Ali and Carmen's Wedding in West Chiltington, West Sussex

What I later found out was that as soon as the venue staff went and announced the change, every male guest we had went and helped move chairs, and worked to set out the inside ceremony space for us - the magic of a village! The ceremony was beautiful, and everyone cried happy tears with us, not a dry eye in the house! With a mix of readings and personal vows, and our little dog as our ring bearer, everything was us down to a T. We even had our live illustrator do a drawing for us at the end of the aisle, which is just so magical!

After the ceremony, we had the confetti arch, and managed to have some photos outside. Guests went and played the garden games we had, and drinks and canapés, while we mingled and then went off for couples photos. We spent ages having the photos just to get the wind to die down so my hair and veil were not in the way for the shots! We then had our wedding breakfast with speeches, and we had dinner 'family style' where the guests shared bowls of food to help themselves at the tables. We incorporated the grooms middle eastern heritage by having beef koftas, chicken tagine, vegetable matbucha, cous cous, rice for the mains; we had chicken nuggets and chips for the kids, and then a classic Eton Mess for dessert! Everything was perfect, and no one was hungry, which we loved because there is nothing worse than being hungry at a wedding!

Our evening guests arrived for the start of the evening do, and after we had a few more photos outside and some more mingling, we had the cake cutting, and went into our first dance, which we had had choreographed and practised. Then into dancing, more live illustration, photo booth and fun! We had glowsticks, which went down well with every guest of every age! We really lit up the dance floor for the whole night! The groom and I snuck away to go and feed the highland cows before our photographer left, and had some last photos, and then enjoyed our evening buffet and dancing. We spent the whole day together, and that made everything so special because we now have the same memories from the day - it goes so fast, and we only realised how true this phrase was once we were living it!

The day was the most magical, heartfelt, personal, love-filled day from start to finish! All of our suppliers also just felt like friends throughout, too, and we were so lucky to have vendors who cared as much as we did!