By Louise Baltruschat Hollis
Joyful, Nature, Love, Laughter, Colourful
Fiona and Richard
I am super excited to share WWW readers Fiona and Richard’s glorious Two Woods Estate wedding held in West Sussex on the 15th June 2019. Their day was oh so beautiful, filled with joy, love and nature. I am going to start at the end of their wedding experience, with their honeymoon as I was totally bowled away by their trip, it sounded epic! It’s well worth a read if you are looking for honeymoon inspo folks.
Back to the day itself and what’s not to love about a woodland wedding ceremony, multicoloured flowers and DIY decorations?! It was all so cool. I really love the illustrated signs, the pom pom garlands and that cake table, yum. Fiona looked just stunning in her ethereal gown with dried flower crown while Richard opted for a navy suit and animal tie combo, very dapper indeed.
Laura Debourde Photography captured the whole day so perfectly and I can’t thank her enough for kindly sharing these images with us.
After 10 years of dating we went on a wonderful holiday to the Lake District. The original plan Rich had was to propose by a waterfall, so we went out for the day. Rich had to carry his raincoat as the ring did not fit in his jeans pocket. Because of this I decided to carry my raincoat as well (even though there was not a cloud in the sky!). After all that Rich decided the spot was too busy so went for plan B.
We were staying in a little cottage on a lake and when we got back to the cottage we went out in a paddle boat and Rich proposed in the middle of the lake (after he was able to drag my attention away from naming the ducks). After some happy tears I said yes 🙂
We wanted the day to be colourful, chilled and full of personal touches. We both decided early on that we wanted an outdoor ceremony.
We looked at lots of venues but most either were out of our price range or did not have a wedding license. We decided that the venue being licensed was important to us.
Two Woods Estate
I had a big palava with my dress. I bought a second hand dress a year in advance. When it got to the fitting we realised the dress had a big stain on the front that I had not noticed when purchasing. Therefore I had to find a new dress 2 months before the wedding. I rushed to Heritage Brides in Hatfield and the wonderful Sam was amazing. She found me a dress I loved even more than my original (Levana by Willowby) and she is just a wonderful and friendly person. Also her shop is gorgeous!
My flower crown was from a lovely company on Etsy. It was made of dried English flowers and was stunning. Their Etsy shop is called EnglishFlowerFarmer.
I wore a vintage necklace my parents bought me from an antique shop which was special to me. It was my something old and my something new.
I wore my Mum’s bracelet as my something borrowed and my something blue was my engagement ring.
I wore little flat pumps from LK Bennett and had my aunt’s necklace wrapped around my bouquet.
I wore a cathedral length veil for the day and swapped to a short veil for the evening. My evening veil was made from some embroidered material I bought off Etsy.
Rich wore a suit from Reiss and an animal tie from Reef Knots.
My hair and makeup was done by the wonderful Jo Loves Hair.
The bridesmaid dresses were from Asos (in the sale). I always knew I wanted colourful dresses and the style of dress suited all of my bridesmaids and they all looked gorgeous!
Rich wanted the groomsmen to all have matching animal ties. We got these in similar colour to the bridesmaid dresses. The animals were sharks, crabs and flamingos. We asked the groomsmen to all wear their own suits and then also got them pocket squares in addition to the tie. We think it worked well.
Our wonderful friend Ben played me down the aisle on the keyboard to Ludovico Einaudi I Giorni. After this our equally wonderful friend Heledd played a number of songs on the keyboard whilst we signed the register. Later in the evening my Dad’s band played a ceilidh and then towards the end of the evening we swapped over to a silent disco which myself and Rich made 3 channels for. My channel, his channel and a requests channel where guests could request and vote for songs.
The cake was so tasty and was made by Truffles Bakery.
Our stunning flowers were from Nell’s flowers. I had collected vintage milk bottles with our last names on (luckily there is an old dairy with our last name!) and we had these filled with colourful wildflowers.
We decorated the venue ourselves. I had been making pompoms non stop for just under a year. In addition to this we made games such as naughts and crosses on an old wooden stump we found in our garden when we renovated. We put fairy lights everywhere and also created a tattoo and glitter station with eco glitter from EcoStardust and tattoos from the lovely Doris Loves.
Our amazing photographer was Laura DeBourde. I work in photography so it was really important to find the right photographer. Both myself and Rich instantly loved Laura’s work. She captures real moments that are full of love and happiness and colour! When we met with her it was clear that she was exactly like her photos. Even after the wedding I still speak with Laura often and really feel like I have made a friend 🙂 She is a wonderful human.
Laura also did our video and we watch it all the time. We have also received so many compliments on how wonderful and moving the video is. It is perfect.
Our honeymoon was incredible! We hired a convertible Mustang and went on a road trip for 3 weeks along the west coast of America. We started in LA and went to Disney and Universal. Then we travelled up towards San Francisco with an overnight stop on Route 1 on the way. We then arrived in SF and explored the city and visited the redwood forests. Then we went down to Santa Cruz and stayed in a treehouse in a forest. We then continued on to Sonoma to drink lots of wine surrounded by hummingbirds. Then we went to Yosemite and did some hiking and horse riding around the parks (they were insane!). We saw lots of deer but no bears. We then travelled to Death Valley (via a few ghost towns) and stayed in the most incredible hut in the middle of nowhere on the edge of death valley. After the quiet we plunged into Vegas where I got dragged on stage with David Copperfield and we visited the Grand Canyon. After all the excitement we drove back to LA and had a stroll along Venice Beach for our last night before we flew home.
All of it! Every minute was incredible from the proposal all the way through to the last day of our honeymoon. A funny moment was me not being able to put the ring on Rich’s finger so he had to help!
Try not to take on too much! Do not focus on the little details too much. Do not worry if things go wrong, no one knows what is right apart from you! Make sure you take time to be with your husband. Do not stress about feeling like you have not spoken to people enough, you will feel like you have had snippet conversations with everyone all day. It is impossible to have a full conversation! Most importantly do the day the way you and your partner want and have fun!
Photography/Video
Laura Debourde Photography
Venue
Two Woods Estate
Flowers
Nells Flowers
Cake
Truffles Bakery
Tattoos
Doris Loves
Dress
Heritage Brides
Wow, just extraordinary.
Fiona and Richard thank you so very much for sharing your simply splendid nuptials on WWW xo Lou
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Lucy Meehan
A beautiful wedding – colourful and full of personality.
Asheville Wedding Photographer
I am not sure which I like more, the wedding cake or the bride’s custom Converse shoes.
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