Your Berks, Bucks & Oxon Wedding - Dec/Jan 2019 (Issue 80)

L aura and Dan met through work, and had known each other for about three years before they started seeing each other. “Once we got talking properly, I realised how kind, funny and confident she was,” says Dan. “She is always so relaxed and great to be around. We became very close very quickly, going on a holiday to Mexico within a few months of being together, and that holiday really proved what we already suspected, that we were a perfect match.” “Dan was so much fun to be around and such a kind person that he is impossible to not love,” says Laura. “I just got really lucky that he chose me!” Dan proposed at Christmas with Laura’s family present. “I hid the ring in a pair of goalkeeping gloves,” says Dan. “When Laura opened them she thought I’d given her one of my nephew’s gifts. I explained that the gloves were for her because she was a ‘keeper’. I got down on one knee, took the ring from the glove and asked her to marry me.” SETTING THE SCENE “King’s Chapel was totally different from anywhere else and is a beautiful venue,” says Laura. “I loved that there were so many options for us to personalise the decoration.” Getting married as close to Christmas as they were, they embraced the theme. “King’s Chapel already had a couple of Christmas trees in the venue, so we added heart-shaped blackboard baubles as favours, and wrote our guest’s names on them so we could use them for place settings as well. We used planets for table names as Dan is a big space geek.” For their centrepieces they filled star-shaped lanterns with silver baubles and fairylights. The cake was decorated with stars and snowflakes of different shapes and sizes, decorated with white and silver. There was fruit cake at the bottom, lemon and elderflower in the middle and Victoria sponge on the top. As for floral decorations, “We knew we would struggle to get fresh flowers as it was in between Christmas and New Year, so we used silk flowers for the bouquets, the buttonholes and the centrepiece for the top table, says the bride. “They were great quality and exactly what we wanted, and we can keep them forever.” LOOKING THE PART Laura wore an chiffon A-line gown by Lillian West, with alterations done by Jennifer Katherine Bridal who also sewed a diamanté belt onto it and hand- sewed diamantés all along the back so that it went the whole way round. Breakfast of champions Laura and Dan had the perfect Christmas wedding at the King’s Chapel, Old Amersham Images courtesy of Nigel Chapman Photography REAL WEDDINGS 41 