Abbie and Ed's gorgeous Godmersham wedding

Earlier this month we provided the flowers for Abbie and Ed's wedding in the very pretty village of Godmersham.  They married in the church and then moved just up the road to a marquee on the lawns of the beautiful Godmersham House.  We met Abbie through a word of mouth recommendation, and once again were so lucky to be working with such a lovely couple.  Abbie wanted eveerything to be fairly natural and relaxed but pretty.  She also wanted to incorporate her favourite White Company candles on the tables.

The colour palette for the wedding was ivory, pale pink, lilac and grey / blue and we were blessed with fabulous peonies, O'Hara roses, La Belle roses, sweet peas, astilbe, waxflower, bouvardia, lisianthus, gypsophilia, freesias, veronica, rosemary, flowering mint and other gorgeous bluey grey foliages.  We were like children in a sweet shop surrounded by such prettiness!



Abbie's bouquet was a soft and textured hand-tied bouquet which smelt unbelievable!   Her bridesmaids also had textured hand-tied bouquets but we omitted the peonies and swopped O'Hara for La Belle roses.  The two Flower Girls were lucky enough to have gypsophilia crowns which I'm sure looked gorgeous on them, but are very difficult to photograph without a sweet Flower Girl!  Hence my challenge is to find creative ways to photograph them!

The boys had lovely textured buttonholes to tie in with the bouquets, with Ed's being particularly lovely with the O'Hara rose.

At the lovely spacious marquee, we dressed each table with a central pitcher filled with flowers and added lace wrapped jars and other pots around the outside along with Abbie and Ed's scented candles, fluted votives and tealights.  We were just supposed to be adding single flowers to the vases, but I'm sure they won't have minded us going a little further and adding more! We then finished the whole look by adding sprigs of gypsophilia to all the napkin ties.

We filled the length of the top table with a selection of vases, jars and pots filled with flowers, all wrapped in some way in lace.  We also added votives and scented candles to tie in with the rest of the tables.  It really did look and smell amazing!

Additional finishing touches included dressing Abbie and Ed's lovingly painted stepladder with jars of flowers to complement the "LOVE" letters.  We also added random jars to the cocktail bar (and were amazed to see absolute replicas of our two cats being the inspiration for the cocktails!) and we also dressed the scrummy looking chocolate cake.

Abbie and Ed's wedding day was lovely in every way, and everyone we met from the caterers, waitresses, fabulous candy cart girls to the actual marquee providers were great to work with.  It was a fab day for us and we were only setting up, so I can only imagine how much fun Abbie and Ed will have had on their special day!

Lucinda and Richard's soft and pretty wedding at Sissinghurst Church and Hole Park Gardens

When I met Lucinda and her Mum Penny for the first time, Lucinda was just going off to live in Singapore (it wasn't something I said honestly!) so the planning process for her wedding was always going to be slightly different.  However, with the powers of the internet, email and having a very organised Penny on hand, it all went very smoothly indeed.  Lucinda knew straight away that she wanted a very soft and natural style for her wedding and a very English mix of flowers.  Colours were dusky pink, ivory with just a hint of blue and we chose a selection of hydrangeas, roses, spray roses, waxflowers, gypsophilia, gentiana, lisianthus, freesias, astrantia, bouvardia, astilbe, cornflower and sweet pea with scented foliages such as flowering mint, rosemary and eucalyptus.  Just like an English Country garden.

Whilst designs of tablecentres and floral requirements for the church changed a little along the way, Lucinda chose her bouquets right at the beginning of the process.  She opted for natural hand-tied bouquets with her bouquet having touches of the blue (cornflower and forget-me-not) included, and her bridesmaids just having the pink and ivory.  They were such a pretty collection and set the scene perfectly.  Having seen Lucinda with her bridesmaids on the wedding morning, I know the photos will look gorgeous!

The boys were wearing tradtional tails and hence instead of more rustic buttonholes, Richard decided upon elegant and simple ivory rose buttonholes for himself and all the boys (including four Best Men!).  Mum's had delicate lapel corsages to tie in.

For the very pretty and very friendly Sissinghurst Church, we were given free rein by Penny to dress it fully for the wedding, and hence started at the lych gate to welcome guests (and to amuse Japanese tourists as I balanced on a ladder!) then added a large pedestal arrangement inside the former doorway.  We then added little glass "lanterns" wrapped with hessian filled with flowers down the aisle.  We dressed the pulpit with an arrangement to match, and added two garden style arrangements to the shelves either side of the altar.  We also added an arrangement to the font at the head of the aisle.  Finally we added simple arrangements to the windowledges to finish off the overall look.  So pretty and so appropriate for the church and its surroundings.

We were then off the Hole Park Gardens to dress the marquee.  What a fabulous setting for the reception, and for a canape and drinks reception the following day.  The gardens are exquisite and I loved the idea of different parts of the garden being used at different points of the day...I also loved the swing from the tree by the marquee, but didn't let myself down by trying it out on the day!  I've added a few photos I snapped on the day to show you how lovely it is.

For the tables in the marquee, Lucinda chose central mirrors with an enamel jug on each (with a slightly larger one used for the top table) and with jam jars wrapped in hessian added around the edge along with votives and tealights.  We also provided some additional jars and flowers for the gift table (not photographed as not ready when we left) and a jar by the cake provided by the lovely girls at Creative Cakes.  Maria (and her beautiful daughter) even helped us carry boxes across the lawn that morning...and it's normally her that persuades others to carry things for her!!  It was a real help as it was a bit of a walk across as the owner understandably didn't want tyre marks on his lovely lawn.

We thought it was a perfect choice of flowers to go with the venues, and just shows how we can finalise details and create a full floral theme across the internet!  The newlyweds emailed from honeymoon (that's what I call dedication) to say the following....

Hi Amanda,

Thank you so much for our beautiful flowers. They looked absolutely fantastic. Everyone was commenting on them. We would love to see the photo's you took. You can send them to this email address.

The photographer took some amazing photo's. Once I have the full set I'll send you some photo's of the flowers.

We are just on honeymoon at the moment but we will complete the questionnaire when we get back.

Thanks again

Mrs Green!

We can't wait to see some of the photos (especially the bridal party).