Jo & Claire’s Travel Inspired, Child Friendly Wedding. By Binky Nixon

I’m so happy to be featuring yet another same sex wedding on the blog today. Since the legalisation of same sex marriages, we are seeing such an increase in submissions, like this one of Jo and Clare from regular contributor Binky Nixon.  What I love, as well as the beautiful gowns, is the subtle handmade touches throughout the ceremony and reception. Claire and Jo look absolutely stunning and so very much in love.

“Friendly, happy and inclusive. One of our guests left a message to say our wedding “gave her hope for the future, and pride that Brits have welcomed marriages like yours”.

Jo & Claire were married on 30th May at South Farm, Shingay-cum-Wendy. “We really wanted to get married somewhere with a lot of character and South Farm had absolutely everything we wanted from a venue. Not only does it have beautiful grounds, a stunning house and Tudor barn, but it also has gypsy caravans for guests to stay in and tiny piglets roaming around. We were able to get married outside in the summer house with our guests watching from over the lake. We always knew that we wanted two aisles so that we could both walk down at the same time and having the wedding outside gave us plenty of space. South Farm grows most of its own produce and the food is delicious. By coincidence, our preferred date came free the day before we visited so we ended up booking, before we had even been on a tour!”

How they met
Jo fell off a bus in Brighton in November 2000 and Claire caught her! We were together for almost two years and had an amazing time, before splitting up for a while. Looking back, we were both young and it was good for us to go off and live life independently for a while. We kept in touch on and off and got back together six years later, in 2008.

The proposal
We got engaged in August 2012. Claire had been away with work for 3 months. When she got back, Jo organised a trip to Brighton and proposed on the beach near the West Pier just as the sun was setting. We went to buy the rings a few days later, just before we went to watch the athletics in the Olympic Stadium on super Saturday. It was a pretty amazing week.

How did you allocate your budget?
We sat down and worked out which things were most important to us and then prioritised the budget in those areas. We both agreed that the venue was most important. We wanted somewhere with plenty of outdoor space as we had 26 kids under the age of 13! Good food and wine was also important to us and the food at South Farm is amazing. We both love photography and wanted to ensure we got great photos and we also spent money on our dresses, accessories, hair and make-up. We managed to save money by making a lot of our decorations by hand or sourcing them from the internet or car boot sales. This also meant we had complete freedom and could make everything personal to us and to our guests.

Why did you choose your photographer?
Claire already knew Binky and we knew straight away that we wanted her to take our photos. We actually checked she was free before we confirmed our venue! Binky’s photos are just beautiful. She manages to capture the essence of a wedding so that you can relive it over and over again. Neither of us wanted a lot of formal photographs – it more important to use for our pictures to really reflect our day.

The dresses and accessories
Claire’s dress was Solitaire by Suzanne Neville and Jo’s was Jacee by Maggie Sottero. We actually went dress shopping together and nobody else saw our dresses until around 3 weeks before the wedding, when our mums came to our final fitting. Some people were surprised that we went shopping together but to us it made total sense as we could ensure that the dresses complemented each other (and also that they were not identical!). We bought our dresses from Morgan-Davies in Hitchin. They were great as we had back-to-back appointments and each tried dresses on individually but then they let us try them on together before we bought them. We both had shoes from Nine West. Neither of us liked conventional wedding shoes so we went for one blue pair and one sparkly pair instead! Claire’s hairpiece was from Ann Bridal, Stevenage, and her earrings and necklace were from Ernest Jones, and Jo’s hairpiece was from Morgan-Davies in Hitchin.

The bridesmaids
Rather than bridesmaids we had two ‘best boys’. Their suits were by Kenneth Cole, from House of Fraser. Claire’s three eldest nephews were our ushers and they wore herringbone suits from the John Lewis Heirloom collection. Claire’s niece and youngest nephew were our ‘flower kids’. Evan also wore a suit from the John Lewis Heirloom collection and Lilia had a Pearce ii Fionda dress from Debenhams with shoes and cardigan from Monsoon.

The theme
We had a loose travel theme with a vintage suitcase to collect cards, pictures of places we had visited for our table plan and centre pieces and lots of luggage tags. We chose to use duck egg blue and pale yellow as our predominant colours, which conveniently matched the colour of the house at South Farm, but we also used a lot of complementary colours so that these were not too over powering.

The flowers
All of our flowers were in a mixture of jam jars, milk bottle and glass coke bottles and we wanted the flowers to look as if they had been picked from a country garden that morning. We also had a bouquet each – both predominantly white and one with yellow roses and the other with blue and yellow tones. We met Catherine Elworthy at the Tie the Knot wedding fair and she understood what we wanted immediately. When we walked into the barn and saw all of the flowers it took our breath away. They were so colourful! Catherine did an amazing job.

The decoration
We decorated over 200 jam jars by hand using ribbon, lace, string and hessian for flowers and candles. We made our table plans and centre-pieces by printing Instagram pictures of our favourite places and hanging them in wicker hearts using string and tiny pegs. Each card had a story about that place to try and make them as personal as possible. We also had wicker hearts hanging from the walkway into the barn and our mums made us 80 meters of bunting to decorate the barn. In the dairy we had tiny jars with daisies and a vintage suitcase, which Jo’s mum lined, to collect cards. We sewed heart shaped confetti onto string to create garlands, which hung from the windows.

The food and wedding cake
We served canapés and ice cream after our ceremony. The ice creams were especially popular with guests old and young! For our main course we chose four different options because we wanted all of our guests to have a choice of meals. These included pan fried cod, wild mushroom & mixed root puree; slow cooked crispy pork on squash puree; aubergine cannelloni on bulgur wheat & cous cous and roast leg of lamb with garlic & rosemary. To follow, we had a trio of desserts. In the evening we had a buffet followed by profiteroles and wedding cake.
The cake was made by Emily Jane cakes, based in Knebworth, and had four tiers, each with a different flavour. We started off with chocolate orange and caramel, then carrot cake, lemon cake and finished off with a gluten free strawberry and vanilla layer. The cake was decorated with a cascade of flowers and Emily made a luggage tag to tie in with our theme. We also had a cake stand made out of oak by a friend.

The entertainment
We didn’t need too much entertainment as South Farm is such a great venue with so much to do. The kids all had a great time exploring the grounds and watching the piglets and peacocks and we had an indoor space set up with games and colouring. We also gave them each a bundle of activity books and stickers to keep them entertained at dinner and did speech bingo cards for the speeches, although these seemed more popular amongst the adults! In the evening we had a disco provided by Bluemark Entertainment. They have a guest request system to allow people to make requests in advance and the dancefloor was full all night.

Buy or DIY your stationery?
We made all of our invitations and stationery by cutting cards into luggage tags and hand printing them at home. It was time-consuming but meant we had complete freedom and saved us a lot of money.

Any personal or handmade touches
We created all of the decorations ourselves, with help from friends and family.
What were your special moments or highlights of the day?
Walking down the aisle and then saying our vows was very special.

Advice to other couples
Think about the things that are important to you as a couple of prioritise them.
Get as much organised in advance as possible – there are so many last minute things you don’t think about so it can be stressful if you leave a lot to the last minute.
Take some time on the day to enjoy yourselves and make sure you spend some time together.

Biggest surprise
Jo: I was really worried that the day would be stressful or that I would worry about things going wrong but it was the complete opposite! I had so much fun and didn’t worry about a single thing.
Claire: How well the kids did their jobs. It was a risk asking my niece and nephews to be ushers and flower kids but they were brilliant!

Supplier Shout Outs:

Venue: South Farm http://www.south-farm.co.uk
Photographer: Binky Nixon http://www.binkynixon.com
Flowers: Elworthy Flowers www.elworthyflowers.com
Cake: Emily Jane Cakes www.emilyjanecakes.co.uk
Hair and make up: Denise Lilley www.d-dmakeup.com
DJ: Bluemark Entertainment www.bluemarkentertainment.co.uk
Dresses: Morgan-Davies Bridal www.morgandavieslondon.co.uk

For more information on Binky’s work go to

www.binkynixon.com
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