Wedding Blog UK ~ Wedding Ideas ~ Before The Big Day: Sam Johnson Photography

Monday 28 January 2013

Real English Garden Wedding: Krysten & Matt - Reception Details

With tonnes of English garden wedding details, you're going to love the pretty in pink reception pictures from Krysten and Matt's beautiful big day! Krysten organised many of the DIY projects herself, with a little help from her family. Matt's mum made the wedding cake, his aunt arranged the wedding bouquets, and their friends all grew English garden wedding flowers to decorate the reception venue. With tonnes of money-saving tips, you're going to love reading Krysten's wedding advice, and you'll want to copy all her stunning shabby-chic wedding details. Huge thanks to Sam Johnson for his beautiful pictures - don't miss Part 1 here.

We got married on Saturday 7th July 2012 at noon in our church in Long Itchington. Our reception was at Matt's parents' house – a beautiful old farm. We always knew we would want a summer wedding there as it’s very personal and special to us, it's a stunning English setting and had the space we needed.

Our theme was English Summer Country Garden – we had different coloured flowers everywhere and our day had a real personal DIY feel. Family and friends had grown all the flowers in the pots that surrounded the marquee and courtyard, and a close selection of family arranged all the table flowers.

Our photographer was Sam Johnson. We went to school with him and I knew he had a very good reputation. Ahead of our wedding he came to visit the church and venue, and we spent time deciding on the types of shots we wanted. We are so pleased with our photos, particularly the ones of us on our own in the garden - they're gorgeous pictures that we will cherish forever.

Matt and I met at secondary school when we started taking GCSE Maths and History lessons together at the age of 15. Matt asked me to our Year 11 summer ball and 10 years later asked me to marry him on my birthday weekend away to Lake Windermere.

It was April Fools Day, we went for a long walk in the rain with our puppy and he kept checking his phone for the time and then proposed after midday {April Fools don’t count then apparently!}. I was very shocked when I saw him on one knee and of course said yes! It was very romantic. Minutes later we bumped into a couple who were celebrating their 50 year anniversary – they said it must be a good sign for us!

Our wedding reception started with prosecco and canapés in the courtyard, with a string quartet and then we chose a really unusal marquee from Artisan Marquees for the reception. It was plain white, so we decorated it with lots and lots of beautiful colourful English garden flowers, large colourful flower paper pom poms, and white paper globes.

My exceptionally creative and talented friend Milly Carter designed and printed our gorgeous invites, order of service, place names, table names, table plan. They all had a floral, vintage theme.

Our wedding invitations, Order of Service and place-names were printed on brown eco paper and our table names and table plan were hand painted black and white with pink flowers. We chose a theme of 'These are a few of our favourite things' so each table had names including 'Lady Coco' {our dog}, 'The Beatles', 'Lake Windermere' and 'Trinity School' {where we met}.

For wedding favours, we had Matt's mum traditional chutney in little glass jars topped with floral material for decoration, plus a brown luggage tag stamped with 'Spread the love. Matt and Krysten. 7th July 2012'. They fitted perfectly with our DIY country theme, and were very cost-effective.

We had lots of DIY projects. We made the flower pom-poms, decorated the chutney pots for favours, created our favour sweetie table and a photo wall with pictures of all our guests. But the biggest project was probably the wedding flowers!

I love flowers so this was a huge part of our wedding theme. From the start I knew I wanted as many flowers as possible – lots of different colours, with little dainty garden flowers in teacups on the tables. We asked our family to grow pots of flowers and help with the decorations, and the scent on the day was glorious.

I loved planning our wedding! I followed lots of bloggers on Twitter and had two books; a scrapbook with ideas, and a wedding planning book full of lists and deadlines. I found the more organised I was the more I could enjoy the creative side.

I really miss planning it now! It was special and fun to be able to chose everything and develop a theme. Matt was happy to leave me to do the 'look' so long as he tasted the food, and chose the wedding band. He picked Anthem who are based in Brighton, and they were absolutely fantastic!!! We've never been to a wedding with so many people dancing wildly to a band!

Our favourite cake is Matt's mum's freshly baked Victoria sponge with cream and strawberry jam. The strawberries added a summer feel. She made this with our sister-in-laws company Sweet As in Leamington Spa. It was simple, classic and delicious. We served it as pudding with fresh cream.

My advice for brides is to set a budget from the outset and work out your priority items – we were fortunate to have people to help with flowers, so that £100, which we could put towards a fantastic band. I got at least three quotes for everything too – it's astonishing the price difference between companies. Our marquee was a third of the cost of another company, and by driving an additional 5 miles we saved £100 on the bridesmaid dresses! Our friend recommended a string quartet at a music college who were significantly cheaper as they are not yet graduated so charge less – they were superb.

Also, use talented friends and family – they can offer a wonderful personal touch, you can save lots of money and people love to be involved and be apart of your special day! It’s easy to focus on the wedding but your committing to a lifelong marriage - so don’t forget to make plenty of time for each other before the big day.

More posts like this one:
✽ Shabby Chic London Wedding
✽ Anthropologie-Style Wedding

♥ Want to see marquee weddings? ♥ Or how about more church wedding ideas? ♥

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Real English Garden Wedding: Krysten & Matt

I'm taking a quick break from my Before the Big Day Wedding Trends of 2013 series today, to feature this incredible English Summer Garden themed wedding. With pretty pinks, stunning stationery, buckets of garden flowers, and a gorgeous bride and groom, I couldn't wait to show you Sam Johnson's beautiful pictures. Krysten and Matt planned many of the DIY details for their wedding themselves, and created a truly personal big day. Krysten even designed her own wedding dress, with the help of her local seamstress, Julie Dutton - a fantastic idea if you can't find a gown in the shops. Feast your eyes on all the wedding pictures, I've got more of their stunning marquee reception to publish later today!

We celebrated our wedding on Saturday 7th July 2012 at noon in our church in Long Itchington. I was christened there when I was a baby so it's very special to me. My stepdad had been ordained a year before our wedding, so he married us.

Our theme was English Summer Country Garden – we had different coloured flowers everywhere and our day had a real personal DIY feel. Matt's incredibly talented Aunty Luciana made my bouquet and the wedding party flowers – they were perfect!

I searched through several wedding dress shops and couldn't find a gown for me, so I searched the internet for ideas, and then took these ideas to my fantastic seamstress, Julie Dutton, who worked with me to select the lace and tweak the style until I was happy.

I always wanted bright fushcia dresses for my bridesmaids and I loved Alfred Sung from Dessy. They were ideal for a summer wedding, and I wanted each of my bridesmaids to have a different style {I didn’t want them looking like identical triplets}. I was keen for them to feel unique, comfortable and special - and with plenty of style options, they could choose their own look.

I loved my dress so much - it was perfect and exactly what I'd always pictured. I would recommend having a dressmaker to all brides who have a specific idea in mind – the final cost worked out similar to buying a wedding gown, but it was one of kind, especially for me! I’m very traditional so I decided to have a veil for church, after all, when else would I get the opportunity to wear one, plus I felt it completed the look.

I found my Rachel Simpson shoes at a vintage wedding fair. They were reduced to £50 on the day and a percentage of the money was donated to Breast Cancer Research UK. I love pink, so they were perfect and fitted my vintage style dress. I wore dropped pearl earrings – a wedding gift from my mum, and Matt's mum gave me a wedding gift – a beautiful gold Rolex watch that her mum bought her for her 21st birthday. She also lent me a simple gold bangle with a diamond on it.

I love flowers so this was a huge part of our wedding theme. From the start I knew I wanted as many flowers as possible. My bouquet and wedding party flowers {bridesmaids bouquets, button holes, flower girls' head-dresses} were all beautiful large English roses, gypsophilia, wax flowers, sweet peas and more!

Matt's outfit was a Ted Baker three piece suit, Next shirt, black skinny tie and Dune shoes – all very classic and to his taste.

Naturally we wanted Sam to take as many photos on the day as possible but we were adamant that we didn’t want to spend hours having our photos taken, so we were keen to be organised with a list of photos we wanted. We assigned the organisation task to the ushers, so we didn't have to spend ages trying to find people. We are so pleased with our photos, particularly the ones of us on our own in the garden - they're gorgeous pictures that we will cherish forever.