Charlotte and James Fab and colourful tea-party at Frasers Barn

 

We generally don't have favourites in our line of work as all weddings are lovely and we are lucky to work with amazing couples all the time....but if there were favourites, Charlotte and James would be up there.  A gorgeous couple, fabulous outfits, bridesmaids dresses from Vivien of Holloway, bridal shoes from Irregular Choice, a vintage vibe, loads of colour, a fab venue and a Victoria Sandwich cake to die for.....I could go on and on.  We loved this wedding.  Well just look at the photos courtesy of Russ Bell and Orella Images...they are stunning.

Charlotte and James had a very simple brief...colourful quirky, English and tea-party.  And they trusted us completely beyond that.  Props, flowers, bouquet finishing etc was all left to us.  I just love that happening as we can get very creative and use whatever seems right at the time.  It is a bit nerve-wracking as we don't know whether the couple will love it all as much as us, but we needn't have worried with Charlotte and James.  We used a range of flowers including stocks, astilbe, astrantia, agapanthus, santini, roses, hydrangeas, freesias, lisianthus, waxflower, gentiana, flowering mint, rosemary, sage and eucalyptus parvifolia.

Charlotte wore a stunning fitted lace dress with a high neck and a wonderful vintage fitted veil...she looked amazing.  She also looked very similar to her Gran on her wedding day, whose photo album was on display...just gorgeous.  Charlotte also changed into a 50's full dress in the evening as she and James Lindy Hop and she needed to be able to move!  Her girls all wore a different style and fabric dress from the wonderful Vivien of Holloway and had their hair and make-up was done in wonderful 50's style.  Even the umbrellas looked fab!  For their flowers we decided upon very natural, hand-tied bouquets with a just-picked feel about them.  Charlotte's were tied with lace, and we decided the girls should have theirs tied differently with gingham and polka dot ribbon.

 

 

James looked fab in his three piece suit and bow tie...so dapper and such a wonderful cut.  It definitely wasn't the fashion police with the car....Buttonholes were gorgeous and varied and included below.

 

 

Rather than describe the flowers for the ceremony, reception etc, I think it is better just to show you images from the whole day...we provided random containers, sewing machine and bunting, books, suitcases, flowers on the cake table (with cakes made by Charlotte and her girls along with Lisa Fraser), confetti in lace cones and other general venue dressing.  I'll leave it to the photos to describe.

Charlotte and James had a vintage typewriter with personalised paper for guests to leave messages...and they sent us a wonderful thank-you letter typed painstakingly on the typewriter....just wonderful. 

 

Nikki and Louie's fresh and fabulous Cooling Castle Barn wedding

 

In an attempt to catch up with some of our blog backlog, I've spent ages reminiscing on some of the lovely weddings we've done this year...we really are truly blessed to have such fabulous couples and I have to say that Nikki and Louie (and their families) will be up there with the best.  I so enjoyed working with them from the first time we met at Cooling Castle Barn's Open Day when they fell in love with the candelabra arrangement we had on display.  We also loved meeting the dogs (of course) on the wedding morning, complete with their wedding bows! 

Nikki wanted a very fresh and striking look for her wedding day and we used a palette of green, ivory and a touch of charcoal grey. 

For Nikki, we designed a relatively small (as Nikki is petite) shower bouquet of germinis, roses, trachellium, bouvardia and chincherinchee with amaranthus, grasses, rosemary and eucalyptus.  To contrast against their dresses, we then provided hand-tied mainly ivory bouquets for the bridesmaids, scaling them down in size according to their sizes.  For the Flower Girl, we decided on just some spray roses wired for her hair.

For the handsome groom, we used the Green Tea rose along with chincherinchee and foliage for his buttonhole and for his boys, we used just chincherinchee with foliage.  Mums had corsages designed to match their outfits too.

Nikki and Louie married outside at Cooling and we designed a simple, but very pretty arrangement to sit on the celebrant table because after all, it is such a gorgeous garden, you don't need anything else.

For the wedding breakfast, we added a full heart dressed with flowers to match the wedding to the plough behind the top table, and then added a long and low arrangement to the front of the top table using all the flowers used elsewhere.  We also added flowers to the place settings as a finishing touch.

Guest tables had a tall central candelabra complete with a soft trailing arrangement of hydrangeas, roses, bouvardia, germini, trachellium, amaranthus etc.  They really did look pretty and contrasted beautifully against the beams in the barn.

Finally we added flowers to each of the three tiers of a seperated cake, all to match the wedding flowers but scaled down to fit.  It was a lovely wedding for a wonderful couple, and I know they won't mind that I've "stolen" some photos from Facebook to show you how gorgeous they looked!