WWW readers Sarah and Mark tied the knot on Friday 11 ^th April 2014; hosting their reception at Monkey Island in Berkshire. They wanted their wedding to be bright vibrant and Spring like.

Seasonal Spring flowers are just my favourite and the blooms on the day were so very pretty. Teamed with stylish paper, bridesmaids in coral frocks and trees heavy with Cherry blossom and you have the most beautiful of wedding days.

Sarah looked amazing in her Agnes Bridal tulle dress with polka dot veil while the boys looked sharp in grey suits.

Thanks goes to Kate Gray Photography for kindly sharing these wonderful photographs today.

THE PROPOSAL | After being together 10 years me and Mark were pretty settled when it came to our relationship: we had our own house, loved each other and had such a great life - everything, as it was, was pretty much perfect. It was my 29 ^th Birthday and like most women, when you get over the age of 25 you start to dread each birthday and this one was my last before turning the dreaded 30. Waking up on the morning of my birthday Mark was adamant that I stay in bed, and he was going to cook me breakfast in bed - something which he had never done before! After spending my time lying in bed, texting, seeing what the latest was on Facebook and Twitter I heard Mark coming up stairs, appearing at the bedroom door with a tray of breakfast goodies complete with faux rose, wanting to tuck into my sausage bagel, Mark shove my birthday card in front of me to open and insisted I open. Like with all the cards I get from Mark I tend never to read any of pre-printed blurb but noticed a massive long, handwritten message - where after reading it twice did I realise it was him asking me to marry him! Presenting me with a Haribo jelly ring, I burst into tears with surprise and shock and said yes!

THE VISION | We didn't really have one! For us, the most important thing was that we had everyone we love there, for people to be comfortable, be able to relax and enjoy. When we picked the date of April, I knew I wanted bright, vibrant and spring-like!

THE PLANNING PROCESS | I'm not going to lie I am a bit rubbish at planning and appeared rather blasé about most of the details until the week before the actual wedding. We kept spreadsheets for the costing and guest count which was handy, but being old skool and a writer/blogger I am addicted to notebooks so was regularly scribbling down ideas for the wedding and 'things to do'

We sorted out the venue first and then pretty much went from there - I was lucky enough to have the best Maid of Honor who kept me in check and organised.

BUDGET | We didn't set a set budget for the wedding, but knew we wanted to keep the costs down as much as possible - with an eagerness to do a lot of work myself I knew there were ways I could scrimp and save but still achieve the vibrant fun look I wanted.

THE VENUE | We got married in a local church which was in Maidenhead, Berkshire - St Lukes. This was a church that had been used across the families and somewhere where I had grown up with. The church was beautiful - gothic stained glass windows, that all-too familiar traditional church smell, for both me and Mark it was hugely important to get married in a church - we're not necessarily religious people, but we knew this church held an important place in both our hearts.

The reception venue was called Monkey Island Hotel in Bray-on-Thames - I first went to visit this venue with Marks mother, my MOH and MOH mother and instantly fell in love - to the point where I couldn't imagine having anywhere else. A little quirky, stunning bridges and grounds, resident peacocks, somewhere to stay and a Monkey Room that acted as a snug - it really was everything I could've wanted.

THE DRESS & ACCESSORIES | My dress was Agnes Bridal number 1125 -the best way to describe this dress was layers and layers of tulle!!! Essentially this dress was quite plain and reserved. Because of the sheer volume of the skirt of my dress I decided to keep my jewellery to a minimum, so went for a simple pearl drop earring and just my engagement ring and Nomination bracelet. My shoes were from Dune and were a simple brushed silver court shoe. For me, the dress had to be the centre of attention so everything else had to blend!

FINDING THE DRESS | I was dead nervous about picking a dress and going dress shopping, but I headed to Stunning Bride in High Wycombe (which unfortunately is now closed) along with my MOH, 1x bridesmaid, MOH's mum and Mark's mother - unfortunately my mother is based in North Devon so wasn't able to be there. We were all told to pick out a dress for me to try on, of which they all had a lot of fun with ;) and Carol Pope (who was my advisor) picked out the Agnes dress - turning my nose up at it, I reluctantly added it to the pile to try on. I had had an image in my head about what type of dress and it was a dress with NO skirt, however after trying on the Agnes dress first I literally couldn't take it off - I loved it so so much.

GROOM'S ATTIRE | To go with the general laid back theme of the wedding I was desperately against tails for the men and wanted just a nice 3-piece suit for the gents. Both me and Mark love the casual-ness of the colour light grey and thought it'd make a nice balance to the general theme of the wedding and colour scheme, black can sometimes be a bit harsh! We purchased the suits from, believe it or not, Next! The suit jacket, trousers and waistcoats cost little more than £100 and are all machine washable. We decided to buy all the suits as it was a nice gift to give to the Best Man and Ushers.

THE READINGS & MUSIC | We had two readings during the church service - one had to be religious so we picked the traditional 1 Corinthians 13 - The gift of love. It was hard to pick a religious reading that actually had meaning in a more modern nature and this one was the closest we could find - it had a fab quote in it "Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things"

I let my MOH pick the non-religious reading without her telling me what it's going to be! It was exciting to have it be a complete surprise and it made me cry when I heard her give the reading - it was called On Your Wedding Day by anon. It really was beautiful.

For the entrance tune we went for 'Arrival of the Queen of Sheba' from 'Solomon' by GF Handel - I really liked the fact it was untraditional and not the normal entrance of the bride song. I also liked the way the tune was very bouncy, it seemed fun even when played on an organ.

For our first dance song, I let Mark pick this. I had no idea what it was and told him to pick a song that meant something to him for us to dance too - I have to be honest I was somewhat scared about his choice! He chose Genuwine "Differences" I wont bore you with the words, but when I listened to the words I literally melted and welled up! It meant a lot for me to hear this was Marks choice. It was pretty special.

BEAUTIFUL BRIDESMAIDS | I had 4 absolutely stunning bridesmaids who are all difference sizes but all equally gorgeous - finding a dress to do them justice was hard, especially as my sis-in-law to be and maid of honour was 6months pregnant at the time of picking the dresses! The colour scheme for the entire wedding came from the bridesmaid dresses colour - it was completely by chance we found the dresses in House of Fraser - they were classed as coral blush and had such a lovely spring-like, fresh tone to them. I had always wanted two dresses long and two dresses short for a little change. We found these ones in the sale with over 50% off and in JUST the right sizes - I'm pretty sure fate was looking down on me that day!

THE FLOWERS | I was pretty obsessed with having babies breath/gypsophila as the main flower for the wedding. I am quite a plain girl and well, as the dresses and overall theme for the wedding was rather bright, I wanted the flower to accentuate rather than take over. The lady who done my flowers was wife of our toastmaster for the wedding, Lynn Smith. She does all the flowers herself in her house and I loved the little details that she would suggest - she knew exactly what I wanted. For the bridesmaids bouquets we went for purely gyp, and for my bouquet I wanted a mixture of gyp, freesias and ranunculus - which are a lovely lovely alternative to roses and personally really pretty! For the flowers in the venue I told the florist to go nuts and chose whatever wild flowers she wanted. All my flowers were going in jam jars that were covered in tulled by me (to match my dress) so I wanted them to look rustic and casual.

THE CAKE | My cake came from, dare I say it, Marks and Spencers! All the quotes that I got for a standard 3-tier cake were silly and I wanted something quite plain as I had a cake topper especially made by a friend (Sculpted little treasures) to match me and Mark, so I wanted to make sure these were stared at- the cake was a simple vanilla sponge with cream. It tasted lush and was a bargain!

YOUR PHOTOGRAPHER | I could go on for HOURS about our photographers. Kate Gray Photography was ALWAYS my first choice. I instantly fell in love with her relaxed style of photography, the way she captured 'moments' just blew me away and I knew that no matter what else I chose on the day, I just had to have her. We were lucky enough to have her equally as amazing husband join us on the day too, who sprinkled some amazingness by bringing out some vintage cameras. I wanted something very vintage and with an old style to come out of the photo's - to tell a story, to capture the parts of the day that we didn't see and mostly to create a keepsake for us for the future and we got just that and more. I cried with happiness after seeing the photo's - Kate and Jon gave Mark and I much more than just photographs, they gave us life-long memories in a physical form and for that I can never thank them enough.

THE DETAILS & DÉCOR | WOW - too much to mention, but in short, we wanted to make the most of the venue we picked. Monkey Island has some great ground and little details that are so well worth capturing and making the most of! Paper pom poms were a massive feature and dare I say it, a hated part of my maid of honour who really did not enjoy fluffing those bad boys! They give an amazing effect - we hung them in both our wedding breakfast room and evening reception river room at all difference length. I collected jam jars for a whole year and then covered in them matching tulle as my wedding dress and these were filled with flowers on all the tables. Our centrepieces were a jewelled and candle filled birdcage, I matched these with empty wine bottles that I collected and spray painted in the same vintage cream colour and added my table names and menus. The table names were all of favourite romantic films with my favourite quotes from them. I also included some wedding ad-libs for the guests to fill in which I created and cut out -the responses were pretty darn hilarious (and rude!) photo props that I hand-cut out (it took me forever) but were well worth it, children's activity books to keep them occupied. Then in the main evening reception room we had a picnic basket filled with flipflops for the ladies, a sweetie table and a polaroid camera to go nuts with and fill in on the guestbook! There is too much to mention but I really hoped we had created a fun and pretty environment.

THE HONEYMOON | We hadn't booked anywhere until after the wedding, me and Mark aren't massive holiday people but we knew we wanted to get away 'somewhere' we decided to go away straight after the wedding to the New Forest which was stunning - our hotel room was exquisite and the location beautiful. When we came home we decided to book 10 nights away in Fuerteventura at an adults only hotel - it was stunning, so quiet and so lovely to be surrounded by white sands and a pina colada!

MEMORABLE MOMENTS | WOW - the whole day?! I adored the morning getting ready with my bridesmaids, hearing the bestman speech (although the pictures were a little much) looking at all our guests chatting , laughing on the lawn of the venue was something special to see, being able to give a speech myself, getting a scruff-o-gram from my beloved house rabbit, the dancing.... ALL The dancing, but mostly for me it was when me and Mark disappeared from the crowd to have our photos taken and I looked at my new husband and told him how happy I was, I cried with pure love, it was something really special.

ADVICE FOR OTHER COUPLES | Go with the flow. Never stress about anything, instead embrace it. What will be will be and don't ever forget that this is a celebration of your love together - it's all for you both , no-one else. That day is the first day of your future: love, laugh, smile and be thankful.

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE |

Photographer | Kate Gray Photography

Dress: | Agnes Bridal - with special thanks to Carol from Stunning Bride and Dawn Bird at Dawn Bird Bridal Alterations

Venue | Monkey Island Bray-on-Thames

Church | St Lukes Church

Credit to be given to Kelly Nash, Steph Bedwell, Ingrid Nash, Pam and Clive Williams, Emily Jones for ALL the DIY help!

Wow so gorgeous. I sooo love this wedding day.

Thanks so much to Sarah and Mark for sharing their wedding story with us today XOXO Lou