Inside: A Blissful Garden Wedding In Devon

From meeting at work to their sunset proposal and magical Deer Park Country House wedding in Devon, the couple’s story is one of love, laughter, and cherished memories. Discover all the details of Lauren and Dan’s dream wedding here.

The Story So Far..

Dan and I, like many other couples, met at work. We worked alongside each other and became good friends. I moved departments and we didn’t see each other as much then a few years down the line he asked me on a date. Fast forward 3 years and we bought our first house and got our beautiful puppy Bonnie. A few months after we moved in Dan and I went to Crete after the covid restrictions finally started to ease. Dan proposed on the beach at sunset, just him and I with the most beautiful orange sky. The ring is a single oval cut diamond on a thin gold band, all my dreams came true.

The Venue

We got married at the beautiful Deer Park Country House in Devon. We looked at hundreds of venues online but when we stumbled across The Deer Park on Instagram we both instantly loved it. The white manor house and Italian gardens were exactly what we had envisioned for our big day. As we were going down to Dorset for my Birthday in late December, we decided to view the venue on route. We were blown away the minute we saw it, even on a rainy grey day in December the venue was exquisite. I could instantly see our wedding day unravelling as we were shown around the extensive grounds.

The Fashion

I knew I didn’t want to spend thousands on a wedding dress I was only going to wear once. I had seen a dress on House of CB in their bridal range that I loved, it looked just like a Vivienne Westwood, simple, classy and elegant, which was exactly what I wanted, but I thought I best go through the typical process of trying on dresses and see if there was anything I liked?! I wanted to have the full experience after all.

My mum, my maid of honour, Emily and I went to a little wedding boutique in Godalming and I can’t lie, I just didn’t enjoy the process at all. There was nothing I liked or that suited me at all, the dresses were all so heavy and uncomfortable. I could have tried other shops but I thought why not see what the dress online was like, so I decided to order the House of CB dress and try it on.

The dress arrived and we had a try on at my Mum’s, as soon as I put it on I knew it was my wedding dress. I had the dress altered to fit me perfectly and I couldn’t have been happier. There are so many beautiful dresses out there but it is so easy to get caught up in the whole thing and feel like you need to spend thousands.

I styled the dress with a lace trim veil, satin bow Jimmy Choo heels and a Simone Rocha Bag. The veil was custom made for me by my seamstress. I wanted vintage & classic style like most Viviene Westwood dresses are styled with but with a modern edge with the lace trim. I saw Francesca Hung wear the Jimmy Choos on her wedding day and I searched high and low for them. When they arrived the colour of the bow matched my dress perfectly.

Initially, I wasn’t too fussed about having a second dress. I was very much in the mindset of – if i find one that’s right then great but I’m ok with doing just one look. I saw the dress online, also from House of CB, and thought wow! Such a contrast to the day dress and how fun would it be to do something lacey for the evening. I know most people do a short dress for the evening but that just didn’t feel like me, I’m not a short dress kind of girl.

My beautiful Mum was my something blue in a Self-Portrait dress and Mach & Mach heels.

Jewellery

I wore my Mum’s pearls that she wore on her wedding day as my something borrowed. My brother and sister-in-law bought me matching pearl earrings from Aspinall of London which were my something new.

The Bridal Party

My bridesmaids wore stunning lemon-yellow dresses from Billy J Bridal. I gifted them each a personalised box with Meeka dressing gowns to wear whilst getting ready, these were pale blue to match the colour theme and personalised with their names. They also had little pj’s and slippers, a candle and some pearl earrings to wear on the day, personalised fans and a Chanel compact mirror each.

My 2 year old Nephew was our page boy, he walked down the aisle with his Mum in his little tux, he was on a vintage car the venue had (he loves cars) which made everyone smile.

Transportion

We got married at the venue so no wedding cars were required, but we did have my Dad’s vintage Jaguar, this was really special as he has had this car for as long as I can remember. We finished the look with a “Just Married” sign attached to the back, our stationer designed it for us – @samanthacollingcreativestudio.

The Tablescape

The colour theme was blue, green, white with a hint of lemon yellow, the flowers and fruit were a huge part of the vision, we wanted something modern and elegant. We had an abstract broken flower arrangement laid out over the water fountain for our ceremony, along with aisle florals all covered in bows and pearls.

Our stylist Verity from @thefiorcollective created handwritten personalised fans for each chair at the front for our Bridal party, I loved this touch! We also had beautiful big umbrellas, baskets of paper parasols for our guests to shade themselves with, some of these were also personalised!

We had a lots of styling features throughout our day, including the bar feature with personalised bar menus, drinks and napkins. Mini popcorn snacks (my husband’s favourite) with our wedding logo on. I even made lime ice cubes for the Margaritas!

The orangey where we had our wedding breakfast was styled with draping and Verity created a table setting of dreams with abstract flowers, white candles, grapes, limes, bows and pearls. We hired beautiful plates, crockery, glassware and chairs to ensure every detail was perfect. Each place settings was pinned to a lemon, no detail missed.

Food & Drinks

The venue did the food which was perfect for us. Canapes were served during the drink’s reception, my husband, Dan, insisted on us having the mini-Yorkshire pudding with beef and horseradish which fitted perfectly with our Devon based wedding.

We had a divine three course meal for our wedding breakfast, summery and light.

For our cocktail hour we had “his and hers” cocktails, I chose a Margarita and Dan chose and Gin and Tonic.

Finally for evening food we had stone baked pizzas and wedding cake. We did our champagne tower spray and passed around glasses.

Entertainment

I walked down the aisle to “Godspeed” by James Blake, it still gives me goosebumps just thinking about it. The piano intro played as I started to walk and as the song started Dan turned around, it was the most perfect moment. Our first dance was – “is this love” by Luke Burr.

For entertainment we opted for a jazz band as we felt this was the perfect vibe of our day. Our thanks the amazing Blue Lion Band.

We had a 4-piece band for the drinks reception just playing classic jazz music, a pianist for the cocktail hour, and for the party we had a 7-piece jazz band with a sax set of Ibiza songs to end. That was most definitely a highlight.

Beauty Regime & Wellness

I took wedding prep very seriously! I wanted to feel my absolute best on my wedding day. I found an amazing skin therapist who recommended a full personalised regime, including medical grade Obaji products, chemical peels, red light therapy and diamond glow facials – Amanda at – Hampshire Dermal Aesthetics was brilliant.

My amazing makeup artist was @makeupbymelissaj and my hair stylist was @emilyleesehair the girls were both so brilliant and my bridesmaids and I all absolutely loved our hair and make up.

The Honeymoon

We got married on a Friday, spent the rest of the weekend in a beautiful country house in Devon with our family, and flew on our honeymoon on the Monday. We wanted to stay in our wedding bubble and appreciate and enjoy every moment. It was important to us to have our honeymoon straight after the wedding and I definitely recommend doing so!

We got married in June so we didn’t have to go far for somewhere hot and beautiful. Majorca had been on our list for a long time so we decided to book the new Ikos Hotel that had just opened. It was just stunning, the food was amazing and the service impeccable, they even gave us a Tesla for the day so we got to explore the island. We had the best week ever and just continued the high we felt from our wedding day.

Advice

Don’t waste your energy on being nervous the morning of the wedding, channel those nerves to excitement

Trust your vendors to do what you hired them to do and don’t stress about the small stuff on the day, if things don’t go exactly to plan, no one else will notice