A Naomi Neoh Gown For A Romantic and Elegant English Country Garden Inspired Wedding

Hello lovelies! We're squeezing in a little evening post for you - we figured that the odd evening and weekend treat would help us deliver all the beautiful weddings we have lined up to share in a more timlely fashion in the run up to Christmas (given all the beautiful submission we accepted over the summer), and it's nice to get a little unexpected surprise too, isnt it?

Micky and Elaine tied the knot on 29th June this year at Woodbrough Hall in Nottinghamshire. I love the 'officer and a gentleman' nature of these photographs – the essence of the bride quite literally being swept off her feet by her love.  I also adore Elaine's beautiful Naomi Neoh wedding dress.  I had the pleasure of meeting Naomi Neoh recently at the Wedding Magazine Awards event in London and the experience only went to strenghthen my fan-girl status. I do very much love Naomi's romantic and elegant designs -  absolutely perfect for Elaine and her elegant country garden inspired day.

Photography Copyright (c) 2013, Kathryn Edwards Photography

 

"From the very start of the planning process I had a very clear image in my head of how I wanted our wedding to be. I wouldn’t say that I was focussing on one thing in particular, I just knew that I wanted the day to be romantic and elegant – I wanted the styling to feel very English country garden, with rustic homemade touches and shabby chic ornaments etc.

I guess you could say it was a bit of an eclectic mix, but from the word go I just had a vision in my head and ran with it hoping that it would all come together! I was over the moon when I saw the venue on the day, it’s so lovely to see everything that you’ve worked so hard on finally coming to life."

"Micky and I met five years ago through my Maid of Honour, though it took a good while longer before we actually got together.  Two years after meeting, Micky took it upon himself to start a full blown stalking campaign – without much luck, I have to say! That was until my Maid of Honour's birthday, when he gate-crashed our girls night out and decided to win me over by pushing me off my chair – and, well, it worked! So, won over by his sense of chivalry I finally agreed to a date, and I can report that it turned out to be worth the wait!

Being unsure though, I pushed him away and made him wait another five months before finally confessing I felt the same way. There was just one catch though – he was seconds away from boarding a flight to Afghanistan! So as I nervously spilled my heart out like a school girl and asked him to be my boyfriend, he had just enough time to say 'YES!', before flying off to go on a seven month deployment.  Yet again he was well worth the wait though, and after a torturous seven month long distance relationship, I met him at the train station with a kiss and we’ve been together ever since."

"We always knew we wanted a fairly short engagement, and with us planning to relocate the following summer, it seemed a perfect time for us to tie the knot so that all of our family and friends could celebrate with us before we moved away.

Our wedding ended up being thirteen months after Micky proposed, and even though it was extremely stressful at times – our wedding was four weeks after my final exams at university – I wouldn’t have had it any other way. It was a lovely reward after a stressful year for the both of us."

"Our daughter wore a pretty little cream ‘Baker’ by Ted Baker flower girl dress. It had a ruched flower design all over which looked oh so pretty, especially with her big bouncy curls!  Our son, who was an usher for us, wore a suit matching those of the Groomsmen from Greenwoods"

"My dress was the Dita design by Naomi Neoh, that I purchased from Cicily Bridal.  I can’t recommend Cicily Bridal enough.  The two lovely ladies, Lisa and Victoria, who own it are absolutely fantastic. It’s clear to see upon meeting them that they are absolutely passionate about what they do.  From the second you walk into their beautiful shop, they make you feel as if you are the most special bride in the world! I couldn’t have wished for a more relaxed, enjoyable experience from start to finish.

Despite having such a clear concept for the wedding from the start, my dress was the one sticking point that I’d been putting off. Even though I didn’t have a clue what I wanted, I just knew that I didn’t want a traditional dress and that when I saw “the one”, I’d know it!  And that’s exactly what happened. I was just flicking through (yet another) bridal magazine one day, and there it was staring at me on the page. I fell in love with it instantly, and I knew I had to have it!  I tracked down my nearest stockist and the rest is history."

It appealed to me because it was just so girly, floaty, and romantic. The French lace cord looked so beautiful paired with the chiffon silk, and I loved that it had had such gorgeous detailing with the corsage and ribbon down the front. What I really loved though, was that because the fabric was so soft I could have the big fairy tale dream dress without feeling like I was waddling around in a giant meringue, it just moved with me effortlessly. My dress also had under layers of blush that you could only really see glimpses of as the skirt swished about. It was just another special touch that I loved about it.  I just thought it was perfect, it was ‘me’!

My veil was by Halo & Co, bought from Cicily Bridal. The length and style of the veil complimented my dress perfectly, and I really loved the simple detailing along the edges.  The hair band was called ‘Daisy’ from Debbie Carlisle of DC Bouquets, also purchased via Cicily Bridal.  After trying on a few different styles and pieces, I decided on this headband as I felt it really complimented the dress. It added a vintage feel to the styling without being too blingy or over the top, it was simple and elegant, exactly what I was looking for."

"My shoes were called ‘Coco’ from Christian Day Designs who specialise in vintage wedding accessories, they have some fab pieces. I always knew I wanted lace, ribbon tie shoes after seeing another bride in some before I got engaged. They ended up being even more perfect than I had imagined though, as the lace looked almost exactly the same as the lace on my dress!

They added lots of cute little extras like love heart sweeties and gel insert cushions as freebies in with the shoes. It’s the little things like that which made me smile!"

"My favourite part of the day by far was the actual ceremony. I was so nervous before I walked into the orangery, but as soon as I got to the end of the aisle I felt such a huge rush of excitement! Seeing the look on Micky’s face as we exchanged our vows was absolutely priceless, and they’re still my favourite photographs to look back on even now.

"When I met with my florist, Woods of Arnold, I went armed with my planner, packed full of pictures of just about every single beautiful bouquet I had come across. It was clear that I had far too many ideas to cram into one bouquet! One thing that I was certain of though, was that I definitely wanted to include avalanche roses – I loved their understated simplicity and beauty.

With my florist’s help, we decided to focus on various shades of avalanche roses to match in with our colour scheme. Sweet avalanche to match my dress corsage, cream avalanche and amnesia roses to bring a vintage, dusky shade to the bouquet. I entrusted the rest of the bouquet decisions in the capable hands of my florist, as I felt completely confident that we shared the same vision!  And I’m so glad that I did, I couldn’t have been happier with them."

"Finding dresses for my bridesmaids turned out to be the most stressful, traumatic ordeal during the whole planning process! For me, the colour of the bridesmaid dresses was the glue that was going to stick all of the ideas, colour schemes, and planning together, but I struggled to find the shade that I was after anywhere.  In the end, after an exhausting, unsuccessful day of shopping which led to finding no dresses to suit, we ended up buying the very first dresses we had seen in Selfridges, but had dismissed without trying on! They were from Warehouse and they ended up being absolutely perfect.

I always knew that I didn’t want traditional gowns for my girls, I wanted them to be contemporary and flattering, but in line with the vintage feel. I LOVE lace and pleats, so we were onto a winner. As for the colour, I couldn’t believe it when our flowers turned up on the morning of the wedding and completely matched the colour of the dresses. Some things are meant to be!"

"Finding a dress for my maid of honour was slightly less traumatic, although she might not agree, (her dog ate her first dress delivery, whoops)!  In the end we went for a lovely summery occasion dress in ‘nude’ from Fever Designs. At first I was a bit concerned about having too many different colours and designs going on, but in fact it was lovely for her to be able to stand out as being different, and the colour and corsage on her dress went beautifully with the blush colour of my own dress!"

One of my favourite decorations though was outside - my home made pompoms ended up looking amazing dangling from a large tree in the grounds! It made a beautiful backdrop for photographs, and I especially loved seeing all of the children playing underneath them!

As well as the pompoms, I also made some string balloon chandeliers to hang from the trees. Again, not for the fainthearted (unless you enjoy balloons popping in your face, smothering you in a mixture of corn flour, glue, and poster paint!!!), but they were also massively fun to make and looked lovely bunched together."

"A lot of our decor was DIY.  In the far corner of the room we had a table where we sat our card holder and guestbook etc. After seeing a picture of a suitcase card holder when I started the planning process, I felt inspired to do something similar. I wanted the effect to be really worn and vintage, so we sourced an old, falling apart suitcase from our local indoor market and set about transforming it.

I lined the case with some wallpaper off cuts and then edged it with some drab, vintage looking lace I had picked up. For the interior I draped some soft velvety, cream fabric inside the case and let it spill out over the sides. I didn’t want it to look too ‘perfect’. For the letters that spelt out ‘cards’, I bought some wooden letters and then hand wrapped them in a rustic looking wool (now THAT was a pain!)"

"Instead of traditional bunting, I enlisted our daughter’s help to make some paper heart garlands to string from the ceilings instead. They were so fun and easy to make and it was lovely to let her get involved so that she could look around and think, yay, I made that!"

"I would recommend Kathryn Edwards, our photographer, to absolutely every bride (and husband!) to be. Her talent for photography speaks for itself, and you only have to have a quick glimpse at her work to see that she can make the simplest of things look extraordinary and beautiful. I found Kathryn whilst searching for images of our wedding venue, and came across some shots of a recent wedding she had photographed. Her candid style of photography and natural use of light completely appealed to me and had the ‘look’ I was going for.

I hadn’t yet looked for a photographer, but knew right then that I didn’t need to even bother and contacted her immediately. From the moment we met Kathryn for our complimentary engagement shoot, we were put completely at ease in front of her camera. Not only is she a total dab hand with a camera, her relaxed, warm manner had us bowled over and excited for our engagement shots and forthcoming wedding. And we weren’t disappointed! Kathryn was a pleasure to have at our wedding from start to finish. Not only did she manage to capture every moment of our wedding in a truly magical way, she also felt like one of our guests by the time she left, and we were sad to say goodbye.

From helping out in the morning, to chatting to everyone throughout the day, Kathryn was the name on everyone’s lips and it was pleasure to have her there to shoot our special day. I’ve got to be honest, we were already expecting great things from our photos, but she even managed to surpass our expectations!  Great photography, great company, and great fun – what more could we have wished for?"

"We’d already looked at several other venues, but from the moment we set foot in Woodbrough Hall, we knew it was the perfect venue for us. Set in beautiful grounds, the venue just oozed old English, vintage charm that made us fall instantly in love with it.  The décor fitted in perfectly with the style of our wedding, with its grand mirrors, chandeliers, and ornate birdcages sending my imagination in to overdrive!  The orangery where the ceremony was to take place looked simply beautiful with the sun shining through the glass ceiling.

As our wedding was fairly modest in size, we felt that the venue was perfect. Small enough to create a personal, intimate feel, yet large enough for our guests to have the freedom to wander about and not be cooped up in one room. We had exclusive hire of the venue."

"My dad gave me away and we walked down the aisle to Poppiholla by Sigur Ros. I actually stole the idea a few years ago on a random blog when I was looking for something completely unrelated to weddings. Someone had suggested it as a good wedding march song, and I thought yes, I am totally with you on that one! It had always been stuck in my head since then, and it just always had to be the one!"

"We wanted to make our vows personal, so we took inspiration from vows that we had found on the internet, and pinched bits and changed ideas so that they were personal to us. I think vows that you have written yourself are such an incredibly personal thing to read out in front of everyone, it can seem so daunting knowing that a whole room full of people are going to hear your innermost thoughts and feelings! On the day, it really doesn’t feel as bad as you’ve conjured up in your head though (ok, I’m not gonna lie, it’s still a bit scary!!), but nowhere near as bad. You will only have eyes for each other at that brief moment in time!"

Here are a couple of extracts of mine to Micky; 'I promise to be with you always, to care for you, and to love you no matter how far apart we may be.  When you are happy I will be happy with you, and when you are sad, I will make you smile. I promise to be the best parts of me that fit perfectly with the best parts of you, and to ask of you no more than you can give.'  And some of Micky’s vows to me; 'I promise to care for you with love and friendship, and to fill your days with sunshine. To be there when you need me through good times and troubled times, to comfort and encourage you to reach you goals.'"

My mum chose this beautiful reading for the start of the ceremony, there were quite a few teary eyes in the room! It couldn’t have been more perfect, it was an emotional moment. 

'Young Man,
Take care of my little girl,
I’ve loved her and raised her since giving her life,
This dear little girl who will now be your wife.

I’ve worried and cared whenever she hurt,
With words always loving, though sometimes quite curt.

I may have made blunders but always I’ve cared,
And good times and bad times alike we have shared.

Now it is your turn to take over my task,
To help her find happiness this I will ask:

Please keep her from danger and her needs provide,
And together look upwards; let love be your guide.

Your joy and your sorrows together you’ll share-
But what she needs most is to know that you care.'”

"I designed and made all of the stationery myself.  For the table plan, I bought a plain white ornate mirror and then the fun really began (groan!). After removing the mirror I painted the frame with a bronze metallic paint, and then painted over it with an antique shade of cream. After leaving it to dry I gently sanded the cream paint off in parts to reveal the metallic shade underneath creating a lovely antiqued effect. I then covered a board with a sample of wallpaper, embellished the pattern with pearls, and slotted it all back together.

For the table places, I designed and then printed them off onto some good quality card and strung them onto twine with some cute little heart pegs. I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out, although I don’t think anyone would have realised the amount of work that actually went into it!"

"Most of the decorations were handmade except for a few exceptions. For the centre pieces I sourced some beautiful, distressed birdcages and hand decorated them with rose garlands, pillar candles and ribbons. I wanted the tables to look elegant and simple, so other than some mirrored plates and freeze dried petals, the birdcages were left as the main feature."

"Our candy buffet was filled with lots of yummy bakes and treats such as macaroons and fudge from our supplier Macys Kitchen, and retro style sweets that I’d bought from our local old fashioned sweet shop."

"I knew from the start that I wanted to have a cupcake tower for our wedding cake, but I’m so picky that it took me a while to find a supplier I was happy with… You can’t mess about when it comes to cake, right?! After finding a supplier I was really happy with, we discussed the details and I supplied her with pictures of various styles that I loved and left her to work her magic! I wanted the tower to have an eclectic, vintage feel that worked well together from a distance but still had enough variety to look interesting.

I didn’t want the designs to be too fussy or overdone, so I decided on 6 different designs in pinky shades that whilst simple, looked really effective together. One of the designs had nothing more than icing and desiccated coconut on, but looked so good! There was also several mini cupcakes to add further variety.  I had originally thought about having a giant cupcake on top of the tower, but in the end I opted for a white chocolate cigarillo cake for the top tier. It just added something a bit different and I think it ended up complimenting the tower perfectly. The top tier was lemon and the cupcakes were a mixture of vanilla and lemon, and trust me, they were gooood! Nom."

"We chose Beyonce’s ‘Halo’ as our first dance as it had a really significant meaning for us. When Micky was away in Afghanistan when we first got together, we obviously didn’t get to talk very often, or nearly as much as we’d like. So every day we would send each other a song that would represent how we were feeling that day. They weren’t always slushy, it could be very mood dependant, but we are both massive music nerds, so we would only send songs where the lyrics completely said what we couldn’t at the time.

I sent Halo to Micky one day and he was bummed that he hadn’t thought to send it to me first, as it summed us up completely! From then we always joked that it would be our first dance, so it was an obvious choice.  In fact, we actually used the majority of the songs that we’d sent to each other as the playlist for our wedding breakfast, unbeknown to the guests! It was just a nice little extra touch that gave us something to smile about together."

Words of Wedded Wisdom…

"I don’t know about other brides-to-be, but I know that I always had a little fear in the back of my mind that all these ‘wonderful and amazing’ ideas that I’d conjured up in my mind perhaps wouldn’t look so wonderful in real life! I think it’s normal to have these little niggles, but my advice would be to try not to worry too much! Everything WILL look amazing on the day, and to be honest, the chances are you’ll be enjoying yourself too much to even care.

Also, although it can be loads of fun to have lots of crafty projects on the go for your big day, it’s really important to have a realistic time scale in place. I can tell you from experience that you’d be amazed how quickly the time can fly even when you think you’re on top of everything. I was still stringing pompoms and garlands together at 3am on the morning of the wedding! Dark circles are soo not a good look – my make-up artist deserved a medal!

"I don’t think I would change anything about the actual planning of the day, I was really happy with how everything came together. I know it’s easy to say, but the day really did feel perfect and ran so smoothly. I do wish I had slowed down a bit and enjoyed the run up to the wedding more though. I had always envisaged the week before the wedding being full of rest and relaxation (idealistic, I know!), but in reality I was rushing around so much that by the time it came to the morning of the wedding I was exhausted and stressed. So if I could do it all over again, I’d definitely improve my forward planning!

Finally, I know it’s a massive cliché, but if you do nothing else, just try and savour every moment of your big day! So many people said it to me before our wedding, to which I just thought “Pffft, how quick can a whole day go?!” but it genuinely does go by in a flash. Try and make some time for each other, even if it’s just a few stolen moments together. We ended up resorting to a crafty walk in the grounds just so we had two minutes alone to stop and say “Wow, we actually pulled this off!” High fives."

What a lovely elegant day – huge thanks to you Elaine for sharing so much of your experience with our readers and all our best to you and Micky for a beautiful and happy marriage.  Thanks to photographer Kathryn Edwards Photography too for sharing these lovely photographs.

You can see more from Naomi Neoh here on Love My Dress.

Big love all, come back tomorrow – we've got 3 brand new bog posts scheduled for your enjoyment!

Annabel

 

Photographer – Kathryn Edwards Photography
Venue + Catering – Woodbrough Hall, Nottinghamshire
Brides Dress – 'Dita' by Naomi Neoh, via Cicily Bridal, Tamworth
Veil/Headpiece – Halo & Co, bought from Cicily Bridal
Brides' shoes – ‘Coco’ from Christian Day Designs
Earrings + Necklace – Alan Hannah’s ‘Devoted’ range at Debenhams
Groom – his own uniform
Bridesmaids – Lace Bodice Pleat Dress, Warehouse + Fever Designs
Flowergirl dress – Baker’ by Ted Baker, via Debenhams
Page Boys – Greenwoods
Florist – Woods of Arnold
Cake – Heavenly Cupcakes
Entertainment – Disco, via Nightair
Rings – Diamond Heaven (Elaine) + Wedding Rings Direct (Micky)
Hair Stylist – Charlotte Wesson
Make-up Artist – Bettie Lottie