I thought it may be fun for our clients, and anyone else who wants to read this blog,
to talk about our wedding day and what as wedding photographers we got up to,
especially as we attend so many weddings you could consider us wedding experts!
Our wedding day was very different to a traditional wedding, and by this let me start
by correcting that to ‘wedding days’. We held our wedding over the space of two
days. We had our very intimate ceremony on Thursday 22nd August 2024, and held
our wedding reception on the evening of Friday 23rd August 2024. Why? Let me
explain. TLDR at the end!
Long before our wedding:
We used CAST to create our own wedding rings out of wax, which we made each
others, before sending the wax off to get it cast into the metal of our choice. This way
we wear something very personal each day for the rest of our lives, and it was great
fun to make! We also collected some stone samples from Combestone Tor which is
where we got engaged and gave them to my mum to make me jewellery for my
wedding attire.
Wednesday 21st :
The day before the wedding we went to our local sunflower farm to pick my bouquet.
We wanted sunflowers as the main flower theme for the wedding, so we went and
spent the time together picking them, which is a tradition we do every summer
anyway so it was nice to include this. We tried to grow our own gypsophila (which
thanks to the unpredictable weather of Summer 2024 bloomed a few weeks before
and died by the week of the wedding), and lavender from my mums garden to make
the bouquet, which we went to my parents’ house together the day before to make.
We wanted the wedding to be as personal as possible for us. We also made our
wedding cake. By made, I am exaggerating. We bought a football cake from ASDA
and decorated as ASDA’s discontinued shark cake having bought icing and icing
pens ourselves as we always joked about having the shark cake for our wedding (we
were obsessed with it, unsure why we loved it so much).
Thursday 22nd :
We decided that we didn’t want a huge wedding ceremony. We wanted just our
nearest and dearest there when we tied the knot. That’s not to say we didn’t want
our friends and extended family there to celebrate with us, but we thought they would
be best off coming to the evening party. Why? Well, we didn’t think it was important
for everyone to see us make our vows and exchange rings is all. We simply had
parents, siblings and grandparents at our ceremony (10 people) which made the
space we needed to book for easier to find as there’s less people, and made our
ceremony seem almost private and special. We also opted for non-traditional music.
I walked down the isle to ‘Palms’ by Allman Brown and Liz Lawrence, and we walked
back together down the isle married to Firestone by Kygo. We chose songs we both
loved, that were ‘soft’ and fitted the wedding vibes but also reminded us of each
other. We said custom vows and laughed and cried at each others speeches and I
wore a jumpsuit which is not often the traditional, worth mentioning in case anyone
else out there wants something a bit different to a dress.
This was the only time we had allocated photographers and videographers for so we
could capture memories of the moments we got married. To add to this we chose to
use an audio guestbook (which we hired for both days) which was a traditional
looking phone, allowing our guests to leave us voice messages, getting that extra
level of emotion from peoples voices and a real method of ease for people.
After the ceremony we did the traditional style routine. We had our confetti tunnel,
which we made by collecting flower petals during our year engaged so it was
environmentally friendly and more personal to us, we had a glass of bubbly and
moved on to group photos. We opted for group photos as we only had our nearest
and dearest with us, and it wouldn’t take much time. We also thought our
grandparents would enjoy the more traditional style photos. We then bid our guests
goodbye and let them enjoy the rest of their day how they wished and get out of the
uncomfortable heels and suits. For our couples photos we changed location to a
beautiful woodland area nearby. We did spend a bit longer doing this than
traditionally is done, but as wedding photographers ourselves we offered our
photographer and videographer the opportunity to get photos and trial new things
with us that they may want to introduce to other couples. We didn’t mind being the
experimentees for this!
For the rest of the day, we decided to simply spend it together. We see too much of
wedding couples not spending important time together on their big day and decided
we wanted to spend as much time just the two of us as possible. We got changed
out of our wedding outfits and had a beautiful 5 course meal at our venue’s
restaurant. We got married at Two Bridges Hotel on Dartmoor, which I couldn’t
recommend enough. The restaurant is open for normal bookings and the bar and
food is great if you want to ever pop by (their scones are to die for). Our meal was
absolutely gorgeous, and we had the chance to digest our ceremony without the fuss
alongside the food, just having time to each other with great food and drink. We then
planned to spend the evening stargazing with a picnic basket of scones (very us) but
unfortunately the weather was too poor for this so instead we enjoyed the bridal
suites huge bath for a soak to relax and let away any stress, and then spent the
evening chatting and playing games we brought with us.
Feel free to nosey through the gallery of photos from our ceremony and wedding day- taken by Katy Johnson Photography
Friday 23rd :
We started the day by having a nice, stress-free lie in, before grabbing a bite to eat
for breakfast (again, fabulous food). We then drove back to Plymouth singing along
to our favourite tunes before recruiting our closest friends and family to help us dress
up our evening venue, Custom House on Plymouth Barbican. We hired the whole of
upstairs as we had many more guests this evening than we did the day before. We
spent the afternoon setting up the venue and getting all our decorations in place
(huge shout out to our mum for custom making us most the decorations which were
gorgeous). We set up and allocated space for sweeties as Morgan’s a huge fan of
sweets, popcorn buckets, packets of sunflower seeds for wedding favours and some
chocolate Welsh spoons and Welsh cakes provided by someone close to Morgan
and his side of the family. We had a band for the evening, playing our favourite
songs, which we chose over a DJ as we felt it gave a bit more life to the party, and
we set up a photobooth and minigolf. Morgan and I forever have an ongoing minigolf
competition (which I am badly losing) and this was a massively important
personalised item that we decided we needed on our big day. We also hired a
photobooth as I am a huge fan of using any photobooth I find and have a large
collection of silly photobooth photos. The photobooth we opted for, provided by West
Country Photobooths was amazing. Not only did they bring props for silly photos, but
they provided a copy of the images taken to each guest in the image (so now we see
these photos on our friends’ fridges) but also GIFs and a USB with all the photos
taken throughout the night. They also printed an extra copy of each photo to get put
in a photobooth guestbook which our guests all signed, meaning we had a physical
guestbook as well as the audio one which we had set up on both days. We didn’t
hire a photographer or videographer for the evening and instead allowed guests to
take photos and use the photobooth, which massively helped the guests also use the
photobooth without us needing to be in the photos and just enjoy the evening. We
booked a buffet and just let a huge party commence. We did spend the evening back
in our wedding attire but we barely noticed and as we expected, the evening was full
of talking to people and not really spending time together, which is why we were so
grateful for the time we had together on the wedding day itself.
Some shots from our photobooth on the wedding reception. Feel free to scroll through the gallery.
TLDR?
-We spread our celebration across two days to get as much time together as
possible
-I wore a jumpsuit
- We picked our own flowers and made the bouquet ourselves to be as personal as
possible
- We had non-traditional wedding music
-We had an elopement size ceremony instead of a large one
-We wrote our own vows
- We collected our own flower petals for the confetti
-We asked our guests to leave after group photos, so it was just us two for the rest of
the day
-We hired an audio guestbook instead of making a physical one
-We had a huge party the next day
-Hired a photo booth instead of photographers for the second day
-Hired mini golf entertainment as that’s very personal to us and a band
-We had a tiny wedding cake which we decorated ourselves and was very non-
traditional.
Thanks for reading!
All the credits for our wedding:
-Katy Johnson Photographer
-Annie Rose Weddings for videography
-Two Bridges Hotel for our venue
-Rusty Nail for our decorations and for my gorgeous wedding jewellery
-CAST for our wedding rings
-Jumpsuit is Ronald Joyce
-Audio Guest Book
-Ocean Waves Hairstyling for my hair
-Custom House for the reception
-Westcountry Photobooths
-Portable Putts for the mini golf
-Something Borrowed who were the band!
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