Ashridge was actually our second wedding. With Roy being from Cyprus we needed to have two weddings (no family politics surprisingly, we just wanted to celebrate both parts of our lives and ensure as many of our friends and family as possible could celebrate with us!). Ashridge was the only venue we looked at in person in the UK. I looked at many online, and narrowed them down quite a lot as I had very specific requirements (Close to an airport, North of London for my Nottingham friends and family, had to have parking, had to have a church or chapel on site or within walking distance (we’re both Christian so this was important), wasn’t allowed to be a barn (Roy being an architect), had to have accommodation that we didn’t need to book out but could, and obviously cost was involved). One thing about Roy is (being from Cyprus) he doesn’t like the English weather. When we looked around, I knew it was the one for us when he said ‘Even if it rained I’d be happy getting married here’.

Forest green was our colour scheme. Having two weddings, we wanted very different vibes from each. Cyprus was blue, beachy, painted candles, lemons… / the UK was Architecture, Forests, Gold accents. Both however we wanted to be deeply personal - and as a designer I wanted to hand craft a lot of this myself. A few examples of this: 1. Confetti. I hand made the confetti and put them into bags with personalised stickers (We did also have some confetti canons for ’the photo’ however) 2. Place cards. I hand painted dinosaurs (our first ever conversation was around my fear of dinosaurs) and saw’ed into them. I learned calligraphy and wrote everyone’s names on cards which Roy had painted on and placed them Inside the dinos. Some needed some assistance standing so I bought little circles and glued them on too. 3. The board. This was a family effort with my Dad building it and all of us painting / assembling it. We wrote postcards for every guest and put them into envelopes which also acted as a table plan. The stamps were designed and led each person to the table (based on places we’d been). My best friend used her cricuit to print the wording and we assembled it all the day before at Ashridge. 4. Flowers. All of the table flowers were hand made by me over the past year out of crepe paper after I saw a paper flower on Instagram. The DIY started as a money saving exercise, but I honestly loved every second of it and wouldn’t take it back. It made the wedding ours. There were a few other DIYs too like the order of service, crossword, table names etc.

My UK day dress was Nathalia from Grace Loves Lace. I looked at a lot of dresses. At one point I didn’t think I would find one. My issue was that I didn’t want a low cut dress, as I just didn’t feel comfortable and it wouldn’t have flattered me. I also didn’t want a dress that came to the neck. Finding the right neckline for me was tough. I also knew I wanted lace after trying on a few dresses. I loved the delicate and girly nature of them. I almost went with a different dress, but I just couldn’t stop thinking about this one. No regrets at all with my choice. Although I do with I remembered to use my finger hole on the day! My evening dress was my Mum’s up cycled 80’s wedding dress (our seamstress - and also florist for our bouquet flowers - was our neighbour)

We had private dance lessons for our first dance. They were such fun and also acted as date nights. I messed up the dance a bit at the first wedding in Cyprus (In my defence I was VERY poorly that day) but we both nailed the dance at the UK wedding - that was a great feeling. We also both just really loved our service. I wasn’t expecting that to be so emotional for us having gotten married a month before - but it really was. It was lovely to have Roy’s brother speaking about us in his sermon / address, and my Mum doing a reading. I had been writing Roy a diary for the past 18 months or so in secret about our journey and planning and life (the first entry was a few days before we visited Ashridge) so I was very much looking forward to him receiving this. We both love being in the spotlight, so we just loved the entire day. We loved the photography sections, we loved our photo dash (we had the course of one song to have photos with every table), we loved celebrating one of our groomsmen’s birthdays with him. We just loved celebrating with our family and our friends.