History Teacher Janet tied the knot with her love George, on 16th July 2022 with a ceremony at St Cyriacs Church in Lacock, followed by a reception in the private space of the groom’s parents beautiful Wiltshire home.
The couple had already had a smaller wedding during the pandemic, when limitations on guest numbers and restrictions on celebrations were in place. This time, they wanted to celebrate in a way that truly represented them both. They adored the idea of long tables with low decorations and sharing platters as they wanted to create a relaxed, conversational vibe at their reception.
The bride wore a green wedding dress by Dorking based bridal designer, Felicity Westmacott and carried a beautiful bouquet of seasonal blooms by Luna in the Wild. Photography by South West based wedding photographer, Andrew Brannan. Enjoy!
Bridal Beauty & Accessories
My make-up was done by the lovely Vicky Draper (honestly, I’ve got a total girl crush on her – what an absolute babe!) I dont’ wear huge amounts of makeup and was quite concerned about not looking like myself on the day! I really felt that Vicky listened to my concerns and made me look like myself, just better.
I was totally anti eyelashes for example, but she used some really lovely, natural individual lashes that worked an absolute treat.
My engagement ring is a custom designed piece from Rachel Boston – our wedding bands are off the shelf pieces from her main range. I adored designing my own engagement ring – right down to choose the individual stone and blue tacking various pieces onto a plain band to see how they worked together. As George had proposed with a simple silver band it was lovely to be involved in choosing my own ring.
We visited the usual places and I felt, much like I later did with the dresses, that none of the rings I tried on were quite me. I felt like they were someone else’s engagement ring that I was playing pretend with. Getting to design my own ring, along with the expert guidance and help from Rachel, was very special – right down to choosing the individual main stone. I’d highly recommend doing this if you can!
All other jewellery that I wore on the day were pieces that I already owned. The earrings were Tiffany knot studs that my husband bought me many years ago, and are a firm favourite. My pearl necklace, gold watch and woven bracelet are all pieces that were left to me by maternal grandmother.
I remember as a child secretly rifling through my mothers jewellery box and putting them on to prance around the house in when she was out, so it felt very special to wear them on my wedding day.
Throughout our initial fittings I’d been adamant that I didn’t want to wear a necklace! For some reason I was getting ready I felt a strong desire to wear my maternal grandmothers pearl necklace – my watch and bracelet were also hers, so it was nice to have her with me on the day.
The Dress
My emerald green dress was a Felicity Westmacott bespoke dress. Felicity and I designed my dress together (it was definitely a collaborative) approach and I could not have loved the process any more! I did try on some more traditional white and ivory wedding dresses but I didn’t feel like myself at all them – nothing felt quite right! When Felicity and I first started speaking I felt quite strongly that I wanted something in a deep emerald green, possibly with some beading and that I could dance in – Felicity came up with all the rest.
We looked through her treasure box of beads and jewels together picking out shapes and colours, she then put together a design which she hand applied. Felicity understood what I wanted so much better than I could have ever articulated – I made very few changes, she just totally nailed it.
At a fairly tall 181cm tall I’m very used to clothes not fitting my particularly well. Tall ranges have gotten much better in the last few years, but a lot of things aren’t quite long enough. It was so wonderful to wear something that was tailored to suit me, right down to adjustments to ensure that I could ceilidh in it.
Flowers
Maria from Luna in the Wild did all things flowers for our wedding. I didn’t have strong opinions about the flowers, other than wanted a protea in my bouquet to link to my South African heritage, and so my loose brief was ‘seasonal’ and ‘nothing too fluffy’.
Maria was an absolute pleasure to work with and, having worked a lot with Simon from Buffalo before (which is how we found her), just cracked on with talking to him directly about what we needed. All of our tables and chairs also came from Buffalo, so it all worked out rather well.
The Groom
George wore a rather fetching custom made suit that we’d had made a few years before whilst travelling in India! It was all a bit stressful at the time, as they were quite delayed so we only just made it to the airport for our flight home. But it was well worth it.
Ceremony
Due to covid restricts I wasn’t able to have anyone walk me down the aisle at our first/small wedding and I found it really quite nerve wracking! As we had a blessing for our second/bigger wedding I was quite keen not to repeat this… So we walked down the aisle together as a family with my husband carrying our daughter.
We found the music really quite hard to choose! Other than Jerusalem as a hymn, naturally, it was really hard to choose just one or two pieces. We were really fortunate in that the wonderful Fiona from the Lacock Parish (who was phenomenal at ensuring that we could actually get married the first time around!) Has a keen ear for music and she helped us narrow down our selections.
Revered Andrew officiated over both of our wedding ceremonies (and our daughters Christening) – he also hosted part of our marriage preparation course that we did through the church. We found the latter really helpful, it gave us the opportunity to talk about things, such as what our views are on mealtimes and how we’d raise children, that we might not have discussed otherwise. It felt like a really important part of preparing for our lives together, when it’s so easy to get caught up in the wedmin.
We didn’t tailor our vows specifically (I was far too nervous!) but we did choose to love and respect each other, rather than honour and obey. My favourite bible reading that we had on the day actually found me. It’s The Facts of Life by Padraig O’ Tuama and was actually written about The Troubles in Northern Ireland.
I sadly lost my mother to early onset Alzheimers and my Dad to a heartattack in the years just prior to Covid and it made me very keenly feel the importance of family/our people. In The Facts of Life O’Tuama describes how difficult, and wonderful, life can be. That sometimes life is good, and sometimes better than good. That we must learn to live with regret and disappointment – that often life is not so good. But ultimately, he concludes, that with all of this we might as well love! Which really hit home for me. We will face fresh challenges, and joy, in the future so we might as well love.
Despite being somewhat lacking in the parent department I’ve been really fortunate with some of my ‘chosen’ humans. My Uncle James did a wonderful speech in lieu of father of the bride and it was wonderful having my Aunt Hilly sign the register for me. Somehow having to think about things like if/who would walk me down the aisle, as the ‘traditional’ person wasn’t available, really made us think about how we’d like to do things and it gave us total freedom to leave out or reimagine the bits that didn’t serve us.
We also had bell ringers! We loved the idea of bell ringers and we were not disappointed. The total joy of the bell ringers announcing our exit was truly wonderful – five stars, would recommend.
Photography
The lovely Andrew Brannan photographed our wedding. Andrew was not only a pleasure to spend the day with but he managed to engage my camera shy husband into getting some really fantastic shots.
He also fully took on board our brief that we didn’t want to spend hours doing formal, posed photographs – we were more interested in capturing people enjoying themselves. He totally nailed it.
How They Met
George and I have been together, quite literally, forever it feels. Having know each other for a few years prior we finally got together the weekend before he started a new job where he’d be based on an FPSO (oil rig) off the coast of Angola. This excellent timing has set the theme for our lives every since…
After a few years rotating to Angola (George would be based on the platform for four weeks and then he’d have four weeks at home. The four weeks at home are excellent for travelling! The four weeks where he lived on a boat with no personal space was not so great.
Whilst George was rotating to Angola I finally became British, after five years on an ancestral visa, so I did what any sensible person does in that situation. I quite my 9 to 5 in marketing to do a ski season in Chamonix, France. George joined me there during his months off and will tell you that he missed all the good snow – he is lying.
After Chamonix I returned the UK and started doing a PGCE – I’ve worked as a History teacher ever since. We got engaged on a section of off piste in Argentiere in the Chamonix valley in February 2020 after 8 (I think!) years of dating. At this point we’d navigated the deaths of both of my parents and bought a house together, so we were already pretty committed to be honest!
We had hoped to get married in summer 2020, as neither of us wanted a long engagement, but eventually managed to have a small legal ceremony with just 30 of our immediate family in May 2021 and a bigger reception (combined with christening for bub who’d subsequently arrived) in July 2022. Having had two weddings in the space of two years my family keep asking when the third will be… Not a chance!
Reception, Decor & Detail
The lovely Simon from Buffalo Tipi sorted the tipi’s for both our weddings! A single top hat (with all the sides up) for the small one and three linked together for the bigger reception.
We found that the tipi’s are so lovely that they don’t need loads doing to them, which was great! Maria from Luna in the Wild did her magic with the flowers.
We discovered Buffalo Tipi through Love My Dress.
We had a giant cheese platter in lieu of cake supplied by a family friend who is a cheesemonger. We did have a cake at our small/first wedding, however, this was a super late addition! We just didn’t want one for the big/main day.
Peter and Jurgita from Vaughn’s Kitchen were absolute hero’s for both of weddings. Thanks to the lack of communication from up high for our first wedding we just had no idea what we’d be allowed to do. Their approach was ‘we’ll do whatever we can and ensure that everyone is fed’, which we were so grateful for – we bandied about ideas about individual picnic baskets at one point but in the end were able to do platters, which was great.
I’ve worked with a lot of creatives in my previous career in Marketing but Peter is something else! He wanted to know all the details so he could get a sense of how the day would feel and it really showed. He created a wonderful menu which melded together my husbands Wiltshire roots with my South African ones – nothing was too much trouble throughout the planning process and they could not have taken better care of us. We were, and are, so grateful.
My father in law had opinions the wines, so we were more than happy to hand this side of things over to him. We did a big online order from Majestic and my husband chose some local ales from Box Steam Brewery which went down a treat. We also included a gin bar for later in the evening, which resulted in many a sore head.
We used Papier for the order of service, menu’s, place cards and table numbers. I just downloaded a table plan off Etsy and had this printed locally – jobs a good ‘un.
Evening & Dancing
Many moons ago I attended a Burns Night ceilidh where Fiddle Paradiddle – their caller was fantastic. My husband has many wide and varied talents, however, a sense of rhythm is not one of them. So a ceilidh was something we’d been quite keen on from the start – we were very fortunate that the Paradiddle team travel!
Neither of us are great dancers so we had an all inclusive, everyone get involved first ceilidh, which was perfect.
Words of Wedded Wisdom
As much as I love my child, obviously, it really made life quite difficult trying to juggle the needs of a small human both in the planning and on the day. We hired two lovely local ladies who looked after all the younger children on the day, which I’d highly recommend – it was wonderful for all the parents. But for our 7 month old it was all a bit much really – there was far to many exciting things going on to sleep or eat much and there are so many people wanting to have a cuddle etc.
You can never have too many flowers or too much booze – fact.
Also, find people whose work you like and trust them to do the job well. It’s okay to not have strong opinions on certain things (flowers in my case) – if you choose good people they’ll help you figure it out! That thing is, quite literally, their job.
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The below suppliers and venues are featured in this article, but are not part of the Love My Dress Wedding Directory.
Annabel View all Annabel's articles
Founder of Love My Dress. Passionate Podcaster and Editor. Annabel lives in rural North Yorkshire with her husband and business partner Philip, their two daughters and menagerie of furry hounds. She loves photography, meditation, walking, being outdoors and star gazing. She is fierce when it comes to championing talent within the wedding industry and when she's not working on Love My Dress, she supports her husband Philip in the running of the family's sustainable flower farm and floral design business, Moonwind Flowers. In 2013, she became a published author.
