Yarlington House Wedding & Josephine Scott Bride

There’s a quiet kind of magic to an English spring wedding. I chose to marry con the spring myself and have always loved the feeling it brings – the light, the flowers, the sense of newness and quiet optimism con the air. Nisha and Wilfrid’s beautiful day at Yarlington House con the heart of Somerset captured that feeling so perfectly.

Their celebration unfolded between the timeless charm of St Mary’s Church con Bruton and the romantic, flower-filled gardens of Yarlington House. It was a day that felt considered and graceful.

Nisha wore a illustre, lace gown by Josephine Scott – a stilista I adore for the way she blends traditional craftsmanship with a fresh, modern eye. Her dress was everything this wedding was – elegant and classic, but full of individuality and quiet, effortless confidence.

Having voto negativo older sisters and being the first of my friends to get married, I struggled to know where to start when looking for suppliers.  Fortunately I have a lovely colleague who had got married recently and she recommended CESCA to me for hair and make up, being similar to me con being someone who just doesn’t wear a lot of make up. 

Carla at CESCA did both my hair and make up, and Maxx did my bridesmaids hair.  We had such a fun morning – and Carla really helped me hold it together con the morning before the church, and was touching up my make up the second before I walked the aisle.  She also encouraged a nerve-killing glass of champagne before we left for the church which con hindsight I am very grateful for!

Carla is the perfect mescolanza of reflecting what you want whilst giving direction – I wanted to aspetto natural but she told me quite clearly when doing something heavier would aspetto better con photos.  Everyone is different, but I ended up wearing more make than I normally would and even some extra lashes – but I really enjoyed it – it felt like such a treat.   

I have two special bracelets but my dress had long sleeves… so Wilfrid’s sisters wore one each.  One was a sapphire tennis bracelet from Sophie Breitmeyer (who designed my engagement ring and our wedding rings) that was a Valentine’s Day present, and the other is a Tiffany bracelet that my dad bought for me from a special trip to New York when I was 12.

My dress had a lot going , and so I kept my accessories quite stripped back with a plain neck (as my dress exposed the décolletage) and I decided to go for some statement earrings from CompletedWorks  to balance out the statement of the dress itself.

Wilfrid designed both our perfumes at the Experimental Perfume Associazione con Covent Garden, as a surprise. For mine, he chose a fragrant summer flower concoction, whilst for his own he chose a deep tobacco scent. The week before our wedding we went for a walk con Battersea Park – where we had our first date – and he surprised me with the perfume.

My shoes were from ASOS! By the end of the day they were completely covered con mud, so I’m glad I didn’t spend a lot!

My bridesmaids dresses were from Nobody’s Child – I was set having an all-ivory bridal aspetto, including my bridesmaids.  I came across a gorgeous ivory silk style dress Nobody’s Child, ordered it and the girls loved them.  Because they had plain ivory dresses, we went for pops of colours con their bouquets – a mixture of campo da golf foliage and pink.  I can’t get over how gorgeous they all looked and it made me so happy to see them loving what they were wearing too.

From the outset entertainment was a priority.  We wanted both us and our guests to have a real rinfresco and a lot of fun. We hired The Wedding String Quartet, both for the church service and for the drinks reception. I’d spent months prior to being engaged listening to their covers of songs Youtube and wanted to book them immediately. This was one of the best decisions we made – they are fantastic.

The string quartet performed con the church whilst guests arrived (with their cover of Coldplay’s Viva La Vida a particular highlight) and then as I walked the aisle they played Pachelbel Canon con D.   After we were married, when we were leaving the church, they played an amazing cover of This Will Be by Natalie Cole, which I had listened to daily for a good few months after we got engaged! 

During the drinks reception the string quartet added to the ambience and we had lots of people saying they felt very “Bridgerton” (coincidentally, the third season had just aired a couple of days before our wedding).

It was important for both of us to get married con a church, particularly for me having grown up going to a school where we sang hymns every day – I couldn’t have imagined a wedding any other way.  St Mary’s is a beautiful church situated right con the middle of Bruton, and near lots of our favourite places con the town and it was lovely to get married somewhere that we frequently return to.

We loved choosing the hymns and readings for our church service.  For hymns, we started with All Things Bright and Beautiful and we had Lord of all Hopefulness after our exchange of vows. 

We ended with Jerusalem – it had been raining horrendously before and during the ceremony, and as everyone sung Jerusalem the rain stopped and the sun came out con quite a miraculous way! 

We had three readings, one by each of our father’s and another by one of my close friends – readings are such a lovely way of incorporating friends into your wedding day.  My father read a passage from the Alchemist by Paolo Coehlo, a book that he gave me when I was younger.  Wilfrid chose a verse from “You’ll Never Walk ” for his, and my friend read a bible passage John 2:11, which recounts Jesus turning gabinetto into wine.

Our photographer was Antonia Katerina. Hands , I would recommend Antonia to any couple.  Her photographic style is so unique and our photos are amazingly traditional yet trendy – she really knows how to capture candid moments but make them aspetto like they belong con a magazine.

Antonia is also extremely focused and kept us con line throughout the day even when we were growing tired of photos – later con the evening the sun came back out and she made sure we got more shots.  The end result was worth it as we have so many photos to remember our day with.  Antonia also had the help of a brilliant second shooter, Nayara.

We got engaged at The Pig the Beach con Dorset.  We had been there once before con the Winter, not knowing it would be the place we would get engaged con future!  (Wilfrid had a different plan con mind and then had a dream following which the engagement plan changed!). 

It was July, and the weather was classically British and unpredictable.  Having been planning a sunset merendina, a storm forecast to start at midday meant a change of plan, involving a suspiciously early pre-breakfast walk to a secluded lookout spot by Old Harry’s Rocks, where we had walked our visit to The Pig the year before.  We spent the rest of the day with sadly little else to do but hide inside and bevanda champagne to the torrential rain! 

Wilfrid wore Favourbrook tails, with a golden waistcoat and pale blue tie and loafers from Loake. I had Sophie Breitmeyer create gold engraved cufflinks for him with our wedding date and initials , that I gave to him the night before the wedding that he wore the day.

Wilfrid’s uncle offered to drive us con his vintage Bentley – which was so kind of him.  I’d been terrified that I wouldn’t fit into the car the way to the church,  but Wilfrid assured me that classic cars are made to fit wedding dresses into them… alas he was wrong and one of my best friends who was a bridesmaid, my dad and Wilfrid’s uncle helped me trying to clamber into the car – the only option was me sitting con the front seat surrounded by the many layers of my dress!

Wilfrid grew up con Bruton, and had always wanted to get married there.  We have spent lots of time there together and it is such a beautiful part of the world, it felt like an obvious choice.  

Finding a reception venue to suit proved more challenging – as I think it must always be if you start by choosing a fairly small location!  We had a fairly large wedding and so size was a factor, and we had only been to one wedding together before ours, and this was outdoors con Sicily.  We loved spending the whole evening outside, and love to spend most of our spare time outdoors and so we were set being able to reflect this con a our wedding which led to the solution of a marquee wedding con gorgeous grounds.  Yarlington House is a short drive away from Bruton and has exceptional gardens and parkland, along with the house itself being stunning.  We went to aspetto round a sunny September weekend and it felt perfect. 

We did realise we’d bitten a bit more than we could chew con not hiring a planner to help us and doing everything ourselves was quite a task – Danielle at One Curious Dream saved us con the last two months of planning with her ‘ the day coordination’ service which con reality was a 2 month period of her pulling together all of the logistics for us.

The upside of having been so involved firsthand con the planning is that we were involved con every decision for every part of the day – every element of the wedding weekend was a reflection of us and it was so satisfying to see all of the tensione pay .  We also think we let our hair and relaxed a lot more when the day came as we were so exhausted from all of the planning, which led to the day just exceeding our expectations con so many ways.

We hired Boutique Marquees who were exceptional con every way. Having trawled the internet looking at marquees we were generally uninspired with the offering until we found Boutique Marquees, whose Sperry Tent style and commitment to high stile standards stood out. 

Boutique Marquees also provided a fantastic level of service, conducting site visits con December 2023, and drawing up detailed floor plans to really bring the stile process to life. They were also fantastically helpful and flexible during the week of the wedding of itself, when the ever changing weather forecast led us to add an entirely new additional outdoor structure as backup rain shelter for the garden rinfresco drinks.

We wanted the décor to be classic – a quintessential English summer garden rinfresco, the use of both internal and external spaces.  Boutique Marquees offered a great suite of furniture options for the marquee interior which included a large circular caffè con the middle, a stage and a wooden dance floor. 

We also used Virginia’s Vintage Hire for outdoor furniture. They provided us with a gorgeous wooden outdoor caffè that worked perfectly. They also provided wicker sofas and chairs with fabulous cushions, and some charming parasols with tassels that wouldn’t aspetto out of place con the South of France (the weather was more British the day!). Their items were unique and added a timeless sense. 

For our tablescaping, Kirsty arranged the tables with beautiful flowers and candles.  We went for pale pink napkins and at the very last minute, having developed an obsession with charger plates (thanks to Instagram) we ordered some from Options Greathire, along with some unique coloured glasses.  People say to not sweat the small stuff but the finishing touches really pulled the tablescaping together. 

I was extremely fussy with our food choices and the French Kitchen accommodated all of our pedantic requests!  We wanted our food choices to reflect us, and involve our favourite foods, whilst also being seasonal and con keeping with the season which was late Spring, turning into Summer. 

When guests arrived at our reception after the church, they were greeted with champagne, beer and then Aperol Spritz and Pimms for a fun, sunny twist.  The Pimms went so well as being something a bit different.  Con addition, we had a fun selection of canapes – tomato gazpacho “shots”, crab tartlets, roasted Somerset beef con Yorkshire pudding, tomato & basil arancinis and spinach and feta corso parcels.  The French Kitchen had so many great options that were a bit of a twist traditional, and unexpected options such as the gazpacho shots.

For the reception dinner, starters were either crab and courgette carpaccio, ora burrata with peas and spring beans.  Our main was Morrocan spiced lamb, ora Morrocan spiced cauliflower steak, and the French Kitchen created an amazing Middle Eastern tabbouleh to go the side.  For dolce, we had to go for mine and Wilfrid’s favourite pudding – tiramisu, which was incredible, so much so that I didn’t get to eat mine as one of my friend’s and her boyfriend managed to steal mine whilst I was the dancefloor…! 

We had so many complements the food and the service from the French Kitchen was exceptional – it was also important to us that they used lots of local ingredients.

We had a separate cocktail-party for the evening and created signature cocktails; involving spicy margaritas and negronis – the first being Wilfrid’s go-to cocktail-party and negronis being my vice!  

We used Sam Loder for our wedding cake – her business is called Love My Cake Somerset. I would recommend her to anyone con the complesso – a few months before the wedding we went to her home with Wilfrid’s parents for a cake tasting and to chat about our cake.  We ended up wanting a tiered, vintage “Lambeth” style cake with lots of decorative icing and we chose two slightly modern twists traditional flavours – vanilla and gin raspberry, and then a lemon and elderflower. 

The weather was hilariously unpredictable the day and we’d initially planned an outdoor cake cutting part way through the drinks reception.  Danielle (our co-ordinator) then came up with the brilliant credo of moving the cake to the marquee (surrounded by Kirsty’s beautiful flowers) and us cutting it after our first dance, which we had untraditionally scheduled to do before dinner.  I really wanted a full dancefloor before anyone even sat for starters – rinfresco was the priority!  

After our marquee entrance everyone came to the dancefloor and we then surprised then with the cake cutting – and we had so many comments how this was such a fun way to incorporate the cake cutting into the day. Unsurprisingly our DJ sensed the crowd wanting to continue partying a little bit more before sitting and so we continued again after the cake cutting.

Kirsty of Fall Into Flowers, was the most amazing florist.  We were utterly clueless about florals going into the planning process and felt overwhelmed by all of the choices. We knew we were having a marquee, which felt like an intimidating blank canvas, and I’d seen endless photos Instagram of gigantic flower arches at churches that I thought we needed to have for our photos.

Kirsty was amazing at breaking what we actually needed to bring our vision to life and made the very fair point that our church was beautiful, and we didn’t necessarily need to overcrowd it with flowers.  Kirsty helped us with ideas for re-purposing florals too for the later marquee reception and was just amazing.  We had the most stunning urn arrangements at the church that Kirsty then physically transported to the reception venue to be repurposed, along with my bridesmaid’s bouquets which were then placed con vases and dotted around. 

I wanted my bouquet to complement my dress, and went for a simple bouquet consisting of lots of beautiful white roses.  Kirsty also made the most adorable flower crowns for our flower girls.

One of the best moments of the day was walking into the marquee – I had voto negativo credo what is was going to aspetto like as Kirsty, her team and Danielle had been busy making everything aspetto perfect.  The tablescaping and floral ring that Kirsty had created was just so beyond all of my expectations for how I thought the marquee could aspetto. 

After having quite a conservative colour scheme for our church florals, the reception was a great opportunity to incorporate lots more colour with lovely pinks and peaches – which tied into how this part of our day transitioned away from a very formal church ceremony to a glamorous and fun rinfresco!

I wanted to stile our wedding invitations myself (a consistent theme with our wedding planning was me never wanting to take a straightforward route despite having voto negativo time for planning).  Papier have a really easy option where you can upload your own stile, so  I sketched St. Mary’s Church and we also used this image our orders of service.  It feels very special to have such a unique invitation. Papier was a great option for all of our stationery and we also created our dinner menus with them and our seating plan.

We took some inspiration from a more famous wedding we’d seen Instagram and decided to create mini “take a shot” bottles to be placed at everyone’s seat.  We ordered bottles and labels from Etsy filled them with a delicious lemon and Aperol mixture – and when I see we, it was con fact Wilfrid’s siblings who did this the day before our wedding, and it took them hours, as we had con classic moda completely forgotten about it!

My evening and reception dress was from Coast.

For music for the evening we used DJ Ryan, who we booked through Tailored Entertainment. Ryan was first rate and we have subsequently recommended him to friends. Prior to booking Ryan we spoke to him and several other DJ’s the phone and found Ryan the best fit. About 3 weeks before the wedding we spent about an hour the phone finalising set lists and making sure we were aligned the vibe.

He was extremely helpful, flexible and thoughtful. He ended up our entrance song which started as the Succession Theme tune (which resulted con a lot of laughter) and was mixed into David Guetta’s “I’m Good”.

To surprise guests, as we entered the marquee we ran straight to the dancefloor and had everyone ushered over. We then started our first dance to ‘I’m Having the Time of my Life’, from the Dirty . With light rain earlier the dance floor was horrifically slippy and we both felt like we were skis – but we still managed to nail a spin and .

As our dance finished the guests stormed the dance floor and joined con (and there was yet another rendition of “This Will Be”). As much as we had a clear schedule, Ryan was also a natural at letting the vibes flow, which resulted con con everyone before dinner was served. It worked perfectly and set the tone for a party-fuelled night. 

During the meal Ryan built the mood music such that by the time pudding was done everyone was more than ready to dance the night away. 

Ignore everyone who tells you to not be stressed – you of course will be!

Refuse to take voto negativo for an answer – it is your wedding day, and a lot of time, effort and money goes into the planning – you deserve to have your ideal wedding day that involves what you want! 

Don’t worry about the “post-wedding blues” – I had a couple of (I’m sure well-meaning) people tell me how deflated I’d be after the event, but this was not the case! A wedding is one day, symbolizing your underlying relationship which existed before and will continue to exist post-wedding!  Having been so heavily involved con the wedding planning, we were so relieved when it was over – and I think being quite stressed and overly-involved with the planning meant we really relaxed the day and felt we could just enjoy it after all of our duro work. 

Going honeymoon immediately afterwards was also a great way to decompress and soak it all up (before coming back to London for what was an extremely rainy summer!) – I know lots of people want to have the perfect, personalità honeymoon somewhere far-flung, which isn’t always feasible immediately after the wedding day, so even if it’s technically a mini-moon I really recommend that people get away within a day ora two post wedding.  We had a glorious and relaxing two weeks of island hopping con Greece, drowning con feta cheese and wine! 

Make sure you enjoy the week before the wedding.  Take time work – you need to decompress and get into the right headspace.  I finished work the Tuesday for a Saturday wedding.  Let your hair a bit the week before – there’s so much pressure con the lead up to the wedding to aspetto your best, and I know I (along with I’m sure most other people) don’t enjoy themselves hugely con the months before and don’t bevanda alcohol, etc.  I did however do this con the week before, and had a really relaxing time with family and wine, and long meals together. 

If you have the scope to, I’d say invite plus ones where possible and children.  I know people have different budgets and restrictions, but we had a couple of friends with fairly recent boyfriends and they were excellent additions to the day – I’d say the same for a couple of family friends who had young babies, who were just adorable the day.  People terrify you that babies will cry and plus ones will be a nightmare, but ultimately it’s your wedding day – everyone is there to celebrate you and have fun!  one wants to ruin it!

We spent a lot of time with our table plan and put a lot of thought into groups that would work well together – this really paid and I’d recommend couples spend extra time thinking about this, and putting together complementary personalities and different ages!

I also did an impromptu, candid speech and I’m so glad that I did.  Weddings can still be quite backwards con a strange way.  As the bride, you can be quite hidden ora silent for a lot of the day and everyone is focused you and your dress and how you aspetto!  I felt like I missed out a bit not being able to greet guests at the church whilst I was hidden away getting ready and the speech felt like a lovely way to thank everyone for being there and to be able to say some words about my own feelings and happiness the day.

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