A Josephine Scott Bride & her Romantic Spring Wedding in Somerset

There’s a quiet kind of magic to an English spring wedding. I chose to marry in the spring myself and have always loved the feeling it brings – the light, the flowers, the sense of newness and quiet optimism in the air. Nisha and Wilfrid’s beautiful day at Yarlington House in the heart of Somerset captured that feeling so perfectly.

Their celebration unfolded between the timeless charm of St Mary’s Church in Bruton and the romantic, flower-filled gardens of Yarlington House. It was a day that felt considered and graceful.

Nisha wore a sublime, lace gown by Josephine Scott – a designer I adore for the way she blends traditional craftsmanship with a fresh, modern eye. Her dress was everything this wedding was – elegant and classic, but full of individuality and quiet, effortless confidence.

Having no older sisters and being the first of my friends to get married, I struggled to know where to start when looking for suppliers.  Fortunately I have a lovely colleague who had got married recently and she recommended CESCA to me for hair and make up, being similar to me in being someone who just doesn’t wear a lot of make up. 

Carla at CESCA did both my hair and make up, and Maxx did my bridesmaids hair.  We had such a fun morning – and Carla really helped me hold it together in the morning before the church, and was touching up my make up the second before I walked down the aisle.  She also encouraged a nerve-killing glass of champagne before we left for the church which in hindsight I am very grateful for!

Carla is the perfect mix of reflecting what you want whilst giving direction – I wanted to look natural but she told me quite clearly when doing something heavier would look better in photos.  Everyone is different, but I ended up wearing more make than I normally would and even some extra lashes – but I really enjoyed it – it felt like such a treat.   

We got ready at the beautiful Durslade Farmhouse – which was the perfect backdrop.

I have two special bracelets but my dress had long sleeves… so Wilfrid’s sisters wore one each.  One was a sapphire tennis bracelet from Sophie Breitmeyer (who designed my engagement ring and our wedding rings) that was a Valentine’s Day present, and the other is a Tiffany bracelet that my dad bought for me from a special trip to New York when I was 12.

My dress had a lot going on, and so I kept my accessories quite stripped back with a plain neck (as my dress exposed the décolletage) and I decided to go for some statement earrings from CompletedWorks  to balance out the statement of the dress itself.

Wilfrid designed both our perfumes at the Experimental Perfume Club in Covent Garden, as a surprise. For mine, he chose a fragrant summer flower concoction, whilst for his own he chose a deep tobacco scent. The week before our wedding we went for a walk in Battersea Park – where we had our first date – and he surprised me with the perfume.

My shoes were from ASOS! By the end of the day they were completely covered in mud, so I’m glad I didn’t spend a lot!

My bridesmaids dresses were from Nobody’s Child – I was set on having an all-ivory bridal look, including my bridesmaids.  I came across a gorgeous ivory silk style dress on Nobody’s Child, ordered it and the girls loved them.  Because they had plain ivory dresses, we went for pops of colours in their bouquets – a mixture of green foliage and pink.  I can’t get over how gorgeous they all looked and it made me so happy to see them loving what they were wearing too.

From the outset entertainment was a top priority.  We wanted both us and our guests to have a real party and a lot of fun. We hired The Wedding String Quartet, both for the church service and for the drinks reception. I’d spent months prior to being engaged listening to their covers of songs on Youtube and wanted to book them immediately. This was one of the best decisions we made – they are fantastic.

The string quartet performed in the church whilst guests arrived (with their cover of Coldplay’s Viva La Vida a particular highlight) and then as I walked down the aisle they played Pachelbel Canon in D.   After we were married, when we were leaving the church, they played an amazing cover of This Will Be by Natalie Cole, which I had listened to daily for a good few months after we got engaged! 

During the drinks reception the string quartet added to the ambience and we had lots of people saying they felt very “Bridgerton” (coincidentally, the third season had just aired a couple of days before our wedding).

It was important for both of us to get married in a church, particularly for me having grown up going to a school where we sang hymns every day – I couldn’t have imagined a wedding any other way.  St Mary’s is a beautiful church situated right in the middle of Bruton, and near lots of our favourite places in the town and it was lovely to get married somewhere that we frequently return to.

We loved choosing the hymns and readings for our church service.  For hymns, we started with All Things Bright and Beautiful and we had Lord of all Hopefulness after our exchange of vows. 

We ended with Jerusalem – it had been raining horrendously before and during the ceremony, and as everyone sung Jerusalem the rain stopped and the sun came out in quite a miraculous way! 

We had three readings, one by each of our father’s and another by one of my close friends – readings are such a lovely way of incorporating friends into your wedding day.  My father read a passage from the Alchemist by Paolo Coehlo, a book that he gave me when I was younger.  Wilfrid chose a verse from “You’ll Never Walk Alone” for his, and my friend read a bible passage John 2:11, which recounts Jesus turning water into wine.

Our photographer was Antonia Katerina. Hands down, I would recommend Antonia to any couple.  Her photographic style is so unique and our photos are amazingly traditional yet trendy – she really knows how to capture candid moments but make them look like they belong in a magazine.

Antonia is also extremely focused and kept us in line throughout the day even when we were growing tired of photos – later in the evening the sun came back out and she made sure we got more shots.  The end result was worth it as we have so many photos to remember our day with.  Antonia also had the help of a brilliant second shooter, Nayara.

We got engaged at The Pig on the Beach in Dorset.  We had been there once before in the Winter, not knowing it would be the place we would get engaged in future!  (Wilfrid had a different plan in mind and then had a dream following which the engagement plan changed!). 

It was July, and the weather was classically British and unpredictable.  Having been planning a sunset picnic, a storm forecast to start at midday meant a change of plan, involving a suspiciously early pre-breakfast walk to a secluded lookout spot by Old Harry’s Rocks, where we had walked on our visit to The Pig the year before.  We spent the rest of the day with sadly little else to do but hide inside and drink champagne due to the torrential rain! 

Wilfrid wore Favourbrook tails, with a golden waistcoat and pale blue tie and loafers from Loake. I had Sophie Breitmeyer create gold engraved cufflinks for him with our wedding date and initials on, that I gave to him the night before the wedding that he wore on the day.

Wilfrid’s uncle offered to drive us in his vintage Bentley – which was so kind of him.  I’d been terrified that I wouldn’t fit into the car on the way to the church,  but Wilfrid assured me that classic cars are made to fit wedding dresses into them… alas he was wrong and one of my best friends who was a bridesmaid, my dad and Wilfrid’s uncle helped me trying to clamber into the car – the only option was me sitting in the front seat surrounded by the many layers of my dress!

Wilfrid grew up in Bruton, and had always wanted to get married there.  We have spent lots of time there together and it is such a beautiful part of the world, it felt like an obvious choice.  

Finding a reception venue to suit proved more challenging – as I think it must always be if you start by choosing a fairly small location!  We had a fairly large wedding and so size was a factor, and we had only been to one wedding together before ours, and this was outdoors in Sicily.  We loved spending the whole evening outside, and love to spend most of our spare time outdoors and so we were set on being able to reflect this in a our wedding which led to the solution of a marquee wedding in gorgeous grounds.  Yarlington House is a short drive away from Bruton and has exceptional gardens and parkland, along with the house itself being stunning.  We went to look round on a sunny September weekend and it felt perfect. 

We did realise we’d bitten off a bit more than we could chew in not hiring a planner to help us and doing everything ourselves was quite a task – Danielle at One Curious Dream saved us in the last two months of planning with her ‘on the day coordination’ service which in reality was a 2 month period of her pulling together all of the logistics for us.

The upside of having been so involved firsthand in the planning is that we were involved in every decision for every part of the day – every element of the wedding weekend was a reflection of us and it was so satisfying to see all of the stress pay off.  We also think we let our hair down and relaxed a lot more when the day came as we were so exhausted from all of the planning, which led to the day just exceeding our expectations in so many ways.

We hired Boutique Marquees who were exceptional in every way. Having trawled the internet looking at marquees we were generally uninspired with the offering until we found Boutique Marquees, whose Sperry Tent style and commitment to high design standards stood out. 

Boutique Marquees also provided a fantastic level of service, conducting site visits in December 2023, and drawing up detailed floor plans to really bring the design process to life. They were also fantastically helpful and flexible during the week of the wedding of itself, when the ever changing weather forecast led us to add an entirely new additional outdoor structure as backup rain shelter for the garden party drinks.

We wanted the décor to be classic – a quintessential English summer garden party, mixing the use of both internal and external spaces.  Boutique Marquees offered a great suite of furniture options for the marquee interior which included a large circular bar in the middle, a stage and a wooden dance floor. 

We also used Virginia’s Vintage Hire for outdoor furniture. They provided us with a gorgeous wooden outdoor bar that worked perfectly. They also provided wicker sofas and chairs with fabulous cushions, and some charming parasols with tassels that wouldn’t look out of place in the South of France (the weather was more British on the day!). Their items were unique and added a timeless sense. 

For our tablescaping, Kirsty arranged the tables with beautiful flowers and candles.  We went for pale pink napkins and at the very last minute, having developed an obsession with charger plates (thanks to Instagram) we ordered some from Options Greathire, along with some unique coloured glasses.  People say to not sweat the small stuff but the finishing touches really pulled the tablescaping together. 

I was extremely fussy with our food choices and the French Kitchen accommodated all of our pedantic requests!  We wanted our food choices to reflect us, and involve our favourite foods, whilst also being seasonal and in keeping with the season which was late Spring, turning into Summer. 

When guests arrived at our reception after the church, they were greeted with champagne, beer and then Aperol Spritz and Pimms for a fun, sunny twist.  The Pimms went down so well as being something a bit different.  In addition, we had a fun selection of canapes – tomato gazpacho “shots”, crab tartlets, roasted Somerset beef in Yorkshire pudding, tomato & basil arancinis and spinach and feta filo parcels.  The French Kitchen had so many great options that were a bit of a twist on traditional, and unexpected options such as the gazpacho shots.

For the reception dinner, starters were either crab and courgette carpaccio, or burrata with peas and spring beans.  Our main was Morrocan spiced lamb, or Morrocan spiced cauliflower steak, and the French Kitchen created an amazing Middle Eastern tabbouleh to go on the side.  For dessert, we had to go for mine and Wilfrid’s favourite pudding – tiramisu, which was incredible, so much so that I didn’t get to eat mine as one of my friend’s and her boyfriend managed to steal mine whilst I was on the dancefloor…! 

We had so many complements on the food and the service from the French Kitchen was exceptional – it was also important to us that they used lots of local ingredients.

We had a separate cocktail menu for the evening and created signature cocktails; involving spicy margaritas and negronis – the first being Wilfrid’s go-to cocktail and negronis being my vice!  

We used Sam Loder for our wedding cake – her business is called Love My Cake Somerset. I would recommend her to anyone in the area – a few months before the wedding we went to her home with Wilfrid’s parents for a cake tasting and to chat about our cake.  We ended up wanting a tiered, vintage “Lambeth” style cake with lots of decorative icing and we chose two slightly modern twists on traditional flavours – vanilla and gin raspberry, and then a lemon and elderflower. 

The weather was hilariously unpredictable on the day and we’d initially planned an outdoor cake cutting part way through the drinks reception.  Danielle (our co-ordinator) then came up with the brilliant idea of moving the cake to the marquee (surrounded by Kirsty’s beautiful flowers) and us cutting it after our first dance, which we had untraditionally scheduled to do before dinner.  I really wanted a full dancefloor before anyone even sat down for starters – party was the priority!  

After our marquee entrance everyone came to the dancefloor and we then surprised then with the cake cutting – and we had so many comments on how this was such a fun way to incorporate the cake cutting into the day. Unsurprisingly our DJ sensed the crowd wanting to continue partying a little bit more before sitting down and so we continued dancing again after the cake cutting.

Kirsty of Fall Into Flowers, was the most amazing florist.  We were utterly clueless about florals going into the planning process and felt overwhelmed by all of the choices. We knew we were having a marquee, which felt like an intimidating blank canvas, and I’d seen endless photos on Instagram of gigantic flower arches at churches that I thought we needed to have for our photos.

Kirsty was amazing at breaking down what we actually needed to bring our vision to life and made the very fair point that our church was beautiful, and we didn’t necessarily need to overcrowd it with flowers.  Kirsty helped us with ideas for re-purposing florals too for the later marquee reception and was just amazing.  We had the most stunning urn arrangements at the church that Kirsty then physically transported to the reception venue to be repurposed, along with my bridesmaid’s bouquets which were then placed in vases and dotted around. 

I wanted my bouquet to complement my dress, and went for a simple bouquet consisting of lots of beautiful white roses.  Kirsty also made the most adorable flower crowns for our flower girls.

One of the best moments of the day was walking into the marquee – I had no idea what is was going to look like as Kirsty, her team and Danielle had been busy making everything look perfect.  The tablescaping and floral ring that Kirsty had created was just so beyond all of my expectations for how I thought the marquee could look. 

After having quite a conservative colour scheme for our church florals, the reception was a great opportunity to incorporate lots more colour with lovely pinks and peaches – which tied into how this part of our day transitioned away from a very formal church ceremony to a glamorous and fun party!

I wanted to design our wedding invitations myself (a consistent theme with our wedding planning was me never wanting to take a straightforward route despite having no time for planning).  Papier have a really easy option where you can upload your own design, so  I sketched St. Mary’s Church and we also used this image on our orders of service.  It feels very special to have such a unique invitation. Papier was a great option for all of our stationery and we also created our dinner menus with them and our seating plan.

We took some inspiration from a more famous wedding we’d seen on Instagram and decided to create mini “take a shot” bottles to be placed at everyone’s seat.  We ordered bottles and labels from Etsy filled them with a delicious lemon and Aperol mixture – and when I see we, it was in fact Wilfrid’s siblings who did this the day before our wedding, and it took them hours, as we had in classic fashion completely forgotten about it!

My evening and reception dress was from Coast.

For music for the evening we used DJ Ryan, who we booked through Tailored Entertainment. Ryan was first rate and we have subsequently recommended him to friends. Prior to booking Ryan we spoke to him and several other DJ’s on the phone and found Ryan the best fit. About 3 weeks before the wedding we spent about an hour on the phone finalising set lists and making sure we were aligned on the vibe.

He was extremely helpful, flexible and thoughtful. He ended up mixing our entrance song which started as the Succession Theme tune (which resulted in a lot of laughter) and was mixed into David Guetta’s “I’m Good”.

To surprise guests, as we entered the marquee we ran straight to the dancefloor and had everyone ushered over. We then started our first dance to ‘I’m Having the Time of my Life’, from the film Dirty Dancing. With light rain earlier the dance floor was horrifically slippy and we both felt like we were on skis – but we still managed to nail a spin and lift.

As our dance finished the guests stormed the dance floor and joined in (and there was yet another rendition of “This Will Be”). As much as we had a clear schedule, Ryan was also a natural at letting the vibes flow, which resulted in in everyone dancing before dinner was served. It worked perfectly and set the tone for a party-fuelled night. 

During the meal Ryan built the mood music such that by the time pudding was done everyone was more than ready to dance the night away. 

Ignore everyone who tells you to not be stressed – you of course will be!

Refuse to take no for an answer – it is your wedding day, and a lot of time, effort and money goes into the planning – you deserve to have your ideal wedding day that involves what you want! 

Don’t worry about the “post-wedding blues” – I had a couple of (I’m sure well-meaning) people tell me how deflated I’d be after the event, but this was not the case! A wedding is one day, symbolizing your underlying relationship which existed before and will continue to exist post-wedding!  Having been so heavily involved in the wedding planning, we were so relieved when it was over – and I think being quite stressed and overly-involved with the planning meant we really relaxed on the day and felt we could just enjoy it after all of our hard work. 

Going on honeymoon immediately afterwards was also a great way to decompress and soak it all up (before coming back to London for what was an extremely rainy summer!) – I know lots of people want to have the perfect, big honeymoon somewhere far-flung, which isn’t always feasible immediately after the wedding day, so even if it’s technically a mini-moon I really recommend that people get away within a day or two post wedding.  We had a glorious and relaxing two weeks of island hopping in Greece, drowning in feta cheese and wine! 

Make sure you enjoy the week before the wedding.  Take time off work – you need to decompress and get into the right headspace.  I finished work on the Tuesday for a Saturday wedding.  Let your hair down a bit the week before – there’s so much pressure in the lead up to the wedding to look your best, and I know I (along with I’m sure most other people) don’t enjoy themselves hugely in the months before and don’t drink alcohol, etc.  I did however do this in the week before, and had a really relaxing time with family and wine, and long meals together. 

If you have the scope to, I’d say invite plus ones where possible and children.  I know people have different budgets and restrictions, but we had a couple of friends with fairly recent boyfriends and they were excellent additions to the day – I’d say the same for a couple of family friends who had young babies, who were just adorable on the day.  People terrify you that babies will cry and plus ones will be a nightmare, but ultimately it’s your wedding day – everyone is there to celebrate you and have fun!  No one wants to ruin it!

We spent a lot of time with our table plan and put a lot of thought into groups that would work well together – this really paid off and I’d recommend couples spend extra time thinking about this, and putting together complementary personalities and different ages!

I also did an impromptu, candid speech and I’m so glad that I did.  Weddings can still be quite backwards in a strange way.  As the bride, you can be quite hidden or silent for a lot of the day and everyone is focused on you and your dress and how you look!  I felt like I missed out a bit not being able to greet guests at the church whilst I was hidden away getting ready and the speech felt like a lovely way to thank everyone for being there and to be able to say some words about my own feelings and happiness on the day.

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