Stylish Florals & Mustard Boathouse Wedding

We’re in Norfolk today for the simply beautiful wedding of Jonathan and Gina who were married on the 4th September 2015 at The Boathouse. They didn’t have a vision for their nuptials, it organically took shape as the planning commenced. Think dinosaurs and florals, mustard and graphics, style yet substance.

Gina looked so gorgeous in her tulle Eternity Bride gown which she accessorised with a custom made garter, Juliet cap veil and lace jacket. The boys looked very dapper indeed donning tweed bow ties and blue suits, while the bridesmaids wore floral 1950s style dresses. They all looked so marvellous.

I really adore the badge favours, illustrated cake, natural blooms and the custom made letter lights. Such a special celebration.

Thanks so much to the fabulous Katherine Ashdown Photography for providing these images.

THE PROPOSAL | Gina: My twin brother and his then girlfriend were visiting for a couple of weeks (they live in The Netherlands) and we had decided to head to Castle Acre one day for a walk around and a nice meal at The Ostrich Inn (highly recommend the food here!). It’s always lovely going back to Castle Acre as we used to go there a lot when we were kids (me, my brother and sister) with the family and grandparents. We have many good memories of running around the ruins and surrounding area. I also absolutely LOVE castles, which Jon was well aware of! We’d had a lovely wander around in the afternoon, then went for dinner at The Ostrich. I had a quick toilet break before we left the pub (they were counting on me doing that, apparently it’s a thing I do?) and came back to find my brother and his girlfriend had left to ‘go take more photos of the castle ruins’, totally believable, so Jon and I took a slow walk to meet them there. There was a really atmospheric mist settling across the land as the sun was going down that made the castle look amazing. As we walked over to the bridge that goes over the moat I could see my brother crouching at the top doing something and then quickly rushed out of sight when he saw us, I got really suspicious and thought he was trying to hide from us, playing some sort of game. As we got closer, we turned to walk over the bridge and I could see sparkling fairy lights and candles edging the bridge (which as it turns out is what my brother was doing, re-lighting the ones the wind had blown out) and suddenly thought in my head ‘OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD, this could be it’ but I didn’t want to get too ahead of myself or too excited in case it was someone else’s moment and had nothing to do with us! That could have been embarrassing! We got to the end of the bridge, stopped, and Jon got down on one knee and he asked me “Will you be the Queen of my castle”! And I said “YES!” Although, I later had to check with him if that meant we were actually engaged because he didn’t ask me with the traditional words, maybe he just wanted to live in a castle?! Who knows!? Luckily he confirmed that yes, we were indeed engaged, phew! My brother and his then girlfriend, Mel, had sneakily been taking photos of the whole event. I feel so lucky to have actual proposal photos as I know that a lot of people don’t have that opportunity (or such a well organised partner). I can’t explain how surprised and excited I was when he asked! We’d been together 7 1/2 years after meeting at De Montfort University in Leicester, and I was past the stage of getting my hopes up too high at anything that

might look like a proposal. He was always determined to completely surprise me, so I wouldn’t see it coming, and he definitely did that! It was just the best day and the most perfect proposal! Jon had made sure my brother was there (we are twins and very close, I’m so happy he was there to witness it), and had even asked my dad’s permission earlier that day (very traditional and really lovely that he included my dad)! The ring was beautiful, chosen by Jon himself and fit perfectly! A job, that I’m told was in the planning for months.

THE VISION | Jon: The ‘vision’ was certainly something that evolved over time. At the start, we weren’t sure what we wanted, but knew what we wanted to avoid (chicken wrapped in bacon, I’m looking at you. No purple. No chair covers). Weddings can often be a bit of a cookie cutter affair, and we wanted to make it much more personal to ourselves. Once we had our venue booked, it was much easier to put together an overall style. Light and nature played a huge part in our attraction to the venue, and we wanted to echo this in our ‘theme’. I use quotations for ‘theme’ because we never had an overall running theme, and whenever people asked what our theme was we usually just said ‘wedding, I guess’. Eventually, that kind of progressed to ‘florals, probably’ as that was the closest thing to a tangible theme we had, although if you asked the guests they’d probably say ‘dinosaurs’ and we’re ok with that. I couldn’t say where the floral idea came from, it just developed. We wanted the flowers to bring sprays of colour within the venue, and Gina loved the idea of floral bridesmaid dresses, it then became an obvious extension to continue this throughout the table names, invite styles and beyond.

THE PLANNING PROCESS | Jon: Step by step and spreadsheets! Shortly after the engagement we took a walk around a local park in the sunshine, the topic of conversation being ‘Weddings: how do you even?’ Usefully, there was a wedding fair at St Andrews Hall in Norwich shortly afterwards, so we went along with the hope of getting an idea of how to wedding. From there, we got an idea of how things take shape, and what dates we’d need to get things done by and decisions made. This marked the start of the creation of The Many Spreadsheets which dominated our lives to come. We set ourselves deadlines, and for the most part met them. Because of this, we didn’t have much to do the month beforehand besides fine-tune and ensure that everything had been done, and which box it was in.

Gina: I’d like to contest that statement Jon made about not having much to do the month before the wedding… that may have been the case for Jon, but I was certainly running around the county for dress fittings, hair trials, make up trials, last minute ideas for decorations, deciding on shoes and other little details, etc, etc, etc! I wouldn’t say it was a relaxing time!

Jon : Gina and I approached the wedding differently. I treated it like a design job and created an appropriate strategy and realistic time scale to ensure successful completion. Romantic, I know! Gina enjoyed a bit more of a scattergun approach by buying all the magazines, filling up pinterest and a concentrated effort on scrap booking. Together, it worked perfectly and it meant we had a brilliant wedding that was executed to perfection!

BUDGET | If you had asked at the start, we’d have said ‘as little as possible’. This evolved to something a little more realistic. Did we spend more than we wanted? Probably. But it was totally worth it. That said, we’re not in a rush to revisit that particular spreadsheet.

THE VENUE | The Boathouse, Ormesby Broad, Norfolk. When we booked it was still a building site, and we only had CAD drawings to go on. But we felt confident that it’d turn out to be an amazingly unique spot, AND Gina would get to arrive by a boat. We did look at other venues but kept coming back to The Boathouse. We also liked that they allowed us flexibility over our menu, meaning we could have afternoon tea, which was raved about afterwards.

THE DRESS & ACCESSORIES | Gina: Dress: Eternity Bride D5031 from Gracie Bleau Bridal, Matlock, Derbyshire. Juliet Cap veil: Made by my seamstress, Michele Mulcahy, who was recommended by Pure Brides in Norwich. Michele also altered my dress beautifully and put in a ribbon and hoop system to control my train for the evening, instead of the usual bussell, which wouldn’t have worked very well with my dress and I personally aren’t a big fan of. Headpiece: ivory pearl 1920s style headdress by Sparklebyelle on Etsy. Shoes: Lotus Cathy yellow floral slingback court shoes. These carried on the floral notes of the wedding rather nicely. Lace Jacket: From Pure Brides in Norwich. Necklace & Earrings: Pearl necklace from Jon that was a Christmas present one year. I had planned to wear this all along and had taken it to every single bridal shop session, just to make sure the dresses I was trying on went with it! The pearl earrings were a wedding day present from my father from Dipples in Dereham. Garter: Made by my incredibly talented Auntie Melanie. I had been given a few little trinkets by people and I wanted to incorporate them somewhere on my outfit, so I decided to sew them onto my garter. These items included my mum’s 21st birthday ring (something old and borrowed), a pendant with a little blue gem given to me by a very dear friend on my hen do (something blue), a little blue dinosaur from one of my bestest friends (another something blue), a tiny lace butterfly I brought in Brugge on holiday in honour of my Grandmother who we call the butterfly lady, amongst many other little things.

For the evening, when my feet just couldn’t handle any more heels, I changed into my black and white Converse high tops, my old faithfuls. People were quite excited and shocked by that, but they are my go to comfy shoes, they are just me, I didn’t need a pair of fancy flats. As a bonus, they also looked pretty awesome with my wedding dress!

FINDING THE DRESS | Gina: I absolutely love pretty dresses, I have at least 130 (and counting), so I thought it was going to be very difficult finding and deciding on one single dress for the most important day of my life. I did, however, fall in love with the very first dress I tried on at Pure Brides in Norwich! Did not expect that to happen! I then continued to try dresses in various places around the country and beyond, specifically wherever each one of my bridesmaids were situated; London (JS Couture & Fairygothmother), Cambridge (Burr Bridal & The Tailor’s Cat) and even in Haarlem in The Netherlands (Bruidsmode Haarlem) where my twin brother lives. I guess I just wanted to really make sure there was no other ‘the one’ out there and also make the most of being a ‘bride to be’! Ultimately, it wasn’t until a year later that I decided it was definitely time to order ‘the one’, the first dress I tried on… only to be told it had very recently been discontinued with immediate effect and the only one the bridal shop had was the sample I had tried on in a size 14 which had seen much better days! Needless to say, there were many many tears before pulling myself together and trying to track my dress down… somewhere… anywhere! I’d sent out loads of emails to various bridal shops around the country that stocked the brand or had the dress on their website, phoned around and sat there with my fingers crossed just hoping I could find it. Amazingly one day I received a reply from Steph at Gracie Bleu Bridal in Matlock, Derbyshire, saying she didn’t have one, but two of my dresses in stock in my size, one new and one sample! It was one of her favourites so she had ordered as many in as she could predicting that it might have been discontinued! Jon and I took a day trip up to Matlock to try the dress on (don’t worry, Jon waited in the waiting room and didn’t see the dress at all), it fit perfectly and I purchased it there and then. It was a very long day, 3 hour drive there, 3 hours back, but it was totally worth it and Steph was amazing! Jon was just the best, he’d offered to drive me anywhere once I’d tracked the dress down, no matter how far, he wanted me to have the dress that I had loved right from the beginning! He’s definitely a keeper!

GROOM’S ATTIRE | Jon: Suits from Slaters, Bowties and cufflinks found on Etsy, shirts from Charles Tyrwhitt. Grooms shoes from, ironically, Ask The Missus. I’m not sure when I decided upon a blue suit, but after a few wedding shows and visits to suppliers I decided I wanted a rich blue suit. Something which is apparently harder to find than we would have expected, especially during the winter. The upside was it meant I didn’t have to make a decision from a huge selection. I’d bought suits from Slaters before, and was hopeful they’d have something from their extensive stock. The other thing I liked about Slater’s was the fact that they’d tailor the suits to each of my best men – something which was important due to their, shall we say, non-uniform sizes. After booking the venue, which is very modern, the style of suit had to fit in with that, which is why I went with a ‘business’ style suit. Tails would have looked out of place. Once I had the suit sorted, the shoes and shirts were obvious choices; classic brown brogues with a sharp white shirt was the brief and both of my choices fitted the style and budget I was after. Throughout the wedding, we wanted to inject little touches and details, whether they were little things one or the other of us liked, or in jokes that only we’d understand. My shirt has a herringbone weave, because Gina really likes herringbone fabric, and my right cuff was monogramed with a mustard J&G, so I’ll always remember it as my Wedding shirt.

The accessories took a little longer to decide on. I went back and forth from ties and bowties many times, hampered by it being really tricky to find a nice mustard tie or bowtie. After much searching, I found tweed mustard ones on etsy, and ordered a sample. After trying it with the suit and ensuring that I didn’t look ridiculous, I ordered two more. The cufflinks took forever to decide upon. I was at a loss after looking everywhere at more traditional options until one morning in the shower, I wondered if fabric covered cufflinks existed and if I could have ones made to suit our floral note. It didn’t take me long to find ones which suited the style I was after, and as a bonus there were a few variations, which meant my best men and I, along with the Father of the Bride and Man of Honour, didn’t have to match completely, something I was keen on. How did people do weddings before Etsy?!

THE READINGS & MUSIC | Readings :

‘A Lovely Love Story’ by Edward Monkton.

Extract from ‘I Got Love’ by The King Blues.

‘True Love’ by Robert Fulghum.

Jon: We settled on our readings after going through many lists, pinterest boards and spotify playlists trying to look for the perfect words. After we read True Love, it was instantly chosen. The same with Edward Monkton. We liked that it was fairly untraditional. We actually had two people read it as we felt it’d work brilliantly as a duet, and my (Jon) sister and my brother-in-law performed it brilliantly.

Jon: Music was an important part of the wedding to us, but our tastes in music aren’t traditionally wedding friendly, but we liked the contrast this created, like a metal song sung acoustically. The King Blues song is excellent, and the lyrics just fitted perfectly with us.

Gina: We had a string quartet play for the processional, recessional and mingling music after the ceremony until it was time for food. For the processional we had Pachelbel’s Canon because it’s an utterly beautiful song and was even making me well up with tears whenever I heard it before the wedding, just thinking about walking down the aisle to it! For the recessional, we chose something a little more ‘us’, with the quartet playing the Jurassic Park theme tune! It was amazing seeing everyone’s faces and hearing their comments when they realised what it was! For my arrival, by boat(!!!), we requested that the quartet play the Star Trek Voyager theme tune, but as I was not at the venue, and Jon was a little distracted and anxious, we’re not actually sure if it was played, which is a bit of a shame.

Jon: Having a live band was very important to us, as we’re big music fans and have spent many evenings at various gigs and shows. It was a very tricky selection process to find someone that fit our specific requirements. We thought we’d found ‘the one’ but we took too long to book them, and missed out. However, every cloud and all that. We’d almost given up, but then we stumbled across ‘Bandit’ who fulfilled every requirement and sounded brilliant. Thankfully they were available, and open to our requests including an encore of Blink 182 – Rock Show. They put on a top show which everyone raved about afterwards.

First Dance – Existentialism on Prom Night by Straylight Run. One of our favourite songs, and the one song we kept returning to when thinking about our first dance.

Side note – ‘True Love’ is also nearly always credited to Dr Seuss, but that’s incorrect.

BEAUTIFUL BRIDESMAIDS | Gina: Man of Honour: Lewis Gibbs (twin brother). Bridesmaids: Sonia Gibbs (sister), Hannah Harvey (friend) and Rosie Austin-Webster (friend). These were all easy decisions, my twin brother had to be my ‘Man of Honour’ as we’re so close and just get each other so well! My sister was of course first choice in bridesmaid, followed by close friends of ours Hannah and Rosie.

The Bridesmaids wore 50s style floral dresses brought from Elsie’s Attic and Lindy Bop (various places due to size availability), nude pink slingback shoes from M&S, along with pearl jewellery. I’m very big on pearls.

The Man of Honour wore the same suits as the Groom and Best Men, white shirt from Charles Tyrwitt with the herringbone weave, his own brown brogues and a custom floral tie made by Mary’s Collection on Etsy to match the diamond point style of the Groom and Best Men, but fit in more with the floral Bridesmaids. I also had a tie made for the Father of the Bride in the same floral fabric, custom order by Katkin Jane on Etsy. I sent my own fabric for the custom orders. The same fabric was also used to make the centrepieces. Everything seemed to come together very nicely with these subtle matching details.

THE FLOWERS | Janet Dodd at Forget Me Not Flowers in Toftwood, Dereham. Janet is an amazing florist and so friendly, we felt like we got to know her and her husband, Phil, quite well. Janet was the first florist we had a chat to about our wedding and we instantly knew we didn’t need to look elsewhere at all. We basically provided a load of images of flowers we liked, explained what we wanted, suggested some specific flowers we wanted to be included and Janet magically provided the perfect centrepiece floral arrangements, bouquets and garland around the wedding arbour (that unfortunately due to rain we were unable to have the ceremony in, but looked absolutely beautiful). We wanted a ‘wild flower’ natural feel to the florals, nothing too structured, loosely matching our colour palette and we wanted to include plants such as lavender and rosemary for their lovely scents (a couple of our favourites).

THE CAKE | Imogen at Sugar Buttons Cakes in Norwich. We were specifically looking for a cake maker who also had some sort of experience in art as we wanted flowers (that had been originally designed and painted by Jon’s mum for the invitations) to be painted onto the cake. Imogen had qualifications in fine art and was an art teacher. We had a look on her website and decided she was the perfect one for us. As a bonus, her cakes also taste amazing!

YOUR PHOTOGRAPHER | Katherine Ashdown of Katherine Ashdown Photography. We originally saw Kathy’s amazing work in various bridal magazines before meeting her at the EDP Wedding Show in 2014. We had a really lovely chat and a good look through her various albums. We knew instantly that we wanted Kathy to photograph our wedding, she has an amazing style that is full of light and is so natural. Kathy didn’t let us down at all on the day, as you can see we have so many amazing photographs that we will treasure forever! We are now at the difficult stage of deciding which photos to choose for our album, they are all so lovely!

THE DETAILS & DÉCOR | Jon: We wanted to bring a little bit of ourselves in the detail where possible, rather than just having something pretty or cutesy for the sake of it. The venue itself didn’t actually need much, if any, decoration so much of the detail was small items on the table. That is, of course, apart from the 4ft high illuminated letters which were all built by the Father of the Bride, Owen Gibbs (electrician). The reason for these? Because they are awesome.

Gina: One of my favourite touches were the favours. We had gold dinosaurs (spray painted ourselves with kid/toy friendly paint), with a brown tag attached to them that had a set of 3 x badges pinned to them. We used flowers, that were originally painted by Jon’s mum for the invitations, as the design for 2 of the badges, with a logo we made for ourselves as the 3rd badge. We both love dinosaurs and the badges were a hint to the music gigs we love going to, where you can often purchase badge sets for your favourite bands. Plus, who doesn’t love badges?!

Gina: We commissioned my dad to make some light up letters for us, ‘J & G’, as he is an electrician and brilliant with anything DIY. Everyone was super impressed with them and they were a great photo prop.

THE HONEYMOON | I think the only things we wanted from our honeymoon was a beach somewhere beautiful with a bit of culture thrown in somewhere. Bali was perfect! We spent 5 nights in the beautiful Spa Village Resort in Tembok on the north of the island, which included complimentary daily spa treatments and incredible food. We then travelled further inland, through the mountains and via a coffee plantation, to Ubud, and spent another 5 nights at Alila Ubud, spending the time in their amazing infinity pool, attending a cookery lesson with the executive chef, and exploring the vibrant town of Ubud.

MEMORABLE MOMENTS | Jon : So many to choose from, but one of my favourites was towards the end of the night. I’d taken Gina outside and to the end of the jetty to look back at the venue. With the band performing inside, our large J&G and the silhouettes of everyone dancing it looked fantastic. On the way back, we were standing on the deck and Gina stopped to take a photo. She waved to try and get peoples attention, but it turned into a left to right arm wave in time with the music. My brother, Nick, noticed and turned around, copying her arm wave. This spread quickly through the crowd and in moments the whole dance floor was facing Gina and copying her, all in sync to the music. I think there’s a mobile phone somewhere…..

Gina: As with Jon, there are just so many to choose from! I particularly liked heading over to the playground area with Jon and Kathy (photographer) to get some photos of us being the silly and playful couple that we are! We ended up having a bit of a ‘fairytale’ moment on the slide, which made a great picture! Arriving by boat was also one of my highlights! I became more and more anxious the closer we got, but it was just such a lovely experience and quite a unique way for a bride to arrive at her wedding!

ADVICE FOR OTHER COUPLES | Jon : Elope. I kid, I kid. Looking at the planning process of the wedding as a whole can be very overwhelming. Take it step by step. Work out what needs to be done and when it needs to be done by. That allows you to be able to focus on what’s in hand rather than things that may not need to be actioned until later.

Gina: What he said! But also, if you find the perfect dress, order it, ORDER IT NOW!!! Do not wait, you might not end up being as lucky as I was. One piece of advice I was given by many many people, and I would also like to give this advice to you all now, make sure that you really take some time to just enjoy your day together. It goes by SO quickly. Don’t get hung up on the things that go wrong or not quite the way you wanted. These things will likely happen, but you can’t do anything about them now, you put so much time, effort and money into making it the perfect day, so let it go and just enjoy your amazing day.

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CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE |

Photography | Katherine Ashdown Photography

Flowers | Forget Me Not Flowers

Make Up | Love Moi Makeup

Hair | Tanya Woollacott Hair

Cake | Sugar Buttons Cakes

Suit | Slaters

Dress | Gracie Bleu Bridal

Dress Boutique | Pure Brides

Alterations | Michele Mulcahy

Headpiece | Sparkle By Elle

Mustard Bowties & Custom Floral Bowtie | Mary’s Collection

Custom Tie | Catkin Jane

Floral Cufflinks | Pretty Little Titch

Shirts | Charles Tyrwitt

Bridesmaid Dresses | Lindy Bop

Bridesmaid Dresses | Elsie’s Attic

Band | Bandit

Quartet | Vivace Quartet

Venue | The Boathouse

Favours | Badgetastic

Light up letters, custom made | Owen Gibbs Electrical

Centrepieces | IKEA candlesticks, with sweetie jars from eBay. The circle runners were made by Jon’s Sister.

Oh how perfect!

Jonathan and Gina, thank you so very much for sharing your amazing story with us xo Lou