Pink Weddings Spring 2016 Pink Weddings Spring 2016 | Page 37

AdRIAN ANd STEvE PAUL NOEL ANd away, Bay Tree, who already provided the hotel’s flowers. Our colour theme was navy, grey and white, with accents of yellow, which we incorporated throughout the wedding, from designs to flowers. We are fortunate to know a very talented graphic designer, Maxine Gregory, who designed our bespoke wedding logo along with all our stationery, from invites, patterns, address labels, favour stickers, place names, seating plan, table cards – the lot. She did an incredible job considering I was very indecisive and would throw a million ideas at her that I had found from Pinterest! We also commissioned a calligraphy artist, Bonjour Laura J, who has had her work featured in bridal magazines such as Vogue, to create us blackboards to place around the venue, gift tags for guests and our card box. It took me ages to decide on wedding favours and gifts for the wedding party, but Etsy was our saviour and we had handmade soy candle wedding favours made for guests by Amber Watkins, who was an absolute delight to work with and did an amazing job. We also had engraved hipflasks for the ushers and customised swarvoski and silver plated compact mirrors for the groomsmaids. I made some paper fans following our colour theme – small ones that were scattered on the tables at the wedding breakfast and as wall decorations behind our wedding cake. It was decided from the start that Paul and I would wear matching morning suits, and we chose navy suits with silver waistcoats and lemon yellow cravats. For our shoes, I wore versace and Paul wore Gucci, and we both had matching Swarovski crystal cufflinks. Our ushers, best man and my father were dressed in grey morning suits, with the same silver waistcoat as us, and lemon cravats. The groomsmaids wore full length navy maxi dresses with decorative beaded collars. We surprised each other with gifts before the ceremony, as we decided it would be nice to get ready together in the morning so we could capture some really great photos helping each other with cravats and cufflinks. My gift to Paul was a Michael Kors watch and his to me was a vivienne Westwood watch. As our guests arrived at the ceremony, we h ad a string quartet playing, and they continued afterwards in the gardens as we came out for drinks and photos. We walked down the aisle to them playing Can’t help falling in love by Elvis Presley and the recessional song was Signed, sealed, delivered by Stevie Wonder. We had four ushers selected by Paul on his side and a best man, and I chose my best girlfriends as groomsmaids. (Our friends had played a huge part throughout and had organised our separate stag-dos – I had a weekend in Cambridge and also Amsterdam, and Paul had a party at our local rugby club as well as a weekend in Benidorm.) Our groomsmaids walked two by two before us and then we walked down the aisle together, which was very emotional and daunting as everyone was looking at us – but just felt right. It was great to see the room filled with so many smiles though, and the whole place looked beautiful. We held our evening reception at the hotel and another 60 guests arrived, on top of the 80 day guests. The night began with our first dance, an acoustic version of Yellow by Coldplay, a song that we both very much like for its lyrics and meaning. All the lights in the room were also turned to yellow and it felt magical. We then cut the cake and greeted our evening guests. pink weddings magazine » 37