Let’s Brunch

Arriving at Lyde Court I was greeted by Lydia and her Bride Tribe dressed in Avacado pyjamas setting up a temporary tattoo station, a limbo pole and water melon bowling… it was obvious this day was going to be an absolute cracker!

Every aspect of Lydia and Andy’s wedding oozed with personality and humour, around each corner there seemed to be little details celebrating everything that they love… I mean there can’t be many people that have based their wedding theme around pizza, gnomes, llamas and pineapples right!?… but these guys smashed it! I witnessed dancing on crutches, confetti swallowing, split trousers and some rather intricate illustrations off genitalia. You’d struggle to top that to be fair.

So here it is, Lydia and Andy’s beautifully crazy wedding, a little of what I saw:

Supplier shout outs:

Venue: Lyde Court
Flowers: Hopmarket Flowers
Hair: Claire & Lena
Make-up: Ruth Currie
Musician: Tina V
Sax: Gemma Wild
DJ: Chamberlain Events
Videographer: Adam Lyduch
Cake: Cakes by Karen
Rings: Handmade by us at Quarter Workshop

Bride & Groom Q&A

How did you meet?

We met at a mutual friends Halloween Party! I was dressed up as a Scarecrow and Andy turned up unprepared with zero costume… Luckily, Calv (Best Man on our day) had a good stock of bin bags and Andy was transformed – wearing a sort-of bin bag nappy all night!

We spoke briefly on the night – mainly about how I tea-stained my socks especially for the occasion, but having barely got any of his attention I did the dreaded and drunk-texted Calvin asking who his ‘fit ginger friend’ was, followed by a series of head-in-hands ‘oops’ messages the next morning!

Luckily it worked and a few days later I had a facebook friend request and message from Andy, nicknaming me ‘Teabags Taylor’!

Tell me a bit about yourselves

We both have the Monday-Friday office routine (Lydia in Marketing and Andy a Quantity Surveyor) so it’s all about the weekends for us! Andy is super-sporty and this is something I’m learning to love too, so we tend to gym and then ruin all our hard work with Brunch in town! It’s become such a routine that we ended up choosing classic Brunch dishes for our wedding breakfast!

To be honest, most of our hobbies and social life are centred on FOOD… Andy is obsessed with Pizza – he makes incredible ones himself but we also love going out for dinner, where pizza or burgers are the usual go-to options, washed down with beer & cocktails. This obviously also had to be part of our day, so we ditched canapes for slices from the wood-fired oven!

Aside from food, we love getting away for city breaks when we can! Our fave to date was our first ever holiday together to Barcelona but I think Lisbon comes a close second – highly recommended.

The most important one is spending time with our family and friends – we’ve got a brilliant bunch and loads of kids in the family so we just have so much fun!

How did the proposal go down?

Andy surprised me with a trip to Florence. He’d told me the dates to book off work and gave me a few hints along the way but the big reveal came a week before our flight.

It was in the back of my mind that he might propose but I wrote the idea off fairly quickly because

a) he wasn’t going to take a backpack and…

b) he happily let me rummage through his case when we got there… SO WHERE WAS THE RING!?!

On our last day, we climbed to the top of the Duomo and he took out his wallet and said ‘I’ve got something for you’, then out came a tiny ring box! He gave it me to open and I saw my absolute dream yellow diamond ring. I kissed him straight away and then he said ‘Would you like to Marry me, Lydia?’ – it was amazing!

How did you choose Lyde Court as your wedding venue?

I found Lyde Court quite quickly in my searching and was completely WOWED by photos of the main barn. We kept searching for alternatives but nothing was quite matching up to Lyde so we went for a look around and were instantly sold. It had everything we wanted – a huge, beautiful barn, loads of quirkiness and accommodation on-site for our friends and family to party late and stay overnight.

Vibe & Style

We just wanted our day to be FUN! We wanted to make it ‘ours’ in as many ways as possible – from the colours, to the food, to the music – and even the stationery!

The main part of the day that I had imagined was a summer party vibe for our reception drinks – I desperately wanted everyone to enjoy mingling with games and music on the lawn and we were SO LUCKY that the sun shined all afternoon on a day sandwiched between two cold, rainy days!

We didn’t have a theme as such – we just wanted bright colour and fun. Luckily, Andy is super creative and my Mom is a dab hand with a sewing machine!

Andy hand-drew our invitations with a series of random items that have meaning to us (such as a Halloween pumpkin, a garden Gnome, a Llama and a Pineapple). These items then became our table centrepieces. He also drew our amazing table plan!

My bridesmaids and flower girls were wearing hot pink with bright yellow flowers, so this formed the colour scheme. My Mom made custom bunting and banners for us – allowing us to avoid too much of the ‘Mr & Mrs’ soppyness!

For the venue flowers; the bridal party sat in our Air Bnb the night before the wedding filling pink glass jars with multicoloured flowers I picked up from Tesco! Lyde Court is a fab venue that really doesn’t need much dressing up – another good reason for choosing it!

What was you best decision during the wedding planning?

I think one of the best decisions we made in our planning was to put ourselves first! So we made a point of making sure that every single decision was something that we wanted, without worrying about what other people might think, or breaking ‘traditions’. I think this made our day really authentic as we found it difficult to find things to buy that we actually 100% liked so ended up making everything ourselves!

What was the hardest decision?

I genuinely think choosing a dress was the hardest part of planning! I watched so many TV shows that glamorise the experience and it was lovely, but SO difficult! What I had in mind initially was the polar opposite of what I ended up choosing, but the problem was that I liked too many completely different styles! In the end I had to shortlist six, try them all on on the same day and make myself make a decision!

I will say, finding Andy’s suit was equally as challenging though!

Oh, and MUSIC choices! Deciding what’s playing while you officially become husband and wife is sooooo difficult. There was so many songs we wanted to include but couldn’t because the lyrics were about a break-up or something!

What were your favourite memories of the day?

Both of us absolutely loved the ceremony – and we always thought that would just be ‘the boring bit!’.

There was also an amazing moment in the morning where my naughty nan (who had apparently been told not to go wandering) walked by the White Room where I was getting ready! It was so classic her that I loved it though and called her over for a quick chat through the door while I was still in my PJs!

Weirdly for two people who hate PDAs, we also loved the part of the day where we went off for our photos. It’s a nice opportunity to spend time together and have a laugh! You’re just like ‘is this actually happening?!’

What advice would you have for any couples planning their wedding?

Our best advice would be to just ‘do you!’ – Personalise AS MUCH as you can for the best memories.

And trust people to help! You invest so much time, money and effort into the day that you want it to be perfect, but you have to trust your bride tribe, suppliers and venue team – they all want to do their best for you!