A romantic, joyful micro wedding from the Welsh coast – with glorious summer flowers and the most stunning wedding dress for our beautiful bride. The dancing begins outside the church… and these two just don’t stop moving from there! I love the happiness and celebration here – I hope it makes you smile!

Sophie & Karl’s original wedding plans had to be put on hold when covid arrived on the scene. They had planned a big knees up with lots of dancing and family coming from overseas. After the initial disappointment they decided to move the wedding to a year later, but contacted their lovely photographer Hannah Timm in early August saying they were thinking of just going for it with a smaller guest list in a couple of weeks time. Of course she said yes, and she was amazed to see how they pulled it all together in just a few weeks. At the time in Wales they could have up to 30 guests and so they married at a local church and then had a very small dinner with family in the evening. Sophie & Karl are both keen dancers – the bride & groom enjoyed a very special first dance with the music playing in the sunshine outside the church. Before long everyone was dancing and toasting the happy couple.

Wedding photographer’s website

https://www.hannahtimmphotography.co.uk

How did you choose your photographer?

We googled wedding photographers in our area, then made a shortlist of 20. We then separately had a look through their websites and picked our favourites – Hannah came up as the one we both liked the most!

Were you pleased with your wedding photographer? Do tell… we love a brilliant review!

We were absolutely delighted; Hannah has such a wonderful way about her, she takes the time to get to know you as a couple and reflects those aspects into her photos. Our photos are stunning, and she managed to capture a lot of little moments of the day that bring us straight back. We are so glad we went with her for our wedding photography.

Tell us about your venue – what made this place special for you?

Our initial wedding plans were to get married in a service in our local church, followed by a reception in Insole Court, which is a beautiful mansion house and gardens in Llandaff, Cardiff. It was saved and restored by the community, and has a wonderful feeling and history to it, and is used now to hold a lot of community events as well as weddings and parties. Unfortunately Covid got in the way of our original plans, so we initially postponed everything to next year. However, as most of our guests live abroad, and we really wanted to get married, we decided once the first lockdown lifted to have a small ceremony with immediate family and friends, with the celebration later on (hoping that it can still go ahead!).
The ceremony was held at our local church, followed by some cake and prosecco, then we went for a beautiful beach shoot and on to a dinner with family at a gastropub in the Vale of Glamorgan, where we actually had one of our first dates!

Did you love wearing your outfits? How was the dress / suit shopping experience?

Sophie: I found dress hunting quite stressful – I wanted something very simple with an interesting cut, and found it difficult to find something I felt comfortable in. When I finally went to All About Eve, they had a wide variety of dresses in each style, and I very quickly found the right one. I loved wearing the dress on the day.
Karl: For me, I narrowed down the options online then visited Slaters, where they were very helpful and we quickly managed to find something suitable.

Did you hire a florist? Tell us about any floral amazingness

Our flowers were arranged by Jean Pritchard, a lovely local member of the church. She did an amazing job at very short notice (only a couple of weeks!), and we were so happy with them! We wanted a rustic, seasonal arrangement and she gave us just that.

Did you hire a wedding planner?

We didn’t hire a wedding planner, but we thankfully didn’t need one as Heledd Jones at Insole Court was fabulous and took everything into her hands, guiding us newbies through the process to make it so easy!

As cake lovers here at English Wedding we’d LOVE to know who made your cake, and how delicious it was?

We postponed our cake to the celebration next year, and instead had homemade cakes and biscuits from our lovely family and friends. As members of the local lindy hop community, we are all used to baking cakes for our regular tea dances!

Tell us about any special personal touches, or creative projects you made yourselves

Everything was arranged very last minute but we were really touched by how much our family and friends rallied together. Sophie’s family secretly decorated her sister’s car with streamers and flags which was such a wonderful surprise on the day! One of our friends, together with Sophie’s cousin (from afar) set up a video livestream so that our family and friends could watch the service live, and our wonderful friend Jessie from the Swing Project Cardiff brought along her speaker so that we could all enjoy music and (socially distanced) dancing in the church courtyard and garden. Not to forget the tasty home baked treats our guests brought along too. It was a wonderful homespun wedding!

Did you personalise your vows or have any wedding readings? What were they?

We unfortunately couldn’t have our readings due to the Covid regulations at the time.

What was your first dance song? Why did you choose it?

We weren’t expecting a first dance – we had originally planned a swing dance evening followed by a ceilidh for the reception, which wasn’t allowed with the covid regulations. However, our guests insisted we dance outside the church, and our friend Jessie had curated a playlist specially for us on the day! We ended up spontaneously dancing to “Cheek to Cheek” by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, with some guests joining in with us halfway through

Favourite wedding suppliers

First mention should go to our fabulous photographer Hannah who can be found at https://www.hannahtimmphotography.co.uk/

Laura from Wishbone and Comb did an amazing job with the bride and bridal party’s hair and makeup. She can be found on https://www.wishboneandcomb.com/

https://swingproject.co.uk/ – this is the website of our lovely friend Jessie who runs the Swing Project in Cardiff. Alongside socials and regular classes, they also do taster classes and swing DJ’s for events, weddings and parties.

Also we should mention our reception venue Insole Court – https://www.insolecourt.org/ It is a beautiful mansion house and gardens, nestled away in the leafly suburb of Llandaff. Anyone wanting to hold their wedding there is in excellent hands with Heledd and the team.

Sophie’s ring is made out of white gold with a Spanish oak inlay (in reference to getting engaged in Andalucia) – our supplier was eco wood rings, a lovely ethical and sustainable store which allows you to personalise your rings.  Their communication was fantastic and they make beautiful personalised rings.  They can be found at https://ecowoodrings.co.uk