Clare + Reece | September 2024
“Sarah honestly made our day. I couldn’t have asked for a better ceremony, and so many people commented about how personal it was.”
Clare and Reece’s wedding was my first time leading a ceremony at Marshall Meadows, in fact my first visit at all, and the team were so lovely. Which is great since I now have a second wedding booked there for this year. There’s a pretty little ceremony room (the Coast House) set slightly away from the main manor house and it was giving New England vibes, with a white-washed cladding frontage, high beams inside and floor-to-ceiling views out over the bay. Gorgeous.
And there were plenty of gorgeous elements to the day, not least of which were the smallest members of the wedding party - the tiny flower girls, Clare’s nieces - who had the perfect names for their role: Daisy, Ivy, and Lily.
Images by groom’s mate and pro photographer Dan Clark
And the bride and groom are two such sweethearts themselves that on her own wedding morning, as I went to see Clare in the bridal suite, she presented me with a 40th birthday card and bottle of booze for my husband Jonny. Sweetheart in a suite. What a cutie pie.
It was partly to thank him for allowing me to work on his birthday, as their original wedding date had had to be moved - but Jonny didn’t mind. And it meant that my fee from this wedding went towards us having a lovely birthday weekend as a family, holed up on Holy Island. Somewhere I have always wanted to stay*, and it didn’t disappoint.
*well, since I met Jonny in 2012 and heard for the first time that there was a county called Northumberland haha.
Holy Island, in north Northumberland, is a magically spooky and spookily magical place to stay where - if you haven’t been - at certain times the tide cuts off access and no one get on…and no one can leave. THRILLING for a weekend away, but I simply cannot overstate how many times I must have checked those tidal times, knowing I had a wedding to get to!
One of my favourite parts of Clare and Reece’s ceremony was the story of how they first met: at work…and she didn’t think much of him! The bride and groom share a brilliant, self-deprecating sense of humour and it was fantastic to hear their friends and family laughing along as we went through the timeline of their enemies-to friends-to lovers trope.
We ended the ceremony with a shot of tequila and a toast, before they went back down the aisle with only eyes for each other.
And these photos are particularly special because one of Reece’s best mates - the fab Dan Clark - is a wedding photographer so everyone was so at ease, before, during and after the ceremony, having such a close friend there to capture the happiest moments.
“I’m over the moon on how my day went and the ceremony was my favourite part, felt so filled with love and happiness.”