Pretty Secret Garden Wedding | Whimsical Wonderland Weddings

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WWW readers Sophie and Harry's summer wedding was inspired by The Secret Garden and they decided to hold their wedding reception in Sophie's parents back garden.

With that in mind they organised a day which was both personal and relaxed. They DIY'd many elements of their day, with a pretty frame table plan, personal invitations and catering part of their wedding food themselves.

Sophie looked gorgeous in her Suzanne Neville dress with pretty lace Sassi Holford jacket and cathedral length veil. While the boys wore grey suits with Liberty print ties.

I adore this wedding for all of the little thoughtful details and the smiles all day long. Thanks so much to Heidi Vietz for sharing her lovely images with us today.

The Proposal... We were on holiday in Tenerife, a very special place to me where I have been with my family every year since I was a little girl. I hadn't been in several years and it was the first time I had taken Harry. One evening he suggested we went and sat out on the rocks at sea to watch the sunset go down. Just as the sun began to hide beneath the horizon he started saying some lovely romantic things (which is rather unusual for him!). I was very taken aback and even more so when he pulled out a stunning engagement ring (which he designed himself). I got very emotional and although he forgot to ask me the question and just sat there with the ring I said "Yes!" and we celebrated at the sea front bar with litre glasses of Mojito!

The Planning Process... I am an accountant by day (although wedding planning felt like my full time job for at least 9 months!) so I went a little spreadsheet crazy but actually it really helped me to keep everything in one place. I had a HUGE to do list which had over 300 lines but it allowed me to think about what I could do in advance and what needed to wait until the last minute and meant that the week of the wedding was incredibly relaxed considering the mammoth task that we had taken on by having the reception at home with so many DIY elements. My Mum was an enormous help in planning the day and I definitely could not have done it without her. Although there were a few falling outs along the way which we laugh about now (who knew that the size of a pie could cause a declaration of war!), we had a very similar vision for the day and she often brought me back down to earth when I went a little crazy. The first decision I felt that needed to be made was a theme, I knew that I didn't really want a fixed colour scheme as I don't like the overly coordinated look, I am all for mixing and matching it up. However, I did want to have some sort of direction to help narrow down what felt like a world of choices. Once I knew we would be having a garden wedding I started to go down the vintage, garden tea party route and one day The Secret Garden just popped into my head. I loved the film as a child and it fitted the venue perfectly. From then on I was a decision making machine as I suddenly had a benchmark and clear inspiration.

Due to the church setting I felt it was important to keep the service traditional so we had traditional organ music and a couple of readings. After all her hard work, I wanted my Mum to be involved in the day and her favourite reading is 1 Corinthians 13 so that was an easy decision. Since Harry had two best men, we tried to split up the duties so Andy did a reading of an extract from Captain Corelli's Mandolin which I felt illustrated our journey together to a tee.

Our table plan was on one of my parent's trees. We framed each table in a different vintage style frame and hung it from the tree and against the trunk. All the tables were named after flowers from The Secret Garden. I then hand painted a picture of each of the flowers on recycled card which were propped up with little heart stands on the tables. We placed a single sprig of lavender in a folded napkin wrapped in raffia with a hand calligraphed luggage label name tag and mini vintage key for the place settings. For people who we wanted to say a particular thank you to we included a copy of the secret garden book with a personal message inside. The table centres were large pots filled with colourful flowers that matched my bouquet and we had mismatched vintage china to add an extra splash of colour and interest.

We semi-self-catered our wedding which required a huge amount of effort! I knew I wanted something simple but different and I definitely wanted a sit down meal which is how we ended up serving pies as our main course. They were locally sourced from our award winning village butcher and we gave guests the choice of four different fillings. We served them on decorative glass cake stands and I handmade little flags with each guest's name and pie choice on them.

As I mentioned, I really wanted the day to be about the guests so we provided a basket full of white, lilac and green spotted flip flops for the ladies to change into when their feet hurt (which were incredibly popular!). I also had little baskets in each of the toilets which had everything from hair wax to paracetamol to eyelash glue - all hand labelled of course! After the breakfast we encouraged people to explore the garden where we had set up lots of exciting areas including a candy buffet, outdoor chaise lounge photo booth with polaroid pics (which we used as our guest book too), outdoor games including croquet; Jenga; hula hoops and quoits, music area with a fire pit and toasted marshmallows, a garden swing laced with rose garlands and even a hidden forest bar. One of my fondest memories is just looking out and seeing everyone enjoying themselves in random groups of people. It really made all the effort seem worthwhile.

The Entertainment... When we went shopping for the mother of the bride outfit in London we visited a bar in Covent Garden which had a string quartet, Abraxas, playing in the courtyard. They were completely different to anyone else I had seen before they were super energetic and fun and we both just looked at each other and we knew we had to book them! They played throughout our drinks reception on the patio. We also had a cloudy lemonade station with little vintage milk bottles and paper straws and Pimm's. In the evening we just had a DJ as we love to party and wanted a variety of music styles. We asked guests to request a song on their RSVP's which we included in our playlist. Our first dance was Robin Thicke - Lost Without You. We wanted a song that reflected our taste in music, wasn't too soppy and had a good beat. Harry is a fantastic dancer so he threw me all over the place while our Master of Ceremonies (and Usher) commentated and it was rather entertaining! We provided drinks all night for the guests but we also had a special cocktail happy hour where we had a flare bartender who made three cocktails we designed and named for the day "Love me Lychee", "Secret Garden Mojito" and "When Jack met Ginger". I also handcrafted chalkboards to display them to the guests. Harry was born in Ghana and we wanted to make sure this was also reflected in the day so we played lots of afro beats music which sparked some excellent group dances. We also served curried goat with rice and peas as an evening buffet. Finally to end the night we handed out heart shaped sparklers which everyone lit up to send us off to our bridal suite with. It was the perfect end to the perfect day.

The Honeymoon... We spent our honeymoon in some exquisite resorts in Singapore and Bali. Incredibly, this was only our third holiday together in 10 years which made it that extra bit special. We felt like king and queen and being able to mix city nights, with cultural adventures and total relaxation was the perfect balance to a holiday I wish I had never had to leave. We had a honeymoon gift list for our wedding which allowed guests to buy us specific elements of our honeymoon such as activities and upgrades so when we sent out the thank you cards I created a little instagram collage of each of the gifts and included a print out in the card so guests could see how much fun we had!

The best piece of advice I can offer all brides though is to have the wedding day you want, not the wedding day you think you should have. Don't feel forced by tradition and convention. Start with a blank sheet of paper and just ask yourself what your ideal day looks like and let the unique ideas start flowing!

String Quartet: Abraxas

Ties and Pocket Square: Liberty at Moss

Best Men Attire: Next

Bridesmaids Dresses: Ted Baker

Grooms Attire: Healy Menswear

Cheese Wedding Cake: Grey's Cheese of Pangbourne

Bespoke Necklace: Magpie Vintage

Dress: Suzanne Neville at Ellie Sanderson

Toilets: Deluxe Loos

Marquee: Oxford Marquees

Photo Booth: Flash Fabulous

Professional Photography: Heidi Vietz