Pretty, pretty, pretty overload this afternoon. Yay.

WWW readers Kelly and Alistair's wedding is all fabulous florals and delicious cake. They decided to marry on the 3rd May 2014 with a gorgeous marquee reception at Burwash Weddings in Cambridgeshire.

One of my favourite parts of this wedding has to be the style. With Kelly wearing a romantic tulle gown and Alistair donning a quirky bow tie look. Perfect.

Thanks so very much to Victoria Mitchell Photography for sharing her lovely imagery today.

THE PROPOSAL | A wonderful surprise, after anticipating a possible proposal on our third year anniversary, Christmas and then at New Year, I definitely wasn't expecting it. Alistair emailed me at work to ask if I could take a day off so that we could celebrate Valentine's Day so I duly booked the time off work. On the day I received a romantic message in a bottle via the postman in the morning which instructed me to pack an overnight bag and be ready for a taxi pick up that afternoon. I was impressed by the Valentines effort as usually we opted for an M&S Dine in Meal offer with a DVD, but I still didn't suspect.

We had a wonderful afternoon in Cambridge with lunch and a Spa afternoon at the Varsity Hotel, where he had also booked us in for an overnight stay. Dinner was booked at the Michelin stared restaurant Midsummer House, a venue we had always talked about going on a very special occasion...... Whilst getting ready for dinner I could tell that he was extremely nervous and was also very quiet on the walk to the restaurant. We arrived and ordered our meal. Half way through the starters I noticed that he was still looking very nervous and starting to sweat slightly! I remember asking him if he was OK but the rest is a slight blur... I think he simply said "right I have to do this now" to which I replied "Oh my god". He followed up with a very romantic speech and then produced the ring and proposed. I was shocked, excited, and nervous all at once!! It turned out that he actually wanted to propose before dinner on the walk through the park but we kept getting interrupted by Cambridge cyclists.

THE VISION | For about a year before the proposal I had an idea of what type of wedding I wanted, something relaxed, vintage styled where we could add our own personal touches for the day. Luckily Alistair felt the same once we had started discussing what we wanted. Neither of us wanted a big wedding, rather simply to have our close family and friends around us to help celebrate the day.

THE PLANNING PROCESS | We had a trip to Cuba already booked for shortly after the proposal so were able to discuss a few ideas. I am super organised (some would say maybe a bit too organised!) so I was keen to get planning immediately. Both of us decided that we didn't really want a long engagement but in order to save enough money and the fact we wanted a spring wedding we decided to wait until the following year. Alistair has a Catholic background so we chose to have our wedding at our local Church in Cambridge. Once we had decided this we looked at venues around Cambridgeshire that were close enough to the church.

Once we had the church and venue sorted everything fell into place. I did get a bit carried away with various wedding blogs and Pinterest pages, which on one hand are a great help but also throw up so many ideas that I felt my brain was going to explode.

BUDGET | We had a fairly good expectation on what sort of budget we would need as we have been lucky enough to have been invited to a few weddings over the years, however the reality of how much it could cost still shocked us! However, we were able to manage our budget well by making a concerted effort to shop around and get the most for our money.

THE VENUE | Our wedding was a Catholic ceremony at Our Lady & The English Martyrs in central Cambridge. The church is beautiful and has a Cathedral like feel to it inside. After the service we had our wedding breakfast and reception at 'The Secret Garden Wedding Marquee' at Burwash Manor in Barton, Cambridgeshire.

THE DRESS & ACCESSORIES | My dress was found online by designer Lou Lou bridal but purchased at The Tailors Cat bridal shop in Cambridge. My shoes were nine west. I don't wear a lot of accessories generally so I just had a silver bangle that was a 21st Birthday present from two of my bridesmaids and doubled as my something old. Alistair surprised me on the morning of our wedding day by sending a gift of diamond earrings that matched my engagement ring, so I wore these as my something new. My hair tiara was a bargain from Glitzy secrets.

FINDING THE DRESS | I didn't find this stressful at all. As I have previously mentioned I had spent quite a bit of time looking at various wedding bit and bobs online for about a year before the actual proposal and luckily some I had pinned to my trusty Pinterest page.

Looking at various wedding shop websites in Cambridge and Bedfordshire I came across 'the dress', and made a note of the designer 'lou lou bridal'. From images on the Internet it look amazing, traditional but with a vintage type feel. The price was also agreeable as I didn't want to spend thousands of pounds on a dress.

As soon as we were engaged I tracked down the dress to a shop in Berkhamsted and went to try it on for the day with my Mum. It was the first dress I tried on and I knew instantly that this was the dress I wanted. I did try on a few more and lots of different styles but none compared to this dress. Unfortunately I didn't find the bridal shop at all helpful or friendly, I had imagined them to be excited about my engagement and wedding plans but they were not really interested and didn't even offer us a drink of water. I decided not to buy the dress on this day but shopped around and found the lovely ladies at the Tailors Cat who also had the dress. I had one fitting with them and ordered it straight away. They were amazing and made it a great experience, and I managed to get the dress £250 cheaper. So it's a good idea to shop around.

GROOM'S ATTIRE | This proved more an event than the wedding dress.

After a few purchases from the high street, Alistair still wasn't happy. The colours and fit didn't seem the one for us or fit in with the look we wanted for the day.

So we opted for a tailor made suit, this was slightly more expensive but it meant he could choose the exact colour, fit and add some personal details. The final suit fitted perfectly and really stood out and can of course be used for many more weddings etc. for the next few years.

THE READINGS & MUSIC | With a Catholic ceremony we were guided by the priest on the number of readings to have and what they should be. With this we decided to have an equal number of friends take part in the readings, and gave them each a reading.

Our wedding music was mixture of traditional and non-traditional, I didn't have the traditional bridal march but instead choose the song 'Suddenly', which featured in Neighbours when Scott and Charlene got married (a long time ago!). The organist at the wedding played a piano version of the song with was perfect. Whilst signing the register we chose to have a soloist singing Ave Maria, which added a nice touch as she sang from the balcony and her voice beautifully echoed throughout the Church. It also helped keep the congregation entertained whilst we were doing the paperwork.

We deliberately chose hymns that were well known and ones that we all used to sing along with in school assemblies. We hoped this would help everyone feel comfortable as they would know the words and be able to sing along.

BEAUTIFUL BRIDESMAIDS | My bridesmaids were all friends from school that have been my closest friends for over fifteen years. They were all amazing in helping through the whole process and super excited to take part.

Finding the dresses was quite a difficult task, I had an image in my mind that a vintage floral type tea dress would look fantastic and on paper I think this was a good idea.

Once we all got together and hits the shops it was obvious that this wasn't the best idea as not all the dresses suited all the bridesmaids. In the end we opted for some navy (my favourite colour) Ted Baker dresses from John Lewis, this also meant that my male bridesmaid could easily purchase a navy suit that matched perfectly.

THE FLOWERS | These were not a high priority for either of us, we buy flowers every now and then for the house, usually supermarket bunches or daffodils, but neither of us have a love or eye for flowers so this was left until the last minute.

We decided that with the venue style, a fixed garden marquee in a country style garden, that we wanted something simple, ideally flowers that hopefully wouldn't blow the budget! I met with a couple of florists, one of which was super expensive, but thankfully the other seemed to offer exactly what we wanted.

We were conscious of the cost of having elaborate flowers for our guests' tables and the fact that it was highly likely few would be taken by home by our guests and therefore most likely would be discarded the morning after. Along with this we wanted some flower decoration in the church to add a personal touch. Eventually we decided on some gypsophila pew ends for the church which we then took with us to the reception and used as table decorations. The simplicity of the gypsophila worked perfectly against the beauty of the Church as well as feel in keeping with how our venue looked.

For the bouquets and button holes again we wanted something 'country garden handpicked flowers', so I left this is the hands of the florist, who mixed together some foliage, gypsophila and garden daisies. And that was it, very basic but they fitted amazingly well with the venue and day itself.

THE CAKE | Neither of us are fans of traditional wedding fruit cake and I am not too keen on icing and marzipan. One of our favourite cakes is Victoria sponge, so the decision was easy. I only contacted my wedding cake supplier who fortunately was booked up and would have charged £750. After this and having looked at many images online and lots and lots of recipes I decided that I would make the cake myself! Fortunately I changed my mind after my friend Natalie offered to make the cake for us, we made the sponges together at her house a few weeks in advance of the wedding and she added the final touches on the morning of the wedding.

We were so happy with the finished result and it tasted delicious, all for a cost of £25. I'm very glad that I didn't decide to go ahead with taking this task on myself but having helped a little bit the sponges I did help a little bit.

YOUR PHOTOGRAPHER | During the first few months of our engagement we visited a lot of wedding fairs, taking in a lot of information on suppliers and different photographers. We both agreed that we didn't want a lot of traditional portrait photos of family members standing in a row, rather have more relaxed images of the two of us with our friends and family enjoying the day.

Cost and personality were a major factor, a lot of the photographers we initially spoke to were very expensive and although looked like good photographers, neither of us felt that we would be relaxed with any of them. After trawling the internet for a very long time, I remembered a friends sisters' wedding the previous year which had some wonderful pictures. They put us in touch with Victoria, who was fantastic and after our first meeting the decision was made. She made us feel completely at ease having our pictures taken and the final photos look better than we could have hoped for.

THE DETAILS & DÉCOR | The wedding marquee that we hired for our wedding was a blank canvas, they supplied the venue and bar and we supplied everything else! This meant that we could add a lot of personal touches and details that were all our ideas. Again Pinterest was a help and anything and everything on the internet that looked at all like what we wanted was pinned!

The location and setting meant that we leaned towards an English Afternoon Tea Party theme, which as it happened was something that we both liked and meant that the relaxed atmosphere we wanted was possible. We didn't really have a regimented colour scheme but opted to simple matching colours and styles that went together.

Our stationery throughout was very simple with a vintage feel; check out the supplier at the end. I found them on ebay but ordered directly from their website. They are based in Sheffield and produced some truly lovely items for us, from our invitations right through to the menus and are very reasonably priced for the quality they supply.

Décor in the marquee was minimal, they provided plain white linens, chairs and fairy lights around the inside of the marquee. I never knew the difference fairy lights could make to a venue until our wedding day! As well as this, our table decorations were jam jars we had spent a year collecting (and eating the contents) which we filled with gypsophila bouquets. We didn't add anything else except individual menus and our favours. Our favours were fudge hearts (from Etsy.com) in personalised 'Alistair & Kelly' brown sweet bags which I also found on ebay and were another bargain.

Dotted around the venue we added some vintage signs some personalised from ebay and some other generic signs. In the garden the venue already had some tables and chairs set up so we just added some deck chairs and hay bales with blankets for extra seating.

We didn't have a 'disco' as such but opted for a Spotify playlist on our laptop. This worked out great, we placed the laptop on a small 'DJ' table surrounded by fairy lights and some hired disco lighting for the dancefloor.

THE HONEYMOON | New York has always been top of our list of destinations for a break away, but cost and lack of beach/poolside time for me has always meant other destinations have won through and we have jetted off somewhere else. However, we decided straight away that New York was a must, but we would also tag on a sunshine destination afterwards. We trawled the internet looking and different locations that we could fly to directly from NYC in a reasonable time. Antigua and the Caribbean popped up, after investigating further this was the perfect option, we treated ourselves to an five star all inclusive resort 'Galley Bay' which exceeded our expectations and provided the much needed relaxation after the hustle and bustle of New York.

Our honeymoon was probably the only aspect of the wedding where the budget was forgotten!!

MEMORABLE MOMENTS | Wow this is quite difficult..... but we would say

Our journey from the church to the venue on a traditional routemaster bus, after the ceremony. It was great to catch up with friends and family over a large glass of fizz.

Getting ready in the morning with my bridesmaid, I was very relaxed with no nerves; this was surprise to everyone including myself!

Meeting each other at the aisle, it was lovely to see how excited we both were for the day.

Arriving at the reception venue, we had been in the day before to set up a few things but when we arrived all the final touches had been put in place and we it looked fantastic.

There are just too many things that stand out to choose only a few!

ADVICE FOR OTHER COUPLES | We would say that planning is key, it is surprising how much goes into organising a wedding, especially if like us our reception venue is a blank canvas meaning you have to source your own suppliers for almost everything. Be clear on your budget, we were taken aback by our initial vision of what our wedding would cost and was in shock after the first venue we saw! If you start with a clear understanding of how much you feel comfortable spending on your wedding and which parts of the day are most important to you both, this will help a lot with your planning.

We had a year to plan and lots of lists were made, there is so much information out there on the internet that if you take in too much you will find yourself overwhelmed and starting to panic. I found that once a decision on something was made I avoided looking at anything to do with that again, as you'll always find another blog/image that could be better or different. You'll end up going around in circles and questioning everything you've already agreed.

In the end we had the wedding we wanted, all our friends and family said it was the perfect day. Remember, they don't what isn't there or you have missed, even if you do, so don't panic. We had a couple of minor mishaps on the day which were out of our hands, but we didn't let it spoil our day and to be honest barely noticed.

Finally get on ebay, we found some lovely personalised touches on here from small signs to our wedding favours bags, these were a fantastic find and very reasonably priced.

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE |

Venue | Burwash Weddings

Photographer | Victoria Mitchell Photography

Wedding dress | Lou Lou Bridal + C ambridge Bridalwear

Florist | The Flowerhouse

Disco lighting | Pro Event

Caterer | Tom's Kitchen

Groom suit | Tailormade London

Bow tie | Mrs Bowtie

Stationery | The Vows

Oh the loveliness.

Thanks so very much to Kelly and Alistair for sharing their wedding story with us here at WWW XOXO Lou