Chic & Quirky Green, White & Gold Wedding

Bicycles, pretty pink bridesmaids dresses, lovely letterpress, home made wedding cake, Jimmy Choos, stripy straws and his ‘n hers converse? Don’t mind if I do!

Vanessa and Phil’s beautiful, multi-cultural wedding at Beechfield House in Wiltshire was a three-day affair.

It began with a welcome BBQ and a combined bachelor and bachelorette party on day one, a traditional Chinese bridal fetch and tea ceremony on day two and a church wedding officiated by Phil’s dad – followed by a rocking reception on the third day.

There is so much beauty, love and laughter in these images by Albert Palmer Photography and a whole lot of darling details too.

Prepare to be inspired…

From The Bride…

We couldn’t decide on one colour for the wedding so we went with a very neutral palette – gold, kraft brown, mint green and lots of fresh white. Being of Chinese ethnicity, I am used to large, ostentatious weddings so we wanted to keep ours small and intimate.

Both of us have lived in more than a few different cities before we met so we had friends from all over the world travelling to Bath for the wedding and we really wanted to help our guests feel at home and welcomed.

At the barbeque, guests each took home a welcome bag filled with items necessary for the wedding bonanza – a jar of sweets, bath salts, a map of Bath, a stamped postcard (addressed to Mr and Mrs Kenchington) inviting guests to pen down their favourite memory of the wedding, a bottle of water and aspirin!

For the bouquets we went mainly with white roses, hydrangea, ranunculus and lisianthus with a few wild berries and lots of eucalyptus leaves.

Letterpress Wedding Invitations

All of our invitations were hand printed by our Adana letterpress and we included a luggage tag in the invitations for those travelling. We had a friend design our wedding invitation suite and the other printables for the wedding. Then we painstakingly had each invitation, place card, menu card, programme cover, luggage tag, and post card letterpressed by hand with our Adana letterpress.

The Ceremony

Phil’s Dad is an Anglican Vicar at Holy Trinity church in Bath so we knew from the get-go we wanted him to officiate our ceremony. After a wonderful ceremony, we travelled back to the hotel for cocktails and cake on the front lawn (thankfully the weather held up!).

We had three readings, two biblical ones which we chose and were read by both our mothers and the last one was a surprise reading by one of my best friends and bridemaids. She chose the E.E Cummings poem, “I Carry Your Heart”.

The church was decorated with simple altar arrangements and pews were adorned with fresh hydrangea. After the ceremony, ice cream, cocktails and wedding cake was served on the lawn. We hired an ice cream tricycle – it was a real joy watching our guests’ faces light up when the tricycle made a surprise entrance!

The Decor & Details

Instead of opting for a traditional seating plan, we set up an arrangement of champagne flutes with stirrers in them – each stirrer bore a flag with a name on it. Guests would then find their table name on the coaster beneath the flute. Phil is a real music kind of guy, so we named each table after music greats that we both loved – Ella, Frank, Harry…

For favours, each guests received a jar of homemade caramel sweets (wrapped by Phil and his family one night before the wedding!). Each lady also received a pair of slippers (“Dancing Shoes for Tired Feet”) and the gentlemen received a bottle of homemade beer, brewed and bottled by Phil’s brother!

The only things missing at the wedding were our two cats – so we had one of the bridesmaids handpaint cake toppers of the both of us and our two cats!

The Refreshments

We had a three-course dinner (traditional British fare) and followed by treats from a Dessert Bar – put together by the women in Phil’s family and featuring many of Phil’s favourite desserts. Phil’s Mum made a gorgeous three tiered cake with alternating tiers of Chocolate and Carrot cake frosted in vanilla cream cheese frosting.

The Wedding Music

I marched in to Enigma Variation IX (Adagio) “Nimrod” by Edward Elgar, walked out to It Must Be Love by Madness and had our first dance to I’m In The Mood For Love by Jamiroquai.

Albert Palmer Wedding Photography

We took a very long time to decide on our wedding photographer – we didn’t quite like the traditional style of British wedding photography and we wanted someone who could capture the joy and fun of our day as well as our personalities. We also didn’t want too many posed shots and wanted more natural shots showing the events of the day.

Albert did a fantastic job – it’s been six months and we still haven’t stopped looking at our pictures!

Advice For Other Couples

Let it go on the wedding day! We were incredibly stressed in the week leading up to the wedding but on the day we left it to the hotel team and our family to pull the final finishing touches together so we could relax and take the events of the day in.

Congratulations Vanessa and Phil!

Thanks so much for sharing your special day with us and huge thanks also to Albert Palmer Photography for sharing these beautiful photos.

I’m totally enamoured with those letterpress invites and the welcome totes aren’t you? You’ve gotta love a bicycle motif!