Lucy & Mike's Classic Country Wedding

Written by: louise

Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2014

So far this week's been all about country-side style with my Rustic Romance inspiration board, and the second instalment of our Lavender & Honey Style Guide. So Lucy & Mike's pretty pastel countryside wedding in the Cotswolds fits in perfectly! Her maids set the colour palette in a mix of muted pastels, shades picked up in the stationery (designed by this multi-talented bride!), flowers and bouquets. And Lucy proves a girl can never have too many shoes, pairing her classic Sassi Holford dress with a pair of fabulous metallic Miu Miu's AND Chanel pumps.

We were childhood sweethearts who met at a school and shared our first kiss at a New Year's Eve party back in 2002! Mike proposed to me in our home. I came home to a post it note and bunch of gerberas (one of my favourite flowers) on the front door, the note told me to follow the path. Inside the house he had put photographs from all through the years we'd been together all of the walls, with rose petals and tea light candles scattered on the floor. The pathway took me all around the downstairs of the house and then upstairs. When I reached the landing there was another post it note on an I-pod saying to press play, this then started to play a special recording of Bruno Mars 'Marry You' (which was recorded by Paul Canning - hence him singing at our wedding!), I reached the bathroom door where there was a final post it instructing me to 'take a deep breath' and behind the door was Mike, holding a red rose and dressed up all smart! He got down on one knee and asked me to marry him! We had recently moved in and had started renovations but only completed the bathroom which is why he chose this slightly unusual location for the actual proposal! We celebrated by going for a lovely dinner at The Crazy Bear Thai Restaurant and drank lots of champagne! I brought my dress and belt from Ellie Sanderson in Beaconsfield. I had already been to the Sassi Holford boutique in London and fallen in love with the Bluebell dress so it was perfect timing when Ellie Sanderson hosted a designer day with her a few weeks later. I made a few bespoke changes to my dress and couldn't have been happier with it! The rest of my accessories were collected from various places! My Chanel earrings were my 'something old' as I had had them for a few years, my Chanel pumps came from Harrods. Then for the evening I wanted to be able to change my look a little, so I removed the top section of the dress, added the sparkly belt and the Miu Miu shoes (which were from Net-A-Porter) as well as some more 'bling' jewellery which I could from my Mum's shop Kt-Lu's in Banbury! I had my hair put up as I knew it was the only way it would stay relatively neat and tidy! That being said, I wanted a relaxed up do that didn't look too 'done'. I researched a few styles online and went for a trial before the big day. For my make-up I wanted a fairly natural look as I didn't want to look too different from my normal self, just the best possible version!!I choose to have it professionally done to ensure it lasted all day and the airbase foundation was fantastic for this! My bridesmaids had dresses from Dessy. I choose the company because they offer so many colours and I wanted them to match with my Pantone chips! I wanted my 3 bridesmaids to have 3 different coloured dresses, but I also didn't really mind if they were the same style or not. In the end they all happened to like the same one and I was really pleased with how they looked. The male bridal party all hired traditional morning suits from Henry's of Banbury. Then my pageboy outfits were brought from BHS. I tied the whole look together by co-ordinating the men's cravats and pageboy's bow ties back to the bridesmaid dress colours. We wanted to create a romantic, country look that and a day that had a relaxed feel about it. I love the flowers and colours of Spring and therefore new that I would love to get married whilst they were in season so I could incorporate them into my theme.Our colour palette was soft, 'dirty' pastels! A light pink, taupe, lavender and green. I choose them by carefully looking through a Pantone book and trying out lots of colours together until I felt I'd found the perfect collection! I like to think the overall style was classic and romantic. I love fashion, but wanted to ensure that I could look back on my day in years to come and not feel like it looked dated or very typical to a certain period so I always had this in mind when making any decisions. Our venue was Caswell House in the Cotswolds. We went to one of their open days quite soon after we got engaged and fell in love with it even though it was raining! We had always wanted a barn style venue, and were really taken with the idea of being able to get married in the beautiful garden; which luckily the weather allowed us to do! We used Fabulous Flowers from Oxford who were amazing. I had quite a clear idea of what I wanted; relaxed arrangements that had a natural look and incorporated roses, hydrangeas and peonies, and they interpreted it perfectly. I chose one colour bouquets for my bridesmaids as they had different coloured dresses, and a mixed bouquet for myself. Out table centres were bird cages, and we also had jug arrangements on some of the window sills. I even ensured that the men's button holes were colour co-ordinated with their cravats and respective bridesmaid's dress! All the added little extras were a combination of buy and DIY and kept evolving, even until a few days before the wedding! My Mum made all of the bunting, the women's favours were lavender filled birds which myself, my Mum and my bridesmaids made. We brought in some light-up trees and clipped paper birds on them that worked as escort cards so people found the bird with their name and it told them their table number. We had a memory chair set up to remember the guests we would have loved to still be around to share the day with and I also wrote out blackboards for the order of the day and to explain some of these details. I made all the stationary for the day, and it was my husband's idea to use years from the lifespan of our relationship as table numbers. Our cake was made by Samantha of The Pretty Cake Company. It was 4 layers of 4 different flavours (chocolate, carrot, vanilla and fruit from largest to smallest!) and was mainly ivory. The decoration was tied back to my dress as the top layer was covered in lots of tiny flowers, like the bodice of my dress, then they cascaded down the cake. Our photographer was the wonderful Lucy Davenport. We chose her because we wanted our photos to be a story of our day that was natural and thought her candid style was perfect to capture this. She was brilliant on the day, a lot of our guests mentioned that you hardly noticed her at all and that's exactly how we wanted it to be!

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