Becky and Robert wanted an English country feel fete wedding and so chose The House Meadow, Kent to hold their celebration. The whole day had a relaxed ourdoorsy feel with a lovely marquee filled to the brim with homemade touches.

Becky found a gorgeous 1950s inspired frock from Honeypie Boutique and i love the flash of blue from her petticoat. Robert found his sharp suit in Next, which he paired with a Ted Baker shirt.

I adore the flowers, the ice cream and that amazing star sparkler. Amazing.

Thanks so much to the wonderful Kerry Ann Duffy for sharing her images with us today.

 

The Proposal…  Rob and I had had a week off work between all the bank holidays we had in 2011 in the run up to the Royal Wedding, we were using the time to decorate our bedroom. Just as we were about to go to bed one night (camped out on the spare room floor!) Rob started chatting about our future and marriage then out of nowhere he produced a little white box which he flipped open and said “How about it?”! I was totally shocked as the question had come so out of the blue and I was completely gobsmacked and distracted by the ring…..it was a beautifully sparkly star shape….exactly what I would have chosen myself and I knew straight away that Rob and my cousin (Luke Goldsmith, who designed and made the ring http://www.lukegoldsmith.com/) must have been plotting and planning for ages! Eventually Rob prompted me out of my silence to remind me that there was still a question that needed answering and I said YES!

The Vision for the Day…  We went for blue as the main colour with peach as an accent colour with an English country, village fete, fun and relaxed feel to the day.

 

Due to our large families and friendship groups, whenever we had talked about getting married, even before we were engaged, we had always said we wanted our wedding to be a fun day and an opportunity to bring people together and get people talking. So a lot of our plans came out of this such as having buffet food rather than a served meal, having a tug of war competition, cricket and frisbee in the meadow, using table name cards for people to leave messages for us, having a photo collage that featured almost everyone at the wedding and having a “Build your own Sundae” competition for dessert as a real highlight! Everyone really got involved and produced some very creative puddings – including 2 sundae towers (see Kerry’s photos!) and even Becky and Rob themed creations! – I think that was our best idea and was made possible with the help of our Caterers.

 

The Venue… The legal ceremony was at Rochester registry office, Kent. We had to have a separate legal ceremony as The House Meadow didn’t have a marriage license at the time. The big day, including another ceremony conducted by Rob’s cousin Pamela, was at The House Meadow, Biddenden, Kent.

We really wanted a blank canvas for our wedding, somewhere we could make our own with an outdoorsy, relaxed feel. We first viewed the House Meadow when it was under construction but we fell in love with it straight away. It is a beautiful sweeping meadow in the heart of the Kent countryside with gorgeous views in every direction. Clare, the venue manager, explained her vision for the venue and we knew it was only going to get better. We were really excited to be part of the venue’s first year of weddings. We also liked the fact that the House Meadow didn’t have a license as it meant that we could have more of a free reign in our ceremony and it was important to us to be able to have Pamela lead our ceremony. This also gave us the chance to have a small legal ceremony with just our parents, Rob’s sister and my Nan which was really nice to celebrate with them ahead of the big day with everyone there.

The team at the House Meadow, led by Clare Passmore, were incredible! They were great at giving us the balance of allowing us to be creative and make the venue and the day exactly what we wanted it to be, whilst offering helpful advice from their events experience. We enjoyed every single visit to the House Meadow in the run up to the wedding and loved getting to know the team and meeting the horses, dogs and ridiculously cute puppies on the farm that the venue is attached to. As the day got closer the whole team went out of their way to bring our vision to life and really helped us out when we had some problems with our marquee supplier. The House Meadow were also able to suggest some excellent suppliers including our caterer Home Gurr’own which really helped us with our decision making. Even when Rob and I were stressing about various things along the way, Clare and the team at the HM would always get us feeling really excited about the day again.

The Dress + Accessories…  Honeypie Boutique – online retailer. Very easy but a bit of a gamble as you buy without trying! However I gave all my relevant measurements to them and discussed a few specific requirements with them – for example I wanted a dropped waist bodice – and it was made to order.

I had a very clear idea of what I wanted it was just a matter of finding it. I visited a few shops to try on some different styles which was very useful to gather information but it just confirmed my original vision – that I wanted a 50s style dress in white rather than ivory, with a calf length skirt and blue detail in it somewhere. The information I had gathered from visiting shops helped me to make a more informed request when I ordered online. I also spoke to a friend of the family who is a dress maker to help make my decision and she then made some alterations to the dress when it arrived so it sat better on my hips and she added some blue detail to the netting on the skirt of the dress.

Shoes – again I had a very specific idea of what I wanted and had searched high and low and not found anything quite right. I then found Beretun Designs in Brighton who could custom make the shoes from a simple original design. My shoes ending up costing more than the dress! I bought my necklace from Ebay, hair decorations were from Hobbycraft, earrings were from Accessorize – a birthday present the month before from my Bridesmaid. I had a small bag which was from an independent Boutique in Cranbrook, Kent.

Groom’s Attire… Men’s suits were from Next with Ted Baker shirts.

Beautiful Bridesmaids… Bridesmaid dress from Warehouse, Flower Girl dress from John Lewis.

The Flowers… We used Camille in Rochester, a local florist. We also asked friends and family to collect jam jars ahead of the wedding so that we could use them for the table flowers. Camille produced attractive bouquets and table displays and were helpful in our planning process as we know very little about flowers!

Your Photographer… Kerry Ann Duffy http://kerryannduffy.com/

I first met Kerry Ann when she photographed my cousin Michelle’s (my Bridesmaid) wedding (when I was Bridesmaid for her!) and I thought she was amazing. Kerry then went on to photograph two other close friends’ weddings and for each one Kerry produced beautiful photos that really reflected the feel of each day perfectly, despite being a varied range of styles. I also loved that Kerry fitted in so easily as the photographer; she has a great balance of being able to direct people when needed but of fitting in like having a friend around at the same time, so most of the time I didn’t realise I was being photographed when she was busy snapping away.

As we had planned so much of the wedding ourselves and put a lot of time and effort into doing so, I was really pleased that all the little details had been captured by Kerry. Kerry captured some great candid moments of our guests laughing and enjoying themselves which was really important to us as this was the overall aim of our wedding – we both have big families and large friendship groups so we really wanted to give everyone a great day and encourage everyone to get to know each other. Overall Kerry really captured our personalities and style of the day in the photos.

The Details + Decor… We had a band for our evening entertainment – Get Ape, we had seen Get Ape play our friends’ wedding the year before and we loved their funky twist on a great selection of music. Get Ape were great in the planning of our music as they allowed us to plan our own playlist for the music in between their sets and they played a great selection of music that a wide age range could enjoy which was important to us. Get Ape also learned out First Dance song – Baby I Love Your Way by Peter Frampton – so we could have this live as well. They were great at getting the crowd going and everyone was on the dance floor by the end of the night!

Stationery – all homemade. I used materials from Hobby Craft, Paperchase, Cath Kidston, sourced fonts online and printed and created all the items at home. We had silver chocolate hearts and Forget me Not design plantable seed paper flowers for people to take home with them. Both sourced online.

The majority of our food and drink on the day was locally produced – Home Gurr-own caterers produced the majority of their ingredients on their own small holding so our picnic-style buffet and evening hot dogs were all locally sourced. The food was all handmade and was amazing – we had beautiful pork pies, unique scotch eggs (including beetroot and horseradish), chutney, quiches, potato salad and homemade breads, all stunningly presented and a real talking point on the day. We had Biddenden’s cider available at the bar. We had popcorn produced at Whitstable in Kent with the evening food as well.

The Honeymoon… We had a mini-moon to Brighton straight after the wedding just to chill out for a few days and we had our proper Honeymoon in April this year to Japan! We had wanted to go for a long time and even talked about it on our first dates together so it really was a trip of a lifetime! It was everything we thought it would be, an amazing country and amazing people.

Memorable Moments… The highlight of the day was looking around during the wedding meal seeing everyone laughing, chatting and enjoying the food, especially during dessert, and knowing that all our hard work had paid off and grateful that all our friends and family were there to celebrate our day with us.

Another highlight was also when we were amazed by Owen (who was one of our Best Men along with Stuart) rapping to finish off an excellent Best Men speech. It was brilliant, funny and perfectly rapped!

Advice for Other Couples… I always leave things to the last minute which meant the last few days running up to the wedding were pretty tiring so I would have liked to have got more out of the way earlier such as the stationery and decorations so that all we had to do in the last few days was just decorate the venue. We really loved our day so there is not much we would have changed.

I wish I’d taken more photos and savoured the planning process more as I had some lovely days out with my Mum at Wedding Fairs and visiting Wedding Dress shops and Rob and I had some lovely days out driving into the Kent countryside and visiting the House Meadow or going for food tastings! I wish I had taken a step back and appreciated all of those moments a bit more.

Credit Where Credit is Due…

Photography: Kerry Ann Duffy

Venue: The House Meadow

Dress: Honeypie Boutique

 

Oh such a lovely day. Thanks so much to Becky and Robert for sharing their beautiful wedding with us today XOXO Lou