Matthew & Chelsey’s Elegant Pynes House Wedding

Although I was desperate to repost them straight away I just knew they needed a feature of their own. And so here we are! This elegant country house wedding is absolute perfection. From the pretty pastel bridesmaids dresses (and showstopping Mother of the Bride look!), to the abundance of greenery and the chemistry-filled PDAs on the dancefloor.

It’s a beaut, and I’m SO glad I waited to share…

Chelsey says…

We chose Pynes House in Exeter because every aspect of the venue oozes quality and high levels of attention to detail. It matched what we were looking for in a venue as it was grand and historic whilst at the same time being elegant and minimal. We wanted a sociable wedding and Pynes House fit that bill perfectly with only three rooms downstairs, all large enough to fit everyone in comfortably, but small enough that there wasn’t too much empty space for our 60 daytime guests and 100 in total for the evening.

They are not a “wedding factory” which was perfect for us – we wanted access to the whole venue and the flexibility to do things our own way. This isn’t something other venues we looked at could offer. Whilst Pynes House isn’t the cheapest venue, they are nowhere near the most expensive. They are right at the top in terms of value for money though.

The wedding vibe were going for was elegant and minimal! Working on a budget, the dress was from WED2B and suits were from Moss Bros, with alterations made by a tried and tested seamstress and tailor. The main thing we wanted was to ‘look the part’ but be comfortable throughout the whole day!

We let the bridesmaids choose their own dresses to an extent, as we just wanted them to be happy (nothing worse than being forced to wear a dress you don’t like!).

Hair was done by Emily Stevens at No.1 Regent Street in Somerset – Emily has been my hairdresser for years and is amazing. Again, elegant and minimal. Sally Bracey did the makeup and understood the brief perfectly – not caked in makeup but it needed to last the whole day!

The venue looks amazing enough without us cluttering everything so we didn’t want to bring in too much. We’d been to a wedding previously that used banquet tables in a horseshoe shape and we loved this – much more sociable! So we pinched the idea and made sure we had lots of greenery and any other bits were in ‘antique gold’.

Amanda Florentine who is a family friend local to Somerset was our florist. Not knowing much about flowers we gave her the brief of “lots of green, with splashes of white and dark red” and let her be as creative as she wanted. She did a perfect job!

Catering was supplied by Pickle Shack who have exclusivity to Pynes House weddings. The food was incredible – they gave us so many options it was actually quite hard to pick what we wanted. Traditional menus but done to an extremely high quality; every single one of our guests said how good the food was. They have opened up a restaurant in Exeter now and we fully recommend it!

Originally we’d booked a photographer who had shot a friends wedding – but disaster struck the day before the wedding. He organised for Patrick Partridge to replace him and we couldn’t have been happier! Pat was spot on with everything. Having briefly had a call with on the morning of the wedding, he arrived in good time and instantly made us feel relaxed. We wanted fly on the wall / photo-journalistic style and the best praise we can give Pat is we barely noticed him there throughout the day! We are unbelievably happy with the outcome and he captured each and every emotion that our guests and us had throughout the day.

Best part of the day

Honestly, it may sound cliche, but all of it!
We honestly couldn’t pick a single moment. Neither of us usually want to be the centre of attention, so we kept the ceremony, pictures and first dance as short as possible. But after that we wanted to be with our friends and family all day, join in with the laughter, dance all night and get merry like the times before the pandemic!

From one couple to another…

Three top tips from us: Do it your own way, don’t be afraid to say no and make sure you get a brilliant wedding coordinator – ours was Phoebe at Elisabeth Shell Events.