Mad Scots And Englishmen.

Mad Scots And Englishmen.

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Shooting a wedding on film ALWAYS creates a beautiful, dream-like quality to the images. Weddings shot on film by Peachey Photography? Well they are EXTRA special.

And Annie and Dickie certainly thought so, as they chose Katharine from Peachey Photography by observing her work on these very pages.

Dickie is Scottish and works in advertising. Annie wore a 50s style gown. The couple married at Annie's parents house in the beautiful Buckinghamshire countryside. So naturally, the theme was Scotland meets Mad Men meets English Country Fete. It worked a treat too.

Annie's parents genuinely put their hearts and souls into preparing the garden for their daughters wedding - they had the garden landscaped, grew flowers from seed and even built the summerhouse where the ceremony was held! They did an excellent job, I'm sure you'll agree.

And if you've just come along for a gander at a man in a kilt - you're in for a treat. Dickie is sporting some very fetching Douglas tartan.

Annie The Bride: I had tried on various dresses in some lovely boutiques, but it was when I visited Helena at Heavenly Vintage Brides that I knew vintage was the way for me.

There was something very special about finding a vintage dress that hardly needed any alteration, I liked to think back to the dress' first owner and wonder about them, if they were at all like me. So when a white lace 40s dress fitted me almost perfectly, I had my 'it's the one' moment. I also fell in love with a 1952 buttermilk dress Helena had dubbed her 'Betty Draper'; and with two wedding days it was clear I needed two dresses! The fact that the two vintage dresses came to less than one modern boutique dress was all the additional persuasion needed.

Being Scottish, Dickie knew he wanted to wear a kilt in the Ancient Douglas tartan worn by his family. Dickie chose the blue-grey tweed jacket for an informal and summery feel. His granny bought him a very smart new kilt, a big upgrade to his schoolboy one! (There are a lot more pleats in a wedding kilt apparently). Sadly Dickie's granny passed away before our wedding day, so it was very special knowing that his kilt was an important gift from her.

We decided that we couldn't think of anywhere nicer to get married than my parent's garden. Having decided we wanted the large celebration in the garden with family and friends, we knew we'd have to do the legal stuff elsewhere.

Instead of a quick dash to the registry office the day before, we decided to make it a very intimate celebration for our very closest family and best man and woman. The Compleat Angler in Marlow was somewhere my Grandmother had gone courting, and with its beautiful riverside setting and attentive staff, it was a perfect venue. It helped it was the hottest day of the year, and we enjoyed a sun-drenched boat trip up the Thames after lunch.

Our décor probably ended up being a bit vintage, a bit country fete, a bit literary and a nod to the world of advertising (Dickie's world)! We wanted bright colours and lots of our favourite colour coral. Dickie first came up with the idea of branding the wedding with PepCon (a combination of our surnames) and 'anniedickiemarrie' and designing the invites in the style of a 50s advert. He got hard to work with my brother Ben who is a graphic designer. Ben came up with the logo design, and with the help of illustrator Tim King, designed the most amazing invites and stationary. We also used the PepCon logo to brand the handmade fete games and drinks jars for Pimms.

Having seen Green and Gorgeous' handiwork at a friend's wedding, I was pretty keen to secure them for myself! I loved Rachel and Jo's philosophy of growing seasonal British flowers. Green and Gorgeous made up the tricky stuff of bouquets and large displays, but for the table centrepieces, they provided buckets of cut flowers and a selection of their beautiful vintage crockery. A troupe of mums, bridesmaids and friends had great fun putting these together on the morning of the wedding. I absolutely adored my bouquet and refused to put it down for the whole day! It had big dahlias, roses, nigella, orange alstroemeria and lots of other beautiful things!

Once we were clear we wanted the ceremony in the garden and would have to do 'the legal bit' elsewhere, we loved the freedom it gave to do and say only what was meaningful to us. We wanted a humanist ceremony, and then decided to go a step further and ask our friend, Alex, to conduct it for us. We wrote our own vows together and repeated the words to each other. They were very simple, expressing our values of honesty, trust, fun and 'To stay curious about you, to keep asking questions about who you are, who you're becoming and who you want to be.'

For the evening dancing, we had wonderful jive band Juke Joint Jump. Our first dance was a jive to 'Boney Maronie'. Not the most romantic song in the world, but a hell of a lot of fun!

We came up with the rather mad idea of trying to source ingredients for the wedding breakfast that had a personal connection to us. Most caterers we approached said this was impossible, it would be a nightmare for prices and 'health and safety'. Lucky for us, Jo at Hibiscus was fully willing to pursue our mad plan and worked with us to make it a reality.

So for canapés we had mackerel (caught by friends in a place where I had spent my summers growing up), as starters haggis bonbons drenched with Arran Whisky (a Scottish island very close to Dickie's family's heart), lamb kleftiko made with lamb reared by our local friends, Greek salad made using my Dad's tomatoes, and a lemon tart accompanied by berries also grown by my Dad. The speeches were helped along with Nyetimber, an English sparkling wine.

We saw some of Katharine Peachey's work on RMW and fell in love with her style and the softness and colours of her all-film photography. She suggested a great bar for us to chat and get to know each other, and put up with Dickie's questions about a photographer's dress code. This convinced us fully of her impeccable taste! She was funny and charming throughout and was so incredibly skilled at seeking out that natural shot of people just having a great time, and attending to all the little details that made the day special.

My advice would be to give yourself time at the beginning to have some good long chats about what's important for you as a couple... thinking about the ceremony we wanted and writing our vows got us to concentrate on what married life would mean to us. Then, get everyone involved! We could not have had such an amazing day without drawing on the extensive skills of our nearest and dearest and it was so special to see all their hard work come to fruition.

Check out secondhand internet sites and see if you can source scrap wood/materials. We got all that bunting for a fraction of the price of buying it new, and then dyed it to the colour we wanted. The fete games were made from scrap wood, breeze blocks, old tables, broom handles etc.

I'd also say don't be afraid to have too many speeches! Dickie and I did a joint speech, the best woman (aka 'superior maiden') and best man did their own personal speeches which everyone enjoyed immensely, and my dad did a wonderful father of the bride speech. Yes, the speeches lasted a while, but we look back and remember them as one of the finest parts of the day and become overwhelmed with all that love and laughter. That's what you'll remember for years to come!


Photography by Katharine Peachey
Dress Heavenly Vintage Brides | Shoes John Lewis & Rock My Boutique & Rachel Simpson Outlet | Hair Accessory Lily Bella | Jewellery Baronessa | Bridesmaids Warehouse | Groom MacDonald Kiltmakers & John Morrison | Venue Compleat Angler Hotel | Marquee Hire Joseph Benjamin Marquees | Decor Pom Pom Studio & Preloved | Table Names The Literary Gift Company | Florist Green & Gorgeous Flowers | Macarons Pierre Herme | Band Juke Joint Jump | Catering Hibiscus Food

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