This wedding is full to the brim of my favourite thing... smiles.

Cat and Clay wanted their summer wedding to be a happy affair, a full on celebration with their family and friends. They married in Liverpool by Cat's Dad, holding their reception at OH ME OH MY. Their wedding sure was city chic, a colourful array of crafted décor really set off the venue and showed off their personalities.

I especially adore the wild looking florals, sweet bunting and the beautiful bridesmaids with bumps.

Cat donned her Justin Alexander lace dress perfectly with glitter tip heels and flowers in her hair. Gorgeous.

Thanks so very much to Amy Faith Photography for sharing her wonderful photographs with us.

THE PROPOSAL | It was in New York as we were there for another friend's wedding. He proposed at about 10.30pm at the top of the Rockefeller center. It had already been a great day as we'd been to the top store FAO Schwartz and played on the big piano from the film 'Big' and been to see Jersey Boys on Broadway so getting engaged was the icing on the cake of a brilliant day! We celebrated with a giant slice of pizza.

THE VISION | We wanted it to just be a happy day, with not too much fuss or stressing over things - just a big celebration with family and friends. We wanted to have a really good time so that we had jaw ache from smiling so much (and we did!)

THE PLANNING PROCESS | We got engaged in October 2013 and started planning the wedding in December, so the wedding was planned in about 8 months. My bridesmaids bought me a brilliant wedding planner straight away so I was pretty organised and as I've organised a lot of events in the past I knew pretty much what needed to be done and when. First job was to get a church sorted - my Dad is a minister so I was keen to find a church that would let my dad take the service, and after that we got the reception venue booked. We then divided up all the jobs - Clay was in charge of entertainment, transport and his suit and I looked after most of the other things.

THE VENUE | The ceremony was at St James in Woolton village in South Liverpool. It had recently been refurbished so looked wonderful. The Reverend there (Alan Crump) is brilliant and had no problem at all letting my Dad take the service. Having that made the ceremony all the more special.

Our reception was at OH ME OH MY in Liverpool city centre which was recommended to me by a friend and was absolutely perfect for what we were looking for. OH ME OH MY has so many lovely personal touches, an amazing staff team and beautiful views of the Royal Liver building and exceeded all our expectations.

THE DRESS & ACCESSORIES | I wore a Justin Alexander lace antique gold dress which I bought from a local shop. The shoes I wore were nude with gold glitter toes that I'd spotted on a wedding blog. Sadly they were from a couple of seasons ago but I managed to track a pair down on ebay so they were my 'something old'! Jewellery I kept to a minimum - I just wore a silver bracelet with a heart on that my Aunt bought me when I was 10 years old. I also had my mum's garter as my 'something borrowed'. In my hair I had fresh daisies and baby's breath.

FINDING THE DRESS | I was looking for a lace dress and every time I tried this dress on my Chief bridesmaid burst into tears so I took that as a good sign and went for it!

GROOM'S ATTIRE | Clay put a 50p accumulator bet on the football last spring and won several hundred pounds so decided to treat himself to a good suit! He's 6 foot 3 with long arms and no off the rack suit ever fits him properly. He ended up getting a tailor made suit from Reiss in blue and had the date of the wedding embroidered into the lining. He loved the process as he got to choose the material, colour, lining, stitching and everything so he got to choose everything how he wanted. He also wore a matching waistcoat. His best man wore his own blue suit to save on costs. He and his best man wore yellow ties with blue polka dots and the ushers all wore yellow ties and their own grey suits. I made pocket squares for all the ushers as a thank you and embroidered their initials into them.

THE READINGS & MUSIC | We had three readings - the first was 'The Vow' by Wendy Cope which I read and loved and knew I had to have it at my wedding. Clay and I have been together for over 8 years so I thought it reflected being together for a long time and didn't make out that love is always perfect. The second was the famous 'Love is kind' reading from Corinthians. Our final reading was the lyrics to Joni Mitchell's 'All I really want' - I love Joni Mitchell and love the words she uses - particularly 'I want to wreck my stockings in a jukebox dive'.

BEAUTIFUL BRIDESMAIDS | My bridesmaids WERE beautiful! I had three, two of which were heavily pregnant - one went into labour 3 days after the wedding and the other a couple of weeks after that! My Chief Bridesmaid (the non-pregnant one) was brilliant support in the run up to the wedding. They all wore maternity dresses by Seraphine in a beautiful cornflower blue which had lots of room for movement. They looked amazing. We had two babygrows made for the pregnant bridesmaids saying 'I was at Cat & Clay's wedding' which we gave during the speeches.

THE FLOWERS | My brief to the florist was 'flowers that are happy' - I wanted lots of bright colours and didn't want anything too matching. All the bridesmaid bouquets were a little bit different. We used my bouquet and two of the bridesmaids bouquets as the table centres for the top table which looked great and saved money too. For the church I bought loads of brightly coloured flowers and a lady in the church arranged them for me, she did a great job. The sunflowers looked beautiful. I didn't want big tall table centre flowers, so had lots of natural wildflowers in jam jars and tin cans that I had painted, decoupaged and covered in twine.

THE CAKE | Neither of us are massively into cake so we went for a 'cheese' cake from a local cheese shop. Sadly my dress was so tight that I couldn't fit in any cheese but was pleased it lasted for several weeks after the wedding for us to tuck into! One of our ushers who is a chef made chutney to go with it too.

YOUR PHOTOGRAPHER | Our photographer was Amy Faith who was recommended to us by the reception venue. Amy was brilliant and got what we were after for the big day. We didn't want formal photos taking up lots of time so she got through these in a quick and friendly manner and was fantastic all through the day. We were so pleased with the final photos - a great reminder of the day to have forever. I wouldn't hesitate recommending her.

THE DETAILS & DÉCOR | I love a bit of craft and would always rather make something that has a personal touch and save money. I bought papier mache letters saying Cat and Clay and covered them in decoupage. All the table centre tins cans and jam jars were treated in a similar way and I made the table numbers using canvas and fabric. We also had bunting which my friend made for her wedding.

Everyone's place card had their name on an envelope and inside we wrote a short note to them - some said 'thanks for coming' but some just had something silly on them - it was a nice personal touch that didn't cost anything. For the table plan we had a funny fact against everyone's name about that person which again didn't cost anything but went down a treat and was a good conversation starter!

We asked one male on each table to serve the other guests the main course so we gave them a stripey chef's apron, chef's hat and moustache. They were all brilliant and loved getting into character and ended up having a photoshoot in the actual kitchen with blow torches and more!

For our favours we made hot sauce - we had to make it in three batches and got braver with the heat each time! The final batch was purely scotch bonnets!

Our friend Richard designed the save the date, invites, order of service, table plan, welcome sign for the church and the hot sauce labels. He was an absolute star and put so much hard work into making everything so personal. We gave him an American football helmet gift during Clay's speech, which he has wanted for so long!

THE HONEYMOON | We went to Bermuda as we're lucky to get free flights through Clay's Aunt who works for an airline. It was a very expensive island so we mostly sat on the balcony playing scrabble and drinking beer and daiquiris - IDEAL!

MEMORABLE MOMENTS | I loved the whole day. For me having my Dad give me away and then take the ceremony was very special. The rest of the day I just remember there being lots of smiles and laughter. Happy times.

ADVICE FOR OTHER COUPLES | Don't think you have to do everything that everyone says you have to do. Spend money on the things that mean more to you, but save on other areas. The things that didn't cost us anything were the more personal touches and the things that our guests still talk about. And don't stress out about things that don't matter - just enjoy it.

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE |

Church | St James Church, Woolton

Venue | OH ME OH MY

Make Up | Kate Smith Make Up

Hair | Tina Howarth from Beau Hair

Photography | Amy Faith Photography

Dress | Justin Alexander

Flowers | Blossom and Dill Florists

Cheese | Woolton Cheese shop

So very lovely. Who else is grinning from ear to ear?

Thanks so very much to Cat and Clay for sharing their amazing nuptials with us today XOXO Lou