Lulworth Castle Wedding with Subtle Animal Theme: Sarah & Gaudi

My parents now live down in Dorset and when we were looking in the area we fell in love with Lulworth Castle. We loved the contrast of the venue with the rustic exposed brickwork on the inside and the more classical English beauty on the outside.

Words by Sarah or Gaudi. Images by One Thousand Words.

We were looking for everything to take place at one location and Lulworth offered this with the two rooms and stunning grounds. Gaudi’s family and friends were visiting from South Africa and so to make a weekend of it there was also the beautiful surrounding area to explore. Overall there was also a lot of flexibility with the venue and the staff were very relaxed making it a pleasure to plan exactly how we wanted it.

I absolutely loved the beading detail on the top of the dress with the racer cut as well as the low v at the back. I think this dress was quite different to what Gaudi would have expected me to wear and I loved the balance between it being a little bit different with the top and cut at the back but still having a touch of elegance and tradition for the castle setting.

We loved the natural beauty of our wedding venue and so we wanted the decorations and style to complement. We didn’t want to go too over the top, which we thought could detract from the beauty of the venue.

The page boys walking down the aisle with a sign saying “last chance to run” was a lovely ice breaker that my mum came up with – Gaudi said it helped with his nerves!

We wanted the ceremony to be personal to us and so wrote our wedding vows together before the day. We have these handwritten out as a memory that we can keep.

We wanted to include small touches and references to South Africa where Gaudi is originally from and to make our South African guests feel welcomed. Our table plan, wedding invites, tables names and place names were all designed by Jodie Philo and animal-themed. We loved Jodie’s drawings of the animals and her map on our invitation. She was a pleasure to work with.

For Gaudi one of the most memorable moments was definitely seeing me walk down the aisle to Songbird by Fleetwood Mac. It’s a moment he will always remember and the song brings back special memories.

We loved having so many friends and family from different parts of the world in one amazing venue to celebrate with us. Guests from South Africa, Australia, India, UAE, Germany and Scotland were able to join us.