Laura and Alex tied the knot at the beautiful Woodmancote Place in West Sussex on 28th September. I remember this day well last year as it was a milestone birthday for me and the sun shone beautifully all day long.
The couple wanted their elegant black tie marquee wedding day to be a riot of colour and contemporary style. Laura wore a beautiful Royaldi gown – a discovery at the Wedding Atelier boutique and she’s open about the challenges of dress shopping when you have a larger bust – a frustration for many brides (we recommend these excellent boutiques if you have any concerns at all about body shape – they are run by the most excellent and highly skilled stylists who have years of experience helping women of all shape and size feel maximum confidence on their wedding day). She carried a glorious bouquet created by the talented Em of Frank Floristry that was bursting with colour and joy.
Everything was captured beautifully by Lauren Elizabeth Photography whose portrait images of the couple I adore. Enjoy!
A Few Favourite Vendors
Explore our Wedding Directory and discover amazing talent.
We had always wanted a church wedding and loved the idea of staying on one site for the day. As soon as we drove down the amazing entrance at Woodmancote Place, we knew it was perfect. The grounds, the lake, the flexibility to choose our own suppliers, the proximity to the church… and our coordinator Hannah was amazing.
A Few Favourite Venues
Visit the Love My Dress Wedding Directory to discover more of our favourite venues.
The Dress
Royaldi
My dress was by Royaldi and bought at Wedding Atelier in London. I absolutely loved my experience here. Svetlana was so sweet and very knowledgeable.
To be honest, I found early dress appointments less enjoyable than the gushing experiences you see on TV. A lot of dresses simply aren’t built for big boobs, so I left a lot of shops feeling disheartened that nothing was going to fit properly. The dress from Royaldi had structure but with something a bit different with the flowers on the neckline and I fell in love. Pockets always help too!
I would definitely recommend Wedding Atelier.
An amazing pre-wedding skin experience to share is that eight months before the wedding, I went to meet with Justine Masters; the alternative facialist. I saw her for facials every 1-2 months ahead of the wedding and her advice on skincare and general wellbeing was invaluable. I always left feeling de-stressed and ready to take on anything.
I opted for ASOS Bridal shoes in the end, as given the outdoor format mostly on grass, I decided against a big designer spend.
I am extremely lucky to have Hannah Marshall, founder of Eden B Studio in my life, given that one of my closest friends from school married her into the friendship. Her stuff is amazing and we picked out my veil at her studio in Tunbridge Wells, chapel length to match my fuller dress.
I also went for some drop pearl earrings from her collection, but it was hard to choose as I’m obsessed with everything she makes!
I decided pretty early on to do at least 1 bridal based activity with each bridesmaid (except the one who lives in Australia!) to build in those core memories of the wedding journey. My bestie Harriet and I had a day shopping and went to Jo Malone for one of their ‘Scent your Wedding’ appointments. It was so nice, and we got to try out all the different scents before choosing the very favourite for the day.
I wanted each of my bridesmaids to feel comfortable in what they were wearing. We had a champagne colour palette of which they were free to choose any dress in an array of colours from this.
The dresses were a mixture of Pretty Lavish, Shona Joy, Six Stories, ASOS and Coast. The bridesmaids wore matching organza bows from H&M.
The Ceremony
I’m so grateful that my dad accompanied me into the ceremony – to the sound of ‘Beyond’, by Leon Bridges.
Rev. Janneke Blokland of St Peter’s Church in Woodmancote lead our ceremony. We started the service with a mash up of classic English and Welsh hymns; Jerusalem and Cwm Rhondda (Bread of Heaven).
For a reading, we had slightly shortened version of Dust by Harry Baker. We loved the laid back love story of this poem and Nick our videographer used it perfectly in our wedding video.
Both our wedding rings were from 77 Diamonds in Mayfair, where my engagement ring was also from.
Photography
Our photographer was Lauren Elizabeth. We found the sea of wedding photographers difficult to navigate, but I could not be happier that we found Lauren.
We found Lauren through a referral from one of her photography network and as soon as we spoke over Teams, we both knew it was the perfect fit. Despite Lauren getting married a few weeks before us, we never once felt unsupported or a lack of communication, she did everything to make us feel unbelievably excited for our big day. All of our friends and family loved her, and she blended in perfectly to the day.
We found Nick & Molly from Heartwood Films on Instagram after searching for a supplier who could capture our day. A lot of videographers we had seen we’re producing slower, more emotive films and we just knew we wanted something with more tempo, laughter and excitement.
After a Teams intro to Nick, we discussed our vision and we had complete faith Heartwood could bring this to life. I think I’ve watched our film at least three times a month since we got married, so they definitely succeeding in creating something that we will keep watching together for years to come!
How They Met
Alex and I met at our mutual friend’s wedding back in 2018. Midnight on our wedding day marked exactly 6 years to the day that we met, so it was a date that we had hoped would be possible considering we had a fairly short engagement (compared to most!) at only 10 months.
We spent a lot of our early relationship living back with Alex’s parents during the pandemic, as space was lacking in our London flat.
We found a lot of happiness at this time by walking the fields with their two dogs and taking in the scenery of the Northamptonshire countryside. On a trip back up to the Midlands in October 2023 Alex proposed as the sun was setting, becoming our most favourite dog walk to date.
We jetted off to France immediately for the Rugby World Cup and had a lovely week celebrating with friends, and by early December we had selected Woodmancote as our venue. Not ones to sit around!
Alex’s suit was bespoke by a company called Tailor Made in London.
The Reception
Our marquee was from Tents n Events.
I have proud Welsh heritage, so we gave our guests Welsh cakes as the wedding favours. Super easy for bulk orders, delivered just before the wedding and stayed fresh and delicious.
Alex and I never envisioned a cutting the cake moment, so instead of a traditional tiered wedding cake we opted for 3 yummy cakes from Luminary Bakery.
I have bought many cakes from them previously for friend’s birthdays and celebrations, as think it is just such a wonderful company.
They are a social enterprise, who use baking as a tool to take women on a journey toward employability and entrepreneurship.
Our florist was Em of Frank Floristry. I am slightly flower obsessed and selecting a florist that could bring my vision to life was super important. I found Em on Instagram and after our first conversation, I knew she was going to be amazing. She went the extra mile and was always happy to bounce ideas together before the Big Day. Couldn’t’ recommend her more!
We had an amazing velvet sign for the marquee from Daydreamer Creative, which was placed behind where we sat for wedding breakfast and served as the perfect backdrop – alongside flower arrangements for the speeches. The sign read “This Love is Ours”, quite simply because 2024 was the era for Taylor fans everywhere.
Our first dance track was to Sam Fender’s ‘Will We Talk?’. A friend edited together the acoustic version to flow straight into the original, so we could quickly get into some proper dancing!
Words of Wedded Wisdom
Try not to fill your day with too much organised wedding stuff/jobs, that takes you away from the party. You spent so long planning this day, you should both reap the rewards and love from everyone around you!
For the brides. There is a danger of being consumed by everything that is thrown at you when planning a wedding. We all want to look and feel our best selves on our wedding day, but try not to lose the essence of yourself in the sea of diet plans, workouts, supplements and salmon sperm facials. A smile is your best accessory after all.
Save Your Favourite Content
Register for a Love My Dress account to start saving and curating all your favourite Love My Dress content to access at anytime from your own personal dashboard. You can save all your favourite real weddings and wedding inspiration, your preferred suppliers and venues in our directory, coveted shop items and ceremony readings (we’ve a huge selection to browse through!)
