Wiz and Jeremy — an English Garden Party Wedding with Bunting and Sweet Peas and a Stunning Jenny Packham Dress

Jeremy is one of the coolest grooms I’ve seen this year in his tai­lor made suit by Cad and the Dandy, Lon­don. Wiz is just beau­ti­ful from head to toe with her won­der­ful beaded hair acces­sory which com­ple­ments her Jenny Pack­ham wed­ding dress like a dream. Her red patent leather shoes are fab — and both bride and groom wear the most infec­tious smiles! This is bliss. You’ll love it!

Con­grat­u­la­tions to Jeremy and Wiz, and thanks for being so fan­tas­tic, for shar­ing your wed­ding report and for fea­tur­ing on the Eng­lish Wed­ding Blog today. Huge thanks also to wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher Kris­t­ian Leven for sub­mit­ting the images of today’s wed­ding blog. It’s ace! Every­one — enjoy! Claire xxx

A beau­ti­ful Eng­lish gar­den party wed­ding blog — Wiz and Jeremy

Wed­ding venue: A friend’s gar­den in Yox­ford, Suf­folk
Wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher: Kris­t­ian Leven

How would you describe your wed­ding style?

Eng­lish Gar­den Party

A lit­tle about the wed­ding ceremony:

We had a Human­ist cer­e­mony on the day and had the “legal” cer­e­mony the week before at Hack­ney Town Hall fol­lowed by our Hen and Stag parties.

My Dad walked me down the aisle and it was very emo­tional. Nei­ther of us could look at each other as we both had tears in our eyes.

We had two read­ings, one from my Mum and one from Jeremy’s Mum. My Mum read a poem and Jeremy’s Mum read a sec­tion of the Bob Dylan song “For­ever Young”.

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

We dec­o­rated the mar­quee with bunting hired from The Bunting Queen. It was flo­ral Eng­lish Coun­try Gar­den bunting and arrived a bit late but looked absolutely fab­u­lous. We had flow­ers on each table in large glass vases and had sim­ple white table cloths which our guests could draw and write on using the crayons we provided.

The gar­den was dec­o­rated with plain white bunting and we had tea light can­dles in glass jars for the evening.

The major­ity of the flow­ers were pro­vided by Nurs­ery Fresh Ltd and were deliv­ered to the house the day before the wed­ding. My won­der­ful sis­ter, Sarah, also col­lected local wild­flow­ers and grasses and made up all the table dec­o­ra­tions, my bou­quet and the brides­maids’ bouquets.

We had a “cheese” cake which con­sisted of three large wheels of cheese stacked on top of one another along­side mini deserts includ­ing choco­late eclairs and scones with jam and cream.

Gar­den party wed­ding invi­ta­tions and recep­tion stationery:

Jeremy designed our wed­ding invites and table plans and we had them printed by Overnight Prints.

Wed­ding music and entertainment:

We had a local band who were absolutely bril­liant — Will Rogers. They really got the party started and every­one was dis­ap­pointed when their set was over. Luck­ily we had worked on a playlist to keep every­one going once the band had left. We also pro­vided gar­den games includ­ing bocce and thank­fully the weather held out to allow for a few rounds between lunch and dessert.

What did you wear?

My first dress was called Eve and was silk with gor­geous beaded capped sleeves and a sim­ple colum­nar full length gown with a small train.

I then found out I was preg­nant and had to change dress! I chose the Petra gown from Jenny Pack­ham’s Lon­don bou­tique which was also silk with beaded detail around the bust. It was very flat­ter­ing and com­fort­able to wear. I felt very ele­gant and the bump wasn’t too obvious!

I wore a gor­geous beaded hair piece from Emmy Shoes, com­ple­mented by beaded ear­rings that my par­ents bought for me from the Lon­don Sil­ver Vaults on Chancery Lane.

My shoes were red patent leather wedges which were extremely com­fort­able and were from Hobbs.

Jeremy had a gor­geous suit made at The Cad and the Dandy in the City, Lon­don. The color was char­coal with tiny white “eyes” all over it, the mate­r­ial was 100% wool with a silk lin­ing and the style was a 1940s slim cut.

He wore thin braces under his jacket and a woolen and silk woven sky blue tie that matched his socks and the Suf­folk sum­mer sky! It was held in place with a sim­ple sil­ver tie clip

Mem­o­rable wed­ding day moments:

1. Say­ing our vows and exchang­ing our rings in front of all our won­der­ful fam­ily and friends.
2. The relaxed atmos­phere and large smiles that seemed to be on everyone’s faces.
3. Say­ing farewell to all our guests and then run­ning off the dance floor under­neath a human tun­nel that they formed.

Wed­ding day advice:

Wiz:

1. Make sure you are happy with the food that’s being served. Be clear with the cater­ers in the orga­ni­za­tion about exactly what you want
2. Wear appro­pri­ate shoes and make sure your brides­maids do too! Grass and high heels don’t mix.

Jeremy:

1. Help orga­nize. It’s a pretty stress­ful thing to arrange for two peo­ple, let alone one per­son, even if you are going for a low-key wedding.
2. Find lit­tle details that can tie the groomsmen’s and your out­fit together. Ask­ing the grooms­men to buy a suit that will prob­a­bly not fit them is expen­sive and imprac­ti­cal. Instead, give them a shade guide (eg char­coal) that they all have and use pocket hand­ker­chiefs, socks, tie clips, braces etc to tie you all together. It’s cheaper and shows that you’ve paid atten­tion to detail and you won’t notice hat the suits are dif­fer­ent shades with other things for the eye to be drawn to.
3. If you are get­ting your own suit, con­sider get­ting one made bespoke, rather than off the rack. The cost dif­fer­ence is neg­li­gi­ble and it is cut just for you so it fits per­fectly. You can then choose every lit­tle detail. Go with a cut that isn’t a tra­di­tional wed­ding suit so that you can wear it again.
4. Go fish­ing a week or so before. If it isn’t orga­nized then, it prob­a­bly won’t be, so give your­self some time away from the stress! (I’d advise prob­a­bly clear­ing this with your wife-to-be before­hand though…)

Finally from both of us, don’t for­get to relax and enjoy the day. You are lucky to be sur­rounded by your clos­est fam­ily and friends and it will be one of the most mem­o­rable and fun days of your life! Also, remem­ber that there’s a fine line between relaxed and lazy. An infor­mal, relaxed day takes a lot of metic­u­lous plan­ning in the lead up to it to ensure it feels relaxed, rather than disorganized.

Rec­om­mended wed­ding suppliers:

Kris­t­ian Leven Pho­tog­ra­phy — We found Kris­t­ian through a friend who had him shoot their wed­ding and we imme­di­ately loved his style of pho­tog­ra­phy. We were look­ing for a less tra­di­tional approach to wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phy, with a reportage style rather than more con­ven­tional staged pho­tos. As a cou­ple who have both worked as pho­tog­ra­phers, we were very par­tic­u­lar with how we wanted our wed­ding covered.

On the day, Kris­t­ian was excep­tional. His pres­ence was light, only mak­ing him­self known when it was appro­pri­ate. Oth­er­wise, he was in the back­ground, cap­tur­ing how the day unfolded. Amaz­ingly though, upon review­ing his pho­tos, we were blown away with his atten­tion to detail and the cap­tur­ing of the most impor­tant for­mal and infor­mal moments of the day.

From a nos­tal­gic point of view, Kristian’s pho­tos man­age to cap­ture the excite­ment and sounds of our wed­ding gar­den party in a way that makes us smile every time we look back through them.