Celebrity English Wedding: Jacquetta Wheeler & James Allsopp

Celebrity weddings are always a fabulous source of wedding inspiration, and none more than Jacquetta Wheeler's stunning wedding to James Allsopp. Just take a look at her incredible bespoke Alice Temperley wedding gown, the grandeur of the historic Chilham Castle wedding venue, and the beautiful flowers by Vic Brotherson of Scarlet & Violet. Every detail is picture perfect, and captured exquisitely by photographer-to-the-stars Robert Fairer. For more details and more wedding pictures, don't miss the Vogue article.

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Real Marquee & Bunting Wedding: Claire & Tim - Part 2

Brides planning a marquee wedding will want to save all the pictures from this fabulous Manchester wedding. It's Part 2 time for Claire and Tim's wedding {Part 1 here}, and you're going to love the reception pictures. With a bunting theme and purple as a theme colour, every wedding detail is perfectly thought out, with tonnes of DIY wedding details. The wedding cake, the cake topper, the wedding stationery - everything was bunting themed, and handmade by friends and family. I love how Tim's dad organised the orchid table displays and the buttonholes - as a member of the British Orchid Society he was best placed to choose the perfect blooms. Remember to draw on the talent of all your friends for your wedding - we had a fantastic DIY session the week before our wedding day, and put together tonnes of the decorations and wedding stationery. Claire did the same thing - don't miss her answers to the Before the Big Day Bride's Questionaire for more helpful wedding tips. Huge thanks to Kayleigh Pope Photography for her beautiful pictures.

I took a long time to decide what marquee theme I wanted – toying between shabby chic, morrocan tent or classy event, but I kept coming back to clean white, with purple {my favourite colour} accents. I also love bunting as it seems so celebratory, so eventually we decided to go with purple ditsy-print and gingham bunting, with white broderie anglaise. This then set the tone for my wedding theme and all the other wedding details - including the wedding invitations and stationery!

I loved every second! My advice for other brides? Don’t stress out and worry about things because everything will be fine - people can't do enough for you on your wedding day! Suddenly the little details don't matter so much anymore - having everyone you love in one room is just amazing!

For our wedding flowers, I knew we wanted orchids on the tables as Tim's dad is in The Orchid Society of Great Britain. He sorted these table flowers out for us, along with the buttonholes for the ushers.

The whole of our wedding seemed like a giant DIY project – from cutting out thousands of triangles for bunting, to digging drainage holes in the field before the marquee was put up! We also handmade our bunting wedding invitations - printing the details onto material. My sister-in-law spent lots of time researching how we could print onto material without ink running, or having to buy industrial fabric.

The best man's mum made our wedding fruit cake as many years ago her mum {our best man's grandma} had promised to make Tim's wedding cake. Sadly she died a year before the wedding so Carolyn made the cake for us instead –upholding her mum's promise. Our very close friend Gill decorated the wedding cake, again with a bunting theme! To make it even more personal, the cake couple were sat on a tortoise – our first pet together!

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Real Marquee & Bunting Wedding: Claire & Tim

Any bride planning her wedding on a realistic budget is going to love this beautiful, detail-filled big day. It's packed with wedding inspiration and ideas, including fantastic high-street finds for bridesmaids, and in-the-know websites for reasonable handmade suits for your groom and ushers. Claire and Tim chose a traditional church and marquee wedding, with a British bunting and purple wedding theme. You'll have to wait for Part 2 tomorrow for the incredible reception details, but first take a look at the stunning portrait pictures - all by Kayleigh Pope Photography. Claire's Mori Lee wedding gown is beautiful and she teamed it with dainty {and reasonable} shoes from M&S. Meanwhile the flower girls' pretty dresses came from Next, and all the wedding party suits were handmade in Thailand for much less than they would have cost in the UK. They were even embroidered on the inside with their names! I love the ushers' floral shirts - I'm a big fan of men making fashion choices at weddings, it gives the groom an opportunity to let his personality shine through. Don't miss Claire's answers to the Before the Big Day Bride's Questionaire - there's tonnes of helpful wedding tips there to steal. Huge thanks to Kayleigh Pope Photography for her beautiful pictures.

For our wedding flowers I used a local florist called Magpies in Longton near Preston for my bouquet, and the Mums' 'Thank you' bouquets. Natalie was superb – I emailed her the week before the wedding to add top table flowers to the order, and she produced the most amazing goldfish bowls which matched perfectly with the flowers on the other tables.

I found my wedding dress in a small bridal boutique in Woburn in Buckinghamshire. I wore a Mori Lee wedding gown, and a veil dotted with Swarovski crystals. Many of my accessories were my 'Something Borrowed'. I had two pairs of shoes – my main ones from M&S and some sandals for dancing later. I didn't want to spend lots on shoes when I knew I would never last all day in heels!

I had three bridesmaids all under the age of six. Their dresses and shoes were from Next – I wanted ivory to match my wedding gown. They had purple headbands from Monsoon Occasion.

My husband had his suit tailor made in Thailand, via a website called iTailor. We purchased the man of honour {instead of best man}, and the ushers' suits from there as well, because we wanted them to be able to keep their wedding suits rather than hire.

We celebrated our big day at St Gregorys Chapel in Chorley, and our wedding reception in my parents-in-law's field! We wanted a personal day and it always seemed like the best option. We knew we wanted a big marquee wedding!

The suits were monogrammed on the inside pocket with the date of our wedding and their job {usher / best man / man of honour}.

I chose my gorgeous childhood friend, Kayleigh Pope Photography for our wedding photographer. It was one of the first things I booked - in fact on the day we got engaged I rang and booked her! Kayleigh has such an eye for detail and makes even the most mundane things looks amazing. I would recommend her to anyone without hesitation!

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Real Glamorous Detail-Filled Wedding: Jude & James - Part 2

The glamorous wedding has a special place in my wedding blogger's heart, because it's so similar to my own! Lovely bride Jude chose a similar colour palette and wedding style, and read Before the Big Day in the run-up to her wedding day, so I'm delighted to introduce you to her incredible wedding reception. With a huge selection of perfectly matched wedding details, you're going to feel seriously inspired by all the work that went into making this wedding pitch-perfect. From the airy marquee, to the lace bunting, to honeycomb paper lanterns, glamorous candelabras and fairy lights, everything fits in with Jude and James' romantic wedding theme. Don't miss Jude's answers to the Before the Big Day Bride's Questionnaire - she's listed her favourite Etsy finds, plus a few of her DIY projects. Huge thanks to Mike Legg Photography for his stunning wedding pictures.

We loved the idea of hosting our wedding reception in a marquee – it felt more festive and fun. We decorated with white lace bunting from Devon Bunting, white honeycomb lanterns from eBay & Cox & Cox, and fairy lights from Lights 4 Fun. I wanted to keep the marquee decorations quite neutral and loved the idea of white decorations, so the flower displays and candelabras would really stand out. I hung a lot of lanterns - I discovered that you needed quite a few to create an effect because they white against a white background.

As we had 140 guests I wanted a big four-tier cake and I really wanted a lace design. I'd seen the perfect wedding cake at wedding fairs, but we couldn't afford the £800 price-tag. Luckily, my mother-in-law's friend happened to make wedding cakes, and did one for her son the year before in exactly the style I was after, at a price we could afford. We had chocolate, victoria sponge and lemon as the flavours - it was delicious!

Our florists were Stemtation in Henley-on-Thames for the reception venue flowers, and a local village florist for the bouquets. Both did an amazing job. For the tables we had arrangements of hydrangeas, peonies, sweet avalanche and amnesia roses with gypsophila and astilbe. We also had miniature cut glass bud bases filled with roses and peonies on each table and dotted around the venue.

We had a few DIY wedding projects. Our guestbook table included old photographs of our grandparents in vintage frames, plus a Polaroid camera for our guests to take candid snaps of each other to stick in the guest book. I also made blackboards out of white shabby chic style photo frames for the table numbers, and a big blackboard for the menu which we later used as the cocktail bar menu as well.

Another one of our DIY wedding projects was the place name cards. We created them using typewriter-style letter stamps and glued on with pretty bows made out of a selection or ribbons.

Our wedding favours were tiny bottles of sloe gin, handmade by my mum and stepdad. They picked sloes in the village during the autumn before our wedding, and James’ artist granddad designed the label – a drawing of the village church which we also used on the order of service. We particularly wanted to give favours that wouldn't just get left behind on the tables. So, one of the after-dinner cocktails was a BYO sloe gin fizz - the guests had add their own sloe gin to the drink. It worked perfectly – there weren't many left over!

Our other wedding favours were personalised wedding crosswords from B is For Brown and a wedding message game from Meg Mac Design. These worked really well as fun things for our guests to do in-between courses, and we have some funny messages to keep as momentos!  Fun vintage fork stands from Moustaches In The Post held them in place.

My advice for brides is use blogs! They’re much cheaper than magazines for getting inspiration, and I found so many ideas and recommendations. Also, get a good night's sleep the night before {not 5 hours like I did!}, and remember to let go and enjoy the day. Take a moment to turn around at some point to take in the whole scene, as your wedding day passes in in a second…And get video – even if it's just a relative {like we had}, watching back the ceremony, speeches and first dance is amazing and I’m so glad we have the footage.

Our photographer was Mike Legg Photography based locally in Berkshire. We found Mike online and met him a year before the wedding, we loved his style of photography which seemed focussed on capturing the emotion and atmosphere of the day. The pictures he took are beautiful.

More Wedding Vendors
* For the bar we had bride and groom cake pops from Pop Bakery
* Personalised Wedding Cocktail Stirrers from For Your Party
* Edible flowers to decorate the cocktails from Greens Herbs (_)
* Wedding Stationery by Emma-Jo

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Real Glamorous Detail-Filled Wedding: Jude & James

There's huge excitement here at the Before the Big Day studio, because there's nothing we like more than a Before the Big Day bride. Beautiful Jude regularly read Before the Big Day in the build up to her wedding, and we even bumped into each other at the Designer Wedding Show! As you can imagine, this makes every detail of Jude and James' wedding extra-special, and I'm hugely grateful to Jude for filling in our Bride's Questionnaire, listing all her wedding suppliers. There are so many beautiful wedding details, it's hard to choose which one to mention first. I love the dusky pink and grey colour theme, Jude's stunning romantic Jenny Packham wedding gown, and the complementary Dessy dresses she chose for her bridesmaids. With the elegant vintage car, super-cool jazz trio, and resident wedding artist, Jude really thought of every wedding detail. Just wait till you see the reception pictures in Part 2 this lunchtime! Fabulous wedding photographs published with thanks to Mike Legg Photography.

We celebrated our wedding day on 26th May 2012, with a service at St Andrew’s Church in East Hagbourne in Oxfordshire where I grew up. Our reception was held in the gardens at Basildon Park, a beautiful National Trust property in Berkshire.

My dress was the 'Minerva' design from Jenny Packham, and my headband was also Jenny Packham. My veil was from a separate bridal shop, it was a single tier veil, studded with tiny crystals. My shoes were Christian Louboutin - I wanted to splash out, but buy a pair I knew I could wear again, so went for silver peep-toe heels. They were so comfortable despite having a huge heel!

I gave my bridesmaids jewellery as thank you presents – long vintage style earrings, and a brooch from Oliver Laudus to pin on their dresses.

My bridesmaids wore long, floaty chiffon dresses from Dessy in 'platinum' - a silver, blue grey colour, which made for a lovely contrast to all the dusky pink flowers. The dresses tied in with my softer dress style – anything structured wouldn't have really matched.

Our florists were Stemtation in Henley-on-Thames for the reception venue flowers, and a local village florist for the bouquets. Both did an amazing job. The bridesmaids bouquets were peonies, sweet avalanche and amnesia roses, with gypsophila, so soft romantic dusky and very pale pinks. My bouquet was slightly bigger and had ranunculus, spray roses and astilbe in as well.

James wore a slate-grey morning suit with a dove-grey double-breasted waistcoat, hired from Austin Reed. We organised hired morning suits for the Best Man, the Dads and all six ushers as well. James wore a silver-grey flower-patterned tie from Thomas Pink to match the bridesmaids' dresses, and all the groomsmen wore a dusky pink tie from Jaegar.

A year before I started planning my wedding it all felt very daunting, with all the decisions that had to be made. But I definitely got more into it as time went on, and a few months before my big day everything seemed to fall into place. It’s a very fun time, but can be overwhelming as well!

Our wedding theme centred around our wedding colours. Our flowers were all soft and dusky pink colours, and the bridesmaid dresses and ushers waistcoats were dove grey, so those were the main colours of the day. If there was a theme, it was 'romantic' and 'soft' to match my dress style, with some glamourous touches at the reception with the the candelabras and cocktail bar.

We chose Basildon Park as our wedding venue because of the beautiful and relaxed style of their gardens, and the views from the back lawn. The house itself is stunning, but that wasn’t what drew us to pick Basildon Park, it was more the beauty of the landscape around it that we loved. We were lucky enough to have a beautiful sunny wedding day, so the whole drinks reception was outside on the back lawn. We entertained our guests with a jazz trio called The New Orleans Footstompers, and garden games. 

The flower girls wore floaty chiffon ivory dresses from Monsoon, which were a similar shape to my dress, with flower detailing at the shoulders. I also bought them flower headbands from Etsy shop The Red Magnolia to tie in with the bouquet flower colours.

Our photographer was Mike Legg Photography based locally in Berkshire. We found Mike online and met him a year before the wedding, we loved his style of photography which seemed focussed on capturing the emotion and atmosphere of the day. The pictures he took are beautiful.

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