Lily and Emily’s Elegant Summer Wedding at Northcourt House on the Isle of Wight

Lily and Emily Gray married on 6th June 2026 at the beautiful Northcourt House, a historic Jacobean manor house in the village of Shorwell on the Isle of Wight. Their elegant summer wedding was photographed by Love My Dress recommended photographer Jason Mark Harris, whose gorgeous, romantic documentary images capture two very happy brides and a wonderful celebration with their favourite people.

Shades of green and blue featured throughout the wedding, including the flowers by Wed & Prosper and the bridesmaids’ outfits. A beautiful marquee provided the setting for the reception and although the June weather wasn’t particularly kind to them, the photographs capture a wonderfully colourful celebration with plenty of laughter and some fabulous dancing.

Lily shares their story below, and I hope you enjoy discovering all the lovely details of their day as much as I have.

We chose Northcourt House on the Isle of Wight. I lived on the IOW for 10 years and it held a very special place in both of our hearts. I actually visited Northcourt when I was 17 for a summer fete and loved it so much I drew it in my notebook. I had no idea I’d end up getting married there 10 years later. We put the drawing on our invites as a personal touch.

We used Coast and Country / Grays Marquees for our marquee and they were fab!

We did all of our planning ourselves but we used Wed & Prosper (the same team who did our floristry and props) for additional ad-hoc planning! Flossie was our on-the-day coordinator and she was incredible, so organised and such a calming presence on the day.

We trusted her implicitly and got to properly enjoy the entire day as she made sure everything ran smoothly. She was a lifesaver!

We had the privilege of using the Bridal Rogue Gallery in Connaught Street for both of our dresses. That was the fun part of having two brides, we had back to back appointments at the same gallery and both ended up picking our dresses from there. The team there (Elsa, Lidia and Cat especially) were so fantastic and it felt like such a bonding experience having so many people there.

A fond experience for me was the initial appointments, we wanted to keep the dresses a surprise from one another, so when I went to go try my dresses on, Ems would be at the pub opposite having a pint to pass the time. When it was Ems’ turn, I took her seat at the pub and it just felt so whimsical and fun to be doing it together. We also had a large support group (two aunts, Ems’ mum and my maid of honour) and it was such a special day.

The benefit of having it at the same gallery meant there was absolutely no chance of us picking the same dress! They also made sure the dresses matched in certain ways and that our veils were the same length.

We both had very clear ideas about what dresses we wanted. I wanted a very flowy fairytale dress with lots of layers and details, and Ems wanted a really sleek and modern dress. I think we honed in on what looks we wanted through hours of Pinterest scrolling!

I wore the Lucie dress by Pronovias, which was altered to have sleeves. Ems wore a bespoke dress designed for her at the gallery, she liked the cowl back and buttons from one dress and the higher neckline of another, so they essentially mashed two together to create her dress!

We both wore veils from the wedding dress company too (I think!).

I got some sage green heels from Lace & Favour to match my bridesmaids, and I had some baby’s breath weaved into my hair, while Ems went au naturel! For my perfume, I wore Chanel Coco Mademoiselle as it reminds me of my mum and grandmother.

Ems wore the perfume Beauty by Calvin Klein, and it was a gift from my grandfather who was the biggest supporter of our wedding but unfortunately passed before being able to attend it.

We had two sets of bridesmaids, we gave them a colour scheme (shades of green and blue) and they got their own attire.

As for the wedding party, Bea (Emily’s maid of honour) got her blue suit tailor made for her whilst abroad. The rest of the group got their dresses from a variety of online retailers.

We had Zac (my 10 year old nephew) be our ring bearer. He was very enthusiastic about the role and kept asking to rehearse the night before so he could get his walk down perfectly!

We had a lovely team of sisters, Style Sisters, from the island do both brides and all bridesmaids’ hair and make-up. They were fantastic!! Absolutely nailed what everyone was asking for and made us all feel exceptionally beautiful on the day.

We did initially want to do the aisle walk at the same time using a double aisle, but we unfortunately couldn’t go through with that due to switching to our Plan B (it was raining). So we ended up doing a traditional single aisle instead.

Emily’s brother William played The Swan by Camille Saint-Saëns on the cello.

Our close friend Imogen officiated the wedding, she threw her hat in the ring when we got engaged saying she’d love to officiate and we thought she’d be perfect for the job. And she was perfect!

Emily and I both wrote our own vows. Short but sweet.

My vows read: Emsie, loving you is the easiest thing in the world. I love the way you make me laugh, the way you make me feel safe, so cherished, and so seen. I love that you know me better than I know myself, and that you believe in me so much. I love how sleepy and adorable you are in the mornings and how we dance at the top of the stairs when we get home because we’re so happy to see each other. I love how grateful you are for the life you have. You are wickedly clever, funny, and outrageously positive about everything. You have so much respect for the people around you.

You’ve taught me so much about love, but also about life, you’ve taught me the joy in appreciating everything we have and to see the good in everything. The mundane becomes memorable with you by my side. Even brushing our teeth together becomes a sacred ritual with you.

I promise to stand by your side through all of life’s ups and downs. To support you resolutely and to be your biggest ally. I promise to make you laugh, to dream with you, and to always be grateful for this beautiful life we have built together. You are the most kind and magnificent soul, and I vow to love you unconditionally with every part of me for the rest of our lives together.

And these were Emily’s vows:

Language falls short of being able to describe you, and you are already quite short. You are a comfort, a beacon and a home, but you are also an adventure, a warrior and a force to be reckoned with. You are the best of everything, tender yet feral, steadying yet wild, still yet sparkling!

You possess an unfaltering kindness, a deep generosity in your time and attention, and a steadfastness in your values. From this I have learnt to look at the world with a kinder eye. To have more compassion, to think more deeply and to love more.

There are so many versions of life I could have lived. But somehow, out of everything that could have happened. I found you. And that feels less like fortune and more like fate. I pledge that yours will be the name to which I say goodnight in the evening, and the eyes into which I smile every morning. I love you now and I’ll love you forever.

We only had one reading by my uncle Justin. He read out You are the Bubbles by Rachel Bright!

We designed our own engagement rings with Leon Curtis in Hatton Garden. My grandpa gave us some family heirloom diamond earrings for us to make the rings with and we got to design the rest. Whilst our designs are quite different, the diamonds match and tie them both together.

Leon also made our wedding bands!

We were a love at first swipe love story, we met through Tinder! We were both down in West Wittering celebrating Christmas with our families (who lived 5 mins apart) and matched on Tinder on Christmas Eve. We both got to chatting and saw we went to University not too far from one another (York and Durham). After our first date in York we were both completely smitten with one another, we became official a week later and have been sickeningly in love ever since.

We almost got married a couple of months into the relationship (as lesbians typically do) but decided against it so we could save up for something a bit more extravagant.

We got engaged five years into the relationship, we designed our own engagement rings, swapped them so we had each other’s, and waited until the right moment. Emily proposed to me in Notting Hill at a beautiful family lunch in the garden, and I returned the favour a couple of days later over coffee in our PJs on a rainy da

We always wanted to be engaged for a little while, so decided to set the wedding day 2 years after our engagement so we could really soak it in and get all of our planning done early!

We used some decor from Wed & Prosper’s extensive list of items: candle holders, disco balls, outside seating etc. They were very handy to have!

Our lighting was done by StageGear who are also Isle of Wight based. They were very knowledgeable and helpful!

We used Seasoned Kitchen (IOW based) for all of our catering, they were spectacular. We opted for a slightly different wedding cake, two profiterole towers. My parents had profiterole towers for their iconic South of France wedding in 1998 so we wanted to pay homage to that.

As for our stationery, that was all done by us! It’s a miracle what two women and a Canva business trial can do.

We wanted lots of greens and blues in our bouquets to reflect both of our favourite colours. We had a gorgeous floral arch for the ceremony, as well as greenery decorated around the marquee.

In our bridal bouquets, mine had touches of blue to represent Emily’s favourite colour and Emily’s had touches of green. Our bridesmaid bouquets were quite simple, white and green bouquets with baby’s breath and eucalyptus galore.

All of our floristry and decor was done by the exceedingly talented Wed & Prosper team on the Isle of Wight, they were truly spectacular.

We got custom made matchboxes from The Matches London on Etsy as we both like to collect matchboxes wherever we can. We now have enough left over to last us a few years too so it’s a win-win.

We didn’t have a gift registry and instead we went for a honeymoon fund as we’d been living together for over 4 years by that point. The last thing we needed was more stuff to put in our already cluttered house haha!

Have a plan B sorted that makes you happy, we took ages ironing out what our plan B was going to be as we didn’t want to accept the idea of there being rain, and it ended up raining a lot on our wedding day.

I know everyone wants sun (we did too), but it really didn’t change how special the day was and it made it all the more memorable.

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