn’t recommend her enough.

Content creator name + review

We had a content creator, Chloe from The Relaxed Bride. Another thing that I would recommend every couple to have. The memories that we have to look back on are priceless, videos of us with our friends and family, moments that we didn’t see, a montage put together which highlight what an incredible day we had.

Our wedding cake

Our friend Elise made our cake and even now we have friends messaging us saying it was the best cake they’ve ever had.

Elise made us three individual cakes since we didn’t want to do a cake cutting. The cakes were incredible and a mix of our favourite flavours; chocolate Oreo and cherry, white chocolate, raspberry and lemon and the final one being sticky toffee.

Our wedding stationery

I made all the stationery myself; menu cards, seating plan and welcome sign and signage around the venue, as well as fans for our guests which doubled up as order of service and bridal party info.

Wedding wear

Tell us a little about your outfits – both of you!

Lucy – Made With Love Bridal‘s Darcy in ivory with my sister in law’s cathedral length veil.
The detail on the dress was everything I dreamed of, capped sleeves, a plunging neckline, heavily detailed flower lace with 3d flowers, a fit and flare style dress.
I also wore a silver bracelet with my maiden name engraved on which was gifted to me by my bridesmaids

Brad – a Moss Bros tweed suit in a taupe colour. With matching green ties and pocket squares to match the bridesmaid dresses

Styling and personal touches

We wrote individual notes to each of our guests. I purposely didn’t let our photographer or content creator know because I wanted people to enjoy the moment of reading them without pressures of cameras being around. Every single person absolutely loved them, there were lots of tears and it’s something people mention now. Letting our favourite people know how much we appreciate them was incredibly important to us. I also recorded a voicenote to Brad which was played before I walked down the aisle. I don’t like talking in front of people but it was important for me that Brad had that moment. We met at school and this was a moment I had dreamt about since I was 14!

Wedding ceremony and readings

We wanted to keep our ceremony as short as possible but we did write our own exchange of rings. Brad’s sister also wrote her own poem, talking about them growing up together, and then the journey that we’ve been on and where we’ve ended up.