Not the Royal Wedding!
Transformation scene – the lead up to Bobby and Lee’s seaside wedding at Kennaway House on the Devon coast on Saturday 30 April
Whilst the rest of the world was focusing on a certain wedding at Westminster Abbey I was busy transforming the Cellar Bar at Kennaway House, an eighteenth century manor, for the wedding reception of Bobby and Lee the following day. My team and I arrived early to a messy room which needed lots of tidying before we could get started. The couple had gone for a cool, white rustic theme with touches of colour to be provided by elegant floral displays with a butterfly and heart motif.
As a wedding planner one of my main challenges is to transform an ordinary room into the one dreamt of by the bride and groom. An important part of planning is always allowing more time than you think you need and on this occasion I was lucky to get into the venue the day before. Make sure you check with your venue when you can get into the space and what you’re allowed to do with it – particularly important if you’re having big electrical equipment and candles! Luckily, the groom at this wedding was a fireman!
Around 80 guests were due to come to the wedding, so our first job was to put tables out into a configuration that would work well for the space, which included a dance floor, gift and cake tables. After setting and laying the tables, each one was decorated with a white rustic metal jug filled with white flowers as the table centre. For the place settings, the guests’ names were handwritten onto labels which were tied to little white pails filled with retro sweets. A novel twist was the placing of a cork on someone’s place signifying that they were responsible for pouring the champagne for the speeches.
Having dressed the tables, we then set about decorating the room. The rural theme was continued with hearts made of twigs in which ivy and ribbon were intertwined. Each of these had a label tied to it with a handwritten romantic word. Hundreds of tea lights, candles and paper lanterns around the room further added to the atmosphere. Especially effective, were the candle bags with heart shapes cut out. A nice touch was the wooden wishing well made by the bride’s father for cards and gifts and the beautiful three-tier wedding cake made by the bride’s mother. If you’re working to a budget then why not make use of the skills of your friends and family!
Neil, Wedding Planner for Occasion Occasion
