“I’ll always remember the photographer saying, ‘I’ve never met a bride who took off her shoes to walk through a load of cow muck to go and get a picture with some cows!'”

Lara and Andy married in September this year in a marquee celebration on Lara’s parent’s family dairy farm in Dorset. Lara, a catering event planner, and Andy, a sheep farmer, curated their wedding to reflect their personalities and drew upon their friends, family, farm and animals bring their day to life.

Kalm Kitchen’s Rob Cadwell chatted with Lara (and occasionally Andy, as he popped by the call) about planning and enjoying their wedding.

Thanks for joining me today, Lara, tell us about you and your day.

Andy and I got engaged in May and we decided to book the wedding for the end of September, which gave us a very short lead time to plan. It sort of made everything more intense, but also really exciting.

The day itself was a marquee wedding on my parent’s family farm We ended up making it a full-blown weekend because we wanted to continue the celebration and also to make use of the marquee we had. A wedding is a considerable amount of money and it’s not every day that you have a marquee at the farm! We wanted to use it as much as we could and to invite as many people to come and join us over the whole weekend.

How did you prepare for it?

I’ve worked in the wedding industry for a long time and so you always have a vision of what you would like your wedding day to be. So, you know, once you start planning it, it quickly gets into a routine of what you need to do.

Good old Excel helped me and – this is hugely beneficial for other brides and grooms – I think it’s really important to talk to your friends who have recently got married in the last couple of years. Although I’ve worked in the industry and I’d started my spreadsheet, having talked with my friends and sharing ideas, they then shared their spreadsheets which, funny enough, was a spreadsheet they’d shared amongst each other. It was really, really helpful because it gives you the sort of task list which means you’re able to bring it into your spreadsheet and consider other things you might not have.

How were your family and friends involved in planning and running the day?

There was a running joke between my other half, Andy, and me that my dad, Greg, was becoming my wedding planner!

My dad very much became part of our journey and hosted us at his home. He was very proud of that, you know, and he wanted it to be the best that it could be and came up with so many really good ideas.

We had multiple meetings with my mum, my dad, and Andy over supper, and we just continually talked with each other, it was really lovely. We were all on the same page.

When it came to the planning, we were all going in the same direction and it very much felt like all of our roles came together. I might be strong in one area, and my parents in another area, and then between the four of us, we kind of built it together, which was really exciting.

It just felt like we had huge support. I think your friends and family do come out of their shells and offer their support. And I think although sometimes you think that you might not need it, I think it’s about pulling in support when you do need it because, when you are setting up a marquee wedding, there’s a huge amount of work that goes into it.

You do need that support network of your friends and family to be able to come together and be there for the run-up of the week, on the day and a couple of days after, to be able to turn it around. Everyone just pulls together. I have a huge family anyway, and I think that everyone just comes together, and they all fall into each role and automatically just get stuck in.

I’d also like to mention my good friends Jen (Kalm Kitchen) and Hannah (Hannah Berry Flowers) who were like an absolute rock throughout the whole wedding and helped bring my vision together. They did such a great job and knew what to do at the right time. All my friends on the day were incredible, but those two, they just help me switch from being in the worrying zone to just enjoying the day.

Philippa Sian captured your photos on the day – which do you think really encapsulate your day?

LARA: There are so many pictures that sum up Andy and I as a couple. Andy is a sheep farmer, and my parents are dairy and it was really important that we incorporated that into the day, no matter how little it may be, but actually having memories of that as part of our day was really special.

So we had to have photos with Andy’s sheep and we had to have photos with my dad’s cows, and I’ll never forget the photographer saying to me, “I’ve never met a bride who took off her shoes to walk through a load of cow mark to go and get a picture with some cows, you know, keeps her dress on, climbs over the gate.”

We also tried a few photos with smoke flares, which didn’t really work. It was a bit of a disaster, but it was really funny. You can try so hard to get the perfect picture, but it doesn’t actually work. On the flip side, we really didn’t try hard to get a nice picture of the sheep, and we really didn’t try hard to get a nice picture of the cows, and it naturally just happened. And I think sometimes you need to focus on, like, what is important to the both of you as a couple, and what is your life all about? And try and capture those natural moments rather than try and create ones.

We haven’t received all of them at the time we’re speaking, but already, the snippets that we’ve received are a total kind of overview of our day, and you can see the energy in us and the energy’s so strong.

We received another picture of us coming into the room. We get called into the room, and we have, it’s, oh golly, something like Country Road playing and it’s just very like, it’s us.

You can just see the energy in the photograph of us coming into the room being like, we literally love this, and all of our friends and family are there, and we’re just having the best time ever. And I think those moments are, none of it’s staged. And I guess that’s what I’m trying to say, try not to stage too much.

ANDY: I’d say, probably the one where we’re on someone else’s shoulders near the mirror ball on the dance floor!

Or, you know, just during the whole day, everyone was laughing and smiling.

It’s really good. That’s actually one thing that’s like, that we loved seeing. Everyone is like, laughing, like, honestly, having so much fun and like, it’s just so nice that, like, everyone is in hysterics or laughing or smiling and having such a good time. That’s just so nice to look back on.

As well as your network of family and friends, at what point did you start to work with suppliers to help on your day?

 

The main supplier we started speaking with was the marquee company because that would inform lots of other conversations. We had considered two marquee companies – one that provided sail tents and one providing more traditional styles.

We’d sort of narrowed it down to two companies, and we stood in the field with them and talked about how it would work with a sail tent, and then how it would work with more of a traditional style marquee. We really loved the sail tent style and thought it would be beautiful in the setting.

However, we really, really wanted to have a reveal curtain with a dance floor area, so it could be a party room, and we just couldn’t see how it could work with the sail tent. So, it was quite a natural decision to then go with a traditional marquee.

I’m so glad we started with that because that then formed our day. It formed how the day was going to look, and, you know, the sort of vibe we were going for, even though we already had something in the back of our minds.

And then once we sort of had an idea about that, we’d reached out to our other suppliers, such as catering, florist, photographer, videographer, stationer, musicians and cake supplier.

What were the most important factors for you in choosing your wedding menu and your caterer?

Having established a relationship with Kalm Kitchen for over ten years and a friendship/family with Jen and James (Kalm Kitchen’s founders), we knew from day dot we wanted Kalm Kitchen to be our caterers.

We didn’t know if they’d travel to Dorset (they said yes!) but had hoped in the back of our minds that we’d be able to make it work. Having worked for the company, the decision in my mind was made, and we just knew that they were the one.

Andy popped in it at this point and was asked what was most important to him.

ANDY: The delicious food! I liked it all. I really enjoyed the canapés. I really enjoyed coming up before the actual wedding and doing a tasting with Kalm Kitchen and just all of it, it was really well organised!

What would you say to others when they’re looking for a wedding caterer?

I think that firstly, you need to establish what you’re looking for, in terms of the style of service and the type of food that you’re looking for.

You discuss it between the both of you and feel confident with what they’re producing. Look at their online presence and their social media, their reviews and you’ll gain confidence with your supplier, and you reach out.

I think it’s really important to ask questions to really understand the service that they’re providing.

 

I’ve had many friends get married and sort of look back and think, “Oh, I wish that we’d not cut a corner here to save some money.” And sometimes it comes down to the quality of service.

And I think, especially for my dad, it was really important that we had really, really good service. And it’s something that I know that Kalm Kitchen produces, and so I think that if someone else is looking it’s really important that they consider if that’s a factor that’s important to them.

 

When it comes down to food, there’s so much delicious food that Kalm Kitchen offer. And we knew we had to please a room of farmers, so it was very difficult to choose. We couldn’t go too outlandish with the menu!

But importantly, Andy and I needed to love our menu so that our guests would also love that menu.

We wanted to make sure that we did have a really lovely menu that suited everyone but also was all about us.

Were there any special touches about you that made it into the menu, or any particular touches that made it into the menu?

So for our menu, we decided to not do a starter and instead have loads of canapés ahead of main courses and desserts.

I didn’t want guests to sit down for a really long time. We had 160 guests and we wanted to make sure that they were fed quite substantially when they first came back to the marquee.

We chose a great all-round selection to please everyone and then we could sit down, everyone could have their main course and dessert, and then get up and party.

We chose beef. It’s always a crowd-pleaser, and I’d say it’s definitely one I’d highly recommend. I mean, our menu was great. It was really, really good. And we had a delicious lemon tart for dessert which went down really well too.

Drink was definitely key too! We’re very lucky that one of our friends works for a wine company and so she did a wine tasting with my family and involved my godparents too. It was a really fun evening. We let my friend know about our menu and she narrowed down a selection of wines that would pair well so in our tasting we could select the wines for the day.

We kept it really simple on the day. Andy has a bar company so we left it in his reigns to select the evening bar selection. Although we did have a free bar so we had to rein him in a little bit!

We also had “Take a shot, take a seat.” One of my friends owns a company called Remarkable Drinks and we had everyone’s guest names written on the bottle, and then they obviously had to do the shot to find the number, and then the number was on the bottle, and then they had to go and take a seat and that was really fun. Because of the time of year, it was the perfect season for things like sloe gin.

You were so closely involved in the planning, what’s your advice to brides and grooms to relax and enjoy it on the day?

In the run-up to the wedding, I spent hours staring at my spreadsheet. I spent hours thinking about all the little things, and I did a five-minute timeline of the day, of what was going to happen.

The night before the wedding, I shared that document with ushers, bridesmaids, parents etc. Perhaps one thing I should have done, and this is a recommendation to any future bride and groom, is to share that document maybe a couple of days earlier, rather than the night before!

There are all these other little tasks that you get involved with when it comes to a marquee wedding, and you need the support of your bridesmaids and ushers. It’s really important that you do share your list with them because it shares your worries and allows them to be off your chest, and then they can step into their roles.

But you know, all the things that I wanted to happen just happened naturally.

Andy and I were so immersed in our day that we didn’t even notice anything that was going on and all of those worries after sending the spreadsheet the night before to everyone, all of my worries just went away because I just trusted that everyone that was around me would pull it together and would make it happen, and they did. They really did, and everything that we wanted to happen just happened, whether it happened naturally or whether it happened, because it was on my spreadsheet, it just happened.

And everyone really, really pulled together. And you know, if anything cropped up, we were so unaware of what was happening, because we were so engrossed in having the best day ever. Sometimes you can get so caught up in trying to think about all those little things that you want to happen, but you just must let it go, because you won’t enjoy your day if you’re held up on all the little things.

You know you get this opportunity to have the best day of your life, you have everyone that you love around you, all your friends and family, and they’re all there to celebrate you, and they want you to have the best day, and that’s what matters most.

If there is something really important to you, then communicate that to someone that you know will take that responsibility and they really will do it.

And you know, going back to your suppliers too, although you sort of instil a lot into your friends and family trust that your suppliers are going to do a really good job.

You’ve asked them to be part of your special day for a reason, and it’s so important that you just let them do what they need to do. And you’ve already communicated in advance what you’re what is the most important thing to happen, and now just make it happen.

And they really will make it happen. They really do, because they really do care and are really good at their jobs.

How about working through the logistics of catering in a field?

Leading up to the wedding you have a quite a few meetings, where it’s important to communicate all you want for your day. The one thing to kind of know about Kalm Kitchen is they’re not just a catering company.

They obviously are a catering company – they produce delicious food and amazing service. But they also have a wealth of knowledge in terms of suppliers, guidance and experience with a wedding.

And if you haven’t done this before, it’s okay to kind of say that. And they can point you in the right direction of what to do and where to go. They can share with you suppliers that they’ve worked with before. It might be you’re looking for a particular style of band or a particular style of photography, and they’ve worked with someone before, so it just makes it easier to kind of help you build your network and bring everyone together.

In our case, we had Frankie supporting us – we could gather together questions and ask her, and then she could help and guide us in the right direction. Even if you think it’s not relevant, it’s okay to ask, because you know, they could point you in the right direction.

Even with the knowledge that I have from working in the industry, there are still so many things that you know to kind of bounce off others, serving drinks, what people are doing, what are the trends, how the marquee is going to work within the space, what access is needed.

We were getting married at the end of September and so there was the risk that it was going to be absolutely pouring it down. You’ve always got to have a contingency. We were so lucky that it poured it down the day before, but did pour it down on the day. Whilst we did have dry weather, but we had to prepare for wet weather and make access as easy as possible for suppliers. By doing that, it becomes easier further down the line.

We did have a couple of power issues on the day, which is really frustrating, but they’re sort of the uncontrollables. There are always going to be uncontrollables. It’s just how, on the day, it gets resolved. It didn’t affect our day, and it didn’t affect everyone else’s day. Everyone still had the most incredible day and everyone still got delicious food.

For Kalm Kitchen, I organised a nice little catering tent with a hard floor for them and a light outside.

The access for suppliers was really easy because they could come from the road straight in. The suppliers had separate access to guests. It made their lives so much easier, and then the guests had the full-blown guest experience.

Lara & Andy’s wedding is a beautiful example of how a well-planned and personalised event can create lasting memories for the couple and their guests.

Their wedding featured:

• Marquee: County Marquees
• Stationery: Pete Holder
• Flowers: Dorset Flower Company
• Music: Thom Music and Truly Medley Deeply
• Photographer Philippa Sian – see her photos and blog here.
• Videographer: Ash Videography
• Cake supplier: Lottie’s Little Cake Company
• Catering: Kalm Kitchen