Roxanne & Laurence

February 25, 2018

Roxanne & Laurence

I am in love with the colours in this wedding. Navy’s, soft blue hues and seasonally sexy florals in a natural abundance.

The Bride looks absolutely gorgeous and Sparkford Hall is a really fabulous venue.

As soon as I saw this wedding I instantly recognised some of our lovely suppliers. RMW The List Members Ruby and The Wolf – Florals, De Winton Paper Co – Stationery and Caroline Gent – Catering. We are really proud of the quality of our suppliers so it is a real treat for us to see them together in such a stunning wedding.

The Venue

Teresa the Groom : From the start we knew we wanted our wedding to be one thing-a big beautiful party and Sparkford Hall really fit the bill. It’s a quirky Georgian house that comes with alpacas, sheep, an apple orchard, 14 bedrooms, a garden and a secret basement nightclub! It looks like a traditional old English house from the outside but is funky and modern on the inside so the décor had to match – which suited us perfectly.

We wanted our guests to feel really at home and part of the wedding, in fact some guests ended up being even more part of the wedding than we’d intended as lots of our friends just starting pitching in and helping when they arrived the day before the wedding. This was actually a really fun time.

The Dress

Considering the amount of wedding venues we looked at it probably won’t surprise anyone that I looked for a wedding dress far and wide with nothing being quite what I was after. While looking at Gillian Million’s bridal jewellery on Instagram I noticed the model was wearing the most beautiful dress, which is how I found Angelina Colarusso’s stunning dresses. I made an appointment with her and then she made all my dress dreams come true, using sample gown items to keep the cost down for me.

The Photography

The photography! I am so lucky that a high school friend happens to be a really talented photographer (Elizaveta Photography) and did us the huge favour of coming over from Paris to capture our day! She made us and all our friends/family feel totally relaxed. I had a lot of little details, which were really important to me, and she captured them so beautifully. With her lovely manner I know that if I hadn’t known her she still would have put us totally at ease. She has such an eye for light and just allowed us to interact naturally, making small adjustments. I have so many photos of the day that I love, a mixture of portraits and candid moments, which she captured of friends, our family and us. After the wedding she sent the memory stick with all the photos in super high resolution and a little selection of her photos printed out on special paper. This came in a custom made beautiful wooden box complete with hand dyed silk ribbon – it was a stunning surprise!

The Flowers

I absolutely adore flowers and wanted them to be a big part of the day. Working with Ruby and the Wolf was an absolute dream, she translated my bad descriptions into a beautiful reality of slightly wild, seasonal flowers including Amaranthus, Garden Roses and Dahlias. The flowers and foliage were super fragrant, providing beautiful décor but also scenting the room.

Hair & Makeup

We had two ladies from Amazing Face do the bridal parties hair and makeup which was lovely to take the pressure off us. Caroline (the makeup artist) is a whiz which was great because I couldn’t sleep the night before! Thankfully she completely covered my dark circles so none of my guests were any the wiser! As well as creating beautiful lana del ray style waves for me she suggested the loose braided updos for my bridesmaids which we all loved.

Food & Cake

Food was something that was really easy for us to sort out. Sparkford Hall recommended some preferred vendors that they work with and I was delighted to see Caroline Gent’s name on the list! Just by chance I had already been looking into her separately so it was perfect. To go with the relaxed vibe of the wedding we thought their option of sharing platters would be a lovely way to get everyone chatting. I notoriously never eat dessert because I am always disappointed but I wanted seconds of the lemon posset – my dress said no. As well as tasting amazing it was beautifully presented.

Cake was also an easy choice, I find with a lot of wedding cakes its style over substance, in other words it looks great but tastes like wallpaper. Not the case with Kate Burt who is the complete package in terms of stunning decoration but more importantly (to me) moist tasty cake with fresh flavours. In terms of style, we wanted something modern but not too trendy and she totally delivered. The cake had very subtle gold marbling with gold brush accents and a sugar peony. This tied in with the beautiful hanging foliage above the top table. The flavours were gluten free chocolate cake with raspberry buttercream and honey madeira with lavender buttercream.

Decor

Broadly speaking our colour scheme was dusty rose and gold but we weren’t too fussy about making sure things matched. Our guest place settings were navy so offset the dusty rose and gold elements really well.

One of my favourite elements was our Find Your Seat table plan. This was inspired by a bottle seating plan on Pinterest and was very much a joint effort! We pilfered wine bottles from our neighbours, soaked off the labels and printed our own. We also approached ‘Merrie and Bright’ who produced lasercut lettering saying ‘Find your seat’ and our florist of course added the floral element. The table plan was situated in the hallway/atrium where we had also strung up paper flowers and birds from the ceiling. To tie the paper flower elements together with the fresh flowers I asked my incredibly talented sister to make a gold paper hummingbird to make all the different elements more cohesive. While my sister made the paper birds the paper flowers were created by ‘May Contain Glitter’ who was a star to work with.

Stationery

We worked with Harriet from De Winton stationary to make something which suited us and the style of the wedding. When we went to see Harriet we were pretty flexible because if you have seen her work, everything she does is incredible. So our brief was pretty basic specifying just 2 things, one a must have (gold) and one a must not have (florals). The end result was a lovely watercolour, ombre and gold splatter invitation which is even more beautiful in person.

Special Moments

I have so many special memories of the day but one of my favourites has to be my maid of honour’s 3 year old daughter’s comments during the ceremony. When the reverend asked if there were any objections to our marriage she said NO! thank goodness she didn’t say YES! I wish I could go back in time and do the day again and again.

Advice

Everyone says it is an absolute whirlwind of a day which is absolutely true, make sure to make a bit of time for you and your new husband/wife and take or ignore whatever traditions you please. The night before the wedding we’d planned to sleep separately but had to throw this out the window when I couldn’t get a wink of sleep without him.