Prepare to fall head over hot pink heels for Hannah and Roger's colourful, vintage inspired wedding.
Hannah is one of the loveliest brides I've ever seen – all sweet smiles and fluttery lashes beneath her vibrant floral crown. And just you wait until you see her vintage wedding dress – it's a 1950s dream complete with illusion neckline, delicate lace sleeves and layers of airy tulle.
Their venue, Dove Barn, in Suffolk, UK, was decked out in pastel pom poms, hearts, pretty floral prints and polka dots. There were a whole host of handmade and personal touches including chalkboard signs of various sizes, be-ribboned chair backs, luggage labels, jam jars, stripy straws and a polaroid guest book adorned with washi tape.
Rebecca Wedding Photography captured every darling detail, beautiful bloom (of which there were many) and special moment in her signature soft and natural style. And coming up later this afternoon, I'll be sharing Pearl Productions utterly gorgeous film of their day too!
So stay tuned lovelies…
From The Bride…
The most important thing for us was that the day was personal and that all our family and friends had an amazing day. We loved planning the details of the day and tried to fill it with handmade and vintage finds, with a very loose colour palette of soft pinks and powdery blues.
We felt so lucky to have all the people we love and who love us around us for the whole weekend – there really was an overwhelming feeling of ‘love'!
The Flowers
The flowers and arrangements were just the most gorgeous things! We wanted to keep them all quite rustic and relaxed in-keeping with the day and our venue. Clare at Love Blooms was fantastic, we had a great time emailing images back an forth of the things we liked and ended up with a real mixture, Peonies, Ranunculus, Spray Roses, Hydrangea, Stocks, Lisianthus, Daisy, Muscari, with some fresh Lavender, Rosemary, Dill and Eucalyptus, mixed in – not only did they look gorgeous, they smelt gorgeous too!
I also had a floral headdress made – which really brought everything together.
The Dress
I knew I wanted a vintage dress and after trawling vintage bridal shops mainly in London I’d figured out what suited me, but hadn't found ‘the dress’- so I turned to the internet and to America! I found my dress on Dressing Vintage and after some botched measuring at home, I decided the measurements were close enough for me to chance it (plus about a quarter of the price of others I'd tried over here). It arrived in a scarily small box – but once I got it on, I knew it was perfect. After a few alterations by Lyndsay at ‘The Lady That Does' we we're there!
I also found some amazing hot pink 1920's dance shoes on Etsy- that really gave the outfit a pop of colour!
The Suits
Rog bought, returned and kept a few suits but in the end decided on a lovely Navy textured 2 piece from Topman that was ‘just right'- adding to it with a Reiss tie and pocket square, Cos brogues and a gorgeous button hole he was there!! The rest of the boys wore their own suits to add to the informality of the day.
One part of the wedding that I got most excited about was seeing the men all dressed up with their buttonholes on, they didn't disappoint!
The Ceremony
We found choosing readings tricky, especially as we wanted to keep things sounding relaxed and personal to us. We eventually decided on Rob Ryan – Can we? Shall we? as it reminded us of the early days in our relationship when we used to love a weekend away in Brighton. On one of those little trips we discovered Rob's laser cut art and felt his words really summed us up – it was read by Rog's Mum, Viv.
The second reading, ‘I like You' by Sandol Stoddard, read by my cousin Lauren, was one we tweaked a little and the one which everyone loved the most – they felt just like us!
Rebecca Wedding Photography
Without us intending to – we found that the people we worked with on the wedding all had some sort of ASOS connection to us, especially the case with Rebecca of Rebecca Wedding Photography and Suzie and Dan of Pearl Productions, our videographers.
I'd found Rebecca, whilst looking on wedding blogs, showed her photos to Rog and decided to meet up with her for a chat. We loved her even more when we met, then found out she too had worked at ASOS! It was a deal maker! She was truly amazing in the lead up to and throughout the day (even now in fact) she worked so hard and we are beyond thrilled with our pictures and our Polaroid guest book – something which the three of us had always fancied. We felt that she truly captured the essence of the day and how happy we all were. There might even be a joint business venture on the cards in years to come!
Décor & Details
Decorating the venue was one of our favourite parts of the wedding, when all that hard work finally starts coming together just as you’d imagined! Two of the reasons we booked Dove Barn was that it really was a blank canvas for us to transform into our perfect wedding venue and also the fact that you have the barn from Friday to Sunday! We packed up about 6 cars on the Friday morning and drove up in convoy to the barn to start with the decorating.
Lots of hours and money had been spent on Etsy in the lead up – about 100 paper poms, a few hundred metres of ribbons and vintage handkerchiefs, and even longer collecting gorgeous glassware, jars and decanters for the flowers.We had drinks tokens for the evening Alzheimer pin badges for favours to remember my Nan – which felt really right.
My Dad was chief sign maker and did a great job with old bits of driftwood, now hanging up in our gardens at home!
The Refreshments
We had a big drinks table set up after the ceremony with Pimms in decanters, Modelo's and individual mini bottles of Belvoir drinks.
Canapés were also served – mini fish and chips, bangers and mash and ginger chicken to name a few.
For our sit down meal – we wanted to maintain the sense of informality so we tucked into a trio of bruschetta, followed by carve your own locally sourced Blythburgh ham (which got everyone talking), served with dauphinoise potatoes, roasted cherry tomatoes and green beans.
During the planning I found an amazing Taco Truck in London which I'd really fancied for evening food, however the price was a little ridiculous for it to drive all the way up to Suffolk, so Gemma our caterer recreated this for us by serving up tacos with all the trimmings – apparently they were gorgeous, although I was too busy dancing to sample them!
The Dessert Table
Our families all got together to create our favourite puddings, these were set up on a big pudding table (which both looked and tasted amazing) a selection of all were served to each table so everyone could have a taste – one each would never have been enough!
Our huge two tier cake was ombred pink to cream in ruffley buttercream and filled with layer upon layer of sponge and salted caramel goodness – yum!
The Wedding Music
We're so glad we had guitarist and singer, LJ, to perform some live music throughout the day, she played a selection of laid back songs whilst our guests were arriving including an acoustic version of Milkshake by Kelis- amazing! I walked into James McMurrow's version of Higher Love, bound to get the tears flowing, we had Mumford and sons whilst signing the register then Jessie Ware to walk out together to.
We hired a DJ for the evening who was under strict instructions to play a lot of old school RnB, Garage and Hip Hop! We didn’t stop dancing.
Advice For Other Couples…
I was definitely the planner and loved spending time on wedding blogs, Bridal Musings, Whimsical Wonderland Weddings, Rock My Wedding, Wedding Chicks, as well as using Pinterest, Instagram and Etsy for inspiration, constantly sending ideas to Rog for his opinion. We also attended A Curious Vintage Wedding Fair and used lots of spreadsheets!
Rog held the purse strings, he was amazing at keeping track of everything we had going on, chasing people up and of course paying them! A perfect team!
I know it sounds cheesy and everyone says ‘it will be the best day of your lives’- but it really is true and it really will be. Do as much planning beforehand so that when it comes to the day you can relax, enjoy and absorb everything that’s going on around you.
I really do believe you get what you pay for – I wouldn’t say the vendors we chose were the cheapest, but in our eyes they were all worth their weight in gold!
Ah – can we do it all again please?!
Vow renewal, perhaps? Huge congratulations to Hannah and Roger!
Thank you for sharing your beautiful day with us – I predict lots of pretty pinning will ensue!
