So … it all started with ‘ Hakuna Matata’ … Sadly my beautiful Grandma passed away in 2015, my children ( I felt ) were to young to attend her funeral, they always used to sing different songs to her, and this was the song they asked to sing for us to play at her funeral ..
Hakuna Matata stuck and we decided as a family we would search for a tattoo artist who would brand us all in memory of our beautiful Grandma …
This is where Leon comes into it … a year passed and I decided I wanted to have the tattoo done, I mentioned it to my older sister and she knew of his shop and told me to get in contact with him which I did and booked myself and my Mum in for a few weeks time ..
We went in and had our tattoos done, (at Ink Kings in Blackwater … little promo opportunity LOL! )
We were all chatting away and one of the things Leon said was, “ Are you going to let me take you out for dinner then ?” I laughed and said “ ermmm nooo” haha !
We left and all Mum kept saying was ‘OMG he’s the one for you, you will marry him one day’.
I laughed and said “alright calm down, if you like him so much you marry him!” (just messing around as that’s how we are ), and we left it at that.
My older sister and brother loved mine and mum’s tattoos, so decided to book theirs in for the following month and asked if I would go back with them whilst they had it done.
I did just that, chatting away again all having a laugh and Leon randomly says, “are you going to let me take you out for dinner yet?” I laughed again and left it at that.
Off we went again… a good few months passed maybe even nearly a year .. when I decided it was time for a new tattoo, I went down with a friend who then left to pick up our children from school and left me at the studio getting my tattoo done. It finished earlier than expected so I thought “oh great, I’m going to be sat here like a lemon waiting to be picked back up” … but that’s where our love story begin .. he asked me again if he could take me out for dinner and I said
”yeah why not!” Leon wasn’t expecting me to say yes! He called me that night to say he was going to go over to my mum’s and was I going with him ..
I was like huh? You’re going to my mum’s? I started laughing and then he came to pick me up we went over to mum’s then stopped on the way home for some dinner. This is our children’s favourite part of our love story. We finished our little date got to the car and Leon asked me if I was going to give him a little kiss … Ermm absolutely not I laughed. Then he asked if I could give him a tiny kiss on the cheek, as I did he turned round and I got him straight on the lips! Cheeky!!! Hahaha !!
When he picked me up that night it was like we had never not been together, we then chatted all night and the rest is history.

We moved in together the following year, and had our baby girl in 2018.
His proposal was nothing fancy. He asked me what engagement ring I’d want IF we were to ever get married I started laughing and said I’d only ever want my Grandma’s ring which she left for me when she passed, I always wore it on my right hand. He then said with a grin well you better move it on to the other hand then, we started laughing and he moved it over. As the night went on I moved it back and thought nothing more of it. Fast forward to my birthday (18th September 2018) and Leon said again “well are you going to move your ring over? I looked at him and laughed and said “is this you asking me to marry you?” He said yes, and the following day we went down to the jewellers to have my ring made smaller.

Oh My God this is really happening!!
I start planning straight away (of course) all the family were so excited. The only thing that made us sad about this was Leon’s mum sadly passed away just as we got together, I was with Leon the night she passed and he asked me to take him to be with her with his family which I did, it was one of the saddest memories we had to face and Leon’s only regret is that I never got to meet the most precious lady in his life and it’s also mine. We had so many memories that he already wanted to share with her such as me chucking him up on one of our horses as she loved animals but she was just too ill to hear it. I just know she’s always around us and you can see her in our daughter. This is also one of the first times I met Leon’s family and to this day they always thank me and said I was their angel that night and their so grateful that I was there for them all, and I’ve been close to them all ever since.

We then start to look at wedding venues, we couldn’t decide if we wanted a really big wedding or a small intimate one .. we thought we would book a viewing with Rivervale Barn in Yateley … and that was the decision made for us … Go big or go home !!
Our first venue to look at and our last! It was absolutely beautiful! We both fell in love with it!
We booked it straight away for 18th August 2020 ( a month and a year after Leon asked me to marry him and a day before his birthday ).
Later on in the year we got invited to a taster evening mmm the food was amazing and Leon found the drinks even better especially when I found him propping up the bar!

So we started looking for various suppliers now this is a massive sore subject for us. And all I can say is, really do your research don’t just go by reviews as some of them can be fake.
We booked a lady called Stacey from Essex who was dressing the venue for us … long story short it turned out she is a massive con artist and scammed hundreds of us, she sent two cowboys to the venue with pretty much nothing we had ordered. It was a disaster. But luckily our venue was beautiful and apparently none of our guests had even noticed that anything was missing (thank god !!)
I booked Chloe Grainger from CG makeup artist. She was amazing throughout even at the ungodly hour of 6am she came with a big smile on her face and joined in with all our excitement. I would highly recommend her.
We had Jonathon G photography who I remembered from a friends wedding years ago and we couldn’t be happier with the preview photos we have been sent so far. So he’s another one we would highly recommend.
We also had Suk our videographer from Soulful Media, he was also incredible all day, another we would highly recommend.
And then our theme was big white ostrich feathers (I can tell you more about this later 😁) so I thought what’s better than having an owl fly our rings down the aisle and having different big birds of prey on display for all our gorgeous guests to look at and hold! So they came from Bird on the Hand and they were amazing. Highly recommend this company to!!

Eeek I then need a dress my mum and two sisters got me on the case straight away. Myself and Leon are so chilled out we would have gone to our wedding in our jeans!

Anyway we started to look at different dress shops around us and I just could not find the one. I was surrounded by dresses and had just had enough I said that’s it, I’m done! No more dress shopping, I’ll do it nearer the time. I could see the panic in my mum and sisters faces, but I hate shopping at the best of times and could not be bothered to try anymore on. Later that night mum messaged me and said there’s a beautiful little shop in Hartley Wintney they do the most gorgeous dresses we should try there. My first thought was hell no! (sorry Emma) I’m not doing that again it scared me for life. They managed to talk me round and we booked an appointment to see Emma that week. She has the best system going, so I wasn’t surrounded in a room with hundreds of dresses, or overwhelmed. We got down to two dresses one of them had feathers on it (you see the theme here) all signs from our angels and I finally found the one!!!
I fell in love with it and then I think we all had a cry. I changed the colour of my dress to Almond and that was that. Emma sent off for my dress to be made ( soo exciting !! ) I then became a BOO BRIDE wahooo!!

Emma was amazing through out and was a great shoulder to cry on (thanks again for all those times!!) I also asked Emma if she could come and dress me on the day as she’s super amazing at getting those dresses on. And I’d say it was a massive bonus having her there. She was bloody amazing and kept us all calm. I would definitely highly recommend having Emma on your wedding day to dress you (sounds really bridezilla’ish but not sure how else to word it.) I was so nervous I couldn’t even get my shoes on and Emma was there like an angel to give me that helping hand!

Covid struck the UK !!

Everything was put on hold it was devastating. Just before the pandemic hit my gorgeous Grandad got really ill and we had a really tough time. All he wanted to do was to see us get married. He had his suit ready and hung up but then ended up in hospital for a long time we were gutted!

Grandad was eventually well enough to come home and again all he would ask about was the wedding we were so excited I asked him to walk me down the aisle with Mum and his face beamed! The only problem we had was that we were told his heart was a ticking time bomb and the drs said they couldn’t tell us how long we had left with him as his heart was failing him. The worst news we could have been given.

We then got a call, more bad news from our venue a few weeks before the wedding to say our day couldn’t go ahead due to the pandemic and to reschedule. Wow - to say we were gutted is an understatement :(
We just knew we wanted my Grandad there so booked for the next closest date which was May 2021. Keeping our fingers crossed that our day could go ahead and Grandad would be there.

Sadly it wasn’t meant to be and Grandad suddenly passed away on April 3rd 2021 our hearts were broken. We never got to have our dream day with him.

May drew closer and closer, for us to get a phone call to say our day wasn’t going to be going ahead how we planned it and we could only have 30 people max attend (this really isn’t possible we have such a big family and we definitely couldn’t be picking and choosing, as everyone in our family are the best of the best!)
We had to make the dreaded decision to move our day AGAIN :( !

Right that’s it we’re choosing our final day and if that doesn’t go ahead we’re giving up! We just booked the next available date that our venue had which was Monday 5th July 2021 … Yep that will do (fast forward to our wedding day and a Facebook memory comes up with a picture of my Hakuna Matata tattoo ?! .. yeah we couldn’t believe it all these years later and we picked the exact day we first met .. coincidence or not ?!)

Our wedding day was the most amazing day, I wish we could do it all over again!! My husbands speech went viral as he did a toast to “Gareth and the England football team” it’s a laugh a minute in our house and this is just us all over. (If you need a laugh you’ll have to check it out lol!! )
My sister also embarrassed me with some of my “Lauraisims” and made a video clip for all to see, to say I could have hidden under the table was an understatement!! We sadly had to take a lot of our gorgeous friends off of our guest list but hey, that’s just an excuse for another party later on ; )

My three tips for you gorgeous brides to be is …
- Pick your team wisely .. we had a bloody amazing one who were there for us every step of the way.
- Cannot stress again really do your research on suppliers. If we were to start again I probably would go with the venues recommended list as we had so much stress on the morning of the wedding which definitely isn’t needed!)
- Make a list of the most important things you want for the day as due to a stressful morning with our venue decorator I forgot things that meant so much to me like my bouquet charms with my loved ones on. I even forgot to ask for our favours to be put out whoops!!)
Ooh I know I said three tips but one more lol.. I would highly recommend getting a videographer, the day was over so quickly I just can’t wait to watch our day all over again as some bits were such a blur in all the excitement.

My favourite part of the planning was literally the planning itself. We changed the theme three times, as I said earlier our final theme was the big white feathers it means a lot to us. I’m a strong believer in ‘when feathers appear angels are near’, and as we didn’t get to have 5 of our most important people there, Leon’s mum, my Grandad, my Grandma and my Nan and Grandad, we really wanted the feather theme for them, so it felt like they were a big part of our day.

My least favourite had to be the dress shopping UNTIL I found Emma … why didn’t we think of Emma’s shop in the first place damn !

My most memorable part of the day was seeing my HUSBAND (eeek sounds so strange lol!! ) for the first time. My heart was pounding it was like the first time we met all over again.

Hmm what did I enjoy most about my dress shopping experience? Absolutely nothing at first until we found Boo Bridal. It was a bit different for us as my final dress fitting had to be done over FaceTime, but thinking back I actually liked it, as it was such a surprise for all my family and friends to see me. I got to do the reveal which was amazing! Their faces were a picture!

I’m not going to lie, planning a wedding through a global pandemic was bloody stressful and I would highly recommend waiting till it’s over. Just kidding the only stressful part about it was having to keep moving the date. But now I look at it as it was meant to be so all was fine.

My most valuable person or persons on the day were my Mum, and my two sisters they were amazing throughout, they helped me spend a shed load of money but they were on the ball constantly. They are my rocks and everyone needs some of these!!

We have so many amazing memories and I can’t wait to make so many more with my handsome husband and gorgeous little family xxx

We hope that you have loved reading all about Laura & Leon’s special day and it has given you some inspiration for planning your own amazing wedding. Below are the links to her suppliers.

Make up artist - https://www.instagram.com/cgmakeupartistx/

Photographer - https://www.instagram.com/jonathon.g.photography/

Videographer - https://www.instagram.com/soulful__media/

Birds of Prey - https://www.instagram.com/birdonthehand/

Venue - https://www.instagram.com/rivervalebarnweddings/

Gown - https://www.instagram.com/boobridalboutique/