Vanessa and Ross's gorgeous Cooling Castle Barn wedding

 

 We met Vanessa thanks to a recommendation from our good friends at Creative Cakes....talk about a Welsh connection with Vanessa and her family, Maria at Creative Cakes and me....surprised a dragon didn't appear somewhere!  Having had the recommendation from Creative Cakes, I then persuaded Vanessa to change the cake design with Vanessa (sorry girls) but we all loved the end result.  Vanessa's wedding was always going to be fun, relaxed and full of glorious details.  She and Ross have been together for quite a while and are a fab couple.  Vanessa is so great to work with...full of life, energy and fun, yet very happy to leave the details to us...such great fun creating all the flowers for her.  She wanted everything to be soft, natural, and a little bit hand-picked.  Colours were ivory, cream and a hint of blue which just looked so fresh and lovely. 

For Vanessa's bouquet, we designed a small and delicate bouquet as she is petite and pretty and wanted to show off her very elegant dress.  We didn't want a flat or rounded hand-tied bouquet so graduated all the small delicate flowers throughout the bouquet. We used waxflower, gypsophilia, spray roses, bouvardia and paperwhites along with a hint of blue brought in with cornflowers.  We've "stolen" a photo from Facebook to show you how gorgeous she and Ross looked together. 

 

For her adult bridesmaids, we designed smaller hand-tied bouquets all in ivory with just double blue ribbons on the stems to bring in the accent colour.  The eldest flower girl had a smaller posy whilst the middle two flower girls wore circlets of flowers in their hair.  The two youngest flower girls had small wand style posies to tie in with everything else.  All so pretty and soft.

The boys all had textured buttonholes to match the smaller headed flowers look we had elsewhere.  Ross wore a chincherinchee, spray rose and cornflower buttonhole with rosemary, whilst the rest of the boys had the same style buttonhole just with no muscari.  The Page boys had buttonholes of spray rose and rosemary to ensure they weren't too big.  Mums, Nans and sisters all had lapel corsages, with detail added to match outfits.

For the ceremony, we dressed the beams in the barn with ivy garlands and added clusters of gypsophilia to soften.  We then added vases to the celebrant table and two candelabra arrangements either side of the dais to frame Vanessa and Ross taking their vows.  They had a fabulous pianist (www.exceptionalpianists.co.uk) who brought his own piano for the ceremony and it looked and sounded wonderful.  They also brought a seperate keyboard to play during the drinks reception...a great addition to Cooling and a fab idea.  If I were getting married, I'd definitely want this!  Well found Vanessa and Ross!

For the wedding reception, we added candelabras to the guest tables with soft arrangements in ivory and green with a hint of blue. We then used a rosebowl arrangement for the children's table to tie in with the other tables but to give a more child friendly centrepiece. We added votives and candles to all the tables for additional glow.

For the top table, we used lots of smaller vases, teacups, teapots, jars etc all filled with flowers to match the wedding.  We also added some empty vases amongst them for the bridal and bridesmaids' bouquets.  Loved the bunting on the table too.

We dressed the tableplan with gypsophilia and also dressed Vanessa's vintage suitcase "postbox" with flowers...so pretty. We also dressed the main beams in the reception barn with a faux blossom garland and lights (for the end beams) and with plain lights for the middle beams. A perfect finishing touch.

Finally to the cake...the brief was tall and chunky and with delicate icing which Creative Cakes did beautifully.  We provided a topper and a full floral base (almost an extra tier) and though we say it ourselves, we all did a great job!  It did look lovely and I think is a great option for cake dressing...elegant yet so very pretty...a perfect match for our bride and groom.

The only possible downside to the whole fabulous wedding was that Vanessa and Ross' West Highland Terrier couldn't come along....but they even managed to bring him into the wedding in spirit via a cardboard cutout.  Now that's creative!  We had a great time planning and designing this wedding and we know that Vanessa and Ross had a fab time on their big day.   Hope you've enjoyed reading this.

Kim and Wesley's wedding at Dale Hill Golf Club

Photograph taken from Facebook page - photographer unknown

Better late than never....today I'm featuring Kim and Wesley's very pretty April wedding at Dale Hill.  I am so very far behind with blogs, so apologies.  However, I couldn't overlook this very pretty wedding for a lovely couple.  Kim herself is so pretty and petite, that we wanted the flowers to match.  She had chosen navy blue dresses for her bridesmaids, and wanted everything to be soft, romantic and pretty...we thought it was all very elegant as well.

Kim's gorgeous slim fitting gown needed to be complimented and not hidden, and hence a pretty largely ivory bouquet was chosen using roses, spray roses, ranunculus, bouvardia, freesias and light foliage.  So fresh and soft.  With her gown, it worked perfectly.

For the bridesmaids, we decided to use soft pink with a touch of ivory to contrast against their dresses and once again provided hand-tied bouquets.  For the two Flower Girls, varying sizes of posy were provided to tie in with the elder bridesmaids.

The boys wore rose buttonholes with Wesley having an ivory rose and ranunculus to work alongside Kim's bouquet.  The rest of the boys wore pale pink roses and freesias.  For the ring bearers we used just the ranunculus to scale them down in size.  We also provided thank-you bouquets for the Mums.

To frame the entrance into the ceremony room, we used baytrees dressed around the base with roses.  We use a glass cube arrangement for the celebrant table (not shown as not ready to photograph when we left). 

For the wedding breakfast, we dressed the top table with a cylindrical, non trailing arrangement using all the flowers used elsewhere and then finished the table with pale pink and ivory rose petals.  We also added roses to the place settings to finish off the look.

We then added glass vases containing pretty hand-tied arrangements to every table and surrounded them with petals.  We added a seperate vase to the present table and petals to the table holding the tableplan.  It was such a light and airy room and the colours of the flowers looked lovely against the navy napkin ties and favour bags.  We'd tied the arrangements with navy ribbon to tie in, and we thought it looked very pretty indeed.

It was such a lovely wedding to be involved with, and I know Kim and Wesley had a wonderful day.  Despite it being April, the sun was streaming in through the windows when we left, and everything looked so very pretty...a perfect accompaniment to our lovely bride and groom.