A Traditional English, Cambridge Wedding — Longstowe Hall

Sub­mit­ted by the very lovely Cam­bridge wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher Andrew Hind at Light­works Pho­tog­ra­phy, Char­lotte and Patrick’s wed­ding has every­thing I love best. There are moments of sheer beauty and joy, laugh­ter and big, big hugs. You’ll be inspired by beau­ti­ful details and vir­tu­ally whisked away to dream of your wed­ding day when you see the love caught on cam­era in this blog. And Charlotte’s wed­ding story is a delight — from her Dad’s ice sculp­ture sur­prise to the pro­posal and the sharks, via vodka toasts, gold medals and wing­ing it — suc­cess­fully! — for the first dance.

You might want to read this one care­fully. It’s fantastic!

A beau­ti­ful Cam­bridge wed­ding: pho­tog­ra­phy by Lightworks

The bride and groom: Char­lotte Lomas-Farley and Patrick David­son. Char­lotte is a TV Jour­nal­ist and Patrick a con­sul­tant sur­veyor. They met while both work­ing in Moscow, and moved back to the UK 18 months ago where they now live in London.

Who pro­posed, and how?

Patrick came up trumps with this one… While enjoy­ing a 3 week road trip in South Africa he waited until the last few days, (care­fully car­ry­ing the ring around with him in the mean­time) before organ­is­ing a visit to the southern-most tip of Africa, Cape Agulhas.

We stayed in a lovely guest­house right by the sea and one morn­ing took a pic­nic to the view­point. After a 2 hour walk Patrick directed Char­lotte to the south­ern most part and (after bid­ing his time to make sure no one was around to ruin his moment) he pro­duced a shiny dia­mond ring and that was that. Well, there was some hilar­i­ous laugh­ter and tears before a mad grab of the ring and a yes yes yes from Charlotte.

It was fol­lowed by a bot­tle of bub­bly Patrick had sneaked in the pic­nic bas­ket and then a cage dive with Great White sharks at 5am the next morn­ing. As you do.

A beau­ti­ful Cam­bridge wed­ding venue:

Harl­ton Church, in a vil­lage 8 miles from Cam­bridge fol­lowed by a wed­ding recep­tion at Longstowe Hall

A rec­om­mended Cam­bridge wed­ding photographer:

Andrew Hind from Light­works Photography. Andrew was fan­tas­tic and worked so hard all day to cap­ture some truly amaz­ing images. We were so impressed. Char­lotte is a TV jour­nal­ist with a pas­sion for pho­tog­ra­phy and was pretty fussy, but Andrew out­did all expec­ta­tions. Highly rec­om­mended and such a nice guy.

How would you describe your wed­ding style?

Tra­di­tional English/Vintage/Country

The wed­ding ceremony:

Reli­gious or civil cer­e­mony? Reli­gious, we were able to choose our own read­ings and cus­tomise the music etc. We chose The One from Anon, and we com­posed a read­ing from a per­sonal favorite book:

An extract from THE SECRETS OF LOVE, Fran­cois LeLord

ONE – FULFILMENT. The sim­ple hap­pi­ness of being with the loved one, the feel­ing of calm when the loved one laughs, sleeps, thinks, the incom­pa­ra­ble hap­pi­ness of sim­ply being in each other’s arms.

TWO – THE JOY OF GIVING. Feel­ing happy because we make oth­ers happy, say­ing to our­selves that with us the loved one has expe­ri­enced joys they would not have expe­ri­enced with­out us, that we have brought new light into their life, in the same way they have brought new light into ours.

THREE– GRATITUDE. Being amazed by what we owe the loved one, the joy they have given us, the way they have helped us mature, the way they have been able to com­fort and under­stand us, and to share our plea­sures and sorrows.

FOUR – SELF CONFIDENCE. Feel­ing happy to be who we are sim­ply because the loved one loves us for who we are, with all our strengths and weak­nesses. Despite our ordeals and set­backs, the crit­i­cism of oth­ers, and the cru­elty of life, feel­ing a mea­sure of self con­fi­dence thanks to what really mat­ters to us: being loved by the loved one.

FIVE – SERENITY. Know­ing that, despite life’s ups and downs and its inevitable tragic end, the loved one will be with us on this jour­ney. The tests of time, ill­ness, all of this will be bear­able with the loved on by our side, for bet­ter or for worse, in hap­pi­ness as in adversity.

 THE ONE, author unknown

When the one whose hand you’re hold­ing
Is the one who holds your heart
When the one whose eyes you gaze into
Gives your hopes and dreams their start,
When the one you think of first and last
Is the one who holds you tight,
And the things you plan together
Make the whole world seem just right,
When the one whom you believe in
puts their faith and trust in you,
You’ve found the one and only love
You’ll share your whole life through.

Music and enter­tain­ment: … We had a jazz band in the gar­den at the recep­tion to wel­come peo­ple and then a DJ in the evening: Black Tie DJ who was fan­tas­tic. He helped us enor­mously on the day. We love live music but we also wanted a good dance, which we cer­tainly had! The dance floor was packed all night and we were able to make our own playlist

Wed­ding venue styling and details: …

The aim was tra­di­tional Eng­lish with a vin­tage feel.

To wel­come guests we had white and pink cham­pagne and canapés on the grass.

It was impor­tant to me to be as green and envi­ron­men­tally friendly as pos­si­ble so I cre­ated my own cen­tre­pieces for the tables buy­ing vin­tage style flower pots and pot­ted plants (hydrangeas) which guests later took home. The con­fetti out­side the church was biodegrad­able and the favours were also reusable shot glasses which guests kept as a souvenir.

The bridal flow­ers were a mix of peonies and roses.

We used an old wicker bas­ket as a place to put our wed­ding cards and used vin­tage style acces­sories to keep with our theme.

The favours were engraved vodka shot glasses which were wrapped in small organza bags (pink for ladies, green for men) and tied with lug­gage tags, which acted as place names. One side of the tag was the guests name in Eng­lish and the reverse was the name in the Russ­ian alphabet.

My uncle John drove us on the day in his vin­tage Bent­ley and my step­mother kindly made our wed­ding cake, which tied into our tra­di­tional Eng­lish vin­tage theme. So it was a fam­ily affair. It meant a lot to us to get peo­ple involved.

Our colours for the day were pink and green to cre­ate a coun­try gar­den feel.

We named the tables after famous Rus­sians i.e Yuri Gagarin (the first man in space) or Anna Kornikova. Instead of writ­ing them on the tables we framed a pho­to­graph and made guests try to match the face to the name which was inter­est­ing to watch!

We also wanted to get the guests inter­act­ing, so we pro­duced ‘Char­lotte and Paddy’s big Fat Quiz’ which had ques­tions about each of us which they had to answer dur­ing the course of the meal. The win­ners got a golden medal!

As a guest book we made a sign­ing frame using an old pho­to­graph which we stuck onto card and then asked every­one to sign around it. We have now replaced the photo with one of us from the day and had the card framed as a last­ing mem­ory.

The wed­ding recep­tion at Longstowe Hall, Cambridge

Obvi­ously the main high­light is cast­ing your eye around the room and see­ing all of your dear­est friends and fam­ily from all over the world, from every area of your life, in one place. An incred­i­bly amaz­ing and over­whelm­ing feel­ing. Know­ing they are there for you both, it makes you feel very fortunate.

We have both trav­elled exten­sively, lived abroad and met whilst liv­ing and work­ing in Rus­sia so it was an inter­na­tional affair. We put a lot of effort into com­bin­ing this into a wed­ding theme (for exam­ple we had engraved vodka shot glasses as favours and a tra­di­tional vodka toast to start the wed­ding break­fast) and it was fan­tas­tic to see every­one enjoy­ing it.

The speeches were cer­tainly a highlight.

My (Char­lotte) Dad had a sur­prise in store: He bet me in the run up to the wed­ding that he would cre­ate an ice sculp­ture for us, a lit­tle nod to Rus­sia. My dad is an inces­sant joker with a whacky sense of humor so I sim­ply shrugged this off and humoured him. On the day our good friend and MC Alex intro­duced my dad who said he had a sur­prise… he then ush­ered me to unveil what was an ice sculp­ture of a Russ­ian bear he had some­how smug­gled in. Hilarious.

There was another sur­prise in terms of the Best Man’s speech who had, unbe­known to us, organ­ised a ‘This is your life’ slideshow for Patrick, includ­ing embar­rass­ing child pho­tographs and let­ters from for­mer teach­ers. Highly amus­ing for everyone.

In terms of the Cam­bridge wed­ding venue: The loca­tion is truly spec­tac­u­lar and has to be seen to be fully appre­ci­ated. It has amaz­ing gar­dens which we were able to thank­fully make the most of as the sun was out, a rar­ity this sum­mer! It has a lake at the bot­tom of the gar­dens which was a great focal point and where many guests gath­ered, also ideal for photographs!

The House itself is as grand as they come. Some guests com­mented that it was like step­ping into a Richard Cur­tis movie! It was truly won­der­ful to enter along the long stone dri­ve­way up to the door and be greeted with a glass of bub­bles before wel­com­ing every­one to your big day and see­ing the look on their faces.

Cam­bridge wed­ding venue Longstowe Hall

The Mar­quee: the name sim­ply doesn’t do this room jus­tice. First of all it is huge. But also beau­ti­fully clean, full of char­ac­ter and much more than a stan­dard mar­quee. Even the toi­lets were praised! It is like step­ping into an exten­sion of the gar­dens. One high­light was hav­ing the speeches when the sun was start­ing to set, and the sun­light was shin­ing on the top table. Mag­i­cal. There is also plenty of room to put your per­sonal touch on things. For exam­ple we had a hat cor­ner where peo­ple hung up their hats on thick rib­bon, and a photo wall.

What did you wear?

Groom, Fathers and Ush­ers wore gray tails and light pink ties. The dress code was Hats and Tails, and we were impressed by the amount of peo­ple who made such an effort. Our inter­na­tional friends embraced it!

Bride wore a vin­tage inspired gown by Irish designer More­land. It was oys­ter color with quite a high neck cut, low back and a full skirt with box pleats. It was embell­ished with vin­tage dia­mond broaches. A short veil with sewn in crys­tals and a side head band com­pleted the look. The bride’s hair was a vin­tage up-do.

Brides­maids wore a two tone pink dress, which was long and floaty.

Mem­o­rable wed­ding day moments:

The bride in the bridal car hav­ing to slow down and take a 5 minute pit stop because the vin­tage bus in front with the guests on board was tak­ing too long and we were soon going to catch up with it! The father of the bride and uncle the dri­ver had time for a quick pint which they found highly entertaining!

The roar and applause as we were announced ‘man and wife’ in the church made us both turn around to see every­one and smile. What a feeling.

The arrival of the flow­ers in the morn­ing to the Bride’s house. They were so beau­ti­ful, more than had been expected and the bride loved them so much she refused to throw the bou­quet and has dried them to keep in her spare room! Another great mem­ory of the day.

The first dance: We had promised we would prac­tice before the day but failed. On the night we had to wing it and it was per­fect! We for­got any inhi­bi­tions and enjoyed ourselves.

The last dance of the night where guests cir­cled us on the dance floor and put us on their shoul­ders before we left in a vin­tage car.

Wed­ding day advice:

Enjoy every sec­ond, from the prepa­ra­tions in the morn­ing to the drive home in the evening.

Try to take men­tal pho­tographs of the day to cher­ish. The day really does fly past so quickly.

Don’t stress, not every­thing will go to plan but as long as you are happy, the guests will be happy.

Rec­om­mended wed­ding suppliers:

• Light­works Pho­tog­ra­phy, Andrew was fan­tas­tic and worked so hard all day to cap­ture some truly amaz­ing images. We were so impressed. Andrew out did all expec­ta­tions. Highly rec­om­mended and such a nice guy.
  • Wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher Cambridge
  • Light­works wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phy face­book page
• Capers Cater­ing. We were able to let guests choose their meal on the day, every­one com­mented on how deli­cious it was, even the veg­ans! The food was amaz­ing… how they cooked for 130 peo­ple so well was impres­sive. http://www.caperscateringuk.com/
• Mul­ber­ries Florist Hunt­ing­don. Amaz­ing ser­vice, even added an extra but­ton­hole days before the wed­ding. The flow­ers were beau­ti­ful. http://www.mulberriestheflorist.co.uk/
• Black Tie DJ, Cam­bridge. Alan Gar­ner. Couldn’t do enough to help and was really accom­mo­dat­ing to our demand­ing music taste! Packed the floor with his music and a really nice guy. Highly rec­om­mended http://www.blacktiedj.co.uk/ and on face­book https://www.facebook.com/BlackTieDj
• Jazz Ambi­ence http://www.jazzambience.co.uk/
• First Abbey Exec­u­tive Cars http://www.firstabbey.co.uk/wedding-cars.html
• Jan L, St Ives Bridal Salon. Where the dress was bought, they sourced head band and veil and now the maid of hon­our is get­ting mar­ried and get­ting her dress from them! http://www.janl.co.uk/