Prepare for a fashion frenzy... The names that make today's wedding so perfect are RMW fashion pack member Suzanne Neville along side David Fielden, Christian Louboutin, Jenny Packham... And of course our bride and groom Natalie and Jamie who married at Charlton House in Somerset.

This is a wedding of global proportions with guests travelling from as far and wide as Australia, Papua New Guinea and Singapore... The journey was totally worth it though...

Words can't describe the feeling of how we felt when we got engaged, but the thought of trying on a dress made come out in hot flushes and made me feel quite nauseous (perhaps a little exaggerated, but you get the gist!) It wasn't the thought of getting married, but all the dresses I saw in magazines or in shop windows looked like big white meringues. I didn't see anything I liked and couldn't image any dress on me.

A friend who'd got married the year before had said; make sure you know the style and designers you prefer before trying any dresses on, or at least have an idea. Don't go in blind as it can be like walking into a minefield. So with that in mind, I had a look online. I found the 'Claire Pettibone - Versailles' dress. So after searching for a stockist for Claire Pettibone near Bristol, I came across 'Carina Baverstock Couture' based in Bradford-on-Avon. I probably tried on about 15 dresses in the boutique until lastly trying on 'The One' it was called Baroque and was custom made by Suzanne Neville. It was completely different to what I initially wanted, but it made me feel amazing. Carina also found a David Fielden dress for me to wear for the night before the wedding and my mother found some dresses in their mother of the bride shop, which is located over the road. My mum wore a stunning 'Doris Day' - Claire Mischevani dress and jacket for the wedding, wearing grey Christian Louboutin heels and then later slipped into a David Fieldon feather dress to dance the night away in. After finding the dress, I was told that Carina and her business partner, Lucy had been selected into the Wedding Industry Awards 2013, they later won Best bridal retailer and The National Best Boutique. I formed a great relationship with the girls and even invited them to the wedding!

I'm not a traditionalist so I wasn't keen on wearing a veil initially. The turning point was when my mum saw the dress matched with the veil that I knew I had to wear the veil for mum. I wanted something in my hair but nothing too sparkly. We wanted to create a relaxed, festival chic vibe, as J and I bumped into each other at Secret Garden Party (4 years after we first met in Bristol) and then later got together at Big Chill. So Carina matched the dress with a 'Wonderland' - Jenny Packham headdress, a pearl and crystal embellished design belt by Claire Mischevani. I also wore a long, single tier, champagne colour lace trim bespoke veil made for Carina Baverstock Couture by Nieve Couture. I loved the headdress and it'll certainly be worn again! I also picked up a Jenny Packham Santorini Ostrich feather wrap; in case it got a bit cold at night but we were so lucky with the weather I didn't end up wearing it over the dress. I did however wear it later in the night when I changed into comfy trousers and slippers so I could dance around easier! I chose a mid-heal Christian Louboutin yellow peep toe. I don't wear white or silk shoes normally, so it wasn't something I wanted to do on the day. I also wanted to add a pop of colour and to be able to wear the shoes again.

I had booked a MAC make-up artist from Bristol who went freelance. Everything was paid and sorted, but on the day when she was supposed to turn up, there was no make-up artist. I hadn't received a call to say otherwise and the number she gave wasn't working anymore. Panic set in, but luckily the Spa/make-up girls at Charlton House saved the day! We had already arranged for Charlton house to do the make-up for my best ladies and mum so I knew the girls anyway.
I later found out that the original person booked had sent me an email on the morning of the wedding to say that she was sick - We're still waiting for our refund!

Claire Nicholson from 'The Wilde Bunch' did an amazing job; she's such a talented and creative lady and certainly knows her stuff! We were keen to use local suppliers for the wedding and we found Claire at the vintage wedding fair at Bristol Zoo in 2012.

We aren't normally fans of wedding fairs (although we'd never actually been to one - we could only imagine!) but the vintage ones in Bristol were great and have something a bit different to offer and provide your quirky touches.

We loved the birdcages that Claire had displayed and knew we wanted to incorporate those somewhere. As we love the outdoors, Jamie was keen to use wild flowers, so Claire designed the right combination for us. The wedding planning was an equal affair in terms of what we both wanted and J was totally involved with the process and even surprised himself how he wanted the flowers to be!

We started off with a budget in mind, but after talking to Claire we realised there was so many things you could do to create what we wanted, so the budget went out the window! we were super excited, as it was clear Claire was passionate and excited about helping us to create that secret garden feel.
We had candelabras for the centre pieces, 4 hanging birdcages in the marquee, a crate stack in the orangery hall way, suitcase stack next to the cake in the marquee and a flower and bottle arrangement in the orangery for the ceremony. The flowers used were nigella, eucalyptus, everfew daisies, Queen Anne's Lace, little purple allium & lime green Guelder rose, we also used 'Eden Romantica' & 'Upper Secret' roses ,plus some darkest red paeonies and loads of dusky reddy/pinky/green hydrangea and a little bit of gypsophilla... The best ladies bouquets all had the same flowers in and were similar to mine. The groom, best men, my brother and dad all had the same buttonholes, then we arranged for buttonholes for the family and again, these were slightly different. It was a flower explosion!

One of the most important things for the wedding was that everyone felt comfortable with what they wore. I knew straight away that I didn't want to ask the girls to wear the same dress, equally for the best men and their suits. We couldn't do it as they are all so individual that for us, it wouldn't have been right. I gave the ladies a colour palate to work from and asked them to pick their own dresses, shoes and accessories. As I had 6 best ladies (one of the girls couldn't make it as her mum was sick) we couldn't afford to pay for everything, so instead, we paid for one night at the hotel and paid for the girls to have their makeup done professionally. For the best men, lord of the ring (my brother) and father of the bride, we asked if they could all wear white shirts and we paid for their custom-made 'Morrison' tartan tie to match J's kilt. They already owned their suits and it just happened that they all chose to wear a blue suit with brown shoes, including my younger brother Tom. My dad wore a brown Boss suit with tan Russell Bromley shoes which worked well against my dress.

Before Al, (J's dad) passed away last April, he wanted to kit his boys (Ben and J) up with the traditional Morrison tartan kilt like he had had himself, so he flew the boys up to Scotland to get their kilts made. It was an easy decision for J to wear his kilt for the wedding. It was tough not having Al there on the day, but the kilt was a way of having him involved in spirit. For the ceremony J wore the traditional Ghullie Brogues, but then later wore Nike daps for dancing.

A friend at work talked about this amazing photographer and said we needed to see his work. As soon as we saw the way his photos naturally captured the emotion in people and told the story through the lens, there really was only one person to ask... Sam Gibson.

Although we had seen Sam's work, meeting him cemented it. Sam is such a great guy to work with, friendly, very professional, non-imposing and managed to keep our lively families under control during the family portraits on the wedding day, which for anyone is no mean feat! From beginning to end, the quality in Sam's work and service is worth every penny and it was important to us that our photos weren't too structured. Sam also set up a 'photo booth' later in the day for everyone to use and get involved with, he provided the props and fancy dress which went down a treat. In particular, the bone! After the wedding we received a slideshow of our day, along with 850 photos to view online. On top of that we received a beautiful natural box with a selection of printed photos wrapped in straw, a memory stick and DVD of the photos. Such a lovely touch. I've never seen a photo album so creative and beautiful with each photo embedded into the pages, enclosed in a leather bound case. We also used Alex Haynes, 'Wedding Memories' for our videographer. We hardly noticed him during the day! We can't wait to wait the watch the footage and see what everyone else got up to.

We used Bristol based - 'Chocolate Delores' for our cake who we found at Bristol vintage wedding fair. Lizzing Melling handmakes all her cakes. We chose a vintage inspired white chocolate cake with a dark chocolate sponge inside. 'The Chocolate Cake is made with a 70% dark chocolate. Once baked the cake is soaked in port then layered with Madagascan buttercream and their own homemade organic plum jam. The cake is finally covered in white chocolate and decorated with handmade white chocolate shards and scrolls' J is a chocolate fan, but I'm not usually keen on chocolate cake as I've either tried them too dry, too rich or too bitter. J insisted I tried it - it was a disco in my mouth! We also couldn't resist Lizzies handmade truffles, which were bought for the buffet the night before the wedding. Totally divine!

Music is such a big part of our lives. After getting together at a music festival and with J playing records for a living, It was super important to have a musical adventure on the day. After taking my mum to Bristol vintage wedding fair 2013, we listened to the sweet tunes of 'Til There was Uke' while drinking tea. Mum thought they were great so she booked them there and then for the night before the wedding. We had our friends and family staying at the hotel with us, (some whom had travelled from Australia, Papua New Guinea and Singapore to share the special day) so we wanted to put on a buffet and entertainment for everyone. TTWU added a touch of fun, originality and vintage style to their songs. With my mother's side of the family originating from Barbados, it was also important to include a hint of the Caribbean, so my mum had organised a surprise steel pan band 'The Rainbow Band' to play during the daytime for the guests, which went down well with the rum and gin cocktails in the sun! Even my Nana who needs to use a wheelchair for long days was up and dancing!

For the evening we booked the Bristol based, 'Ten Pound Suit Band' and DJ, Gus Pirelli. Ten Pound Suit absolutely nailed it. Gus kept everyone up and moving till the wee hours and at one point everyone got involved with an impromptu electric slide to Cameo - Candy.

Our first dance was to Fleetwood Mac 'Big Love'. It's a record that we've put on at home and danced around to loads. It just felt right. We had 'Thinking of you' by Sister Sledge for the 'walking down the aisle' song. For favours we had wild flower seeds, which my J's Mam put into individual hessian bags for all the guests - another surprise for us. We also wanted to create some special favours for family and friends staying at the hotel, so we put together bags with pocket sized tissues, lip balm for the ladies, cigars for the men, old fashioned sweets, bath bombs and aspirin for the hangovers. These were put in each room for check-in on the Sunday.

Throughout the year of planning, J's mam picked rose petals and lavender from her garden that she dried out and was used for our confetti. We had 'up lights' in the trees for the evening, handmade bunting loaned from our neighbour and (our favourite) photo bunting - which we hung throughout the venue.
We wanted our guests to feel a part of the wedding, so we printed out over 100 old and new photos of everyone attending and family friends that were no longer with us. We hung these up with small pegs on string throughout the hotel.

Doing something amazing surrounded by everyone we love was pretty awesome and to make it personal we tailored a lot of the proceedings to suit us: wrote our own vows, chose round tables (and no top table) and took our shoes off for the rest of the day!

Photography by Sam Gibson
Dress Suzanne Neville | Boutique Carina Baverstock | Shoes Louboutin | Flowers The Wilde Bunch | Videographer Wedding Memories | Cake Chocolate Delores | Entertainment Ten Pound Suit Band & Til There was Uke.