A Beautiful Real Wedding Blog from Athelhampton House in Dorset — Traditional English with a Vintage Twist

All the pho­tos are by lovely wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher Ben Pipe, with the excep­tion of the three pho­tos of Lisa’s hand­made wed­ding invi­ta­tion, table plan and alter­na­tive guest book. (What should I be call­ing a guest book which isn’t a guest book?! I’ve no idea!) She told me they were a labor of love and the invi­ta­tions alone took more than 30 hours… but worth every sec­ond

Con­grat­u­la­tions Lisa and Kieran, and thank you so much for being utterly fab­u­lous and shar­ing your wed­ding day on the Eng­lish Wed­ding Blog. Thanks to Ben Pipe too for the lovely wed­ding pho­tos. Every­one — enjoy! Claire x

Wed­ding venue:

Athel­hamp­ton House, Dorset

Wed­ding photographer:

Ben Pipe (benpipe-weddingphotographer.com)

How would you describe your wed­ding style?

Tra­di­tion­ally Eng­lish with a vin­tage twist.

Invi­ta­tions and recep­tion stationery:

All made by me! Includ­ing: ‘save the dates’, invi­ta­tions (roughly 40 day time and 50 evening). I also made the table plan, and the table set­tings. I would hate to think how much time in total I spent – the invi­ta­tions alone took over 30 hours. But it was a labor of love, and it was 100% worth every sec­ond. The card for the pocket invites was from pocketfoldinvites.co.uk and the vin­tage ivory paper and map paper was from Paper­chase.

What did you both wear?

I wore a Mori Lee full length ivory gown with a sweet heart neck line. The shoes were peep toe cham­pagne satin heels from Rachel Simp­son Shoes. The head­band was hand­made by Emma Louise Millinery.

The Groom wore a gray Ben Sher­man 3 piece suit, pur­chased at Ben Sher­man, Carn­aby Street.

A lit­tle about the wed­ding ceremony:

We had the cer­e­mony in the Great Hall at Athel­hamp­ton House, which was built in the 15th cen­tury. As the room is rich with his­tory, we didn’t feel as though we needed to add too much dec­o­ra­tion, so had a few jugs and jam jars filled with flow­ers placed around the room. I was given away by my dad, and the cer­e­mony was short but sweet.

We had both of our younger broth­ers play acoustic gui­tar through­out the cer­e­mony – My (the brides) brother played “Time of your Life” as I walked down the aisle, and Kieran’s brother played the Beach Boys “God Only Knows” and “Mar­ried Life” from the film “Up” dur­ing the sign­ing of the reg­is­ter. We had my older brother and a close friend of Kieran’s sign the reg­is­ter. We didn’t have any readings.

Tell us a lit­tle about your wed­ding venue styling and details:

As we enjoy trav­el­ling, there was a travel theme to the room in which the wed­ding break­fast was held. The room was a 15th cen­tury coach house which con­tained all of the orig­i­nal wooden beams and had plenty of charm and char­ac­ter. The table cen­tre­pieces were ‘vin­tage style’ globes, sur­rounded by jam jars filled with flow­ers, and small tea lights.

Each table was named after a city which we had vis­ited through­out our 8 years together. The table names were dis­played on mini easels, which con­tained a photo of us and the name of the city in which the photo was taken.

The indi­vid­ual guest set­tings had each guest’s name on a lug­gage tag, and the table plan was a vin­tage style map which showed each per­son where they were sit­ting. We had a vin­tage bird cage which we found in Por­to­bello Road mar­ket, and was used for guests to put cards into, and we had an old suit­case, lined with post card design paper from Paper­chase, where guests could leave us a mes­sage on a postcard.

The wed­ding cake was a red vel­vet cake from the Hum­ming­bird bak­ery in Kens­ing­ton (lov­ingly deliv­ered by my big brother, who picked it up from Kens­ing­ton and trav­elled over 100 miles with it to Dorset). We also had indi­vid­ual red vel­vet cup­cakes for our guests, which were made by a local cake maker, Karen Power.

Wed­ding music and entertainment:

In the evening we had a band called The Surfin’ Birds, a disco pro­vided by Lux Disco, and we also had the groom’s brother and a friend play­ing music dur­ing the band’s inter­val. After our evening buf­fet we had a candy floss machine and a pop­corn machine for our guests, as well as a candy buf­fet which they could help them­selves to.

Mem­o­rable wed­ding day moments:

We loved every sin­gle moment! Hav­ing every per­son that we loved all under the same roof to watch us get mar­ried was very impor­tant to us, and the sun was out in April for some drinks out­side after the cer­e­mony, which added to the beauty of the day!

Wed­ding day advice:

Try to stop every once in a while and take it all in – the day will take a long time to plan, but will be over in a heart­beat! Also, try not to feel guilty if you haven’t spent equal amounts of time with every sin­gle guest. Peo­ple will just be happy to be join­ing you on such a spe­cial day.

Rec­om­mended wed­ding suppliers:

• Ben Pipe Pho­tog­ra­phy — Our pho­tog­ra­pher was fan­tas­tic – very pro­fes­sional and the pho­tos are amaz­ing. I can’t stop look­ing at them!
• Hob­by­craft — if you are a crafty bride
• Pock­et­fold invites — has some great card supplies
• Ebay — bril­liant for per­son­alised treats, such as per­son­alised love heart packs, and chocolates.
• Card­cuts — We got indi­vid­ual cup­cake pods so our guests could take their cup­cakes away with them if they wanted to
• Our main wed­ding cake was a red vel­vet cake from the Hum­ming­bird Bak­ery in Kens­ing­ton – delicious!!