Carol and Mike met at work when they joined at the same time. “We’re the fourth couple to get married within our group of work friends!” Carol tells us. They became engaged during a surprise proposal while on a romantic holiday in Greece. “We went for a walk along the beach and Mike didn’t even have time to get down on one knee before I said yes!” Carol says. SETTING THE SCENE The couple loved Lillibrooke Manor in Berkshire as soon as they visited. “We wanted to hold our ceremony outside and the gardens looking stunning with a wide variety of settings ideal for photographs,” Carol says. “The large barn looked so atmospheric and we decided to style it with illuminated love letters and a curtain of fairylights.” Leading up to their wedding, the couple were concerned about the potential restrictions that might be in place because of the pandemic and the fact that the weather forecast didn’t look good. “Everything came together perfectly on the morning of our wedding so our nerves were replaced by excitement,” Carol says. “Mike’s godmother, Verna, and our friends Lucy and Mike gave some wonderful readings during our ceremony and my dad, Bernie, gave a very emotional speech. Everyone was in fits of laughter during the best man’s speech by Mike’s brother, Craig!” The couple created their table plan using pictures painted by Mike’s great uncle Eric. “He couldn’t attend our wedding because he lives in South Africa so it meant a lot to us that we could include him in our special day,” Carol explains. “Mike’s parents put it together for us and it looked amazing and now proudly hangs in our kitchen at home!” The table names followed their cricket theme with mini bat-shaped numbers displayed with pens encouraging guests to leave a message. “One of our bridesmaids, Kelly, hand-wrote our place names on mini chalkboards to match,” Carol says. “We also placed bags of sweets at each setting as favours with a puzzle piece attached (because we love doing a puzzle) and our choice of purple flowers, that included dahlias, tied everything together so well.” Carol and Mike wanted a fun wedding cake. “Mike is a big cricket fan so we had sugar-paste characters of us both made with me bowling to him on a cricket green which looked fantastic!” Carol tells us. “The talented team at the venue provided the delicious catering and we had so many compliments on the food, in particular the canapés.” “It was fantastic seeing everyone in the same room together after the past year that we had all experienced during the pandemic.We felt so lucky to have shared our celebration with so many of our friends and family.” – Carol and Mike REAL WEDDINGS 43
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