A Wedding by the Sea in Blue and Yellow — Natalie and Gareth

It’s another beau­ti­ful wed­ding too — with a stun­ning Amanda Wyatt dress, sta­tionery by wed­ding blog favourites Art­ca­dia and a focus on cel­e­bra­tion, food, enter­tain­ment and danc­ing… just a per­fect wed­ding! The venue is The Boat­yard restau­rant in Leigh On Sea (Essex) and all the images are by my friend and fab pho­tog­ra­pher Tracy Morter.

Huge thanks to gor­geous cou­ple Natalie and Gareth for shar­ing their day and writ­ing a wed­ding report for the Eng­lish Wed­ding Blog, which is at the end of the fea­ture. Thanks also Tracy for being lovely and sub­mit­ting the wedding!

Enjoy!

Claire xxx

Natalie and Gareth’s gor­geous wed­ding by the sea with a strik­ing blue and yel­low theme

Wed­ding venue:

St Mary the Vir­gin Church, Ben­fleet, Essex
The Boat­yard Restau­rant, Leigh On Sea, Essex

Wed­ding photographer:

Tracy Morter Photography

How would you describe your wed­ding style?

Tra­di­tional with a mod­ern relaxed feel. We had blue & yel­low as our main colours with a by the sea theme.

Invi­ta­tions and recep­tion stationery:

by the Sea Let­ter­press range from Art­ca­dia Sta­tionery Co. We pur­chased our invi­ta­tions, menu cards and table plan from Art­ca­dia. Our place cards we made our­selves from lug­gage tags, an anchor & tied with a navy sad­dle stitch ribbon.

What did you both wear?

Bride (dress, shoes, acces­sories): Amanda Wyatt Cadiz wed­ding dress in Cham­pagne, Diane Has­sall, Pearl Drift wed­ding shoes, Liza head­wear, Jon Richard Jewellery

Groom: Moss Bespoke

A lit­tle about the wed­ding ceremony:

Small pic­turesque church dat­ing back to 8th Cen­tury. We had a tra­di­tional Church of Eng­land cer­e­mony. Bride’s entrance music was Prince of Denmark’s march. Hymns were Jerusalem and Guide me O thou great redeemer. Exit music was sup­posed to be Mendelssohn’s Wed­ding March but the church had a power cut as we were leav­ing, not that we noticed!

Which read­ings did you choose?

Extract from Les Mis­er­ables by Vic­tor Hugo (1802–1885) & Cre­ation of Woman from the book of Genesis

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

We hired a Camper van as our wed­ding car for some­thing dif­fer­ent and to go with the sea­side theme. We chose the Boat­yard restau­rant for its loca­tion and mod­ern feel. We were attracted to the venue as every­thing was in one room & there­fore in the evening those that didn’t want to dance but pre­ferred to stand by the bar could still be a part of the party. So many venues today have the bar in a sep­a­rate room.

Our focus for the wed­ding was the venue, food, drink and the evening party. We opted not to have seat cov­ers and sashes to try and keep table and gen­eral dec­o­ra­tions sim­ple but ele­gant and let the venue speak for itself.

The tables had low level cen­tre flow­ers (calla lilies tied with the navy sad­dle stick rib­bon) in a fish bowl sur­rounded by votive can­dles. Rather than nam­ing our tables we had free stand­ing table num­bers made from wood and painted blue. Instead of a long top table we had a round table.

Our table was num­ber 13 (Gareth’s lucky num­ber) as men­tioned in his speech our wed­ding date was 13/04/13, I have 13 dia­monds in my engage­ment ring and we had 113 guests (all very spooky).

Our wed­ding cake was a mix­ture of cup cakes, mini cakes, fon­dant cakes and kept to the sea­side theme. Our cake maker dec­o­rated them with life rings, rope, anchors, shells and on our top cut­ting cake she copied the anchor design from our wed­ding invi­ta­tion and piled lots of dif­fer­ent shells on top. She also made our favours for us which were mini cup cakes.

Wed­ding music and entertainment:

DJ – Dreamwave Events. Ben Eve Music — Acoustic Gui­tarist dur­ing wel­come drinks and din­ner. Indi­vid­u­ally selected party bags for the chil­dren. First Dance – Jack John­son ‘Bet­ter Together’ 2nd Dance – Mum­ford & Sons ‘Lit­tle Lion Man’. We gave the DJ a feel for the type of music we liked, they did an amaz­ing job and kept the dance floor full.

Mem­o­rable wed­ding day moments:

There are too many mem­o­rable moments to men­tion, but some that spring to mind was the cheer from our friends when the vicar pre­sented Mr & Mrs Lewis, my dad’s speech, our first dance, the party atmos­phere and Gareth said one of his most mem­o­rable moments was being totally sur­prised by my dress.

Wed­ding day advice:

Plan your bud­get care­fully and try to stick to it, its easy to get car­ried away with the small things and just remem­ber its about the two of you get­ting mar­ried and enjoy­ing the day with fam­ily and friends.

Rec­om­mended wed­ding suppliers:

• Tracy Morter Photographer
• Flow­ers by Sophie Wilson
• Art­ca­dia Sta­tionery Co
• Hadleigh Hats – Shoes and accessories
• Grace & Lace – wed­ding dress
• Birds Bridal — Dessy brides­maid dresses
• Dip­Dubs – Wed­ding Camper Van Hire
• A Spoon­ful of Sugar — Wed­ding Cakes & Favours