Neil & Louise
1st November 2019
Notley Tythe Barn, Long Crendon
Red & Black
Festival – ‘Jollyfest’
Photographer: Mia Harlow
Harpist: Tori Handsley
Camper Vans: Silk & Satin Camper Van Hire
Light Up Letters: Special Events MK
Hair: Harriet Bartley, Aylesbury
Make-up: Carla Tangi at Feel Beautiful
Stationery: Your Perfect Invite by JMS Creative
This article has been written and taken from a live interview which can be seen at the bottom of this article, so if you’d prefer to watch rather than read, scroll down to the bottom!
Neil and Louise Jolly were married at the Notley Tythe Barn in Long Crendon on 1st November 2019 after a ‘surprise’ engagement at a hotel.
Between the two of them, they had decided that they were going to get married and had gone to the trouble of secretly getting a ring designed which Louise describes as a ‘Love Actually’ experience – you know the scene… the one where Alan Rickman is surreptitiously purchasing a gift he shouldn’t be for the girl in the office as shop assistant Rowan Atkinson takes an age to wrap up the illicit necklace. Louise recalls that “I tried it on, then they put it in a box… then put it in a bag… then put it in another bag, and it was very much like Love Actually where they put all the bows on. Then I remember walking out of the jewellers with this bag containing my ring and I thought ‘well, we’ve got the ring now… is that it?!”
Both on their second marriage, Neil had spoken to all four of the children ‘in secret’ so every time the couple went away for a weekend, the kids were expecting news of an engagement, but Neil kept everyone, including Louise, guessing as to when the actual proposal would take place. He looks back fondly when they were walking around a garden centre with the ring and commented that “it was just as well it was well wrapped up, or she would have been opened it and tried on before I knew it!”
The proposal took place when the couple stayed at a local hotel and Louise laughs now about how cross she was at the time with the staff, saying that it was “the worst check in ever! I remember one staff member after the other coming out and asking if everything was ok, then saying that the room wasn’t quite ready. Unbeknown to me, Neil had been in cahoots with the hotel”. Neil continues the story explaining that “I had organised to have a big love heart on the bed with the ring placed on a table, but meanwhile, Louise was still mad at the hotel staff wanting to know exactly what was going on and why everything was taking so long!”
On the verge of writing a complaint email, the couple was eventually shown to their hotel room where Louise says “and then I saw it… the balloons, the candles, and well, that was me gone! I was full-on crying – you know where you get the bogey bubbles… and this is with me knowing that we were going to get engaged, but it was still a surprise not knowing when it was going to happen!”
So, now officially engaged, what was the first thing the couple did to start planning their wedding? “Well, I think it was working out who we were going to invite” chuckles Louise. Then it turned to stationery. “It was both of our second marriages, so we knew that we wanted something that was very us,” said Neil, “something very lively and about us – not about pleasing anyone else and that was really important to us. We were both festival lovers and had been to a lot of shows at that point, so we came up with ‘JollyFest’”.
We fell in love with this idea straight away when they came to us – not only because they were using their love of festivals to add personality to their stationery, but because they went the extra mile and branded the whole occasion as ‘JollyFest!’
They booked one of our bespoke consultations and Louise still loves the fact that their ‘logo’, which contained a red heart in place of the ‘o’ in Jollyfest, “went right from their Save the Date cards all the way through to our thank you cards and everyone KNEW it was us!”
Neil made the point that “we had been to quite a few weddings where perhaps the invitation didn’t match the style of their stationery on the day and it all felt a bit disjointed. We were quite keen to make sure that everything was tied in and that’s exactly where your services came in”.
The date the couple went for in the end was the last Friday of half term and with lots of friends with children, combined with the fact that their nuptials would take place on a Friday, they knew they had to get their date in people’s diaries ASAP, so they first visited us in mid-November 2018 and their Save the Date cards were designed a produced swiftly for them to pop in the post with their Christmas Cards. An additional top tip from their Save the Date cards, was that they added a line on which said “if you already know that you can’t make the date, please let us know”, and this meant that anyone who couldn’t attend told them in advance and this saved them from producing an invitation for them further down the road. Neil also said that this helped them get more accurate numbers early on which aided their planning with the venue.
(If you’re in the early stages of planning and are considering a Save the Date card, you may find our blog useful: Five Facts You May Not Know About Save the Date Cards)
The couple had originally thought that their wedding would take place in a hotel, but after visiting a few of their favourites – and timing their visits on occasion to coincide with a wedding taking place (although they insist that they are not wedding crashers!), they quickly felt that hotels offer a ‘one size fits all’ approach and decided to take a look at the Notley Tythe Barn in Long Crendon.
Initially, the couple was apprehensive about the venue due to the lack of accommodation as they had people coming from long distances – including as far away as Canada – but they quickly realised that they could work around this as everything else about the venue fitted for them. “We fell in love with the Barn immediately,” said Neil “with its twinkly lights” Louise added. “It gave us everything we wanted and it gave us the festival feel we wanted without the marquee vibe.” They didn’t want a marquee as it would be “too cold in November!” the couple chuckled, going on to say that they originally thought they would have a spring wedding but that “someone (naming no names, Louise) got a bit excited!”
So they went for the first date that the barn had available and Neil LOVED the fact that they could meet the chef as the food was such a big part of the day… and he loves his food! The couple were very complimentary about the wedding co-ordinators at the venue and definitely advise chatting to the planners at the venues you’re interested in to ensure you can build up a rapport.
They got around the accommodation issue by including a list of hotels on the reverse of their invitation and advise couples to look for all the positives in a situation, and if something isn’t 100% perfect, to see if there are ways around the ‘problem’ to make it work. The couple also went to the trouble of laying on a coach to and from the venue to a couple of chosen hotels which gave Louise “peace of mind that the majority of people would be on time!”
The couple talked positively about all the trouble that Notley Tythe went to for them, recalling that they were unsure about some of the wines at their wine tasting, so the venue sent them home with a couple of bottles to make sure they made the right choice. “It was the little touches like this that really made it for us with Notley. For us, it was absolutely perfect.”
Hitting it off with your suppliers from the start is something that the couple took really seriously and luckily for us that happened with Neil recalling “it’s like with you guys, we hit it off straight away! But we went to a couple of hotels and we just felt that they were too corporate with no leeway. You didn’t get that with Notley.”
I certainly remember laughing all the way through their consultation and it certainly set the tone for a very ‘jolly’ occasion! Neil was very involved with ideas for their invitations and loved the personal service they received from us saying “it was the little touches, like the bar codes on the ticket-style invitations that really brought everything together.”
Although there are festival-style invitations out there, Louise said that “all the ones we looked at were mainly based on marquees or hay bales and we didn’t want that at all. I mean, it was festival, but it wasn’t the festival vibe we were going for.”
In terms of their other suppliers, the couple credit wedding fairs with helping them to find who they wanted and said that they attended “around 15-20 shows” looking for suppliers saying that “it is definitely worth going to these shows to see who you hit it off with.”
Because of the time of year they were getting married at, they also managed to negotiate a better price with companies like the one who supplied their chair covers and say that going to wedding fairs allows you to ask companies this kind of question.
The couple had a few kids along to the wedding day and made up little colouring packs to keep them amused during some of the more boring adult times, and also suggests putting some packs of bread sticks in to keep them going until dinner time. “The adults have alcohol to keep them going” laughed Neil.
Without any prompting (a well-trained couple!) Neil and Louise come back to the fact that their stationery helped tie everything together and the tone set by their invitations carried on to their On the Day stationery. They named their tables after different festival stages, even going to the lengths of looking at who was sitting on the table and making sure the ‘stage’ was relevant to the people sat there. For example, the top table was named “The Main Stage” and the youngsters were sat on the “Up and Coming” stage. The couple told us that the table plan was the most challenging part of their planning, making sure that everyone was sat with people who would contribute to a chilled out and relaxed vibe and also making sure that people were sat on a table relevant to them. They really believed in these little details.
They also had an order of the day which again followed the theme of ‘The Line Up” and actually said that they more or less stuck to the running order throughout the day – something that they again credit Notley’s excellent wedding planners with.
The couple went to town on their favours and gifted their guests a glass coaster with two red hearts on (we were lucky enough to receive one which is still on my desk today!), a jar of sweets, a lottery scratch card, and their guests’ favourites, a little lanyard to really tie the festival theme together.
The couple only invited people who were close to them and insisted on not inviting anyone who ‘should’ be there, just because they ‘should’ be there.
They wanted only their nearest and dearest to them and throughout their planning, were always faithful to decisions that represented them as a couple – and not anyone else.
For instance, Neil doesn’t like cake, so their wedding cake was a cheesecake! And we don’t mean a sweet cheesecake, we mean a cake made of cheese! “I don’t like cake, so I wasn’t going to have a traditional one!” The chef at Notley put together layers of English cheese for them, which was then served as part of their evening buffet. They were also savvy enough to save some for later and Neil chuckles “whilst we were sat in our room later on looking at all of our cards, we were actually sat there munching through cheese!”
In terms of advice for couples planning now, Neil said that his “top tip is to visit your venue at least twice, and to go back at different times so that you can see them in different situations – and if it’s at all possible, go when there is a wedding on.”
The only thing they regret from their day is that they waited until after dinner had finished to do their speeches with Neil commenting that “I didn’t really enjoy my meal – even though it was a lovely meal, because I was worried about doing my speech. I wish I’d have done it before we sat down for food.”
A final tip from the couple would be to reiterate how important it is to have a good rapport with the suppliers who will be with you on the day – again they advise visiting wedding fairs to get the opportunity to meet people.
A documentary style photographer was important to them and they opted to go for Mia Harlow who provided just this. “We didn’t want a situation where groups kept being called up throughout the day for endless shots. We wanted informal, relaxed photos throughout the day.”
And they are adamant that this relaxed, fun style was really started by the issue of their invitations!
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