an english country garden wedding by planner Alexandria Schiefner | uk wedding blog

I always love blogging wedding industry weddings. You would think it is a like a busman’s holiday for us but it really isn’t. We never tire of weddings. Ever. Alexandria’s wedding was always going to be beautiful, she selected some incredible suppliers but for me, her Pronovias gown and Paula Rooney flowers really steal the show. Utterly divine.

I also have to add that I love Alexandria’s choice to add scent to the wedding by using Jo Malone ‘Red Roses’ candles. It is something I really wish I had done but never got round to in the planning. I think fragrance is such an important part of the day because years later you can smell that scent and be transported back immediately.

Photography by Mark Seymour

Paula Rooney designed all of the floral arrangements and we couldn’t have been more delighted on the day. My bouquet was the most beautiful I had ever seen, I was absolutely in love with it. Paula has such incredible attention to detail and puts so much love and passion into everything that she does. All of our guests were blown away by the amazing floral frame that she made for our table plan. She was so supportive and imaginative throughout the whole process and we loved having her as part of the team.

My cousin, Dominique, who has a cake business, Cupcakes by Dominique, made our wedding cake. I didn’t know what it looked like until midnight on the evening before the wedding. I just showed her the overall look that we were going for with the wedding, including colours, and then she created it all in secret. It was so exciting wondering what it was going to look at, and when I eventually saw it, it blew me away. Absolutely beautiful, so much detail and clearly a lot of effort went into making it.

Pronovias (Ontario Dress) and Rainbow Club. My dress was the opposite of what I thought I wanted (I was seeing myself in a Kate Middleton-style dress to begin with!). I couldn’t have chosen something more different to my original preferences and this is why I always tell my brides to try anything and everything on, you never know what is going to suit you.

Bride’s hair accessories/veil: Rings from Tiffany (both my engagement and wedding band), and my husband’s ring too. My veil was from Pronovias and I wore earrings by Danielle Harper. Tyrone also wore antique gold cufflinks from Spencer Hart.

Tyrone already had a beautiful morning coat  and wanted to wear it on our wedding day. So instead of getting a whole new suit he had bespoke trousers and shirt made by Simon at Hire 5 in Guildford and borrowed a dove grey double breasted waistcoat from them. Hire 5 also made Tyrone, his best man Wade, and our ring bearer, Oliver, a tie in the same silk  and colour as the flower girls’ sashes.

Groomsmen’s outfits/accessories: All of the groomsmen wore suits from Hire 5 and wore pastel pink ties and pocket squares. Our pageboys wore pale green suits from Next and grey converse sneakers. We wanted them to look like little boys rather than try to put them in a real ‘suit’.

We had our adult bridesmaids dresses designed and created by an incredible seamstress called Maria Ferreria and were the same kind of silk and colour as my wedding dress. They looked amazing on my girls. Their shoes were also from Rainbow Club. My flower girls were dressed in the Nicki Macfarlane ‘Eliza’ dress with their sash and buttons in the colour ‘Eau’. Their flower crowns were made by Paula Rooney.

Our caterers were outstanding, Amaury, and his team from At Home Catering totally exceeded our expectations. Amaury is so charming, stylish, and professional and after our initial tasting, we knew that we wanted them to cater our wedding. Their food was incredible, they served beautiful canapés during our champagne reception, and then when we sat down in the marquee we had gazpacho, followed by sirloin steak and then a trio of pimms sorbet, lemon tart with lavender shortbread, and a mango and passionfruit pavlova.

Later on in the evening we had a ‘Ploughmans’ set up for our guests which included roast ham, baguettes, a cheese tower, and lots of chutneys, nuts, and dried fruit. Our wine was all from Caviste, a wine merchant based at Newlines Farm Shop in Odiham, we went to have a tasting and decided to choose wines that we haven’t had before, and now whenever we drink it, it takes us back to our wedding day.

St Joan of Arc Church, Farnham, and reception was at my parents’ home, Oaklands, in Hampshire. St Joan’s is a special church to me as it was my childhood church and Ty and I still go there regularly. Although he is not the parish priest, it was also really important to us that our family friend, Father John, married us. My family has known him for over 20 years, and I was actually a flower girl when he married my aunt and uncle.  We  put a lot of thought into our church service as it was really important to us. My aunt, who is a music teacher, helped me to arrange the organ music and choose hymns. I walked down the aisle to ‘Pachabel’s Canon in D’ and we left the church to ‘The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba’. We asked my cousin and one of Ty’s good friends to do our readings, and another cousin sang for us during the singing of the register.

Hair by Stacey Austin and Makeup by Dena Naji from Makeup by Miki. Stacey and Dena work together quite often and between them made the whole ‘getting ready’ experience flawless – which was quite  a feat considering we had a bride, four bridesmaids, six flower girls, and two mums to get ready! We had such a fun and relaxing morning with them and their assistants, and we all felt absolutely gorgeous after they had worked their magic on us! Before the wedding I went to choose a scent from Jo Malone to wear on the day and decide on a pairing, Grapefruit, and Oud and Bergamot.

Mark Seymour – we were so pleased that Mark captured the whole ‘feeling’ of the day with his images.

Wedding Videographer: The Camera Chaps – we have only recently got out video back and it makes me cry every time I watch it. It is just amazing to be able to re-live the day over and over again and Martin and his team did such an incredible job, both in the filming and the editing.  They were a pleasure to be around on the day and we couldn’t be happier with the final result. They even brought a Go Pro camera and attached it to our dog, Mr Darcy, so that he could film the day from his perspective. Martin then edited this into our overall wedding video, the results are amazing!

As a wedding planner myself, I have seem so many amazing styles and themes it was quite hard to pin down one thing that I loved. Eventually we decided upon an overarching colour scheme of pastel pink and green throughout the whole wedding. I suppose if you wanted to put a ‘theme’ to it, it is quite ‘English Country Garden’ – I knew I wanted the flowers to be central to the whole day, and Paula did such a wonderful job of this, from hanging individual roses from ribbons in trees throughout the garden, to the beautiful church flowers, to the crowns she made for our little ones.

I really wanted everywhere to smell amazing as well so we had Jo Malone ‘Red Roses’ candles giving off a beautiful scent. I just wanted it to be a fun, relaxed day for all of our guests, with plenty of delicious food and lots of champagne! We wanted to make sure all of the children were entertained throughout the day so we had giant garden games set out on the lawn, and had goodie bags for each of them with crayons and activity books. Although I planned the wedding myself, my friend, Gilly, from Amore Star Events, helped by providing some on-the-day-co-ordination and did an absolutely amazing job, especially with the children, making sure they were all well behaved and clean and tidy (at least until the photos were taken!).

My uncle actually created all of our wedding stationery for us and it was so lovely to have all of our family pitch in to make our wedding so special.

Ahh where do I begin! I have lots of favourites, but  if I had to choose, it would be when my husband and I entered the marquee for dinner, and all of our guests burst into song – Petula Clark’s ‘Couldn’t Live Without Your Love’, My mum and aunt had organised it as a surprise and all of our guests had practiced on the bus on the way back from the church.

Dave Keat – who is a family friend and has DJ’d many of our big family parties (including both mine and my sister’s 21^st’s) provided the entertainment. He is always outstanding and knows exactly what music gets us all up on the dance floor.

We spent our wedding night at the Four Seasons in Hampshire, and then lots of our guests joined us there for brunch the following day. From there we flew to Dubai and spent two glorious weeks there sunbathing, relaxing, and drinking cocktails! It was just what we needed after the build up to the wedding and it was lovely to be able to reflect on the whole day and talk about it together.

Being a wedding planner, I loved (most) of the planning process, but some things did become stressful and I was so lucky that all of my family were involved and supportive. I would say let people help, whether it is friends or family. Also just enjoy being engaged, as much as I now love being married, when I look back at being engaged it was just such an exciting and lovely time, with anticipation and excitement building. It is easy to get caught up in planning and stressing about the colour of napkins or the timing of your entrance music, but on the day those things won’t matter, and all you will care about is marrying the love of your life, with all of the people that matter the most, surrounding you.