Nicola & Ruel
Sunday 2nd June 2019
Photography by Sharon Anne Photography
‘I finally married my best friend, my soul mate, after 11 years together’
Ruel and I have been together since 2008 when he caught my eye with his dance moves and his flipping around. Within the first year we were blessed with our beautiful daughter Jada, fast forward to 2011 when we were on a family UK holiday in Great Yarmouth Ruel, proposed of course I said Yes! We were then expecting our 2nd child, Callan, who was born in 2012. They say time flies when your having fun and it certainly did when 2015 came we had our 3rd child, Corey. Now our family was complete, Ruel decided it was now the right time to start planning our wedding.
I had always loved Missenden Abbey just from pictures and reviews online, even though we had been to the Roald Dahl Museum many times with the children we hadn’t visited Missenden Abbey. One weekend Ruel had arranged for the children to be looked after and surprised me with a night away, when we arrived I realised we were at Missenden Abbey which was the day of one of their wedding fairs, so we got to see the venue set out how it could be for our wedding day. That day I fell even more in love with the venue and pencilled in our chosen date. From this day we had 18 months until our wedding day, so planning our wedding finally began.
Firstly, I started dress shopping with my mum Kay and Grandma Vivien. We visited 7 different bridal boutiques until i found ‘the one.’ I visited Butterfly Bridal in Bicester, but I wasn’t expecting to find my dress. They were really helpful and knew the style I was looking for and that is when i found my dress – Ella Rosa by Kenneth Winston. I really felt like a beautiful bride to be and couldn’t wait to pick up my dress.
I had ‘Truly Divine’ dress the venue, Nicola O’dea-Patel is fantastic, we went for a rose gold, blush pink and navy theme. Nicola knew exactly what we wanted from love letters, table runners to sashes and created the perfect centre pieces, which were lanterns filled with flowers, working together with Georgianna from Jade flowers Boutique who also produced the most perfect stair garland.
We had so many compliments and what I love about the venue is that the ceremony room becomes the reception so the flowers were on view all day.
We are very lucky to have a talented family; Ruel’s mum, Teresa Peters, is a cake maker known as ‘Okey Cakey.’ Teresa came up with the perfect shape by having the bottom cake as a hexagon shape with the other layers round but different height depths including the cake separator creating our perfect cake. It was better than I ever could have imagined and tasted as good as it looked. Ruel’s cousin Louise Harris at ‘Baking Brunette’ also created cookies as favours. These were amazing because not only did they taste delicious, they were also personalised and used as place names.
The morning of our wedding I felt very relaxed, I had our daughter stay we me at the venue the night before and Ruel had the boys at home. I also had my mum and my sister Chloe who was my maid of honour, my grandma and my other 2 bridesmaids, Kayleigh, my cousin and my life long friend Laura. This definitely helped as we all got ready together and everyone was ready at the venue. I had Ruel’s other 2 cousins Hannah Dixey and Corinne Green do my bridal parties hair and make up which I was over the moon with. I think finding the best hair and make up artists for your special day is key, as they play a huge part on how feel on your special day.
I was all ready in my dress when my Grampy Bruce and 2 sons Callan and Corey walked in, seeing them for the first time all dressed smartly in their suits made me very emotional. Having my Grampy there to give me away was amazing as he has always been the male role in my life.
It was the moment at the top of the staircase when I heard the song ‘Make You Feel My Love’ by Adele play, I felt the first bit of nerves.
As soon as started walking down the staircase I saw Ruel, who looked more nervous than me, I just focused on him, I couldn’t even hear the song play anymore (all the planning of which part of the song you want to walk down to went out the window but all that didn’t matter anymore)
The best part of our day was being able to share it with our children, so although we had a long engagement, I am so glad we waited as it made our day.
We were able to capture memories which will last forever. Sharon Anne Photography took our amazing photos and Satori Media produced our videography which I’m sure we will be looking back on for many years to come.
We had the amazing saxophonist ‘Saxman Diggle’ play for us during photos and mingling which I thought was amazing. Again we had many compliments and I thought it was so nice having background music whilst we went off to take our photos. We had Colin the DJ with us for the evening, which is Missenden Abbeys House DJ, again very professional, great communication leading up to our wedding on any songs we wanted or announcements. Our first dance was to ‘Perfect’ by Ed Sheeran ft Beyonce because the words to this song are very much us and our children love this song too. Colin then did a great set and even had people up dancing that I didn’t think I would see on the dancefloor and Ruel was still pulling off the same dance moves since we first met.
The food at Missenden Abbey is amazing we came for the food tasting and was very impressed.
The portions are great as there’s nothing worse than having small portions and still feel hungry. The evening food was also lovely and went down a treat, we were also allowed to bring our own food too, as Ruel wanted to bring some of his culture food; his mum made us some amazing Caribbean food also.
Its very hard to put into words what an amazing day we had as its very personal and everyone has things their own way, but one piece of advice I was given and would pass on, would be to go off just the two of you and take a moment to take in the day. The day will fly by, so try and stay together as everyone will want to congratulate and speak with you, enjoy every second as you will miss the planning after.
I would highly recommend to anyone to have a wedding at Missenden Abbey, not only is the venue beautiful, the staff are very professional and helpful, the food is amazing too. I love the layout of the venue and find it keeps the wedding party together allowing everyone to socialise with plenty of space with the beautiful grounds which makes for stunning scenery and photographs. We had many compliments on the venue and staff being very accommodating.
A few suppliers we used –
Photographer
Sharon Anne Photography
sharon@sharonannephotography.co.uk
Wedding Dress
Butterfly Bridal
Dress – Ella Rose by Kenneth Winston
Saxophonist
Saxman Diggle – Johnny Diggle
thezigzagmag@gmail.com