A Relaxed Garden Party Wedding: Alex & Sam

Effortlessly stylish and filled with personal touches

If you've ever dreamed of a marquee wedding at home, let Alex & Sam's real wedding inspire you. This cool couple (who seem like a lot of fun BTW!) created a laid-back garden party in Alex's childhood home, complete with locally-sourced food, DIY decor, home-made bakes and a beautiful LPM Bohemia marquee. With personal touches throughout, from the standing ceremony (with flowing Champagne), or the incredible attire, to the cameos from Alex & Sam's equine guests, this wedding is effortlessly stylish, so sincere, and filled with tips and ideas to borrow for your own big day. Even better, the wonderful Lucy Nuzum Photography captured it all!

Alex tells us how she and Sam first crossed paths, “We met serendipitously in 2010 on the set of a Vodafone TV commercial. At that time, Sam was an actor and I was working as a costume designer’s assistant in film. Two totally unpredictable things had happened that brought us to that point. A couple of months previously Sam had been cast and then edited out of a Meteor commercial.”

The bride goes on to explain how fate (or luck!) intervened, “The production company felt bad for cutting him out of the Meteor ad, so they cast him in this Vodafone job soon afterwards, something that wouldn’t normally happen. Simultaneously, a couple of weeks before the Vodafone shoot, I had been due to leave for Germany for two months, to go to train with my horse. But, the day before my flight, Eyjafjallajökull erupted, so I couldn’t leave, and was able to work on the shoot in the meantime while waiting for the airways to reopen.” Who knew a volcano eruption could have such romantic consequences!

The couple hung out throughout the four-day shoot, and Alex left for Germany the day after it wrapped up, “We emailed while I was away and posted for each other’s benefit on We Heart It and shared Tumblr links (this was 2010 after all) and when I came home started hanging out, pretending we were just friends. After about a month of that we finally smooched, after a night out for my birthday in July, and have been inseparable ever since.”

Alex used some family heirlooms for her ‘something old’, she wore a vintage Omega watch that belonged to her grandmother, while the bridesmaids wore vintage family brooches. I love the floral bridesmaid dresses, the high necks are so chic, and Alex's two piece wedding dress is just beautiful. 

Alex and Sam got engaged six years into their relationship, “We were in Paris. It was December. We had just finished breakfast in our room. Sam was out on the balcony (we have a thing about being on hotel room balconies so being on the balcony in December wasn’t unusual).” Alex tells us. “He said ‘Come out here. I want to ask you a question.’ Out I blithely went. “So are you going to marry me or not,” he asked, equally blithely, holding a beautiful Viennese ring from the 1920s. Cue much delight and roaming of Parisian landmarks taking selfies. In a very adorable move, he had asked my parents beforehand, and they somehow managed to keep it secret.” A very adorable move indeed!

Alex's dad fashioned the stars on the invitations on how she used to write the A in her name as a kid!

Who needs a wedding car when the party is in your own back garden? “My father and I attempted to make the short drive from the yard to the garden in Sam and my 1976 MG Midget but it refused to go into reverse so we abandoned it and walked! I’m not sure Lucy even got a shot of it.” She did, we have evidence!

The couple got married in September in Alex’s parents home in County Wicklow, “ Inspired by the stars, the arts and crafts movement, and the folk tradition of Ireland and Scotland, the ceremony took place under a jasmine arch amidst the beech trees, with guests gathered on the circular lawn,” Alex tells us about their standing ceremony.

Alex kept the flowers pretty and simple, “My mother made my little bouquet with flowers from the garden and family friend Richard Lister did the flowers on tables and in the marquee. And of course the garden provided its own floral backdrop.”

A ceremony where the bubbly is already flowing? I love it!

Alex & Sam included lots of details throughout their day that made it fun, meaningful and authentic, “We spoke our mash-up of traditional Irish folk vows together (we used to sing as a folk duo so the vows were inspired by the folk songs we used to sing together), with hands crossed, with my uncle presiding over the ceremony, and the bridesmaids in William Morris-esque florals. We feasted on seasonal, local food created by our friend Finbarr (such as Wicklow venison with beetroot barley and hay ice-cream with thyme crumble), and danced to big band Swing in a bohemian marquee decorated in simple greenery and seasonal flowers. Our first dance was to Glenn Miller's In The Mood.”

The couple were eager for their day to have a laid back, informal feel reminiscent of old house parties, as Alex tells us, “We wanted to create a simple, relaxed garden party feel, infused with the fun of celebrating together, that everyone would remember. I have a history of having big parties at my parent’s house, so wanted the party to be legendary. We wanted dancing, singing, wildness. We definitely achieved that. People are still telling stories from it, and I think they will be for a long time to come.”

Alex & Sam loved bringing their families together to celebrate, “We both have very large families, and they’re spread out all over the world. It’d rare to get them all together, so having everyone in the one place was wonderful.”

Alex tells us about some of the moments that stood out throughout the day, “One of my favourite memories was before we all went outside for the ceremony. My parents, bridesmaids Anna and Rachel, my uncle who was conducting the ceremony, and Sam and I were all gathered in the house - and we could hear all 150 guests outside (who were already very much enjoying the free-flowing Champagne!) - and it was almost like we were about to go and do a performance, which I suppose we were in a way, and those last little moments of calm were just lovely.”

Alex’s horses Ben and Springer made it into the wedding photos, “Springer has the white blaze on his face, Ben has the tiny white star,” Alex tells us.

Alex & Sam knew who their photographer would be before they even got engaged, “Lucy is a good friend, and we’ve worked together a lot, so it was really lovely to have her shooting the wedding. Years ago she had declared that she wanted to be our photographer if we ever got married. There was a really sweet moment with the horses that Lucy captured – we were standing in the field and they were in the background, unbeknownst to Sam and I they were very slowly approaching us, and suddenly Ben (who has been in my life as long as Sam) was resting his chin on my shoulder, having a nuzzle.”

Alex said she wanted the look of the wedding to be a bit different from what she’d seen online, “I think that there’s possibly too much of an emphasis on creating an Instagram/Pinterest-worthy wedding these days, and a lot of weddings – although they look beautiful – all look quite similar. We wanted something that was very us and the best way to achieve that was for it all to be as local and handmade as possible.”

Alex has advice for other couples planning a DIY home wedding, “Although it is truly wonderful to be at home, if you haven't hired a wedding planner, you need to turn yourself into one, because it's a serious undertaking. As long as you have a masterplan on an Excel sheet, you know what you want but you’re willing to be flexible, and you have an army of people who are willing and able to help out – especially in the last week, you'll be fine. You will be tired. But it's totally worth it.”

But for Alex, the one thing that made her & Sam’s wedding truly special, was having it at home, “It was something my father always wanted to have happen. He loves a project and spent the months between our engagement to the wedding planning and working to make everything perfect. He designed the invitation, based on my childhood habit of writing the A of my name as a star, and all the tables were named for the constellations, which I hand drew, and wrote the story of each constellation on the back. I was still doing that on the morning of the wedding. Insanity.”

It wasn’t just Alex’s dad who helped out with the wedding DIYs, “My mother made cakes and my bouquet, and in the months leading up the wedding it was all hands on deck with my family and Sam’s family helping out in painting, gardening, and generally getting the place looking perfect. The amount of people who helped out the day before and the morning of the wedding was incredible. We couldn’t have done it without them all. From hoovering up tiny spiders who had decided to take residence in the marquee over night to putting up the garlands of flowers – there was so much to do right up until people started arriving.”

Food was another element the couple got involved with themselves, “With Finbarr, we created a menu that was as locally sourced as possible, the highlight of which was the most incredible wild venison which my parents sourced through friends. We didn’t have a cake, my mother baked extensive delicious after-dinner treats, her fabled Jump-Off Brownies and Moroccan Orange Cake, which we had with coffee and tea in Arran Street East cups and Gin Fizz after dinner cocktails.” That all sounds pretty delicious!

And of course this energetic couple were never going to wrap up the party by midnight, “We danced late into the night, with a friend taking over DJ duties after the band, and our very merry guests rolling home as the first flashes of dawn broke.”

Alex and Sam headed on a mini-moon straight after their wedding, “To a wonderful isolated place in a rock desert in northern Spain, called Aire de Bardenas. We went on a sort of accidental honeymoon earlier this year when we went on horseback safari in Zimbabwe with African Horse Safaris.” I’m all about the idea of an accidental honeymoon!

You can just tell this wedding would have been a lot of fun to be a guest at! Thanks so much to Alex & Sam for letting us in on their day, and to Lucy Nuzum Photography for sharing these beautiful pictures with us.

The Wedding Details 

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