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Pastel Fete Spring Marquee Wedding

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Pastel Fete Marquee Wedding http://www.mia-photography.com/

 

Hannah and Ben were married on the 29th March 2014 at Oakley Hall Hotel, Hampshire. They had a vision of a home-made fete feel wedding with pretty pastels.

There was sooo much craftiness, from the DIY bunting, decorated jam jars and crate cake stand to the children’s goodie bags.

Hannah looked so elegant in her lace dress and fingertip veil while her favourite girls wore mismatched pastel coloured frocks. LOVE.

Thanks goes to Mia Hooper for sharing her beautiful images with us today.

 

 

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THE PROPOSAL | A completely unexpected Christmas proposal, just the two of us, at home. Ben had wrapped my engagement ring inside a huge box and as I opened each box there was a smaller one inside, I had no idea he was going to propose right up until I opened the little black box with the engagement ring inside. Ben proposal was lovely, no fuss, nothing over the top, just the two of us together … and no one knew he was going to propose so we got the chance to surprise all our family members on Christmas Day! It was perfect.

THE VISION |  A Rustic village fete/spring wedding theme, with lots of home made aspects. We wanted to make as many of the decorations for our day as possible and we wanted lots and lots of bright bunting, decorated jams jars and beautiful flowers. We wanted our wedding to be beautiful, fun and full of colour. Our colours were pastel pink, lilac and turquoise.

THE PLANNING PROCESS | We had 1 year to plan after picking our venue. Ben is the best at budgets and organising so he sorted all the major aspects of the day whereas I’m better at decorations and details so that was my job, although we tried to do as much of the planning together. We managed to arrange all the major things i.e. photographer, florist within the first 6 months of planning. Our spare room soon became the main storage for hundreds of jam jars, fabric and any knick knacks we found along the way. I would pounce on family member’s glass recycling boxes and have a dig around to find any jars they were throwing out. Most weekends were spent decorating jam jars or cutting little hearts out for our table decorations. And after shopping around for fabric for the bunting and not having much luck finding the right colours, we decided to buy plain white fabric and dye it to the colours we wanted for the bunting. We were making wedding decorations right up until 2 days before the wedding!

THE VENUE  | Oakley Hall Hotel in Oakley, Basingstoke. We fell in love with the place as soon as we pulled up the drive. It had everything we wanted from a wedding venue. The period country house style mixed with beautiful rooms. The ceremony room (The Garden Room) was bright with views across the gardens of the hotel, with lots of period detail. And the marquee we used for our wedding breakfast and evening reception, was the blank canvas we wanted so we could totally transform it. We also wanted our guests to have beautiful rooms if they were staying, and Oakley Hall ticked all the boxes.

THE DRESS & ACCESSORIES |  My wedding dress was Morilee by Madeline Gardner style 1612, it was called “Hannah” in the bridal shop. An ivory strapless ball gown style dress with a sweetheart neckline, button detail on the back and with appliquéd lace and sparkle detailing all over the bodice and skirt. I wore this with a lace, sleeveless jacket “Eva Jacket” which was adjusted to remove the satin collar and a vintage style sparkly belt. My veil was one tiered, fingertip length with lace detailing around the edge. My shoes were plain ivory satin almond toe shoes with a bow and my necklace and bracelet had crystal and pearl detail, my headband had a vintage look with small beaded detail. My something Old, Borrowed and Blue was my garter, passed onto me from my sister in law Selina, with a little blue charm tied onto the garter with our wedding date engraved on it. My something New was my dress.

FINDING THE DRESS | I always knew I wanted a dress with lace and I wanted to wear a lace edged veil, so I started my search based on that. The dress I picked was one of the first dresses I tried on and I loved it, but I wanted to still shop around to make sure it was definitely the right one. I ended up going to about 7 different dress shops but found I was always comparing each dress to that first dress. I went back and tried it on again and knew it was the right one, it had everything I imagined and wanted in a wedding dress and it helped that it was called “Hannah” too, as my mum said “it was meant to be”.

GROOM’S ATTIRE |  Ben knew right from the beginning that he didn’t want to wear tails and I agreed as I felt they looked too formal. We went and had a look together and the first place Ben walked in to, he picked a steel grey suit with matching waistcoat, tried it on and it looked perfect. We went and had a look at another shop but we knew the first one was the right one. We wanted to include the 3 colours of our theme in the suits, so Ben wore a lilac cravat along with my dad Ray, Ben’s dad Brian and our 2 year old nephew Finley, Our 3 Best men Burt, Matt & Sam and my Grandad Stan wore the pink cravats and our 3 ushers Kev, Jay & Matt and my other Grandad (Grandad Jackson) wore the turquoise. Ben wore cufflinks from Fiji that his sister had given him from their travels and we had personalised cufflinks made for the 3 best men.

THE READINGS & MUSIC | As Ben had to make a speech I wanted to pick a reading for him and surprise him on the day. I looked online at various reading examples but I had heard most of them before at other weddings and nothing quite fitted what I wanted to say. My favourite book is “The Notebook” by Nicholas Sparks so I decided to use passages from the book and make it into a reading, which my chief bridesmaid (My sister Leah) read on the day.

Our music choices were a massive part of the day for both of us, as its one of our biggest loves and hobbies, so it took us ages to pin point the songs that meant the most to us. We wanted to pick songs that we really loved but were also in keeping with our theme and also songs that you don’t hear at every wedding. I walked down the aisle to “The Wedding Song” by Angus & Julia Stone, which I had loved from the very first time I heard it years before and felt it summed up exactly how I felt about Ben. We signed the register to 3 songs we’ve always liked which were “Lover of the Light” & “Below My Feet” both by Mumford & Sons and “Mango Tree” also by Angus & Julia Stone, these reminded us of all our lovely holidays in Cornwall. And we walked out to “You are the Best Thing” by Ray Lamontagne which is just a lovely, uplifting and happy song. Our first dance was “Kiss Me” by Ed Sheeran and again the lyrics just summed up how we feel about each other. I also had a first dance with my dad to “Three Little Birds” by Bob Marley, which has been mine and my dad’s song from when I was little and I then had a first dance with my Grandad Stan to “Swinging on a Star” by Bing Crosby which we always sang together when I was young and always reminds me of happy times with my grandad. All our background music before the ceremony and during the wedding breakfast was just a playlist of all the music we love so we had a mix of Ben Howard, Mumford & Sons, Johnny Cash, to name a few. At our evening reception we had a live band and a DJ, We love watching live bands so we knew we would always have one at our wedding and they didn’t disappoint, everyone was up dancing until the early hours!

BEAUTIFUL BRIDESMAIDS | I was lucky enough to have 3 amazing bridesmaids, two flower girls and a pageboy! My chief Bridesmaid was my sister Leah, my other Bridesmaids were Ben’s sister Selina and my best friend Laura. Our flower girls were mine and Ben’s nieces, Poppy (Leah’s Daughter) and Eden (Selina’s Daughter) and our page boy Finley (Leah’s Son) I knew right at the beginning that I wanted the bridesmaids to all have the same dress but in different colours and as we had three colours for our theme I wanted to put one of them in each colour. It was really important to me that the girls all loved their dresses and felt comfortable so we all went bridesmaid dress shopping together and picked the dresses and colours. I was told on more than one occasion to stop being such a nice bride and put them in whatever I wanted them to wear, but it was really important to me that it was a joint decision. I really loved the final dress we picked and thought my girls looked beautiful, Even if we did have a little panic a few weeks before when Selina’s baby bump was stopping the zip going up.

Our flower girls dresses were from John Lewis, and as they are both little we wanted to get them real princess style dresses which they could spin and twirl in. We went for Ivory dresses with sparkle on the neckline and a bow on the back, but to make them a bit different I had a dress maker make a flower brooch and flower hair clips out of their mum’s off cuts from their bridesmaid dresses so they matched our colour theme. Our pageboy Finley had a mini version of Ben’s suit and a mini lilac cravat, they looked adorable and Ben and I were so pleased that they played such an important part of our special day. We couldn’t have asked for better bridesmaid, they helped so much with the planning and making the favours and really helped calm me down before the ceremony, they also threw me two amazing Hen Do’s.. Thank you Girls!! xx

THE FLOWERS | We had a strong idea of how we wanted the flowers to look, we really wanted lots of jars in all different shapes and sizes and for the flowers to look natural and like they had just been picked. Part of the reason we chose to get married in the spring was because I loved all the flowers and the colours so it was important to me that our wedding showed off all those lovely spring garden flowers. My bouquet was a mix of pale pink roses, lilac freesia, white lilac and eucalyptus and our bridesmaids had different mixes of these flowers with gypsophila, and our flowers girls had mini bouquets of pale pink rose with lots of gypsophila.

The Men’s buttonholes were all different to match in with their cravats and we had a mini buttonhole made for Finley. My Grandad Stan carried a single stem light pink rose in honour of my Nan, June who is no longer alive but who was a huge part of my life so wanted her to be part of our day. Our venue flowers were exactly what we wanted, lots of jars filled with flowers, lots of colour and they smelled amazing. We had so many jars of flowers that we were able to give them out to our guest as they left so they could enjoy them at home. After the wedding I sent some of my bouquet to a special company who created a paperweight for me which I absolutely cherish, a perfect reminder of our special day.

THE CAKE | We wanted a traditional three tiered cake, we weren’t too worried about fancy fillings, we chose Victoria sponge and Lemon drizzle but we wanted it to have the three colours of our theme. We had a family friend of Ben’s make our cake and I didn’t get to see it until the night before the wedding, and Ben didn’t get to see it until our wedding breakfast! I was worried as I hoped our ideas and vision had come across right and it would be what we wanted. I needn’t have worried because as soon as I saw it, all my worries disappeared, it was incredible. We loved the detail of the tiny petals cascading down the side of the cake and the amazing mini bunting which went around the middle tier matched our colours exactly! It was perfect and as yummy as it looked!

YOUR PHOTOGRAPHER | We found our wedding photographer by luck really, we were looking for our videographer and found Mia on one of their websites as a recommendation. As soon as we looked at Mia’s work, we knew she was the photographer for us and we were so excited to meet with her to discuss our wedding. I had been reading all the wedding magazines that tell you to meet with more than one photographer before making a decision but as soon as we walked into the lovely local pub and meet Mia, I knew that I only wanted her to shoot our day. Mia got us immediately and was so warm and friendly, it was like we had known her for years and was talking to an old friend. And her work just blew us away, it was exactly what we wanted our wedding photos to look like and her example albums were beautiful. It safe to say that we cancelled all our other appointments with any other photographer on the same day as we met Mia and I was telling Ben in the car park as we left that as soon as we got home I wanted to book Mia for our wedding. After we had booked Mia, we had a fab engagement shoot in the New Forest. Both Ben and I are not the most keen on having our pictures taken and we definitely don’t like posing all lovey dovey hehehe, but Mia managed to make us feel comfortable and less conscious of the camera which really helped on the big day. Mia was brilliant on our wedding day, she was in the room when I was getting ready and was really calm and patient, even answering the door to the florist when we had no one free , she made everyone feel at ease and managed to get our pictures done as quickly as possible so we got to spend more time with our guests. Mia captured truly beautiful, natural photos of our family and friends that we will cherish forever, her work left us speechless. We are so pleased with all our photos and we’ve had so many friends and family comment on how beautiful they are.

THE DETAILS & DÉCOR | We filled our venue with lots of homemade touches, we made the bunting, all 175m of it from scratch, dyeing the fabric in the back garden and cutting all the triangles out. All the jam jars were hand decorated by us with string and hearts cut from pages of “The Notebook” and we hand punched all the little table confetti hearts from coloured card and pages of “The Notebook”. I made hessian bunting and painted letters on the triangles “Mr & Mrs” “Just Married” and “All you need is love” to be used around the marquee. We brought a dirty old vintage apple crate and Ben cleaned it all up to be used as our cake stand and I made a little hessian bunting to go around the edge of the crate with hearts on. I made our initials from wrapping string around cardboard letters, which were used on our top table and I also made two ribbon curtains for mine & Ben’s chairs. Ben’s mum Kay kindly made us our hessian table squares for the centre of our tables. I brought an old wicker picnic basket at Winchester Market which we used on our gift table, I made the small hessian “cards” bunting to go inside and stuck the “cake” and “love” letters together and painted them to match our colour theme. We wanted all the children at the wedding to have something to keep them occupied during the meal and speeches, so we made them their own personalised wedding colouring book and filled their little gift bags with toys, colouring pencils, sweeties and hair accessories. We also wanted to put something in the restrooms for our evening guests, so we made two bathroom baskets to go in each, with hairspray, mints, plasters etc .. We had two frames which we painted cream, one we then painted the inside with blackboard paint and Ben’s mum wrote our order of the day on and the other I wrapped hessian around and made bunting for along the top for our table plan. We had two different wedding favours, Football accumulators for the men, which we put inside a rustic style card and hand tied with string, and for the woman and children, me and the bridesmaids made cake pops to match our colour theme, which took us hours and we all vowed never to make again hehehe.

Other details of the day which we didn’t make, but still made a big difference with the décor were the pom poms that we hung down the centre of the marquee roof and the beautiful chairs we hired and chair bows all in our matching colours. Our table names were named after some of the places we had been camping, and our top table was named after our favourite place to camp in Cornwall, Crantock. Our table name cards and guest book were made by the same company that made our invites and our guest book had some mini bunting made from our fabric to add a personal touch, as did our day invites. We had Pimms and Scones with cream & Jam served after our ceremony with matching coloured paper straws to bring a bit of Cornwall to our special day. We decided to have a magician after our ceremony, during our drinks reception to entertain our guests and for our evening reception we had a Live Band, DJ and a photo booth. We also extended our evening reception until 1am so we could have a real knees up with all our friends.

THE HONEYMOON | 3 amazing weeks Island hopping around Hawaii!! Started off in Oahu, in Honolulu, walking along Waikiki Beach and visiting Pearl Harbour, then headed up to the North shore to a beautiful hotel called Turtle Bay and visited some of the best surf beaches in the world! We then headed to The Big Island, where we did fishing trips and visited an active volcano and national park, and Ben got to paddle board his heart out, and then onto Maui for a week of relaxing on beautiful beaches, seeing sea turtles at our feet while swimming in the crystal clear ocean, doing a famous road trip “ The road to Hana” and climbing waterfalls and seeing some of the most beautiful scenery you could ever imagine. And then finally a mini stop off in Santa Monica in LA on the way home giving us the chance to walk along the Santa Monica Pier and seeing Venice Beach. All this washed down with plenty of beer, root beer, massive ice creams shave ices, smores and Ben’s favourite….. “Bubba Gumps Shrimp”

MEMORABLE MOMENTS| Every part of our day was memorable but for me, I think the feeling I felt as I walked into the ceremony room was something I will never forget. It was totally overwhelming, nerve wracking and calming all at the same time and I’ve never felt so sure I was making the right decision in life like I did in that moment when I saw Ben waiting for me. Another memorable moment for both of us was when we first walked into the wedding breakfast, as that was the first time we had seen all our decorations, family and friends together at the same time, and we were both so pleased how it all came together. We really did have the most amazing day.

ADVICE FOR OTHER COUPLES | Enjoy every moment of your day as it goes so quick, try and take the time to stop and look around at everyone and capture the moment. We were really pleased we had our wedding filmed as it means we can go back and watch those special moments all over again and it’s captured some of our special family members like elderly grandparents and our nieces and nephew while they are still little. It also means we can show it to any of our family members that couldn’t make the day. Also be flexible about when to have photo’s taken , Mia took us out during our meal while the sun was setting and we got some of our favourite pictures, it’s really worth skipping out for 10mins as you get some beautiful pictures. And my last bit of advice would be to not worry about every detail, as what is big to you, most of your guests won’t notice and try not to be nervous and don’t worry if you cry while doing your vows….. It’s fun, and afterwards you will wish you could do it all again!

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE |

Dress & veil | Brides of Southampton

Bride’s accessories | Debenhams and BHS

Bridesmaid Dresses | By Lisa Marie

Flower girl Dresses and accessories | John Lewis and BHS

Makeup | Amy Richards

Hair | Lisa Griffiths

Beauty Treatments | Lauren at Embrace Beauty

The Suits | Grooms Hire

Photography | Mia Hooper and Clare West

Videography | Emma Stock

Flowers | Fiori by Lynne

Chairs and Bows | Balloonique

Cake | Family friend

Venue | Oakley Hall Hotel

Photo booth | Posh photo booths

Magician | Phil Wedgbrow

Band | Scarlett Park

Stationery | To Have & To Hold

Honeymoon | STA travel

Paperweight | Flower Preservation Workshop

 

How lovely.

Thanks so much to Hannah and Ben for sharing their wonderful story with us today XOXO Lou


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