What a whole heap of pretty this wedding is. I love how Hayley tells her story. I love that the colour scheme happened organically and how personal the day was. It feels like such a family affair with Hayley and her Mum making all of the stationery and along with Nizz and his Mum they made the favours. I think that's one thing I love most about weddings; the joining of two families and how you become so much closer in the run up to the big day. It's wonderful when you can look around your venue and think 'we all did this together'.

Hayley The Bride: When looking for a venue we originally wanted to find somewhere that offered the option of self-catering, that was large enough for all our guests and that had outside space as we love to be outdoors. We found that self-catering was proving to be very expensive and Wynyard Hall offered to meet the many different dietary requirements of our guests which was perfect. We also fell in love with the beautiful grounds, the gorgeous ceremony room with huge mirrors covering two whole walls and the conservatory. It just felt special to us from our first visit.

The Dress

Most of my inspiration for a dress came from searching online for styles last Christmas day - I promptly made appointments at boutiques as soon as they were open again on the 27th December! My wedding dress was actually the very first dress I tried on! Joy at Mia Sposa is just lovely and the whole boutique felt so nice every time I visited (even on a rainy January morning). I loved my crystal 'Ellie' belt from Lily Bella. I always wear a belt with my dresses on a normal daily basis so a belt was a must! My silver Tiffany bracelet was a gorgeous surprise from my sister in law and her family the day before the wedding and the little turquoise heart on it matched the hearts in some of the decor perfectly.

Colour

"What is the colour scheme?" is the question I got asked most frequently before the wedding and probably the only question I didn't have an answer to! The bridesmaid dress that the girls and I chose together from Ted Baker happened to come in three pastel shades so we snapped up one of each as each girl liked a different colour by chance; the meadow type flowers I wanted came in similar shades and so over time a colour scheme began to emerge!

Getting Personal

A friend of my Mum, Kate Bailey, and I worked on a design for the wedding invitations together and my Mum patiently cut, glued and addressed every invitation. We wanted the wedding to be personal where possible and so decided to make other things ourselves. We made a hessian and lace board for the seating plan with individual luggage tags with the guests names on. At each setting we placed a wooden heart with the guests name handwritten on. My husband, mother in law and I, had a great time painting and labelling each heart a couple of nights before the wedding. I took it as a good sign that lots of our guests took their hearts home! We also made little packets of seeds as favours which included, rocket and chilli which Nizz loves to grow on the windowsill in our flat.

The Flowers

I wasn't sure on any particular types of flowers that I wanted so instead I took lots of photos of garden flowers to create an idea of what I liked and Val, our florist, interpreted this brilliantly to create the most beautiful bouquets and centrepieces. We wanted jam jars and birdcages for the centrepieces - something that looked quite delicate and I thought these looked beautiful on the day.

The Ceremony

The ceremony was by far my favourite part of the day and how I felt at that point in time will stay in my memory forever. We decided to have a civil ceremony as our families are of different religions and we wanted a way to 'meet in the middle'. We chose to write a little passage to read to each other and I'm so pleased we included this. We both thought it was going to be a daunting task writing something but just sitting down in a quiet space for a short while, it's surprising how easy it is to just write down something truthful and heartfelt about the way you feel about that person. Our nephew Rohan gave us our rings from little bags and took a while getting them out which was a lovely lighthearted moment.

Entertainment

Our evening band, Livewire, were recommended to us and we would pass on that recommendation - we got so many comments from our guests about how much fun it was to have a live band and they were extremely entertaining. The videos on their webpage are actually filmed at our wedding if you want a sneak peak!

We also thought about what we would find entertaining to do so swing ball and games outdoors as well as balloon animal/hat making indoors for our tipsy guests were the order of the day in the evening!

Cake

My family loves cake and we asked my Mum and Granny if they could make us some different flavoured cakes for our day. They kept the whole thing a secret and we couldn't believe how professional the cakes looked but yet they had so many personal touches, like the sugar flowers from the top tier of my parent's wedding cake on our top tier and a little silver shoe hidden on one of the cakes as Nizz and I met when working in a shoe shop. We also had an eggless cake made by Nizz's sister, Vimy. They made so many practice cakes prior to the wedding that many of them are still in the freezer now and I think we will have a supply of cake to last us until our first anniversary!

Photography

Having my photo taken is usually a fairly stressful time for me as I tend to ruin every photo by having my eyes closed! We looked for quite a while before I searched online for a vintage photographer and up popped SJ (Sarah-Jane Ethan Photography). Her photos were stunning - light, natural and relaxed. In person she is amazing to have as a photographer - we loved her from first meeting her and our guests felt the same. We adore our wedding photos and feel like they capture so many of the smallest yet most significant parts of our day.

Tradition

I'm quite a sentimental person and I would say that while there are so many beautiful modern ideas for weddings, some of my favourite memories from the wedding were the traditional aspects, such as my family decorating our car the morning after the wedding (cue a Crystal Maze like experience when we switched on the fans and confetti went everywhere!) and Nizz's Mum giving us both a miniature lemon to carry on the day for protection and luck (mine was pinned in a piece of fabric under the skirt of my dress). We also wanted to include little nods to both our families' cultures, for example serving Indian sweets alongside our wedding cake, and these touches made our wedding feel unique to us. We loved the day - it was all about family and fun and we couldn't have asked for anything better.