I have thought about how best to tell you about my wedding details, and I decided it was best to share with you each supplier and my experience with that aspect and process of each element. It’s such a beast, that I’ve split it into two parts, don’t forget you can find all the information on my dress here, Jack’s suit here, and hair and make-up here.

The Florist: Coco in The Country

The flowers, where to start?! The flowers were the main reason for getting hitched, and I mean that in more ways than one. I met Lucie (one half of Coco in the Country) when I first moved to Lincoln, I used to be in their shop A LOT. I was just so excited to find somewhere to buy such beautiful flowers from, turns out Lucie and Kim loved a natter as much as me. We got talking about Aswarby Rectory, and the next thing you know thanks to Lucie’s encouragement, I’d booked a viewing at the venue where we ended up getting married. I’ll go into more on that when I talk about the venue in the next blog post, but without the not so subtle encouragement from my favourite florists, we’d have probably put off getting married for another four years.

I’ll be honest I didn’t look at any other florists, I knew we were all on the same page. The girls came round one night, to discuss everything floral, and I have no idea if four hours discussing flowers is excessive…but I’m going to say most floral consultations are probably a bit shorter than that. I think my key take-away from working with Kim & Lucie, and most of my suppliers in general, is that you have to trust them. Yes, you have thoughts on how you want it to look, but you don’t want to just copy something you’ve seen online, and neither do they. together, you want to interpret your inspiration with your own unique spin. Suppliers also know what is realistic within your budget, you might want 500 roses on either side of the aisle but the cost in that is a lot more than you’ve probably factored in. Also good florists will tell you what flowers are seasonal, you shouldn’t expect to request Peonies in October, or Dahlias in May.

They also can’t colour match to an exact Pantone shade, the wonderful thing about flowers is that they are unpredictable, you never quite know how they are going to grow each year. We got married in Autumn as the venue was slightly cheaper, so I knew if there was a good crop that year I could have lots of Dahlias, which are one of my favourite flowers.

Lucie and Kim also talked me through what they thought would look lovely in the venue as they had lots of experience in dressing it previously, which is really useful. I’m so happy with how it all turned out, they did the most wonderful job; from the rose filled doorway, the staircase, to the table flowers and the buttonholes. They also sourced the silks on on my bouquet, they made June’s adorable dried flower crown, and also made my dried floral headband which I changed into before our wedding breakfast. Not only did the wedding look incredible, but it also smelt it, I have no idea why I didn’t think about this before hand, but you get enough flowers in one place and it’s going to smell beautiful!. They made sure to not use any floristry foam, and lots of the dried flowers used could be re-purposed for something else. I didn’t do anything with my bouquet afterwards, except admire it, but I have kept both mine and June’s crowns. Our wedding was a floral fantasy come true and I loved pretending I was Elton John for the day.

P.S. More flower photos are coming up in the Suppliers Round Up- Part Two.

The Cake: Caroline Debonnaire

THE CAKE. I say every part of my wedding was my favourite, but that cake takes my breath away every time I see a photo of it! Where to begin?! Caroline Debonnaire made our cake, and I’ll tell you now cake tasting is hands down the best part about wedding planning. After we’d had a tasting with Caroline, she sent over a sketch and her thoughts on bringing my wild mood board to life whilst incorporating her style; she smashed that brief out the park!

The final thing was five tiers (two are dummies) made up of one chocolate tier and two carrot ones, between each layer was a boiled milk buttercream which tastes so much better than standard buttercream. Then the cake was covered in a thin layer of white chocolate, pink buttercream was added with white chocolate mouldings. The flowers that you see between the tiers, were made from SUGAR, I repeat those are not real flowers. I can’t get over it either and it’s been four months. Caroline is super talented, and some of those flowers have been saved and sit in a glass cloche for us to keep.

We served this as desert, we did the ‘cake cutting’ before the speeches so the catering team would have enough time to serve it up once the speeches had finished. Jack’s mum also cleverly cut up the remaining cake that we brought home into individual slices of 6, so we can defrost and eat at our leisure. I’ll be forever grateful for that pearl of wisdom!

The Music: Jack Watkins & The House of Good

When I look back and write about our wedding, it’s safe to say I got everything I dreamed of having when thinking about our big day. I spent ages thinking how I could make a sing along happen, then I met Jack Watkins. He’s a super talented pianist, and after meeting a few times I found out he played weddings. SUPER. The only problem being our venue didn’t have a piano…no problem I thought. Apparently hiring a piano isn’t as easy as you think, I made lots of enquiries and kept reaching dead ends. In the end, my bridesmaid went to school with someone who now owns a piano hiring business in Nottingham called Sherwood Pjoenix. Not only were they willing to deliver and collect a piano, even better than that, THEY HAD A WHITE ONE. Jack didn’t play during our ceremony, and it’s a good job as you could barely hear any music with the talking of 80 of our family and friends. He did play 2 hours of our drinks reception after the ceremony, and then we had a singalong after dinner, which was the most fun I think I’ve ever had. We picked 6 songs, including a spot of Queen, Tina Turner and The Beatles, and gave everyone a song book with the lyrics printed. I was very nervous about this bit, would I be singing to a room of silent guests…the answer to that was hell no. It was everything I thought it would be and more!

We made playlists for the ceremony and wedding breakfast, whilst we loved making them you could barely hear them. Not to self, get quieter friends.

In the evening we hired The House Of Good who I’ve known since I was 16, he used to DJ the indie clubs I stumbled in and out of, and is such a good reader of the crowd. He kept that dance floor filled all night until we crawled up to bed, highly recommend if you’re local to Lincolnshire.

The Bridesmaids

Not technically suppliers, I didn’t pay them to be my friends, I promise. But their dresses have invited a flurry of questions, and rightly so, how gorgeous did they look?! My three bridesmaids are three of my closet friends, I am a lucky girl, only problem being is one is based in Melbourne, the second in Glasgow and the third in London - making dress shopping a tad trickier than you’d hope. I gave them a wide brief, and said pick what you like, I thought I was being a chill bride, well I tell you right now that backfired - we’ve all seen this meme. I didn’t want them to pick just anything, I had an idea in my head and once I mentioned that they found it much easier to hunt for a dress. A wide brief isn’t always very helpful, in the end my *must-haves* were that maxi / midi dress with a sleeves, we were all on the same page apart from the fact the fashion seasons weren’t, it was SS19 when they were looking for a dress suitable for an Autumn wedding. I wanted them to all wear something different, as I find the whole idea you would wear the same dress as two other people on the same day a tad peculiar, also this way they can hopefully wear their dresses again for other occasions. In the end they co-ordinated the whole thing via WhatsApp, Justine in the floral picked hers first, it was Les Reveries from the Net-A-Porter sale. Next up was Leanne who found a Zimmerman dress in Australia and then I think my oldest friend Beth had the hardest job as she had to tie a navy blue floral and terracotta dress together, luckily she went to Ghost on the King’s Road and found the perfect fit. They all wore shoes they picked, my florist made them a dried flower hair clip and a small posy of flowers to give them official bridesmaid status.