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
Before the Big Day - the Best UK Wedding Blog.
