Oodles of craft projects and personal touches for a stunning Cambridgeshire wedding. Sophie is sooo beautiful and Craig looks fab in a relaxed country style suit. There are swing boats and paper lanterns, stunning florals (we do love those dahlias!) and lots of vintage touches for this travel theme wedding. It’s wonderful to see a late summer wedding from 2019… let’s keep everything crossed for events like this later in 2021! All images by #englishweddingmember Damien Vickers Photography – what an incredible day this was!

Wedding photographer’s website

https://www.damienvickersphotography.co.uk/

How did you choose your photographer?

Damien is our neighbours’ son so came highly recommended of course! We checked out his website and loved his style and how colourful and relaxed the imagery was so it was an easy choice for us!

Were you pleased with your wedding photographer? Do tell… we love a brilliant review!

Absolutely! Damien captured the day perfectly and was ever the professional. He blended in to the background so we hardly noticed he was there most of the time which I guess is just what you need on the day. He also had the patience of a saint whilst I was getting ready!

Videographer details if applicable – and any thoughts for other couples about having a wedding video?

https://richardsealey.wixsite.com/weddings
We decided to hire Richard fairly last minute as we were dubious we needed the extra cost but we are so glad we did! We would highly recommend a videographer, it was so special being able to relive the whole experience of the day. The sights and sounds immediatly bring all the memories to life and I cry every time I watch it back!

Tell us about any special personal touches, or creative projects you made yourselves

Where do I begin!? The whole wedding was a real project for me and I loved designing and styling every aspect!

The entire family got involved with all the details from making the Place names which were Origami Paper Planes to the wedding favours.

I taught myself Macrame, and showed all my sisters, my mum and Craig’s mum how to make Macrame feather keyrings and then hand dyed each one as gifts. Everyone helped tie these onto ribbons around the napkins at each setting as well as ribbons on the chair backs. I bought the charger plates and pink vintage style water glasses for each setting too!

I enlisted my dad to build a free standing frame to hold a huge Macrame Wall hanging I created over several months to be the backdrop to our ceremony. He also cut and made all of the huge logs that lined our aisle and smaller versions that held the table names and menus. He even made us a special ring holder from a cut log and had an engraved plaque put on the back to mark the day.

I hunted charity shops and car boot sales all year round for vintage suitcases, books, doilies, maps, globes and bottles and collected candle holders and travel related ornaments for our table displays. My mum painstakingly decorated over 30 bottles with vintage lace and string for our table flowers.

I got a lot of my ideas from Pinterest and reading Wedding Blogs. I even made the travel pillar candles by printing vintage maps onto tracing paper and glueing them onto the candles. Our parents provided their wedding photos and those of our grandparents to display in vintage frames so that they could still be part of our special day.

My mum grew flowers in her garden especially for our ladder displays. Even Craig got involved, he hand wrote all our wedding signs including the Pilot/Co-Pilot signs hung on our chairs and the Order of Service which he made out of an old Pallet. We designed all of our wedding stationery together using Zazzle with our invitations in the format of vinatge postcards and matching menus and order of service fans. My best friend made us a personalised stamp with our wedding date to use on our table names and invites.

My sisters and their partners helped make map bunting out of old ordanance survey maps that I stained with tea bags and we also used these to create the map confetti for the tables as well as cones to hold the real petal confetti that my mum made from rose petals she dried from her garden. Our guest book was made up of vintage postcards that I collected and everyone wrote messages for us on, which we have put in an album.
The table plan was a vintage map poster my sister gave me with hand written luggage tags displayed on a large vintage style mirror we put on an easel. My dad did all the lighting making bespoke uplighters for the huge trees in the grounds and creating the coloured acetates for inside the marquee and my graduation lighting installation hung as the backdrop to our cake table. Sorry but the list is endless!!

Perhaps the biggest team effort and one of my best find were the paper lanterns that were hung in the centre of the marquee. I found a picture of the perfect coloured lanterns on pinterest used at a previous wedding and managed to get in touch with the venue featured in the image to ask where they got them. They stunned me by offering to give me the whole lot for free, I just had to pay for shipping from Ireland. It ended up saving me about £280.

It took Craig my dad and my sisters partners about 3 hours to get them all strung up on a huge rope and were very heavy when lifted and suspended from the ceiling but I think the effect was totally worth it in the end and it wowed all our guests!

Another memorable moment, was being chauffered to the aisle in a Bentley with a personalised number plate, driven by my sister’s boyfriend who works for Bentley, now that’s how the Bride should arrive, in style!

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

Barrington Hall in Cambridgeshire was everything we wanted in a venue. We looked at quite a few places before we discovered it through a friend as we really wanted to get married outside so this was a requirement for us. The house is beautiful and I used the lodge to get ready in. The grounds also allowed us to hire the vintage swing boats I was keen to have. What made the venue for us though was Jana our Events manager, she was so passionate about weddings and made us feel so at ease, it wouldn’t have been the same without her!

Did you love wearing your outfits? How was the dress / suit shopping experience?

Dress shopping was quite the mission for me! I spent several months trying on dress after dress all over London and the East of England only to end up getting the last dress I tried on in one of my first appointments at my local dress shop! It was the one I kept comparing every other dress to and in the end I managed to get it in a sample sale they were having. When I put it back on I was so relieved that I still loved it as much as I thought I did I finally shed tears of joy which was a moment I had been waiting for all along! Needless to say shopping for the groom’s outfit was much more straight forward as we both agreed on the more relaxed country style and ended up finding the perfect Jacket and matching waistcoat in Debenhams, which the groomsmen also wore and then mixed and matched the rest of their outfits.

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

We hired a florist who had previously done one of my colleagues weddings and lived near by. Nicola was amazing and managed to recreate exactly what I’d had in my head perfectly. She managed to deliver everything we asked for all within budget and their were so many different elements I don’t know how she pulled it off all on her own! Even though the timing wasn’t right for us to have my favourite flowers – Peonies – she had most people fooled with her beautiful choice of Dahlias and Roses and her creations certainly measured up to my pinterest board!

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

We were lucky enought that my cousin is a Wedding Cake baker and offered to make our cake as a wedding gift. He started his own business a few years ago and his first cake was his own wedding cake. He is called Mr Cake aka. Chris Holmes. Chris took my brief of a Suitcase themed cake and created a work of art! Most of our guests didn’t even realise it was a cake and they all commented on how stunning it was, and of course it tasted fantastic with three different layers, Red Velvet, St Clementine and Strawberries and Cream!

Did you personalise your vows or have any wedding readings? What were they?

We had two readings read by my good friend Sara and Craig’s sister Zoe. “Yes I’ll Marry you my Dear” by Pam Ayres and ‘Mayonnaise jar and golf balls’ reading by Anon

What was your first dance song? Why did you choose it?

Bobby Darin – Somewhere Beyond the Sea. We chose the song because we wanted something we could learn to dance to and it fit the Vintage Travel theme so well. It was also the one song that we both agreed we loved and the lyrics were just perfect.

Favourite wedding suppliers

https://www.damienvickersphotography.co.uk/
http://www.deanmagic.com/weddings – Best Magician ever, our guests adored him!
https://www.tooleysamusements.co.uk/jubilee-swingboats.php – We wanted entertainment for our guests that really brought our Vintage Travel theme to life and this totally fit the bill! It also made for some amazing cadid photos!
http://www.stephaniepriordance.co.uk/index.html – Our Dance teacher was Tara Prior, she’s wonderful, so talented and patient. We wanted to do more than just a two step or shuffle but not look like we were trying to be the next Baby and Jonny. The balance must have been perfect as our guests thought we had choreograhed the dance ourselves!
https://www.karenforte.com/ – Bridal Boutique were so helpful with the many alterations I needed including adding capped sleeves to my dress.