A Beautiful Wedding at The Bodkin

Laura and Nathan’s glo­ri­ous wed­ding lives up to the qual­ity and ele­gance you’d expect, not just from The Bod­kin wed­ding venue (oh I love it!) but also from Mar­tin Pem­ber­ton Pho­tog­ra­phy. I’m delighted to fea­ture such a beau­ti­fully pho­tographed wed­ding on my blog for you today.

And last but not least, Laura and Nathan. We have a beau­ti­ful bride — a del­i­cate beauty with flow­ers in her hair — and a hand­some groom (watch out for Nathan’s beam­ing smiles through­out the day — he looks so proud to be a mar­ried man)!

Laura’s writ­ten a wed­ding report for you — so over to the bride!

Laura and Nathan’s Bris­tol (Bod­kin!) wedding

Our wed­ding day was fan­tas­tic and couldn’t have gone any bet­ter. From start to fin­ish every­thing ran smoothly and we couldn’t have asked for bet­ter weather which made for bet­ter photo oppor­tu­ni­ties. It was very sat­is­fy­ing see­ing the pre­vi­ous 12 months of plan­ning come to fruition.

Jane Gilchrist is a fam­ily friend who offered to sing at the wed­ding as a gift. Jane is an oper­atic singer and she sang as the guests were seated and wait­ing for me to arrive and then sang as we were sign­ing the reg­is­ter. Due to the church being small in size and the roof struc­ture high this helped the acoustics sound amaz­ing!

My wed­ding dress: Vero­mia from Future Brides

My wed­ding dress was from Vero­mia (Style: VR61018 — ivory fish­tail with lace up back). I bought it from Future Brides in Chip­ping Sod­bury, Bris­tol. They offered a fun and friendly ser­vice and were always will­ing to go the extra mile to ensure that my day was spe­cial. After select­ing ‘the one’, my seam­stress and I added a hal­ter­neck to the dress as well to make it more suited to my indi­vid­ual style. I rec­om­mend Future Brides — they were bril­liant and have a range of dif­fer­ent stock from brides­maids dresses to bridal dresses.

(Future Brides face­book page is www.facebook.com/pages/Future-Brides/172000769489821)

I chose a clas­sic court shoe by Rain­bow with a 2 inch heel as I wanted to be com­fort­able through­out the day as I am so used to wear­ing train­ers being a P.E teacher. My veil also pur­chased and rec­om­mended from Future Brides, was a ¾ length veil and had a silk trim which was sim­ple and ele­gant that com­pli­mented the dress per­fectly. My mom had given me her garter which she wore on her wed­ding day to my dad. The garter had sen­ti­men­tal value as it has been passed down through the fam­ily as a tra­di­tion. It was also lucky as it hap­pened to be old and blue!

My jew­ellery was very min­i­mal and apart from my dia­mond engage­ment ring and wed­ding ring I only wore white gold dia­mond droplet earrings.

Nathan wore a Prince Edward brown morn­ing suit com­plete with ivory waist­coat and taupe cra­vat, hand­ker­chief and brown shoes. This was to help him be dis­tin­guished from his other grooms­men who wore the same but with an ivory waist­coat and ivory handkerchief.

Each Grooms­man wore cuf­flinks with their title for the day so either groom or best man etc. The groom being an avid Tot­ten­ham Hot­spur Foot­ball fan wore his Tot­ten­ham watch which was his spe­cial acces­sory given to him by me that morn­ing before the wedding.

The grooms­man suits were hired from Tux and Tails in Bris­tol, they were very help­ful with choos­ing which colours would work best with the color scheme.

Our foot­ball theme was mem­o­rable: All the tables at the recep­tion were named after the Groom’s favorite Tot­ten­ham play­ers past and present. They all had a quiz relat­ing to that player or to Tot­ten­ham Hot­spur his­tory for the table to amuse them­selves with before the 3 course meal was served.


Our wed­ding break­fast was mem­o­rable: Look­ing around the room and shar­ing our mem­o­rable day with friends and fam­ily and feel­ing the fun and laugh­ter that immersed the room.

Mar­tin Pem­ber­ton, our wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher under­stood that we didn’t want to have the tra­di­tional wed­ding pho­tos, so he man­aged to cap­ture some great relaxed shots of the day where we were hav­ing pho­tos taken by var­i­ous fea­tures that our recep­tion venue had to offer.

Wed­ding day advice: what one piece of advice would you give?

After you are mar­ried, take a moment alone just the two of you to have a moment of reflec­tion and just be able to share a moment in private.