I am in such a privileged position, doing what I do, I get to pour over endless images of couples in love, beautifully photographed - those perfect, wonderful moments one that one day in a lifetime when all that matters is love, and the coming together of two individuals who love one another.
I first became acquainted with bride and photographer Tarah Coonan after her engagement shoot featured on Love My Dress in June last year. I remember at the time feeling all full of excitement when Tarah told me that they had booked Lillian and Leonard to shoot their wedding. I adore Lillian and Leonard and am excited to hear of photographer Cara and Nye's impending move from Scotland to London - more on that at the end of this feature.
Tarah and Nathan's wedding took place on 6th August last year at Temple in the Woods, Holkham, Norfolk, followed by a reception at Whitwell Hall, Reepham, Norfolk. What a stunning venue and perfect backdrop for these romantic and dreamy images. I love the sense of wild flowers and the woodlands playing such a key part in the day...
Tarah's dress was a design by Augusta Jones called ‘Juno’...
"I tried on so many and so disliked dress shopping. I was so self conscious and just couldn’t get used to seeing myself in a wedding dress. I had something else in my head, something more relaxed, but those kind of floaty dresses didn’t feel dressed up enough or they made me look pregnant…"
Love My Dress Wedding Blog - Photography Copyright (c) 2012, Lillian and Leonard
"I was finding it so disheartening, especially as I kept reading about brides trying their first dress on and knowing it was ‘the one’, then I saw a photo of ‘Juno’ by Augusta Jones in a magazine and went to see it at Morgan Davies Bridal in Islington. It was more money than I wanted to spend but I was so relieved to find something I liked, although I had reservations about it the whole way through up until the day! Then, on the day, I felt beautiful and it was perfect..."
"I loved the floaty lace on the skirt and the delicate lace bodice. I changed the sparkly sash to a brown/champagne one and it felt a lot more relaxed and me then."
"We didn’t have a florist as we really wanted to do the flowers ourselves, we love country garden flowers and we had both been on a bouquet making course run by the awesome Martin and the Magpie, so felt confident.
We ordere"d wholesale flowers from Flowers4florists and Triangle Nursery. We also ordered the most gorgeous, wonderful garden roses from The Real Flower Co. - White Mischief, Groupie and Heritage. They smelled amazing!
My bouquet consisted of blue delphiniums, pink astilbe, chamomile daisies (tanacetum), White Mischief roses, cream stocks, love in the mist (nigella), eucalyptus parvi. I tied them with an elastic band and covered the stalks in natural raffia..."
"The bridesmaids wore the ‘Petazeta’ dress from Mango. Their dresses gave a nod to the 1950s and were cream in colour with a pretty flower print and cross over back - they even had pockets! We loved them immediately.
I had wanted all my bridesmaids to wear a completely different knee length high street dress in the same pastel palette, but it turns out that that is really difficult to sort out!! When we saw these they suited everyone and two have worn them at weddings as a guest since which made me happy that they could wear them again..."
"The bridesmaid bouquets were bunches of chamomile daisies. I loved these! They suited the dresses so much...."
"The buttonholes were blue scabious and lavender (the scabious shrivelled up by the drinks reception!) and the confetti were petals that fell off the groupie roses while doing our flowers and dried delphinium petals from the past 18 months (they are our favourites so every time Nathan bought them we dried the petals afterwards).
We loved our flowers, as you can see!"
"I bought absolutely loads of LED fairylights from eBay and strung them everywhere. We also borrowed some outdoor connectable fairylights which went in the main room, as there were only 3 plugs in there, which wasn’t enough for the other length lights.
My brother and brother-in-law worked so hard all day stringing them everywhere, even outside from the house and around the gazebos. They looked wonderful and really made it magical, better than I dared imagine..."
"I bought manila labels from a stationer online. I spent 8 hours printing each name by hand using typewriter style stamps bought from eBay. I had to do each one twice, ones for place names and another with a table number stamped on it for the table plan..."
"I wanted to put the table plan in an antique picture frame but never ended up getting one! In the end we strung them in the hallway on plain string with tiny pegs from eBay and people loved them. Although a lot weren’t sure what to do and a rumour started that you were meant to take the tag with you to find your seat so half disappeared off the clothes line!!
We were meant to have large paper mache numbers from Hobby Craft but they never arrived so we tied another tag with a number stamped on them onto the jam jars and people managed to find their seat fine!"
"We love pudding so we couldn’t decide on a wedding cake (and couldn’t afford anything other than fruit cake)! For our second date we bought some slices of cakes from Patisserie Valerie and shared them on a bench in the park. It was a special memory so we bought four from Patisserie Valerie (Black Forest Gateau, Strawberry Gateau, Framboise Gateau and Valerie Chocolate Mousse).
We also bought some others from Byfords in Holt, just up the road from the venue (lemon sponge, Victoria sponge, chocolate and orange sponge, lemon tart and a Baileys cheesecake) but they also have an online shop. They were all delicious!!"
"My bridesmaid Nikki made cupcakes with gorgeous starry sprinkles the day before and everyone loved those too.
My friend Debs cut out little bunting from material left over from our large bunting, and we strung them on bakers twine between bamboo skewers. I also came across little red hearts one day in John Lewis but didn’t know whether they’d come in useful – we ended up sticking them onto toothpicks and putting them on some cakes too."
