Jess and Ben had an outdoor ceremony under the apple tree in the orchard at Pangdean Barn, and had circus games and portrait drawing in the afternoon (they’re artists!).
The place was filled with flowers – every guest was asked to bring a flower, and the cake was covered in apples and pears because they got married under an apple tree.
Jess and Ben had a circus trick session for guests, which went down really well. Everyone from kids to adults had a go – and it made for brilliant photos!
Here’s their story:
“We met on an art holiday in Cornwall in Summer of 2017 and we got together the year after when we returned to the same place with the same group of people for a second year.
Jess has always loved flowers and uses them as a subject for her art, so there were always going to be lots of flowers in the wedding. We knew we wanted to get married in Spring, when flowers bloom and everything comes to life. We chose Lib (Bettie Rose) as our florist because of her natural and artistic vibe, she just “got” us on our first meeting and was the only florist we looked at! She is also big on sustainability, which was really important to us, and all our flowers are seasonal British blossoms.
We also asked our guests to each bring a flower with them for our flower table – which could be from a florist or a wildflower they picked on their way to the wedding.
We are having drawing at our wedding because we met through art, and a lot of our friends are artists, so we thought why not incorporate that into the wedding?
We didn’t want a very traditional wedding and wanted it to feel more like a big party, so we decided to have our friend Jake conduct the ceremony for us. Jake runs the drawing classes we both attend and also arranged the Cornwall holiday where we met – he’s since become a great friend of ours so he was the perfect person to marry us.
Advice we would give to couples planning their wedding is to try not to get too caught up in following tradition if it isn’t what you want to do. There’s often a certain amount of pressure but really it’s your day so stay true to what you want and have fun!
We chose Anna as our photographer because of her beautiful work, and as Ben is a huge Marvel fan, and Anna has a cat called Loki, we knew we’d click! She was also just very relaxed and fun, so we knew she’d fit in with our friends.
2022 Update!
The above was written in April 2020, when our wedding was originally due to take place and cancelled with just two weeks’ notice. Reflecting back on it now, two years later, we haven’t changed much and we still feel just the same, which is a good sign for both our wedding and our relationship, and we are just so happy to finally say We Do and celebrate our special day!
“We would recommend Anna and Todd to anyone as super approachable, friendly, professional and creative photographers who are just incredibly skilled at what they do.”
Flowers: Bettie Rose – all flowers are seasonal British blooms
Cake: Brighton Cakes
Music/ Ceilidh: Licence to Ceilidh
Circus skills: Circus Brighton
Signage: To Have and To Hire
