Jake is from Dudley and I’m from London, but we met in Vegas! It was his first night there on a stag do and I was on a girl’s holiday, we met up every day after that until he flew home, and we kept in touch when we returned. We had a long-distance relationship for 3 years then he moved down south to be with me. 

Tell us all about the experience of buying your dress…

I 100% “knew” I did not want satin.... then I ended up trying on this dress and it was perfect! I visited 4 shops and tried on probably about 20 dresses before choosing Ronald Joyce’s Joyce Elma gown. I bought it from The Bridal House, Aston Clinton. It’s a very regal looking gown, with buttons all the way down the back and embellishments on the corset without being too much “bling” though. The whole look is very classy yet still has that fairy tale feel. 

As there’s a lot of detail on the corset I kept the accessories simple. Simple veil, hair down and wavy with a pair of beautiful diamond earrings that were a present from Jake on the morning of the wedding, and a glitzy necklace. I also had a little satin purse decorated with crystals and pearls to match.

Tell us all about the wedding… 

We got married at Cain Manor a beautiful oak-beamed barn style venue on the Surrey/Hampshire border.

Planning was very structured as the venue requires you to input every last detail into an online planner, which was a lot of work. We weren’t heavy on the theme, but I suppose it was barn house glitter with plenty of shabby chic but always mixed with some sparkle and no wedding colour, just gold, silver and tones of cream and ivory. The confetti was gold and silver sequins and we had a confetti pic n mix bar for people to fill their confetti cones with. 

We had an acapella group called The Buzztones come and sing pop songs for us during the reception, they even did a UK garage set which was amazing! They started off posing as evening wedding guests then just burst into song, so it was a fun surprise for everyone.

The funniest bit was the best man’s speech; a rendition of Taylor Swift’s “Shake it off” re-worked as “Jake it off” instead, complete with power-point slides of embarrassing photos and videos, it was hilarious and got a lot of hits on YouTube!

Photography by Faye Cornhill.