Gemma and Gerry tied the knot in October at Kirknewton Stables in Scotland. They envisioned a relaxed, rustic and fun day for all of their guests.

Gemma looked gorgeous in a Maggie Sottero dress with Jimmy Choo shoes and pretty up-do, while Gerry opted for a sharp suit with knitted green tie. Oh and there were some of the most beautiful flowers ever.

Thanks so much to Emma Lawson for sharing her lovely images with us today.

 

The Proposal… In our kitchen whilst I was cooking with our Kitten Gertie scooting around us.  Our little family are known as the 3 G’s. Gerry spent the day with my sister who was late showing up to choose rings. I think by that point he had it whittled down to 3 rings and was a little tipsy with the amount of presecco the ladies in the shop had given him to settle his nerves.

The Vision for the Day… Relaxed, rustic and fun for all.  My father always told us not to go over the top on our big day and to remember that the day was about us no-one else and to be a bit selfish to do it all how we wanted.  Best advice we ever had, we did have to stop quite a few times and remember this!!!!!

We are both very informal and wanted our day to represent us and how we live good food, company and wine.  I had always known that I never wanted a colour scheme just as many rustic flowers candles and knick nacks from our home as I could fit in.

We looked to hiring a vintage ice cream van for the day but all these added extra’s are what makes the wedding ££’s add up, so we added things like a dress up box as a picture booth, I have to say I checked the wicker basket of props the next day and they were all gone!!!

Budget… £10k was what we originally set out and we managed to stick to it, quite easily actually.  We were able to buy our own wine and Sparkly so could pick what we wanted at a good price from a wine warehouse.

The Venue… Kirknewton Stables just outside Edinburgh-We are both originally grew up in the countryside, I grew up with stables for our horses attached to our family home and Gerry is from a beef farming background from Ireland.  I think it was the Highland cows in the field opposite that actually sealed the deal for us.  It was important to us that we got married in surroundings that meant something to us and not in a hotel that felt cold and that we would find harder to put our personal stamp on.  I’m unsure I could have had my bright pink wheelbarrow to serve beer in whilst in a big grand house or hotel.

The Dress + Accessories… The dress was Maggie Sottero Lena and it was the second dress I tried on, I went with my sister for support!  However I went to a few other dress shops after, I’m unsure why I did as I knew in the back of my mind this was my favourite.  The Jimmy Choos I just couldn’t help myself, I wanted shoes I could wear after our big day and on anniversaries and special occasions. It’s just a bit of give and take and something else had to give!  I think I searched longer for my shoes than any other item for the wedding or actually anything in my life! My earrings were from a vintage shop and were from the 1940’s I loved them and the fact they had the clip on aspect made me think of my childhood dressing up days!  My bracelet I picked up the day before the wedding by accident and was in the sale for £10.

Groom’s Attire… Gerry’s suit was from TMLewin and we knew instantly it was made for him.  He had a tweed knitted tie that I had bought him a while back from Reiss and a vintage tie pin that used to be my late father’s that he was adamant he wanted to wear.  The suit had to match the tie!!

Gerry loves wearing waistcoats so went to 21st Century kilts in Edinburgh to commission a waistcoat that he could wear in the evening so he could let loose on the dance floor, also to relax the tone a little. Shoes were from Jones the bootmakers

The Readings + Music… Gerry wrote out what readings and the way the order of how the service flowed on the day. He did it in a clever way as to include some readings that weren’t too preachy “Celtic Prayer” and for all to be carried out by our minister. Our minister Norman was an absolute character on the day, providing heartfelt and humorous moments.

I left the music in Gerry`s hands as he loves his music. We have quiet similar tastes so I knew he would choose well. For the band we choose “The Jets” a Scottish band from Glasgow, we had heard a few songs of theirs online and thought they sounded fantastic. Thankfully they agreed and could not have asked for a better band on the day providing a varied range of music that had the every guest on their feet.

During the day between the service and the evening dinner we had a play list which Gerry spent month compiling. It ranged from “Off Monster and Men”, “Passenger” to “Ben Harper”, so a little for everyone on there.

We had a piper who piped the guests into the building, however he forgot to pipe us down the aisle as he was having a break. We thought, we couldn’t have small things like that ruin our day. If anything it provided copious amount of laughs between us and our guest.

I walked down the aisle to – Jason Mraz “I won’t give up”.

First dance – Ray LaMontagne – “You are the best thing”.

Beautiful Bridesmaids… My two beautiful bridesmaids, Lydia my big sister my maid of honour and Gerry’s niece Laura.  They looked so beautiful on the day I was so proud they agreed to be bridesmaids.  They wore a dress that we accidentally found in Coast that looked so insipid on the hanger when I saw it but Lydia agreed to try it on and I knew that it would suit both beautifully, I was originally going to get Laura a different dress to my sister as she is 14 years old a little bit of an age difference to someone in their 30’s but knew that this one would be lovely for both. The shoes were from Dune, a nude heel with multicoloured muted jewels and a flat pair of matching sandals for Laura.  I bought earrings that were turquoise for both girls as I really unlike matching colours and they looked lovely a nice splash of colour. 

The Flowers… What can I say about my flowers apart from I am forever indebted to my florist Laura Eberst.  Wow they took my breath away on the day and made me cry when I saw them.  I found Laura through a friend and she came round to my house for a cup of tea not before I had bombarded her with all my Pinterest pins by email.  Instantly she got what I was looking for, no matching flowers, very wild looking to be displayed in jam jars that I would decorate.  I explained to Laura I had researched foliage called Dusty Miller, my father’s name, apparently its really grown in America but a few weeks before the wedding Laura had told me she had grown some in her garden and that she was putting it in my bouquet, I had bought a vintage locket to have in my bouquet so that I could have my Dad beside me without anyone knowing.  Laura went in the morning of the wedding and dressed all the tables and windowsills for me with all my bits and pieces.  I was blown away with the flowers.

The Cake… The cake was a plain 3 tiered sponge from Marks and Spencer and in many ways I’m so glad that we didn’t buy a big expensive one, although I do wish that we had maybe only bought one tier.  We are not really into posed photo opportunities and had told our photographer that we didn’t want to toss the bouquet or cut the cake moment. We did however forget about the cake and it was not eaten!

Your Photographer… We again cannot believe our luck with our photographer, I used to work with Emma over ten years ago in our student days and had not seen her in that long, by chance she had seen on the internet that I had booked Kirknewton and she messaged us to say she was doing a wedding there that year, I had a cheeky look at her blog and then messaged her straight back asking if she was free to do ours.  Thankfully she agreed and it has been lovely to have her back in my life again.  Emma is a beautiful photographer who manages to capture whatever it is you are looking for, we asked for mainly informal pictures more candid than posed.  Emma was a breath of fresh air on the day and kept us all on the straight and narrow with her advice.  What we and all our family and friends are just delighted with is that Emma captured the fun and the pictures have what we wanted our wedding day to be FUN and RELAXED  with us spending time with our favourite people in the world.  I do wish I had practised laughing in the mirror before I didn’t realise what I looked like but we will forever remember what a happy day our guests and ourselves had by looking at Emma’s pictures

The Details + Decor… I’m a manager in retail and luckily had some bits and bobs like the vintage suitcases that I could borrow, and I have a large team at work that helped me with the jam jar collection I would leave most days with bags of jars!  I bought water bottles form IKEA with stoppers for all the tables and vintage straws but the fun part was enlarging my vintage tea pot and tea cup collection I went to a salvage yard for these bits and pieces a fraction of the price than eBay. Although most of the other bits and pieces were things I have at our home. We didn’t want a guest book like everyone else so bought a wooden jigsaw for everyone to write a piece for us and will treasure this.  I did want to have one of the stone walls covered in simple fairy lights and had to get these fitted so that was a little more costly than I had thought.  Our wedding invitations had hand drawn tractors and welly boots on them so we stuck with Gerry’s love of tractors and used different makes of tractors for table names, I felt  it was important for Gerry’s stamp to be in our wedding too and not just mine.  We had childhood pictures of us on the relevant toilets and had filled the toilets with sweeties and the normal plasters, rennies  hairspray etc and my scented candles all these things were relatively cheap to do and extremely effective.

The Honeymoon… We went to Riviera maya the Monday after our wedding for two weeks and boy did we relax after all our planning!

Memorable Moments… Not being able to look at anyone walking down the aisle until I saw Gerry and how nervous he was too and giving him a squeeze and knowing it would all be just right from then and it was we laughed together and that was it, the start of our next chapter together.

Advice for Other Couples… Get your partner involved, OK I know that Gerry wasn’t going to sit down and decorate jam jars with me but he loved hearing all my ideas and that it made me so proud when I would hear him telling people what we were planning.  It also meant that he took over a lot of the other bits and pieces, Gerry wrote our service for our minister and organised all the paperwork etc whenever I asked as he knew how much I had on with the decoration and planning.

Credit Where Credit is Due…

Photography: http://emmalawsonphotography.com/

Caterer: http://www.foodcreations.co.uk/

Flowers: http://www.lauraeberst.com/

Band: http://www.musicforscotland.co.uk/artistDetail.aspx?artistID=165

https://www.pinterest.com/

www.etsy.com/ ‎

 

How utterly beautiful!? Thanks so much to Gemma and Gerry for sharing their wedding with us on WWW :-) XOXO Lou