Becca & Tom’s Dodmoor House Wedding

Their summer celebration was boho in style with gorgeous big floral centrepieces, personalised music choices throughout the day and one of my new favourite things…an al fresco dance floor!

Becca says…

We always knew we wanted to get married in a barn venue and we just fell in love with Dodmoor House when we visited. The barns are absolutely beautiful and as soon as we set foot in them we could just picture ourselves getting married there. We had 50 day guests, with an extra 20 in the evening, and it was the perfect size to feel like there was enough space for us all.

I always knew that I wanted a boho style dress, and absolutely adored Catherine Deane. I was somewhat unusual in that I found my dream dress online, the second I saw it I knew it was the one. Serendipity Brides ordered the dress in for me and I went to try it on with my Mum and Dad and it lived up to all expectations! It was lacy, floaty and absolutely beautiful.

We bought our suits from Moss Bros for Tom, the best man Jack, our dads and our groomsmen. The bridesmaid dresses were from the TFNC London range sold on ASOS.

Makeup by Liv was our makeup artist and she absolutely smashed it, doing the makeup for me, the bridesmaids and my Mum. Liv is a very good friend of mine so it helped that she already knew my style! I wanted to feel like the best version of myself without being over-done, and at the end of the night I didn’t want to take my makeup off!

Our hairdresser was Stacey from Salonista Brides who I’ve known for a couple of years now – she and Liv make the dream team! She gave the bridesmaids and I the most dreamy curls and our hair stayed in place the whole day.

Tom is very artistic so he designed a lot of the other decorations. He designed our table plan which was finished with flowers and he also designed our table numbers. Each of our tables was numbered 1-6 and we had corresponding photos of myself and Tom at each age of the number which was a cute and personal twist. We also printed photos of us which Dodmoor helped us to hang like bunting in the barn, it meant a lot to me that there was a photo there of my Grandpa who passed away a few years ago so I could feel like he was still an important part of the day.

Our florist was Nicky from the Garden of Weedon. Dodmoor is such a beautiful venue and we knew we wanted to decorate with flowers, so we were looking for a florist to not only create an incredible bouquet but who specialised in venue styling – and Nicky was absolutely perfect! Nicky completely understood what we were looking for and created flowers that were even more stunning than we could have imagined.

We were really lucky that Tom’s mum is an incredible baker and kindly volunteered to make our wedding cake. She made a beautiful semi-naked cake with three tiers of our favourite flavours – red velvet, sticky toffee and lemon. Our florist finished the cake off with some of our flowers.

Portfolio Events did our catering for the whole day. We chose canapés instead of a starter as we found they help keep people going during the drinks reception whilst waiting for food. For our main meal we had chicken supreme with the creamiest mashed potato, followed by a chocolate Cointreau torte, which everyone enjoyed.

Our photographer Gary from First Sight Weddings was great, we met him at a friend’s wedding in 2019 and fell in love with his style of photography. His photos are the perfect balance of posed alongside natural shots. We had a small “practice” shoot with him ahead of the wedding which helped us to feel completely at ease in front of the camera and able to be ourselves. He is so easy going and approachable it was like we’d known him for years! The photography and videography was definitely the best investment.

Best part of the day

There were so many highlights! Walking down the aisle to Tom was just everything I had dreamt of, particularly because we had to postpone our wedding twice before which made the moment all the more special. We had a musician, Joe Bailey, play the music for our ceremony which made it so personal – the song I walked down the aisle to You and Me by the Lifehouse was the opening track on a CD Tom made for me when we first got together at 16, so it was amazing to hear that being played and come full circle.

The speeches were brilliant, my dad and Tom both made me cry, and our best man Jack was absolutely hilarious as we knew he would be. My final highlight would be the band – we found Coco Magic online after watching some of their videos on Youtube and they were even better than we expected. They learnt our first song – Here I Am by Bryan Adams – which has so much meaning for us so that was very special, and had literally everyone on their feet dancing – from young cousins to grandparents everyone loved them!

From one couple to another…

Try to make some time for the two of you in the day. It goes so quickly and it’s nice to just take a step back and take it all in. We really loved walking around the grounds just the two of us whilst we had our photos taken, as it gave us chance to catch up and enjoy each other’s company. We also made time to dance together just the two of us in the evening which finished the day on an absolute high!