Beach Side Kent Wedding by Andy Squires

If you are feeling the brunt of winter today this Kent wedding from Andy Squires is sure to cheer you up and make you feel all warm inside! With the most amazing low summer light, and gorgeous portrait shots set on the beach, these images have put a big smile on my face, so I hope they do the same for you!

‘A traditional church wedding, followed by an informal banquet by the sea!’

The lovely couple are Katie and Andy who were married on 18th August 2012. The ceremony was held at St Peter and St Paul Church Appledore, Kent. Followed by a reception at The Gallivant, Camber Sands. ‘Having visited lots of different venues we wanted somewhere more fun than formal. We’d seen several formal venues with wood panelled rooms, ribbons on chairs and been told ‘we don’t do it like that here’ and when we arrived on a packed Saturday lunch time we immediately felt relaxed and welcomed by everyone at The Gallivant, we loved the sea side feel combined with delicious food and cocktails. We had 110 guests and it took 10 months to plan’

How they met
6 years ago on a crazy Queen’s Day weekend in Amsterdam we were introduced through my brother. The first 2 years involved lots of driving between London and Birmingham, before Andy made the move to London.

The proposal
5 years after we met under the guise of a concert in Amsterdam, we happened to be walking over a memorable bridge from the weekend that we met. Andy was suddenly on his knee with a ring in his hand…….

bride putting on Augusta Jones wedding dress

How did you choose your photographer?
We didn’t know where to start with looking for a photographer, but we knew we didn’t want lots of staged photos. After lots of research another photographer suggested Andy as he had photographed her wedding, and we love our photos!

St Peter and St Paul Church Appledore, Kent

groom at St Peter and St Paul Church Appledore, Kent

The dress
I wanted something very simple and Sharon from Go Bridal helped me try on countless dresses! Eventually I settled on a dress from Augusta Jones, and shoes from LK Bennett.

The suit and bridesmaids
Andy had his suit made at Austin Reed Bespoke. Finding bridesmaid dresses was harder than finding my own, however it was worth it. The dresses came from Boden.

wedding ceremony at St Peter and St Paul Church Appledore, Kent

Theme
We mainly stuck to blues and whites.

Food
Delicious food!
Canapes were wild boar sausage rolls, fishcakes, tomato and basil pizza bouche.
Starters – sharing platters of ham hock terrine with piccalilli, tomato and mozzarella salad, fish tart with dabs.
Mains – Grilled Rye Bay Plaice with crisp capers and sauce tartar, and Roast salt marsh butterfly of lamb with a salsa verde
Pudding – chocolate mousse, orange ice cream and cardamom tuille.
Evening snacks of fish and chips, along with pork pie wedding cake and delicious vanilla cake pops.

Entertainment
Live band – Freddie and the freeloaders. Great band that played fun tunes!

Flowers
We really wanted natural country style flowers, and our florist was amazing at understanding my vague and then last minute requests. My bouquet was made up of hydrangeas, lavender, gypsophilia, freesias and stocks. The buttons holes were gypsophila and lavender. The flower girls had hydrangea balls, and blue and white head dresses, and the adult bridesmaids carried bouquets of Gypsophilia and blue Hydrangeas.
We decorated the church ourselves to save money and used hops that had been picked 2 days before the wedding, and bunches of flowers that we had sourced from gardens and bought from our florist. We made the pews ends and table decorations using jam jars filled with gyp, lavender, stocks, thistles and then decorated them with ribbons.

Decoration
The reception team were great at adding the finishing touches so we didn’t really need to add anything except the flowers and us! Our parents had secretly put together individual montages of us through the ages and we had put up photos of our parents and siblings on their wedding days.

Personal touches
We wanted to keep it really personal the whole way through so we did lots of bits ourselves.
• The save the date cards we made by writing the date in the sand on the beach opposite the reception venue and photographing the message which we then printed on to postcards.
• The invites we made by buying a stamp from Not on the High Street and hand printing them.
• We made our own favours one weekend by turning my parent’s house into a factory, making piccalli (for the boys) and then body scrub (for the ladies).
• The name places were the favours with names on them
• The seating plan was finished the night before the wedding using an old picture frame by Leah, one of my bridesmaids.
• Andy’s father had sourced the pork pie wedding cake.

Special moments
The whole weekend was amazing, but a couple of moments stand out…..getting out of the bus and walking down the road in our wedding outfits next to our bus stuck in the enormous traffic jam and lots of people honking their horns at us!
Then the time on the beach having our photos taken, was a lovely calm moment for Andy and I to enjoy and get to check in with each other before the mayhem continued! Although I would have loved to have seen Andy chasing the bus down the road as he realised he had left his button holes on it before the service.

Advice
Don’t worry about it, everyone is there to have a great time. Things will go wrong – the traffic was hideous, we forgot the order of service, the wedding cake got dropped 2 days before the wedding, but it really didn’t matter. We sorted it out and just enjoyed it all and now these are all stories that make up the wedding.

Biggest surprise
The weather was a real blessing but it was such fun to see it all work out so well, and I can’t believe how much we enjoyed it all!

Supplier Shout Outs
Everyone we worked with was amazing…..
Juliet from Flower craft workshop in Tenterden – www.flowercraftworkshop.com
Andy Squires photography – www.andrewjrsquires.com
Marko the videographer – www.markowaschke.com
Band – Freddie and the freeloaders
Cake pops – http://charlottegardner.vpweb.co.uk
Keith Francis hairdressers, Tenterden – http://keith-francis.com/
The Woolpack Pub in Tenterden – www.thewoolly.com
Vintage bus hire – www.vintagebushire.co.uk