Happy Thursday lovelies! Yes we are that little but closer to the weekend, happy days!
It can be a struggle to get through the week, but thinking about my wedding day and looking over the pictures again for like the 100th time usually gets me through.
For me there had to be lots of vintage prettiness throughout the whole day I think we achieved that, well in our eyes anyway. Our visions of all things gorgeous and elegant was helped along by the very beautiful Coombe Abbey and was all captured by the very talented Ian and Jo Pickering at StoryBook Weddings.
So I begin.
The morning of the wedding was one those classic ‘the morning after the night before’ affairs. The day before everyone in the wedding party and had travelled to Coventry to attend the rehearsal of the ceremony. The one and only run through of probably the biggest day of my life.
Now Alfie has a major issue with time keeping at the best of times, but finishing work later than expected and a torrent of transport issues led to him being an hour and a half late for the rehearsal. Luckily I’d booked the day off to get to Coventry early and rally up the troops. Our very amazing Vicar allowed us to postpone the rehearsal at the church till 6.30pm, which also over ran and meant that our rehearsal dinner at The Saxon Mill also over ran.
My bridesmaids and I got to bed at 2am in the morning and had to be up at the crack of dawn to head to the hair dressers. My hen do took place 2 weeks beforehand, but with only 5 hours sleep it felt like I had just come in from a wild night on the town.
My bridesmaids are absolute troopers and we managed to pull ourselves together and get to the hair dressers in time in the drizzly rain. I went for a simple curly half up and half down do, whereas my bridesmaids went for different variations of an up do. The hair appointment took longer that we thought and with our jackets over our heads to protect our hair from the worrying torrential rain we ran to the car to go and get our glad rags on at Coombe Abbey.
The bridal suite (The Lady Craven) was a picture of perfection when we arrived, but with 3 bridesmaids, 2 flower girls and an over excited bride, a photographer and a videographer the whole room descended into chaos.
When it came to my dress it just had to be lace, for me it just screams vintage and elegance which is what I was looking for. My Pintrest board and the pictures I had collated was full of lace dresses. When going to find my dress it only took 4 attempts until I knew that I had found ‘the one.’ This was also confirmed by my tearful auntie and my very overwhelmed mum. ‘The one’ was a Ronald Joyce dress with lots of antique lace, beading, pearls and embroidery, sweet heart neckline and just the right length train. With the dress and my Choo’s I felt like a princess.
My favourite colour seems to change with the seasons as a result I didn’t have a particular colour in mind for the big day. This was up until I saw the most gorgeous flower dresses with a thyme green sash. To me this colour is timeless so it became the main colour for the wedding. Luckily I managed to find a stunning dress from Coast for my bridesmaids, which matched the colour of the flower girls dresses perfectly.
The wedding flowers also tied in beautifully. Karen did a wonderful job of bringing my dreams to life and she knew exactly what I wanted. From the off I made it clear that I didn’t want a formal looking bouquet, I wanted it to look hand picked. With pale pink sweet avalanche roses, eucalyptus, gypsophila and hypericum berries my dream of beautiful vintage florals were born.
The grooms suits were from Moss Bros. Alfie loved the look of the Newbury Ascot tails which he accented with a dove grey double breasted waist coat, a pink tie and hanker chief. The other groomsmen and ushers wore ties and hanker chiefs to match the bridesmaids. There were 10 men in tails at the wedding, now that’s a lot of suits! Since Alfie is a Ralph Lauren fanatic, all of the groomsmen were gifted bright green Ralph Lauren socks and Alfie wore the purple version.
One of my bridesmaids had a bit of a wardrobe malfunction as the zip on her dress had a snag and wouldn’t go up. Whilst all three of my bridesmaids were trying to get organised it left poor Jo (photographer) and my cousin (one of my flower girls mum) to help me get dressed, well until Janine (bridesmaid) became free.
By the time the cars had arrived and the chaos died down, the rain had gone and clear blue skies and sunshine blessed our day.
And with abated breath and a rush of adrenaline we all headed to the church.
To be continued…
Stunning pictures!
Thanks!
Hi Jemma, (I’m a long time follower -1st time commenting).
You look absolutely beautiful, your wedding looked like a fairytale! xxx
Thank you for taking the time to comment. It’s lovely hearing from you! 🙂
beautiful pics, beautiful place and a very beautiful bride xx
Thank you sweetie! x
Wow! Everything looks so perfect it looks like you had a great time! Congratulations x
Thank you Cryssy!
Everything does look like a dream, and you look absolutely gorgeous!
It really was, thank you!
Beautiful! Congratulations!!
Thank you! 🙂
Congratulations! Everything looks perfectly lovely 🙂
Thank you!
Absolutely stunning photographs, and you, my dear, look absolutely amazing! x
That’s so sweet of you Lucie, thanks! x
So beautiful can’t wait to see the rest!!!
Thanks Tam!
Wow so beautiful! Lovely photos!
Thanks!
Noooo, what a cliffhanger! 😛 really enjoyed reading this, can’t wait for the next part. Some of the photography, especially the black&white photos, is absolutely STUNNING.
So glad that you enjoyed reading this post. The next one is coming up later this week!
Jemma your pictures are BEAUTIFUL and you’re positively stunning!
Aww you are too kind, thank you!
I think it’s lovely they took the getting ready pictures as well as the more traditional ones, the ones of you putting your earring in and sitting in the car are lovely – and your bridesmaids are so gorgeous! It looks like a fairytale day 🙂
Thank you…it really was like a dream!
I was the same with my wedding dress – it was the second one I tried on and I knew it was perfect.
What a beautiful venue!