Heart-warming & Beautiful Wedding At Home

Here before you is a wedding at home, with a reception hosted in a back garden, replanned within just five days due to COVID-19! Introducing WWW readers Sally and Matt who were wed on the 11th September 2020, a day which was both heart-warming and totally gorgeous.

Sally and Matt both looked incredible, Sally wore an ethereal lacy gown teamed with a flower crown and Matt donned a burgundy suit with a bow tie. Wow! Then there were the incredible blooms in an array of pinks, a gorgeous outdoor table set up in the garden complete with festoon light canopy and pretty semi-naked cake.

Emilie May thank you so much for sharing with us these divine images of such a memorable wedding at home.

Wedding At Home

The Proposal

The proposal happened in Rome back in March 2018 around the time of the infamous ‘Beast from the East’, which Matthew organised as a surprise. We will never forget that weekend as it nearly didn’t happen.

My parents had booked for us to go and see Morrissey as a Christmas present which happened to be the day before we flew to Rome. So Matthew’s plan was that we would go to see Morrissey, then stay with his sister who lives in London following the gig and then we would set off early in the morning to fly off to Rome.

However, it didn’t exactly happen like that as much as Matthew tries he’s not exactly the most organised person (that being said I think we are both as bad as each other).

The beast from the east was heading our way that evening so we wanted to get to London before it hit us. En route to the gig I realised that I had forgotten to pick up the tickets as we were halfway down the M4, so had to turn around and go back. However, that isn’t the best part (which I have since learnt) when we got to the gig Matthew realised he’d packed everything except the ring. So he made up some excuse that we needed to get home following the gig – which wouldn’t have been too bad if it wasn’t for the storm!

After a stressful drive home and Matthew nearly writing his car off, we decided we would leave the car on the main road and set off to the airport very early in the morning. I don’t think I slept a wink that night!

We set off to the airport in what we thought would be plenty of time and Matthew thought he had checked us in online so we were both pretty chilled driving over to London Heathrow until we couldn’t find the car park and we realised we didn’t have a lot of time at all.

Cut a long story short we turned up very late, Matthew hadn’t checked us in and we basically had to leg it through the airport (once someone kindly opened a check-in desk) to our plane!

At the time it was one of the most stressful mornings of my life, however, we got there and Matthew proposed at the Roman Forum at a beautiful viewpoint with all the old ruins and the colosseum in front of us, it was honestly the most perfect weekend!

He sadly has never arranged another surprise trip since!

The Vision

The most important thing to us was to have a fun and enjoyable day with all the people we loved and cared about.

The Planning Process

It was always important for me that the planning process wasn’t stressful, it was enjoyable. It turns out you can’t really avoid it in planning a wedding.. however, we never expected to be trying to plan it in a global pandemic and to be replanning it 5 days before!!

All being said though I found the process all very smooth and easy. We were so lucky with our suppliers, we are planning a celebration for September 2021 at our original wedding venue and every single supplier has got on board and moved to our new date without any further charges or fuss, we feel so super lucky!

The Venue

Gosh the wedding venue changed so many times in the end, we had originally booked to have our wedding at the church I grew up going to and was christened at followed by a wedding celebration at Rivington Hall Barn.

I think we always thought that COVID would go away (slightly naïve of us looking back now) but neither of us ever thought about postponing it. I think as we had a two-year engagement we couldn’t bear to wait another year. Two years was long enough!

So the venue changed from Rivington Barn to my parents back garden – until Bolton became a COVID hot spot…

I remember the weekend before the wedding, the restrictions had got so tight that it was just going to be impossible to have the wedding and garden party we had originally planned and to celebrate it properly.

It was all down to Matthew that we managed to get hitched… as we had our Banns read in Thatcham where we live now, he realised we could potentially be able to get married at home instead and have a party in our own back garden.

So the Sunday before we were due to get married we both rushed to get ready to go to church and waited to speak to our vicar and without hesitation he agreed to do it! We were both so happy I remember us just running around frantically after the service (I think it was the realisation that we had five days to replan our day).

With the help of our amazing friends, family and suppliers we managed to move our wedding from the North to the South in the space of five days. Stressful to say the least but I will never forget what everyone did for us to make our day possible and looking back at it now I wouldn’t want it anywhere else!

Your Outfits & Accessories

I remember shortly after getting engaged I went to Tesco’s to buy wedding magazines and it was in one of the magazines that I found the designer of my dress. I spent a lot of time looking but I would always end up back at Catherine Deane. I just loved the simplicity and boho feel to her dresses!

As we were having a two-year engagement I waited for a year until I booked my appointment at Kimberley Anne Bridal who supplies Catherine Deane dresses. I took my mum, maid of honour and Matt’s mum and it was actually my maid of honour who picked out the dress. I tried on a lot of gowns but I ended up going back to that dress a few times so I knew it was the one!

I didn’t really get on with the veils when I went dress shopping, and I’d always liked the idea of having a flower crown instead. My flower crown was supplied by Wild and Wondrous Flowers (who actually did all the flowers for the wedding). It was so so beautiful!

My shoes took ages to find, I think I found Charlotte Mills Shoes through Instagram. I just loved the little details, the printing on the bottom of the shoe, the sixpence and how extra they were. So it didn’t take much persuasion to buy and honestly, I couldn’t recommend them enough they were so comfortable!

Matthew bought his suits and bow ties in the end from Marc Darcy. As he is a mad Burnley FC fan it was always going to be a maroon(claret) suit! We both really liked the idea of bow ties and I always thought they looked cute on Matt.

Beauty

As the wedding was moved from the North to the south and it was so last minute I couldn’t find anyone to do my hair on such short notice. Fortunately, I didn’t want much done apart from it being curled, so my now sister in law curled it for me in the morning.

The bridesmaids did their own hair, I bought them all a gypsophila hair comb from a small business off Etsy to wear.

With make-up I was very fortunate to have a family friend who trained in make-up, amazingly she had work the following morning (in Harrogate) but she still made the effort to come down for the day and do it for me. Something which I will forever be grateful for and she honestly made me feel like a million dollars!

Groomsmen

Groomsmen suits and bow ties were the same as Matt’s all from Marc Darcy. They all scrubbed up so well!!

Bridesmaids

The bridesmaid dresses were from ASOS, both sisters-in-law used ASOS for their weddings and I was really impressed with the quality and price of them. They fit all the girls perfectly and they looked absolutely stunning!

The Readings & Music

I walked down the aisle to ‘Here Comes The Sun’ by The Beatles.

We had two readings one read by my mother in law and the other by my mum.
Corinthians 13: 4-7 NIV
Everything I know about Love by Dolly Alderton

Unfortunately under the COVID restrictions at the time, we weren’t allowed to have Hymns.

For the signing of the Register, we decided on two songs.
Elbow – One Day Like This
Blossoms – The Keeper

We then walked out to Praise You by Fatboy Slim. The lyrics just felt so fitting ‘we’ve come a long long way together, through the hard times and the good, I have to celebrate you, baby, I have to praise you like I should’.

Small Bones by The Courteeners was our first dance! Never did I think I would be doing that in my back garden!!

Check out these Wedding Songs and Wedding Readings too!

The Flowers

The flowers were just something else, they were just the most insane flowers we have ever seen. Nicola and the girls at Wild and Wondrous, Blackrod, Bolton are so so talented, they went above and beyond, we just couldn’t recommend them enough!

As we had to move the wedding down south in five days, I was so worried about asking if they could still do it and we could still have the flowers. For me, it was one of the most important things!

Nicola went above and beyond, when my dad turned up at the shop to collect the flowers along with a list of places to go afterwards and nothing to safely transport the flowers in, she decided that she would bring them round prior to them setting off down to Thatcham. At times I think my dad has been more stressed about the wedding than me and Matt, so I couldn’t thank her enough for what she did, she really put my dad’s mind at rest and considering they were delivered the day before and transported over 200 miles you couldn’t tell!

The Cake

We had a very small and simple barely iced carrot cake, with us only having 20 guests we felt a three-tier cake would be too much! The cake was made by the girls at Finch Bakery in Great Harwood, I have followed them on Instagram for ages and when they said they could do our wedding cake, I had a little fangirl moment! The cake was just so perfectly made, I think they were concerned that the icing might not be very smooth with it being a carrot cake – I’ve never seen such smooth icing!! They are both so talented and I feel so lucky to have had them make my wedding cake!

We used some of the flowers from Wild and Wondrous to decorate the cake.

Your Photographer

When it came to picking the photographer, like everything Emilie was the one we always went back to. I really wanted to have a photographer that wouldn’t just take the standard photo but someone who could capture the emotion and essence of the day. And Emilie did that.

She is another person who I cannot thank enough again we were so worried about asking people if they could come down south, Emilie didn’t even hesitate, she was on board with it and travelled the 400-mile round trip to photograph our day.

On the day she was so lovely, non-intrusive and got the most amazing shots. We’ve had a few of our guests come back to us and say how good she was. Upon receiving the full gallery she even put a little reel together with our leaving the church music, something which we and our families have watched on more than one occasion. Emilie is just so so talented, I just can’t recommend her enough!

The Details & Décor

Right from the very beginning we always wanted a rustic feel to the wedding, we are both big lovers of gin and I loved the idea of having gin bottles as the table feature.

As we didn’t really know what was happening with the wedding we left the décor bits really quite last minute. When we knew we were having a garden party, I just Pinterested loads of ideas and between ETSY, Amazon and Not on the Highstreet we made a wedding venue in our back garden.

Big thanks to my Uncle John he supplied us with all but one of the tables and Matt’s mum, dad and sister for the chairs they fit like a glove in our garden. I didn’t realise how big our garden was until we held the wedding in it!

The Honeymoon

We were so lucky, we booked a ‘Mini Moon’ to Positano on the Amalfi Coast Italy at the beginning of the year and we were so fortunate to be able to go quarantine free! We had the most amazing few days away, we booked an apartment through Air BNB which had the most incredible views, we ate some of the most insane food and did a private boat trip just the two of us to Capri, it was just wonderful and so relaxing.

We are hoping to do a proper honeymoon campervanning around New Zealand, as soon as we are allowed to do so, it has always been a dream of ours!

Memorable Moments

When the best man pulled out a projector (I didn’t even know he owned one) and played a video of all our absent friends and family, it meant the world to us and still makes me so emotional!