Anna Wore Emma Beaumont For Her Jewish Wedding Ceremony at Heckfield Place

Hello loves, it is my privilege to get your Sunday off to a superb start. I really hope that today’s blissful combination of richly-coloured blooms, the most elegant of wedding gowns and a personal lakeside pavilion ceremony sets you up for the rest of the weekend.

Please meet Anna, lawyer and owner of soon-to-launch luxury staycation business The Ruralist and barrister Sam, who chose Heckfield Place in Hampshire for their rescheduled Jewish wedding on 17 September 2020. For the couple, a beautiful, relaxed, Covid-secure wedding was key, and they worked closely with the venue’s event manager Emma Soum to realise their vision.

Like so many other engaged couples, Anna and Sam had their plans disrupted by Covid restrictions but they found Love My Dress an essential support of advice.

Rachel Singer-Clarke is a professional make-up artist and is usually travelling for work but her schedule had cleared at the last minute as a result of Covid restrictions. I usually find it quite stressful having my make-up done but Rachel somehow makes it feel like a spa treatment

I tried on several dresses but none of them felt right. I saw a dress made by Emma Beaumont on Instagram and decided to go for a bespoke dress.

The first appointment with Emma is what you imagine being a bride-to-be is like – you sit there sipping on a glass of sparkling, describing the dress you have in mind while Emma sketches. I loved it; so much that I also asked her to design a jumpsuit for the evening. I wanted something so simple that the simplicity would actually be the main feature of the dress, though I realise now that the design itself was actually quite complicated. Thankfully Emma and her team were on the case.

I wore a perfume I bought from a perfumery in Tel Aviv and it reminds me of that wonderful holiday with Sam. It’s made by Zielinski & Rozen and the fragrance is orange, jasmine and vanilla. Putting my Manolo Blahnik shoes on made me think about my mum getting ready for her own wedding day. I hope the next generation of our family will wear them one day.

When we visited Heckfield Place for the first time we noticed how stunning the flower arrangements were around the hotel. We were delighted when they said that April Deering of April Rose Flowers, their in-house florist, could provide flowers for our wedding. We were lucky that in September there were beautiful blooms growing everywhere so we could focus our budget on covering the pavilion in flowers for the ceremony.”

We weren’t too specific with what we wanted because we trusted April’s informal yet impactful style and focus on seasonal, local flowers. We requested dahlias, craspedias and lots of foliage but other than that the flowers were a surprise on the day.  Most of the flowers were sourced from Heckfield Home Farm.

We had originally planned a wedding in the Lake District (where I’m from) with 150 guests in May 2020.

Initially, we postponed until March 2021 but within a few weeks we found that the uncertainty was taking the joy out of organising and so we decided to cancel entirely. As an antidote to the disappointment and to treat Sam for his birthday in July, I booked a stay at Heckfield Place.

While planning that trip, I thought it would be such a beautiful place for a small outdoor (and therefore Covid-safe) wedding. We did consider it for our original wedding but it was out of our budget with 150 guests.

We figured it could be feasible now that we could only have a small number of guests.

We spoke with Joanna in the Heckfield team who told us they could make it work – we were thrilled! We pencilled in the wedding date for September and, given the uncertainty, didn’t really start planning until just a few weeks before.

We met Emma Soum who was involved every step of the way. It really felt like a collaboration; Emma, Joanna, me and Sam worked together on every detail with the aim of arranging a beautiful, relaxed and Covid-friendly wedding.

We genuinely looked forward to all of our planning Zoom calls! Every time I thought of something that needed to be organised or a detail we wanted to include, Emma’s response was either ‘Leave it with me’ or ‘Yes, I already thought of that, it’s done’.

Along with his dapper Tom Ford suit, the groom wore Crockett & Jones shoes and To Ford Neroli & Portofino Forte aftershave.

Thanks to clement weather, the chuppah was put up inside the lakeside pavilion (and what a gorgeous view!) with the guests seated in bubbles. Their orders of service were designed by Rose & Ruby.

We allocated seats for each part of the day to make sure everyone was always seated with their bubble and two metres apart from others. For the ceremony, we made boxes with each guest’s name on which April Deering decorated with ribbon and dahlias. The boxes included the kippah (Jewish head covering) you would usually have in baskets at the entrance (which of course wouldn’t have been Covid-friendly) and a few favours such as mints, tissues and the essential antibac!

We first met Rabbi David of West London Synagogue when I started my Jewish conversion course (JPrep) a few years ago so it was very special for him to be able to officiate our wedding ceremony. In many ways, the ceremony was a traditional Jewish ceremony. However, we tried to incorporate some of our own interpretations of traditions as well as finding ways to represent our respective upbringings (I am from the Lake District and Sam is from North London) and now our life together.

Traditionally, the Rabbi recites seven blessings in Hebrew. Instead, we asked my brother to read the blessings in English and Sam’s dad to read them in Hebrew.

We wandered down Hatton Garden to find a jeweller to make our wedding band and happened to go into Queensmith. It was a really enjoyable experience. They showed us how the rings are made and offered to polish up my engagement ring each time we had an appointment.

The team at The Happy Chuppah People were fantastic. With no fuss at all they brought two options – one for good weather (a floating chuppah inside the lakeside pavilion) and one for bad weather (which, if we had needed it, would have been an indoor, free-standing chuppah).

We booked Haydn of Ferris & Twine for our original wedding and our hearts were set on him capturing our day so we were lucky that he was available for our rescheduled date. We are over the moon with the photos.

Given number restrictions, we didn’t have a videographer. However, we rented a camera and some of the Heckfield Place staff very kindly shot some footage of the day for us.

We sent that footage and some clips shot by guests on their phones to a professional videographer to edit for us. Arran Kenny of AK Films did an incredible job of turning amateur video footage into a professional video. My best friend made a speech at the reception in the form of a poem that she wrote. Arran asked her to record the speech (from her wardrobe to give good sound quality!) and used clips of it as a voiceover on the video.

We are so happy that we have a short video to remind us of the day.

We had canapés at the reception but they were delivered on a plate for each bubble.

Our reception was held in the Hearth Restaurant at Heckfield Place with a menu by their culinary director, Skye Gyngell. The restaurant for dinner was set up with one table per bubble. We were slightly worried about how this would impact on the atmosphere but it worked well; it felt like being at a restaurant.

We had a chocolate cake with caramel butter cream decorated with flowers from Heckfield Home Farm.

My parents put together favour bags to bring a touch of the Lake District to the wedding day. They included fudge from The Toffee Shop in Penrith, The Lakes Distillery gin and a lovely book, ‘Lakeland’ by Hunter Davies.

I absolutely loved the speeches. My dad’s speech had everyone in tears, particularly when he asked everyone to give a huge round of applause for Sam’s Uncle Mark, an NHS Doctor who had been (and continues to) work relentlessly to save Covid patients. My best friend Laura wrote a poem which brought the house down.

Instead of dancing or a party we had a musical performance in the evening delivered by Daisy Wood Davis. Seating was marked with a soft blanket with each person’s name on, so that they could use it to keep warm outside later in the evening.

It was inexpensive to do; the blankets were a few pounds each and we used iron on calligraphy for the names. The personalisation was to make sure that the blankets weren’t mixed up later on which could pose a Covid risk but they also acted as a favour for guests to take home.

Our actual first dance wasn’t planned. We didn’t plan one as it wasn’t clear whether or not it was allowed. Shortly after, it was confirmed they were allowed. We both absolutely love Carole King; one of her songs was playing when Sam proposed.

We reached out to Daisy Wood-Lewis via Instagram to ask if she would consider performing a few songs at the wedding. It was one of the best moments of the day when we surprised our guests after dinner with her performing accompanied by pianist, Luke. We of course couldn’t get together on a dance floor but we did get to have a sway and a sing-along in our seats.

Make sure that you feel like you are on the same wavelength as your key supplier – the planner, the stylist or the venue, whoever is really driving the day.

If you trust their style and instincts and feel like they ‘get’ what you’re trying to achieve, you will feel so much more relaxed in the run up to the wedding and on the day itself. And, you’ll probably end up being good friends with them long after the day is over!

We visited Love My Dress almost daily in the run up to our wedding. We noticed very early on that the Love My Dress team had been working relentlessly to highlight the impact of Covid on couples, suppliers and the wedding industry as a whole. We would just like to acknowledge all of their hard work on the #WhatAboutWeddings campaign and thank them, in particular founder Annabel, for being a voice of clarity among all the uncertainty that continues to surround weddings.