Anna and Ian married on Saturday 12 April 2014; holding the first part of their wedding day at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Cardiff followed by a party at The North Star pub.

They wanted their wedding to be relaxed, informal but most of all FUN. They had a modern feel to their day thanks to the backdrop and clean lines of the college, while the pub setting gave a quirky cosy feel to their thoughtful touches.

I so love Anna's pretty tea length dress by Sincerity Bridal, the colourful silk flowers and the smiles all day long.

Huge thanks to John Wellings for sharing his wonderful photographs with us.

THE PROPOSAL | Ian got down on one knee and proposed to me at home in our bedroom on a Sunday morning. He's not one for big public shows of affection so he wanted it to be somewhere that meant special something to both of us, without other people around, and it was just perfect!

THE VISION | Over the last few years we have been to a LOT of weddings (we're obviously at that age where many of our friends have reached that stage in life!), so we had the opportunity to get tons of ideas and work out what we'd like most at our wedding: both for ourselves as the bride and groom, and for our guests. The general vision for the day was to keep things as relaxed and informal as possible, and for everyone (especially us!) to have loads of fun.

THE PLANNING PROCESS | We ended up having 18 months to plan everything, which meant that most of the planning was done in a pretty relaxed manner. I knew I'd like the day to be quite a homemade affair, as I really enjoy being creative and having a go at craft projects, but I was also very aware of trying not to give ourselves too much to do in the run up to the wedding as we both work full time and have very busy social lives. Ian and I worked together in figuring out the main aspects of the day, with Pinterest then featuring heavily in me getting inspiration for the rest of it, and while I have always been teased by my friends and family for my love of organising I think it's safe to say that I exceeded even my own expectations when it comes to the number of lists that were written and re-written!

BUDGET | We didn't want to spend huge amounts (definitely nowhere near what the national average for a wedding is said to be!) but we also didn't want to scrimp on things we would like if we could afford them, so we saved where we could but spent where we felt we needed to which kept us on budget.

THE VENUE | We had two venues: the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, by Cardiff Castle, and the North Star pub. While it's not where either of us grew up, we decided we would like to get married in Cardiff as it's where we met and live now, and it was also pretty central for a lot of our guests to get to as Ian is from Surrey and I'm from Pembrokeshire.

Neither of us had a set idea of a venue, apart from knowing we didn't want anything particularly traditional, but we did a bit of research on what was available and once we'd been to see the College we knew we wanted it to feature in our wedding day. We also liked the idea of having a big party in a pub with all of our friends and family, and the North Star is somewhere we've enjoyed going to over the last few years, so we thought it would be great to incorporate both venues if we could. In the end we decided to have the ceremony in one section of the College (the old stable block for Cardiff Castle which is now known as the Anthony Hopkins Centre), a drinks reception with cake in another section of the College (the main foyer area which looks out over Bute Park), and then our meal and evening reception at the pub.

THE DRESS & ACCESSORIES | My dress was a 50's style tea-length design, made by Sincerity Bridal. I had two pairs of shoes - cream and gold peep toe heels from Kurt Geiger, and then pearly cream ballet pumps from Debenhams for the dancefloor. Both pairs were bought on sale as I'm a bit of a bargain hunter, so the two of them came to the grand total of £56! And as neither were particularly 'bridal' in design I can wear both of them again which is a bonus.

For jewellery I wore some very pretty pearl drop earrings that were leant to me by my lovely friend Jodie, who had worn them for her own wedding last year (they were my something borrowed), and a beautiful pearl and silver bracelet that I found on a stall at a vintage wedding fair and then had re-strung by a lady that my Mum's friend knew. I also had a birdcage veil and a fabric flower in my hair which were both handmade for me by the super talented Ashley at With Love from Bobbin, who kindly made sure she incorporated sections of my Mum's wedding dress and other pieces of material that had sentimental value to me (the flower was my something old because of that).

FINDING THE DRESS | I had a fair idea from the outset that I didn't want a full length dress, and when I started trying on options I knew pretty quickly that a tea-length dress was going to be the way forward: I'm not always known for my patience, and would have got far too annoyed with a long one! I tried on a number of different dresses in two different shops, but as soon as I put on the one that I ended up choosing and showed my Mum, bridesmaids and Mum's friend, we all knew it was 'the one'. And it was definitely the right choice as I absolutely loved wearing it, and had a fantastic time twirling it around on the dance floor all night!

GROOM'S ATTIRE | We hired lovely grey suits for Ian, his brother who was the best man, our two dads, and the two ushers to wear. They were hired from the shop where I bought my dress, then we bought navy ties and pocket squares from M&S, and asked that each of the men wore a white shirt and black shoes of their own.

All six of them looked super smart, and their socks were the perfect finishing touch as they each had one with the England flag on and one with the Wales flag on (much to the disgust of my Welsh dad and brother!) My mum also made some beautiful paper buttonholes out of sheet music from my teenage years playing in a string quartet, and old newspaper cuttings which featured Ian's beloved Crystal Palace FC. Each buttonhole was personalised in some way for each of the men wearing them, making them completely unique and original which we loved.

THE READINGS & MUSIC | We had two readings feature in our ceremony which were read by our very good friends, Katie and Andy. Katie read 'A lovely love story' by Edward Monkton, which we'd adapted slightly, and Andy read an excerpt from David Ford's song called 'Song for the road' as the words are lovely but the music was a bit sombre to play the song in full.

I walked in to the ceremony to 'First day of my life' by Bright Eyes, then during the time that we were signing the register we played 'You are the best thing' by Ray Lamontagne, and we walked out to 'Crazy little thing called love' by Queen which was fun as we could have a little dance along the way too!

BEAUTIFUL BRIDESMAIDS | I asked two of my very close friends, Ruth and Daisy, to be my bridesmaids. We've been friends since school and have an enormous amount of fun together, so it was lovely to have them so closely involved in the wedding, and I knew they'd be sure to throw me a great hen do too!

Picking a dress for them both was surprisingly easy, and they wore the navy maxi version of the 'Lori Lee' design from Coast. The shoes proved much more of a challenge as both of the girls are tall so we had to find flat sandals for them to wear, but that's easier said than done in the lead up to an April wedding in the UK! Eventually we found some in New Look which were a total bargain, and I liked them so much that I bought myself a pair to take on honeymoon too.

THE FLOWERS | We asked my Mum if she would be happy to do the flowers for the wedding soon after we got engaged, as I knew she'd helped out with arranging wedding flowers in our local church in the past and as an artist she has a good eye for what works well together. Unfortunately Mum was taken ill at the start of 2013, so the plans for the flowers had to be altered slightly and I chose to have silk flowers rather than fresh ones for the bouquets. This meant that Mum could work on them anytime at her own pace, rather than being under pressure to make them the day before the wedding, and I'm so glad that I made that decision as she did a fantastic job and it meant so much that she could still make my bouquet for me. Plus, most people had no idea that the bridesmaids and I were carrying silk flowers rather than fresh ones anyway!

The flowers on the tables in the drinks reception and the pub were fresh flowers, which were arranged by Ian's mum and I in to old jam jars that we'd collected and some small decorative jugs that were my late Grandad's. The majority of the flowers were bought from a local florist (Thorne's in Llandaff North) who was great with helping me to work out what we needed, and then Ian did a last minute dash in to town (with his dad and uncle in tow) to get some extra roses from M&S which set the jam jars off perfectly!

THE CAKE | We decided quite early on that we liked the idea of having a number of different types of cake for us and our guests to enjoy, rather than having one big traditional wedding cake, and we also knew we wanted it to be served earlier in the day so that we could all get to enjoy it then rather than at the end of the meal when everyone would be full. This developed in to us having a big table full of different cakes that had been made by us and lots of our very generous friends and family members, all of which were delicious and thoroughly enjoyed by everyone during the drinks reception at the college.

YOUR PHOTOGRAPHER | We found our photographer, John, online whilst looking for a wedding photographer that had a relaxed, informal approach to shooting weddings but didn't charge the earth. John's website showed that he favoured that way of working, so we contacted him to make enquiries. John was clearly quite excited at the prospect of getting to photograph a wedding at the College of Music and Drama, so with his enthusiasm for the venue and a love of natural photography we booked him. John was an absolute pleasure to have around during the wedding, and he captured some beautiful shots of the day which really how much fun we all had, so we cannot recommend him highly enough. If you're looking for a photographer, book him now!

THE DETAILS & DÉCOR | We decorated the main foyer at the College with blue and white bunting that family friends, Sharyn & Martyn, kindly let us borrow (it had been lovingly handmade by Martyn's grandma for their wedding a few years ago). It looked really effective in the big white space where we enjoyed our drinks reception, and was a really nice touch on the balcony that we had our big group photo on too. We chose to have prosecco and Bath Gem ale as the drinks at on offer at our drinks reception, as I love prosecco and Ian loves ale, plus he spent a number of years studying in Bath so getting something from the Bath Ales brewery seemed like the obvious choice.

The pub we then went on to didn't need a lot of decorating, as the décor there is quite quirky and detailed anyway, but we did add some personal touches to make it ours for the day. We chose to use albums with some significance to the pair of us as our table names, so pictures of the album covers featured on the table plan and then on top of old wine bottles on each of the tables. We also hung photos on strings across the windows, showing fun times we've had together and with other friends and family over the years.

As well as adding personal touches to the décor at the pub we had a box of fancy dress stuff for people to use to take photos, using a picture frame and a gold tinsel backdrop; plus jars of pick and mix sweets that were very popular at the end of the night, and a basket of flip flops next to the dance floor which went down very well with a number of the ladies who'd had enough of their heels by the time the band started!

And on the subject of music, our first dance was to 'I will wait' by Mumford and Sons. We wanted something lively rather than anything soppy, and it was great as other people joined us on the dance floor after a while and we all twirled about having a lovely time!

THE HONEYMOON | We chose to go to the Riviera Maya in Mexico for 10 days (Playacar and Tulum), followed by New York for 4 days, so that we could enjoy a good mixture of relaxation and adventure during our time away. We had a fantastic holiday full of fun, amazing sights, delicious food, and some lovely people who looked after us very well and helped to make it extra enjoyable.

MEMORABLE MOMENTS | There are lots of memorable moments for both of us, but I think the main ones to note are: Our walk through the park after the ceremony which gave us time to talk to each other while having photographs taken (something you don't get a lot of chance to do during the rest of the day!);

Our group photo on the balcony where a random member of the public decided to perform for us whilst taunting our very patient photographer, and there was almost a crash between a number of cyclist on the path where the photographer was stood because they were all looking at us instead of watching where they were going!

Ian's speech which was very emotional for me but really, really lovely; and The two of us leaning against the windowsill outside the pub at the end of the night waiting for our lift, laughing at all the funny things that had happened throughout the day and agreeing that we'd had a fantastic time which had turned out just as we'd hoped it would.

ADVICE FOR OTHER COUPLES | Top tips would be to try to have some time to relax on the morning of the wedding; make sure you have some time throughout the day set aside to just be the two of you as it makes a big difference; don't worry about the time as people will make sure you are where you need to be at the right time; and when people try to pull you away from a conversation (which they will do) don't be afraid to say that you'll be with them in a moment rather than racing off straight away, so that you actually get to speak to people throughout the day when the opportunity arises.

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE |

Photography | John Wellings photography

Venue | Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama

Venue | The North Star

Dress & Suits | Perfection Bridal and Menswear

Veil | W ith Love from Bobbin

Silk Flowers | Astounding Surroundings

So much fun, it looked like everyone had such a great day.

Thanks so much to Anna and Ian for sharing their brilliant wedding with us today XOXO Lou