Katy & Ben’s refreshingly natural St Albans wedding, with Tori Deslauriers Photography

Published by Claire Gould on December 8, 2022

Katy and Ben’s wedding is the loveliest breath of fresh air, filled with fabulous florals. Their day looks relaxed and filled with happiness – everything a wedding should be! This gorgeous pair have shared reviews for favourite suppliers, which we’re super excited to share with you here and over on our insta through today. The photos are wonderful – they’re by lovely Hertfordshire wedding photographer Tori Deslauriers. If you’re looking for a photographer in St Albans or Herts (or anywhere in the UK) do check out Tori’s profile in our wedding photographer directory pages.

As Christmas approaches it’s lovely to share heartwarming little nuggets on the internet, and it’s giving us all the feels to read the kind words Katy and Ben have for their wedding suppliers. We’ve tweaked our couples interview slightly to give you lovely lot the chance to review your faves when you share your weddings – so please, give your wedding photographer a poke and ask them to submit YOUR wedding to English Wedding! We’ve been a top UK wedding blog since 2009 (!!!) and we’re always looking for love and laughter-filled weddings to share.

Wedding photographer’s website

https://torideslauriers.com/

Wedding photographer review

We came across her website on Google and it looked fun and inviting. She called us back and we knew immediately that we had made the right choice.

We were so pleased we asked Tori to be our wedding photographer. She was fantastic on the day, all of our guests loved her. She was on top of everything, it was like having an extra friend who knew a lot about weddings! She very gently steered us in the right direction through the wedding routines. And this was on top of photographing everything! We had an engagement photo shoot, which was very helpful and meant that we felt like we knew what we were doing when it came to the photos on the day. The photos we had from this were beautiful. Tori sent us a few photos from the wedding the very next morning, which are wonderful to look through, we are so excited to get back the rest of the photos from the day!

What’s your fondest memory of your wedding?

Looking across the garden and seeing all our friends and family enjoying themselves together.

Tell us about your venue – what made this place special for you?

The ceremony and reception took place in the orangery, which was so bright, I fell in love with it as soon as I walked in. We especially liked the views over the garden, which made it feel a bit like being outside without any risks from the weather. But above all this the best thing about the venue was actually the staff, they were so friendly and relaxed, it really set the tone for the whole wedding.

Did you love wearing your outfits? How was your shopping experience, was it fun to find your wedding gear?

We both went to choose Ben’s suit from Waterers in St Albans, a local tailors. We wanted something lightweight and not necessarily a typical ‘wedding suit’ look. It was so comfortable on the day, Ben loved wearing it. I found my dress at Heritage Brides, it was the first one I tried on and helped me to decide the theme for everything else.

Did you hire a florist? Tell us about any floral amazingness 🙂

We got our flowers from Sam at Perfect Moment Florist in Welwyn Garden City. She absolutely blew us away with her creativity and totally surpassed our expectations. I wanted loosely arranged, fairly untraditional wedding flowers and I struggled to find photos as examples, but Sam listened carefully when I tried to explain, and she really cared about what I wanted.

The result was the most colourful, eclectic displays and bouquets which were central to creating the whole ambience of the day. Somehow Sam created, delivered and set up bouquets, boutonnières, wedding combs and a bridesmaid’s flower crown, cake flowers, table displays, 2 huge flower stands for the ceremony, a staircase garland and a fireplace display. Phew! She must have worked so hard and yet she turned up full of smiles on the wedding morning with my bouquet. We had so many compliments about the flowers.

As cake lovers here at English Wedding we’d LOVE to know who made your cake, and how delicious it was?

We often have birthday cakes made by Chloe from Chloe’s Cakeaway in Potters Bar and they are the best cakes we’ve ever eaten! Chloe mainly makes birthday cakes, but we were so pleased we persuaded her to make a wedding cake, it was beautiful and of course as yummy as usual.

Wedding childcare recommendation

There were a lot of children at our wedding, so the first thing we booked after the venue was All Events Childcare They entertained the children during the wedding breakfast and speeches and then put on a film and stayed until the last child had gone to bed (about 11pm). We had so much positive feedback about them from our guests and it gave everyone a bit more time to relax and enjoy themselves.