Our wedding, the partayyyy.

The final instalment of our wedding series! Catch up with one, two, and three here. 

T H E S E   A R M S   O F   M I N E 

I'm not going to lie, we originally had the idea to use Otis Reading's 'These Arms of Mine' as we googled 'short first dance songs'. Neither of us are great at being the centre of attention and particularly dancing in such a manner that didn't involve much booty shaking on my part was unheard of ;) The more we listened to the song the more we loved it though, and I went back to one of the first mix CDs that Sam used to make for my drive home from Derby while he was at uni, and there it was! On the CD! Fate.

S T A R T   T H E   P A R T Y 

Straight after our first dance we had the DJ play 'one step beyond' by Madness which kicked off the dancing big style, it soon dissipated as the staff started bringing out the evening buffet, sliders and tacos and pizza, oh my! 

I now know that my friend's husband, Dave, is famous for his dances with brides and we kicked off the second round of dancing to 'Baby got back' that old classic wedding song. It was a very special first dance that we shared. 

S P A R K L E R S

I bought sparklers from amazon on a bit of a whim just a few weeks before the wedding, with that and £10 worth of lighters from the pound shop we were onto the winner. People enjoyed being kids again and we got some cracking pictures. We have lots of pictures from Henry of our guests enjoying them too :)

C I G A R S 

Lads, lads, lads! Sam took this time with the dudes from his stag do to enjoy some cigars he'd bought, I was inside eating chips, pizza and just the sausages and onions out of the miniature toad in the holes so I don't know what went down here. ;)

F I N A L    D A N C E S 

We played a song for each of our parents and I love this picture of my in laws after their song, sometimes its worth embarrassing your family a little by giving them a shout out and making them dance. We joined in so it wasn't like ours where every one was watching!!

This is the signature (and he states only) move of Colin so of course we had to partake, I didn't even notice Henry taking these pictures as we were in a circle of Barnes dancing with our elbows. 

I don't know exactly what songs these were we were dancing to but if the hen party was anything to go by it was either Taylor Swift, The Killers or some other song to do with butts. We are very sophisticated like that. 

T H E   E N D 

Before we knew it the day had come to an end and we were heading off to our cottage as husband and wife! It really was the most amazing day, if you're currently in the throws of wedding planning and not enjoying it, don't worry. I didn't enjoy planning at all and it really was the best day of my life. 

Thank you so much for reading these posts, particularly if you've made it through all 4! I really didn't want to leave anything out as these posts are mostly for our memories to look back on. 

Our wedding, the reception.

The 3rd post in our wedding series! Catch up with parts one and two here! 

I hope no one is getting fed up of them yet but telling the story is just so lovely for me. we have wedding albums ordered but I think the words in this will really mean a lot to look back on. 

T H E   W E D D I N G   B R E A K F A S T 

I was in awe as soon as I saw the room for our wedding breakfast. One of the main things that attracted us to the Millhouse was how neutral their decor was, it felt like we could add anything to it and make it our own. So many venues around us were very corporate and looked like there should be a business conference there, or so mega expensive that getting married there was a dream! 

Our cake was a collaboration between our cake lady, florist and my mum! We wanted to shy away from typical fondant and fruit cake as we both hate it but thought the naked cake trend may be short lived and also maybe make for dry cake?!
We had chocolate, white chocolate and raspberry and lemon, all covered with white chocolate buttercream, it was unbelievable and because we stayed in the UK for our 'minimoon' we took some away with us. YAAAAS! My mum's part in the cake was the stand, she blagged the tree stump from some tree surgeons who were working on the golf course near her house! Sanded it up a bit, treated it and there you go.

I loved the place names from VM bespoke as they almost felt like another little favour, i scouted round at some point and I'm pretty sure most of them were taken home by their owners. Our favours were little seed packets aimed at attracting butterflies and bees! Save the bees y'all! 

 I think I lost that drink about halfway through it and it was delicious, my one regret ;)

Any other marrieds love looking through the candids of their guests? It's amazing to see the people who mean most to you in the world having such an amazing time and mingling together. 

Mum and I made this 'selfie station' with a load of props i'd found on ebay and in TK Maxx. Sam and I decided to use it as we were waiting for everyone to head into the wedding breakfast room! We didn't get chance to use it again and we didnt use the props either. Oops, it did get used through the night though!

S P E E C H E S 

After stuffing ourselves with brie (Sam and my mum had 2 portions!), 12 hour slow roasted beef and cheesecake (we were actually told by 10+ people that our food was the best they have had at the wedding which made me and Sam do a little fist pump, just what we wanted, the portions were EPIC) it was time for the speeches. Here continues the theme of Finley's emotion. He didn't do a long speech as he's 6 years younger than me so he couldn't have done anything Father of the Bride - esque. However, what he did blew me away! The day before the wedding he went and got an 'Ohana' tattoo in secret. My mum and I have this tattoo matching on our feet so now us 3 musketeers are all inked up to match. I lost it at this point my head in my hands in that first picture is a true overflow of tears. What a cutie he is. 

Sam's speech was a little more traditional and structured! I'm crying in nearly all these pictures and I think it was the first point in the day I really let emotion overwhelm me. He did all the thank you's, touched on how we met and mentioned so much of what we've been through together. I asked Laura to record the speeches and I can't wait to watch Sam's back. I know he was incredibly nervous and I think he did an amazing job.

Thankfully because Sam is quite a well behaved lad Colin didnt have much embarrassing fodder from the stag do for his speech but as you can see from that last picture of me giggling and Sam looking slightly exasperated he definitely had some embarrassing material from growing up. None of it will make sense out of context but I was asked by several people whether Colin did speeches for a living so you can tell it was a heck of a good one. 

Saying goodbye to some special guests after the wedding breakfast who had a train back to London to catch! It meant so much that people travelled so far to come to the wedding. The furthest was the South of France! 

This is the last in the theme of 'Finley gets emosh' Sorry Fin!! We had given out our gifts to people during Sam's speech so once they were all done Finley opened the card I had written for him thanking him for giving me away. Yet again I could not believe this emotional response from my 19 year old baby bro, I had expected the response from my Mum so I had given her the card I'd got her in the morning before there were any cameras around! I think this was the catalyst to him getting quite drunk, helped along by the hip flask and single malt included in his groomsman gift ;) 

G O L D E N    H O U R 

We snuck off to get some pictures in this beautiful light that drenched the grounds and I'm so happy with them. At this point full of our delicious wedding breakfast and high on the love we'd felt in the room as everyone mingled and ate we barely even noticed Henry there with us. Other than tiny adjustments he made to where he wanted us positioned it was just like we were taking a walk and chatting together.

C O N F E T T I   T A K E   T W O

When I noticed during the wedding breakfast that some of the cones and half a bag of confetti were left I had made a mental note to ask Henry how the other confetti shots had gone as I had worked out why I felt it was a bit lacklustre!! Haha! Then we rounded up a few people and did them again, we decided against the running through people thing as we'd already struggled with Sam tripping on my dress a couple of times. This didn't bother me by this point but I think Sam was so in love with my dress that it made him feel guilty! 

After this is was a blur of people arriving and a few people leaving. We didn't have much of a gap between the day and the evening which is really what we wanted. I wasn't going to do another post however I really think this one is now long enough, so see you in the next one! 

Onto the party!! 

Our wedding, the morning. 26/04/2017.

We only went and did it! We got married on Wednesday the 26th April, all that planning and build up and now we're over a month past it! One month as a married couple. I'm going to do a few blog posts to share some of our pictures from our talented photographer Henry Lowther. 

G E T T I N G   R E A D Y

I woke up on the morning of the wedding at about 5am, in a lovely little cottage about 10 minutes from our venue, knowing what a long day we had ahead of us I was terrified that I wouldn't get back to sleep but I actually did! My mum kept commenting about just how calm I was all morning. I felt totally chilled and kept being able to step back and look at what was happening around me.
I was having random flutters of excitement as Unity, our hairdresser arrived and began work on my mum and my bridesmaids. Then Henry arrived and it was my turn to get curled and braided and pinned.
    My Doctor Who garter was the one subtle hint as to Sam and I's meeting story, through a love of the show, we didn't want to do a theme as I feel like so much can get lost, this was my little secret.

 E L E V E N   T H I R T Y

My brother arrived around this time and this was when I was getting my hair done so I could really look around and survey what was going on, I think it was around this time that Sophie, my chief bridesmaid shoved some crumpets into my hands (on a plate) lathered in biscoff spread demanding I eat something. I'd completely forgotten! It was also then that I realised we hadn't offered drinks to the hairdresser or Henry, oops!

After Henry had taken pictures of us getting ready, chatting and dancing he went off to get some pictures of my dress, after some frantic searching for the wooden hanger i'd remembered just the evening before to borrow from my grandparents!

D R E S S 

I knew this was the dress for me when I didn't want to take it off in the shop, despite it being clamped onto me as bridal sample sizing is so strange. 

M A K E   U P

I had chosen quite last minute to get my make up done professionally having always insisted I would do it myself. The more I thought about it the more worried I was that id be too nervous to do a good job of it on the day. As it turns out nerves weren't an issue but it did feel special getting my make up done for the day. Ellie, my make up artist was wonderful and really listened when I said I wanted to look like myself.
I did my Mum's make up on the day which was so lovely as i'd done the same on my hen, joking that it was her trial.

We need to discuss how bloody cool my sister in law Harri looks in that top photo there. I am obsessed with her hair and style and the way it looked with the flower crowns I bought from Etsy was just amazing, people kept talking to me about how great the bridesmaids looked and I couldn't agree more! There will be more pictures coming later of their full attire. The picture of me in my amazing ASOS pyjamas is as the florist arrived with our bouquets. I was SO excited to see them. 

F L O W E R S 

I was instantly in love with the flowers as soon as I saw them and I knew Sarah our florist would have done an amazing job with the venue as well. 

T R A N S P O R T 

Before we knew it the transport to get us to the venue arrived! Where we were staying could be quite difficult to find so id asked them to come a little early but I was still in my pjs. Obviously its not like a taxi on a meter so I wasn't too concerned about this. I love this camper van, Flossy, so much and she was perfect for us all to pile in together to get to the venue. I really wanted to travel all together so we could calm each others nerves and VW camper vans have always been a huge part of our lives with my Mum having owned a few of her own in her time. Sam travelled in a Rolls Royce ghost but sent it away before we could get any pictures! 

T R A N S F O R M A T I O N    C O M P L E T E

Time to complete my transformation into a bride! That final picture is my look of disbelief as I saw myself as a bride for the first time. I had seen myself in my hair and make up after the trial and in my dress I don't know how many times as it was altered etc but seeing everything together is definitely surreal. I really wanted the calmness of my Mum helping me into my dress. She is the person, other than Sam, who I can rely on in my most panicked moments. The excitement still outweighed the nerves through the whole morning however at this stage it was definitely wow, its all happening that was floating around my head. 

Only my mum had seen my dress so this definitely felt like my walking through the fog, tonight Matthew I'm going to be a bride moment. My brothers emotions really surprised me but, as you'll see in the next few posts, it was definitely a theme for the day! 

After this, it was on to the ceremony, and finally some pictures of Sam! Sam and his brother/ best man stayed about 40 minutes from us so unfortunately there aren't any pictures of him getting ready, although he assures me all they did was eat a very large hotel breakfast, lounge around for a while, and then shower. He had it so easy! 

See you again soon for the ceremony!