A stunning and sustainable wedding with a plant-based menu, handmade bespoke wedding dress and a wonderfully summery vibe. Today’s gorgeous couple Janna & Seb were married when pandemics were made up things in films, and the joy and freedom of their day is a delight to see! Huge thanks to lovely dressmaker Felicity Westmacott who first told me about their wedding, to Janna & Seb for a lovely interview, and to Hampshire photographer Lasting Impressions by Lucy for the glorious images.
Wedding photographer’s website
https://lastingimpressionsbylucy.co.uk
Were you pleased with your wedding photographer? Do tell… we love a brilliant review!
We absolutely loved our wedding photos, and really enjoyed the experience of having a friend photograph us on the day. It made it feel so much more personal and intimate.
Videographer details if applicable – and any thoughts for other couples about having a wedding video?
We asked friends attending the wedding to film video clips using their smart phones. In hindsight: not reliable getting a rounded selection of footage, and not all in landscape mode (despite being asked!). We weren’t too precious though and got a few nice clips sent to us which was great.
Tell us about your venue – what made this place special for you?
Cadhay House in Devon is a stunning venue. We really wanted to have a garden party and feel at home at the venue, and Cadhay allowed us to stay for the whole weekend with our close family and friends, making a really relaxed atmosphere. The gardens there are beautiful, and we really enjoyed getting our guests to walk around amongst the flowers, we even made a treasure hunt for the children. The venue had everything – a beautiful historic house (very important to us as we’re both architects), wonderful gardens suitable for a garden party with croquet lawn, plenty of space for a marquee for dining, a barn for a ceilidh with bar, and a range of other spaces for guests to sneak away to enjoy a quiet moment.
Did you love wearing your outfits? How was the dress / suit shopping experience?
We both loved our outfits – the dress was designed by me (Janna) and made by Seb’s cousin, bespoke bridal designer Felicity Westmacott. In fact I was able to use fabric that my grandfather had bought years ago from Indonesia for my mother’s wedding dress, but she didn’t need so kept it for her one-day daughter. It felt so special and connected our special day to my grandfather who had sadly passed a few years before.
As Felicity is an English Wedding member, I wanted to share a little more information about how this dress was created for Janna. The fabrics were layered pale pink tulle, delicate chantilly lace and vintage silk satin jacquard. In Felicity’s own words, “The design was as relaxed and summery as the day Janna had planned.”
The silhouette combines a lightly boned bodice with a full circle skirt. Felicity layered soft tulle in delicate shades of ‘shell pink’, ‘honey’ and ‘pale ivory’ to create a subtle warmth without overt saturation. “The neckline was a softly rounded square with straps extending up and crossing over at the back. Janna knew she wanted a low and open back from the outset. We were both excited by my suggestion of extending the shoulder straps so they would ‘become the lace-up ribbons that fastened her dress. A lace up back with eyelets and no modesty panel made a pretty design feature.
Another unusual design idea must be credited entirely to Janna herself. I would normally carefully cut and sew lace layered over a fitted bodice to hide the joins. But this time I did not cut away the extra fabric, instead I spread the extra evenly around her waist and fixed it into tiny waves for texture. I softened the join of skirt and bodice using the pretty scalloped edge of the lace for a couture finish.”
To see more of the dressmaking process with illustrations and close up shots of the fabrics and design, do head over to Felicity’s blog: https://felicitywestmacott.co.uk/blush-wedding-dress-for-vegan-bride/
Seb also had a lot of fun with his suits(!). He had two! He wanted a formal suit for the ceremony, but afterwards changed into a light linen suit that made him more comfortable for the garden party and dancing. With both outfits he had an amazing waistcoat that his mother made him, with matching bowtie. It was so special and personal.
Hair and makeup
I did my own hair and make-up, so can’t recommend anyone for that, but I enjoyed doing it myself with the help of my bridesmaids. I always cut my own hair and don’t wear a lot of make-up, so it would have felt unnatural for me to get dolled-up by someone. It was also really nice to keep it personal.
Did you hire a florist? Tell us about any floral amazingness
We sourced some flowers from a local organic farm, but we also included sweet pea seeds with our wedding invites and invited each guest to plant them and bring a bunch with them to the day. It was wonderful! Our guests felt included in the decoration, and we were inundated with sweet peas in jam jars, which filled the long trestle tables. We also decorated using 20 large metal arches that fitted over the trestle tables, with strings of greenery and wildflower garlands hanging between each one, creating a kind of tunnel over the long tables. We got the most of the greenery from family and had a team of friends helping set it all up the day before.
Did you hire a wedding planner?
No wedding planner. All done ourselves with lots of help from family and friends.
As cake lovers here at English Wedding we’d LOVE to know who made your cake, and how delicious it was?
Our cake was also homemade, by Seb’s mother. She’s an excellent baker and was up for the challenge of making a vegan lemon & elderflower cake, as well as a fruit cake, which were iced and layered and decorated simply with cornflowers.
Catering
Lyons Catering – Ginny did a great job dealing with our unusual food set up. She cooked some delicious canapés and helped sort and serve all our guest-brought dishes.
Tell us about any special personal touches, or creative projects you made yourselves
Another personal touch was our menu. We included basic recipe cards within our wedding invitations and asked our guests to bring a dish instead of a gift. There were four main recipes (which our food-writer friend helped us write), all vegetarian, and all but the quiche were vegan. We follow a largely vegan lifestyle ourselves and wanted our wedding to be a reflection of that. Everybody did an amazing job rising to the challenge, and we were overloaded with delicious food (almost everyone over-catered, so we had lots of leftovers). Of course it varied in quality, but we really didn’t mind about that. We tried to give the simpler recipes to our less foody friends, and asked those travelling from afar to just bring cheese and biscuits. It was hard work trying to coordinate it all and get a caterer and staff to dish it up and serve it, but I think it generally went really well, and it felt like a feast, just as we wanted.
At one point in the late afternoon I was getting tired, but Seb surprised me on the lawn with a serenade from him and his fellow choir members (who sang during our ceremony). It was absolutely beautiful and breathtakingly romantic.
Did you personalise your vows or have any wedding readings? What were they?
We didn’t personalise our vows, but we did have a few readings from family members, including Seb’s 90 year old grandfather who read a poem that his friend wrote. We personalised our send-off from the church by getting into a cargo bicycle (that we borrowed from a stranger and decorated with flowers and ‘just married’ bunting and tin cans). Seb lifted me and carefully put me in the box at the front, which was lined with hessian fabric to stop anything catching my dress, and then he cycled me through the village, escorted by his two best men (also on bicycles), back to Cadhay House. It was a truly magical moment.
What was your first dance song? Why did you choose it?
Our first dance was in the afternoon, to a lovely live trio who sang some Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong style music while we danced on the lawn. The very first song was Dream A Little Dream Of Me, followed by Cheek to Cheek, when several other couples joined in dancing. It was really lovely to break up the afternoon with some dancing, after drinks and nibbles, before our dinner feast. Louis Armstrong was my grandfather’s favourite, and so it has a very special place in my heart. It created a wonderful English summer-fête kind of atmosphere, dancing in a garden in the afternoon sun.
Bespoke bridal designer Felicity Westmacott is an English Wedding member
Web: https://felicitywestmacott.co.uk
Even as a wedding blogger, you just don’t see this kind of beautiful that often. And I mean – my breath is taken, this stunning Scottish wedding is out of this WORLD! I stumbled across Richelle and Tom’s wedding via our lovely dressmaker member Felicity Westmacott. It goes without saying that Richelle’s dress is incredible; and indeed everything from this amazing (pre-pandemic) wedding is rocking my wedding bloggy world today – not least the brilliant couple who are the stars of it all.
They chose the stupendously talented Lina & Tom as their wedding photographers, and it’s been an absolute joy to read their review for their entire wedding photography experience. Do check out their website if you haven’t already seen the magic they create – it’s one of the best I’ve ever seen.
I also have to share this little note from Lina when she replied to my email about featuring this wedding – she put it simply and beautifully:
Felicity is a genius and the more people know it the better, Richelle’s dress was divine and this is literally one of our favourite ever weddings…
Wedding photographers’ website
How did you choose your photographer?
Initially Tom followed them on Instagram, then we happened to bump into them at the only wedding fair we went to – where Tom gave Tom a flyer with a tea bag on …. and they bonded over tea! A few meetings, calls and obsessing about cats later we knew they were the right choice.
Were you pleased with your wedding photographer? Do tell… we love a brilliant review!
They were amazing, from meeting up for a gin or two to discuss to travelling up to Edinburgh and the shots they took – everything was fantastic. We just wish we had confirmed them earlier so we could have had them at our party (a few days after the wedding down south) – not because the chap they got to sub in wasn’t amazing – but because we would have loved to have thrown some shapes with them on the dance floor. We cannot recommend them highly enough, they love an adventure, a dance and are a unique combination of talented, passionate and organised. Oh and I reckon they would DJ too if you asked them!
How did the pandemic affect your wedding plans? Do you have any advice to share with couples planning their weddings right now?
Luckily for us it was pre-pandemic. We did however watch our beloved suppliers struggle, so when we could, we helped out – buying additional photos from Lina and Tom, ordering takeout from our catering company and recommending the venue, and tech suppliers to others we know planning weddings in the area. Being in the events world we know how hard it all has been, and we hope that everyone planning was able to hold bookings where possible both customer and vendor sides.
Did you love wearing your outfits? How was the dress / suit shopping experience?
Tom: Mine was pretty simple, once we had decided on Edinburgh I had to get a kilt. I had promised my Nana that I would get married in a kilt – so a trip to Geoffrey Tailor on Edinburgh High St to get a Ross tartan kilt was arranged and they did me proud. I bought a beautiful tailored modern Ross Kilt with a Contemporary charcoal tweed jacket and waistcoat. Of course once the Groom is in a kilt, and you are in a castle in Edinburgh, it was easy to get the rest of the wedding party chaps into one. Geoffrey Tailor were able to help out all with hire items and even adding to some other family tartan outfits that were needed.
https://www.geoffreykilts.co.uk
Richelle: having tried dresses on at pretty much every wedding dress shop in the UK (and a couple outside of the country) the penny dropped and I asked a friend (Claire-Michelle T-P) where she had got her fabulous dress made and she passed on Felicity’s details. The planets aligned and I managed to get the last slot she was accepting before going on maternity! So on the promise that I wouldn’t gain or lose any weight that would require alterations in the final days of her pregnancy we went ahead. She was fantastic, I wasn’t so much, just having a collection of ideas of bits and a concept in my head. She managed to extract all my thoughts and fill in all the gaps. What she produced was beyond what I could have imagined, it was a bodice with two different skirts designed in either configuration to look like a dress, and yes both had pockets! The dual look was key to how we wanted to do our wedding, the family formal section and the party element, plus who doesn’t love a costume change!
If you’d like to know more about how Richelle’s dress was made, head over to Felicity’s blog where she explains her process behind creating Richelle’s waterfall skirt, bodice and jacket – it’s a fascinating read!
https://felicitywestmacott.co.uk
Tell us about your venue – what made this place special for you?
Wedding venue: Edinburgh castle, St Margaret’s Chapel — Edinburgh has always been a special city to us, Tom’s grandmother came from there and we had attended the fringe comedy festival regularly from our University years onwards… even sneaking into the castle under the guise of attending a wedding fair one year! Funnily them letting us in back then actually paid off in the long long run! Once we went back in seriousness and saw St Margaret’s we realised it was the place, the small intimate setting we wanted for our family only ceremony.
Wedding breakfast (and photography location): National Museum of Scotland. — just a fantastic place with amazing food from the restaurant at the top of the tower. Plus they have a T-Rex!
Wedding Party (3 days later): The Castle Theatre Wellingborough, Northamptonshire. — Richelle’s home town and the theatre she first ‘trod the boards’ at, great and very accommodating team who let us do pretty much everything we wanted. Plus it could hold the large numbers we wanted for our party
Did you hire a florist? Tell us about any floral amazingness
Not a florist in the traditional sense but we went with silk flowers as we wanted to keep them after the ceremony for the party, and it made them a little more robust against the October winds at the top of that granite mound! Alas these guys are no longer around, a sad effect of the recent times.
Did you hire a wedding planner?
No, we organised everything ourselves, as we both worked at the time in and around events we felt we could probably sort it out, and in a mad way – would enjoy doing it!
As cake lovers here at English Wedding we’d LOVE to know who made your cake, and how delicious it was?
Well, cakes…. the first was actually from a small boutique outfit called Marks and Spencers! This was just a small made to order rainbow cake from the Edinburgh store – just enough for our 30 family guests at the wedding breakfast. … but how do you do ‘cake’ for the many hundreds of guests at the party a few days later – well again a small outfit called Krispy Kreme came through with an order of donuts that filled the entire back of an estate car and even threw in a stand for them!
Tell us about any special personal touches, or creative projects you made yourselves
Our rings were made by an industrial artist we both loved who made them from the same single chunk of super conductor material. (Copperhead superconductors rings) www.blackbadger.se Our photos (by the lovely L&T) were in the closed National Museum of Scotland – allowing us to have a great time, dancing and posing around the exhibits all on our own, including THAT shot with the T Rex and dancing in the beautiful empty atrium. Our party had many nods to our interests, our history together and our lives: Large LED screen, Storm Troopers, Arcade Machines, an inflatable planetarium with hourly shows (first date was at an observatory), commitments cover band, pub quiz, street food from our travels and gin bar!
Did you personalise your vows or have any wedding readings? What were they?
Nope – was a lovely ceremony performed by the Rev Bill who was part of the Chapel offering and couldn’t have been a more lovely and charming, and hilarious chap. Was an utter gem and unexpected bonus!
What was your first dance song? Why did you choose it?
At Last – Etta James. As we had taken some 18 years to get to our wedding from first dating, we thought people would enjoy the choice and Etta James is a favourite of both of us, …. fun fact the live band we had (run by a mate of ours) – is called “The Lack of Commitments”.
Favourite wedding suppliers
Wonderful stationery designs done by: ImperialInvitations on Etsy. Supplied artwork to our requirements, that we then got printed on Vista Print.
Kilts: www.geoffreykilts.co.uk
Wedding accommodation in Edinburgh (Old Town Chambers): www.chevalcollection.com
Eve of wedding drinks: www.headstandtales.com – Edinburgh Gin Distillery
Edinburgh Castle: www.Edinburghcastle.scot
Fab fine dining catering at the wedding breakfast: www.tower-restaurant.com
The national Museum of Scotland: www.nms.ac.uk
Party: The Castle Theatre Wellingborough: www.castletheatre.co.uk
The brilliantly talented collective that is and will forever be our wedding band: www.thelackofcommitments.co.uk
Our patient and perfectly timed Wedding DJ: www.Disco1.co.uk Lovely Leon
Amazing Huge LED screen for the party: www.Wavecoproductions.co.uk – Iain and Fiona x
Castle Theatre Additional AV, tables and lighting Hire: ‘Prism Events Ltd’ on Facebook
Yummy street food for the party: www.stanleystreetfood.co.uk
Inflatable planetarium (Uni of Herts): www.herts.ac.uk/bayfordbury
Arcade machine hire: www.retrogamesparty.co.uk
Stormtroopers: www.ukgarrison.co.uk – the lovely lovely Becki
Party photo booth: www.theprobooth.com – the amazingly engaging Iain
Wedding pub quiz: ‘personalised trivia’ on Facebook
Wedding programme (we had that much going on) by one of our fabulous Best Men: James Castro.
Previously featured on the brilliant Unconventional Wedding Blog