A Spring Inspired Turquoise And Yellow Wedding

Well hello ladies! I’m super duper excitable today. YAY :))) Maybe it’s because I’ve spent the last few hours looking at images from this gorgeous spring inspired turquoise and yellow real wedding.

Our lovely bride and groom, Ben and Candice, styled their day to perfection and I’ve loved reading their story of how they met and where Ben proposed. Ben chased Candice for a good year and proposed to her on a beach in Valencia. Good man!! Read on for all the details and beautiful pics from the fab Alexa Loy.

© 2013 Alexa Loy Photography

Once we decided on a colour scheme everything just came together from there. Bright vibrant colours really lift our mood so we wanted something spring like and fresh. We picked our two favourite colours, yellow and turquoise.

I chose my wedding dress as the pale ivory with gold thread suited my pale skin. It was the beautiful detail of the lace back that sold it for me also, I wanted something that looked stunning from the back as well as the front. It was also important that my dress was very comfortable.

For my bridesmaid dresses I picked out a dress previously worn by Kate Middleton. It’s a gorgeous long flowing dress with lace back. The dresses were custom made by Persun and arrived 5 weeks later. One of the bridesmaids dresses needed to be altered slightly but that was for comfort reasons rather than the dresses not being made as requested. Persun even sent me sample lace for free so that the alteration could be done.

Ben wore a Ben Sherman Kings, 2 piece suit in a light grey colour + waiscoat from Reiss in a lighter grey. His white super slim fit shirt was from Hawes and Curtis. Ben’s accessories were a Ted Baker tan belt, Aldo tan slip ons, Arsenal cannon cuff links (had to get Arsenal in somewhere), Uniqlo pastel yellow slim tie, a homemade matching pocket square and yellow socks.

Ben didn’t want traditional flower button holes and opted for craspedia, camomile and herb button holes. Blooms did and amazing job on my bouquet which was mainly cream with touches of yellow and the bridesmaids bouquet, yellow with touches of cream.

Our venue Southend Barns in Chichester was everything we were looking for – everything in one place (ceremony barn, reception barn, outside grass courtyard, covered outside area with fire pits and seating and the bridal suite), beautifully decorated but unfussy and natural. The venue needed very few additional decorations as the beauty of the venue was enough.

We were still able to add our own little touches and make the day very much our own. The venue opened for weddings in July 2012, so we visited it as it was about to host its second wedding. The owners Mariella and Will are extremely passionate about the place and what they offer, they were superb during the planning stages and ensuring that everything ran smoothly on the day.

The venue needed very few decorations, it’s beautiful enough as it is. We hired  small decorations from a wedding hire website Perfect Details. We hired their gorgeous gold birdcage lanterns, ceramic milk jugs, chalkboard, vintage suit case, to name a few things. They have some beautiful stuff to buy or hire.

We had one long banquet style table in the reception barn that everyone ate at. We used a turquoise table runner to go down the center of the table. This looked great with the bright yellow flowers on top.

We wanted yellow, seasonal, simple flowers to complement our yellow and turquoise colour scheme. We wanted to keep the cost of the flowers down so whilst Blooms did the key decorations, my Mum filled little turquoise jars with 3-4 flowers in each to go on the wedding breakfast table and put bunches of flowers in ceramic milk jugs to go on the drinks bar and guest book table.

The wedding breakfast table was also decorated with cream buckets filled with craspedia, roses, camomile and freesia (same flowers as the bouquets). The bright yellow flowers made a simple but very effective pop of colour at the venue and particularly against the turquoise table runner on the wedding breakfast table.

Ben’s mum made gorgeous turquoise and yellow lavender hanging hearts for the ladies wedding favours. These were also used to decorate the ceremony barn by tying them to the pew ends. My Dad made yummy chocolate and hazelnut biscotti biscuits for the men.

My dad John walked me down the aisle to Ben. He kept me calm and made sure I walked at a steady pace.

For years I wanted to walk down the aisle to Stand by me by Ben E King, I well up everytime I hear that song for some reason. So when I came to picking it for the day, I listened to many versions of the song and picked an instrumental version of it, slightly mellower to listen to than the original version.

We met at Lancaster University, even though we were actually from the same town in Hertfordshire but went to different schools. We were best friends throughout university and didn’t get together until 2 years after we left uni.

Ben chased me for a good year until I decided to take the scary leap from best friends to boyfriend and girlfriend. Once it happened it felt so natural and I never looked back or regretted it. Ben proposed 6 years later on Valencia beach – happy day! :)

Our reception drinks were cocktails, one yellow one blue, poured from cocktail dispensers into decorated jam jars.

I loved our wedding cake, it was exactly what we wanted. It was made by Maxine who runs Capell’s Cakes in Northampton. We wanted a donut themed cake as Ben proposed to me on Valencia beach with a Simpsons donut style ring. He also used to call me a donut when we first got together, so we wanted to incorporate donuts somewhere into the day.

We had a three tier cake all moulded, iced and decorated to look like Simpson style donuts. One was chocolate sponge and the other two tiers vanilla sponge. The top tier had Groom and Bride donut figurines standing on the top. Then on plates either side we had pyramids of Krispy Cream donuts.

Our wedding photographer was Alexa Loy. We love Alexa’s style and did a lot of internet research trying to find someone that did something a little different to the traditional wedding photographs.

The colours in the photos are vibrant and the style relaxed and natural. We met Alexa a few times before the wedding and really enjoyed the engagement shoot we did with her before hand, a great way to get to know each other and practice before the big day.

On the day Alexa blended into the crowd, capturing some great natural shots and kept the formal stuff short and sweet. Fantastic service from start to finish and importantly we are very happy with the photographs we have received.

 

One of my most memorable moments was looking up and down the long banquet style wedding breakfast table and seeing all our close friends and family enjoying the amazing food and thinking how lucky we are to have these people in our lives and them being there to share our special day with us.

If we could impart any words of wisdom they would be… Be organised and delegate. I had a scrap book where I stuck pictures of things I had seen in magazines, it looked like a mood board. This was really useful to take to wedding dress shops, the hair stylist, florist etc to show pictures of things I had seen and liked.

We also couldn’t have put the wedding day together without help from family and friends, don’t be afraid to ask them to do things, we found they were actually honoured to be asked as opposed to placing a burden on them.

Our first dance was to John Legend – Stay With You. We saw John Legend live a few years into our relationship and just love the song.

Oh wow! Thank you so much Candice and Ben for sharing your lovely wedding with us! There are so many lovely, unique touches that I’m sure will inspire lots of future brides! Such a great colour combo turquoise and yellow and I love your table seating plan and the simpson style donout cake!

Lovely WTW readers please do leave some love for our happy couple and praise for the talented Alexa Loy who captured their day beautifully.

wedding credits | photography: alexa loy photography | venue: southend barns | brides dress: essense of australia via london bride | brides earrings: sarah hickey | bridesmaids dresses: persun | bridesmaids hair accessories: turquoise weddings | grooms suit: ben sherman: | grooms accessories: ted baker | hair & makeup artist: beths bridal hair | florist: blooms of chichester | wedding cake: capells | catering: field and fork | entertainment: the encore band | wedding props: perfect details 

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