Wedding Suppliers Round-up: Part Two.

Wedding suppliers part one can be found here, without any further ado may I introduce part two:

Venue: Aswarby Rectory

I probably should’ve started the whole wedding suppliers post with our venue, as this is the main reason we decided to get married after four years of being engaged. When we first got engaged, we started looking at venues but nothing felt right and also was wildly out of our budget (which at that point I should point out was zero). A few years on, we started to earn more money, had more realistic expectations of what a wedding cost and a baby. We were both thinking about finally getting married, but where?! After Lucie at Coco in the Country encouraged me to go an see Aswarby after few conversations about how much we both loved it, I knew it was the one. I’d seen the price list before I enquired, and the price also included 8 double bedrooms for the night of the wedding, which really sold it to me. We got married on a Thursday in October which saved us over £1000 (which was quickly spent elsewhere), lots of our friends are freelance so whilst some people were unfortunately unable to attend due to work commitments, I knew it wouldn’t be too much of a problem for the majority. Also we love Autumn, both of us get unbearably grumpy when hot and bothered, so a hot sunny day in July wasn’t for us! The venue has a real wonderful energy about it, it’s been loving restored by a husband and wife team and in terms of a wedding venue, it is very new. We got married at 12:30 so we made the most use of the house in the little over 24 hours we had it to ourselves. There’s so many beautiful details at Aswarby, and it provided the perfect plain canvas for lots of flowers, clashing Liberty prints and candle light.

The Stationery: Alice Gabb

I knew I only wanted one person to do our invites, and that was Alice Gabb. I met her selling her wares on Broadway Market over ten years ago and since then Alice’s work has continued to go from strength to strength. Alice draws inspiration from vintage stationery and objects, and Alice was the perfect person to interpret my brief perfectly.

The invite was wrapped up in a map of the original architectural drawings of Aswarby Rectory, and sealed with a quote from our favourite headmaster from the Wizarding world, Dumbledore. In hindsight it slightly looks like the Marauders Map, which neither of us mind. The inside drew inspiration from vintage dance cards, and the main invite was embossed in gold. Alice kindly sent me one in black and gold options to choose from, along with paper samples. Then they were all fished with a wax seal, and an Elton John stamp naturally.

And of course, the banner! Alice made our incredible velvet banner, which she sources vintage fabric for and stitches in her studio. The phrase is a song lyric is from a Zombies song, it was this or You’ll Never Walk Alone, luckily I found my senses before Alice set to work. PSA, She can do any colour or wording you want. Ours is now proudly hanging in my office as a lovely reminder of our big day.

Wedding Stylist: Italian Eye Events

Whilst I’d organised events before, a wedding is a totally different beast. Luckily my super talented friend Angela at Italian Eye was on hand to share her experience and help me co-ordinate the wedding. I couldn’t quite narrow down my 454728 wedding inspiration photos, I was really focused on making the tables a big feature point of the wedding. I wanted it to feel like a big fancy dinner, and as it turned out, we were in the room at those tables for quite a few hours. The atmosphere was perfect. Angela came to me with ideas, as she knew I was struggling to narrow it down even after I sent her quite a confused mood board. She came up with the idea of using two clashing floral fabrics on the tables, for which she spent hours in Liberty sending me photos of my favourite shop’s famous prints. I definitely spent more than I would like to admit on those florals fabrics but it was definitely worth it. Thankfully again Angela’s knowledge and contacts, meant that she sorted out getting the runners and napkins made up for the tables. She also helped me pick out plates and glasses, which we kept super simple, which brought the costs down as I’d spent most of the table top budget on fabric. It was totally worth it, I loved how those tables turned out. The whole room was filled with candlelight by the time the sunset at around 6pm, and felt totally magical!

The Food: Rosie Dicker

Wedding food is such a bug bear for people and I can totally see why. I do think that lots of the wedding industry is undervalued, things are indeed expensive but generally it is because lots of time, and care has gone into whatever they are producing.

When researching wedding food I found it felt very impersonal, as in, pick a few things of a menu of what we think you might want to eat and by the way that’s £85 per person. I know there’s some talented wedding caterers out there, ask me to cater for 80 people and beyond a sandwich and a packet of crisps you wouldn’t get much else! On our wedding day, I wanted to have one of the best meals of my life, not just something to fill everyone up and line their stomachs before the dancing.

Enter Rosie Dicker! I’d eaten Rosie’s food at one of my friend’s wedding a couple of years previously, and by the third helping of her Halloumi corn bread I’d clearly logged her info under people I might need to contact one day. And contact her I did. We met up to discuss the possibility of catering our wedding, and spent a good 20 minutes discussing how good proper tomatoes tasted, and then a further two hours exchanging our favourite meals and places we’d eaten. I knew she was going to be perfect! Rosie designed a menu for us, based on our first meeting, and all I can say is still dream about her Lobster Mac ‘n’' Cheese that we had for our main. For starters we had tomatoes, obviously, with Burrata, and whilst it sounds like a lot of cheese the Mac ‘n’ Cheese was based on a Lobster bisque sauce, so it didn’t feel like you were having a cheese overdose. For dessert we served our wedding cake, Rosie advised me when we first met the biggest waste of money at a lot of weddings is the cake, unless you serve it for dessert. It was served with her homemade damson pears and mascarpone cream. Sadly we have no photos of the food, which is such a shame as Rosie served all her wonderful canapés on her collection of green leaf plates - I knew we were kindred spirits. In the evening Rosie and her team prepared a buffet of cheese, meats, pickles, chutneys and breads all sourced at The Cheese Society in Lincoln. People are still talking about the food now, a job well done indeed!

Photography: The Curries

A quick note about the photography, all photography that you’ve seen across these wedding posts has been done by husband and wife team, The Curries. I had them ear marked, and whilst no-one else compared I wasn’t quite sure we could afford them. But in all honestly, this whole business of getting married isn’t cheap. We’ve spent a small fortune which is why we wanted to do it before we started the long old road of saving for a house deposit. Whilst I was deciding which photographer to go with, we attending Liv’s wedding who The Curries photographed beautifully. When I met them both, and also saw how wonderful they were with June, I knew they were going to be worth every penny (luckily Jack got a job that very day too, planning a wedding with two freelance incomes is FUN).

On the day Gill and Chris made me, and most importantly Jack feel so relaxed, they were such a joy to be around on such an intimate day. And afterwards, I couldn’t be happier with the photos, they have gone above and beyond, and captured our wedding so wonderfully.

Spending a bit more on the photographers you really want is something you’ll never regret, long after the memories fade we’ll still be smiling at these photos of our best day.

Videography: Eileen Dunn of Sugar8

We haven’t got our wedding video back yet, which is no problem as I knew we wouldn’t have it for another couple of weeks or so. I just wanted to note that so far Eileen has been a dream to work with, and having seen previous work I know it’ll be grand.

Sugar8 specialises in combining Super 8 footage and digital film, our pianist Jack has recorded an Elton John track to go over the top of it, and I will of course share some of it when it’s time. Eileen has also worked with The Curries a lot, so they are the perfect trio. Neither the filming or the photography felt intimidating on the day, or intrusive and I think that’s so important when selecting the right people!

Now can we get married and do it all again?!

And that’s it on the wedding content front! Believe it or not I think I have shared not even 20% of the photos with you, it could’ve been much worse. I hope those brides to be have found it useful, it’s a bit of a wild time planning a wedding, and whilst I had my ups and downs with it I wouldn’t change any of it for the world!