Anna met Mat in her home town of Minehead in 2014, while he was in town for a stag do at Butlins. She was sitting outside a local pub when Mat and his mates walked in. Anna’s friend caught their eye and they went over to join her table. Anna and Mat hit if off that night and kept in touch after he’d returned home. They continued a long-distance relationship for a while with Anna travelling to Stroud every three weeks to see Mat, until they eventually moved in together in 2015. “We both fell for each other and were best friends from the beginning,” Anna says. Mat proposed on Christmas Day with a Haribo ring! It was 2020 so he told Anna that he hadn’t been able to get out and choose a real one. But lo and behold, when she opened her present neatly wrapped beneath the tree, it was a real, shiny engagement ring! Anna remembers: “I started crying and our three-year-old said, ‘I will marry you mummy,’ as she thought I was sad! Bless her.” Since the couple met in Somerset, it felt only right that they should get married there and fell for the orangery at St Audries Park. They’d have a lot of friends travelling from Stroud, so they wanted somewhere that offered accommodation and St Audries also fulfilled this part of the brief. Read on as bride Anna tells us more about the big day: 29th April, 2023... SETTING THE SCENE For wedding favours, the couple bought scratch cards and gave them to guests with a sixpence. “This went down well and quite a few won!” says Anna. “I liked the idea of the sixpence rather than a penny due to the link with weddings and luck.” Guests were also gifted toiletry boxes full of useful things such as mints, sewing kit, deodorant and more. We’re told these were a real hit! The bride also made her own wedding newspapers, which contained the order of the day, in-memory-of section, and the couple’s love story. These were laid out in the bar and guest bedrooms. Anna wanted the table plan to be personal, so each one was named after the train stop between Stroud and Taunton. This featured the guests’ full names, whereas the place cards bore their nicknames. The bride designed the centrepieces herself. Each one featured a log slice with three vases on top, each a different shape and size. The flowers were provided by their wedding florist, but Anna arranged them the night before. Gypsophila filled two of the vases, while the other held a single cream rose. “The venue was fantastic and laying out the tables exactly as I wanted them. I also added some advice-for-the-bride cards I’d had made,” Anna tells us. St Audries Park provides in-house floral displays for use throughout, but the couple added their own signing table arrangement for the orangery, which was then moved to the top table for the reception. There were also beautiful blooms for the bride and her bridesmaids, including a toss bouquet, buttonholes and a cake arrangement. Anna added a charm containing a picture of her late nan to her bouquet. The couple enlisted the help of Homemade Cakes by Juliet for the big-day bake. They knew her creations well as she’d also 25 REAL WEDDINGS
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