I want this wedding to be mine!
For now I’ll leave you with one of my favorite ever wedding reports, which is by Jason and Trudie — and with images of a truly wonderful, unique and spectacular wedding day by wedding photographer Sam Clayton. (When I jumped at the chance to feature such a creative wedding Sam told me, “Trudie & Jason will be thrilled. They thought their wedding wouldn’t be of much interest!” To which, all I can respond is “Pah!”)
See what you think…
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Planning a surprise wedding!
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“Our wedding was on the 25th of June, the day following Trudie’s 40th birthday.
We bought our house 4 years ago knowing that one day we intended to hold our marriage party in the garden. The house, Bridge Cottage, is situated next to a river on the rise of a hump back bridge. It is very picturesque with a 900 year old church at the other side of the river, which is listed in the Doomsday Book of 1086 and was where we had our ceremony.
We always knew that we never wanted a ‘traditional’ wedding, we knew we wanted a relaxed wedding with a garden party, festival atmosphere, guests in their scruffs and no expectations.
We soon realised that the only feasible way to achieve this was to have a ‘surprise’ wedding. We chose Trudie’s 40th birthday the perfect excuse to get our friends and family together. We spoke to Nigel, the vicar at St Michael’s, the church next door, he was very excited about the prospect of a ‘surprise’ wedding and we were all set.
We sent out invites to the party, an old school photo of Trudie which we had doodled on, and asked our guests to return the reply, the same photo, with their own doodle – prizes to be awarded on the day for best doodle.
We hoped no-one would guess our little secret!
Meanwhile we cracked on working on our little plan.
We always knew that Sam Clayton would be our photographer, this was an easy choice. Sam has worked with us for our own Funky portrait company for some years and we believe her to be one of the best photographers in Lancashire. Her wedding photography is stunning and as we have a similar creative vision in images we knew we could rely on her to document our day beautifully. So with Sam on board (we had to tell her about the surprise obviously!) we moved onto the next part of the plan…
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We loved every minute of our research, which began on New Years Day. We discovered Rae Morris playing in the Jazz Café in Stanley Park, Lancashire. When we met her she was still a student and unknown, 9 months later she would play Leeds Reading Festival (on the BBC introducing stage) We chatted with her and asked if she would consider a gig playing at our wedding, she was in.
A few days after meeting Rae we flew out to Fuertaventura with the kids. I kept them up late one evening to go to a bar which had advertised an acoustic guitar set fronted by a guy called Simon Korsak. We had a fantastic night and Woody (aged 5) has a magnetic pull to any guitar based music, he was in awe, we all were. On our return we got in touch with Simon via Facebook, thinking “what the heck, let’s just ask”. Simon flew over the day before the wedding and brought along a friend Molly along with her cello. He flew back the following day!
Last, but not least, a couple of weeks before the ‘do’ Rae asked if her friend could come along and do a set. Her name is Karima Francis; we had a look at her My Space page and spent the evening giggling in excitement. Another fabulous singer-songwriter recently signed to Vertigo Records. We loved her song ‘The Author’ and were thrilled when she said she would sing it for our first dance.
So all that was left to do was our garden!
Our decision to hold the wedding at our house is because we are fanatical about our garden. Surrounded by masses of blooms, particularly white cottage foxgloves that I had sewn from seed 18 months we would have a gorgeous floral display. The wedding gave us a deadline to get all the little jobs we needed to do in the garden finished, along with our goats, pigs and dogs we would have the perfect environment to entertain our guests.
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Under the guise of the ‘Birthday Party’ friends and family offered help with food, Jason’s brother was to be in charge of the BBQ (with our very own home-reared sausages) some friends baked some puddings and I made large quantities of all types of salads.
With the garden shed full of wine and beer we were all set.
So the day had arrived, by 3.00pm guests were arriving, dressed perfectly in their jeans and wellies.
As they drank, chatted and listened to Rae and Karima’s sets we mingled, dressed in our scruffs. We had hired a great face painter for the children; I really liked the idea of all the children in church with their faces painted!
We had to make our announcement by 4.30pm and be in church before 5.00pm for a legal wedding!
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The time had come… we gathered our friends and family to the marquee to announce the winners of the doodle competition. Then I asked Frieda and Woody our two children to join me as I had a surprise for them. It was at this point that I asked them what they thought if mommy and daddy were to get married today. After the initial shock they thought it would be great, phew! (Although I think Woody was in shock for most of the day!) Our guests looked a little stunned at first, before realisation set in, whoops and clapping swiftly ensued before they were hurriedly ushered over to the church.
I only had 15 minutes to get me, Frieda and Woody into their outfits! Fortunately Sam, our photographer got Woody dressed and Sam’s mom had come to help me get dressed! Frieda got herself dressed!
Our ceremony was perfect, all our friends and family smiling and happy, and all in their scruffs. Nigel, the vicar said it was his favorite wedding.
We returned to our garden a married couple and popped the carefully hidden champagne.
The day continued with a balloon artist creating fabulous hats, more music and lots of celebrating and ending with a great acoustic set from Simon which got everyone up and dancing.
It was our perfect day and the best day of our lives.
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Being fairly small, a bit of a tomboy and very short hair the ‘one’ dress was always going to be a problem, in fact it is the one thing that kept me from getting hitched to Jason earlier!
Having a secret wedding made it even better; it created little expectation of the dress.
As a teenager I would sew a lot, often knock something up for the local disco, and never hemmed or finished a single garment. This became a long standing joke between me and my mom. So it was great to carry on the tradition on the day. My mom commented on my unfinished hem, she thought it was great.
Voted the scruffiest girl in school, I was completely comfortable in my get up! Oh! Better mention high street store Zara for the crochet top I wore.
I loved my outfit – it was definitely me.
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For a girl who lives in furry boots and trainers, comfort was paramount! I found a pair of floral patterned Hush Puppies that I knew I would wear again and do the job on the day.
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Recommended wedding suppliers
- Zara (obviously provided most of the wedding attire!) a great shop for style which suited our personalities www.zara.com
- Monsoon – for a beautiful dress for Freida www.monsoon.co.uk
- Bouquet, a local florist who I went to the day before the wedding and provided me with the perfect bouquet for Freida www.bouquet-flowers.co.uk
- Hush Puppies – for great shoes www.hushpuppies.com (I love having Hush Puppies on this list! — Claire)
Our wonderful singers:
- Rae Morris http://www.raemorris.co.uk/
- Karima Francis http://karimafrancis.com/
- Simon Korsak http://www.myspace.com/sikorsak
Sam Clayton our brilliant photographer, we absolutely loved our photographs and couldn’t stop looking at them, Jason even invited the postman in to see them!
www.samclaytonphotography.co.uk
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Memorable moments…
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The first dance was a really special moment, dancing to one of our favorite songs ‘The Author’ being sung live by Karima Francis in our back garden amongst our friends and family.
Wedding day advice
Definitely do the day your way, don’t feel pressured to conform to traditional ideas, protocol or current trends. Consider what is important to you, for us we wanted music to play a large part and we knew that we wanted great images to remember the day, therefore the majority of our small budget was spent achieving this and worth every penny! Allow your wedding to reflect your personalities and enjoy every minute.
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