**Back in May this year, Lucie Cave, Heat's editor-in-chief, got engaged to Ben Lunt. Since that day she’s been updating us on her wedding journey from her bridesmaidzilla-moments to the name change dilemma in the Grazia Bride Boggles series. This week she reveals all that she learned from the big day…
[Photography by www.damianbailey.com]
So the big day had finally arrived and after juicing so much I was starting to think Beetroot would make a good name if I ever had kids and doing more press ups than Arnie could dream of ("I will not have bingo wings in my wedding dress!") I felt healthier than I'd ever felt in my life. Well, until the night before my actual wedding I drank so much gin and tonic that I hardly slept a wink and woke up with a stonking hangover and eye-bags the size of the moon. Obviously.
But despite a few minor hiccups, it was the best darn day of my life. Here's how it happened and what I learned along the way.
1. Getting there is all part of the fun
Ben decided he wanted to travel to the venue separately to me. He wanted to bond with his best men - or so he said. He wanted to enjoy his last few hours of being a 'single play boy', he told me. Which translated into him having to hire a Maserati (from dhcullen.com) - something I thought was a type of sword until it pulled up making loud noises outside the house.
So while Ben went for the snazzy supercar, me and the girls, including my mum, went old skool and hired a limo – meaning we had room for all our clobber, could sprawl out and neck Buck's Fizz the whole journey.
*2. Good luck trying ***not to get too bladdered the night before
The night before the big day we were joined by about 60 of our friends and family for a barbecue in the grounds of Babington (which as my dad pointed out was basically the size of another wedding). This way, some of the guests who’d not met before, including the parents… gulp... could get familiar. Some of them got extremely familiar (fortunately not the parents) and most of them got so over-excited they stayed up til 5am - including several bridesmaids. Despite my midnight curfew I managed about two hours' sleep then made the mistake of looking at my face in the loo mirror at 6am and seeing the Grand Canyon under my eyes.
3. Make sure you have plenty of time to get ready
Thank heck my wedding was at 4.30pm which meant a) I had hours to calm the eyebags – a combination of cucumber chunks plus my clever makeup artist bridesmaid Fraggle Jury b) the bridesmaids and mums could hang out with me all day having our hair done and downing sipping champagne like giddy kippers.
[Photography by www.damianbailey.com]
4. Don’t put on your dress til the very last minute
My journey to dressdom took a while but I ended up having my dress made specially for me by my designer pal Kate Halfpenny. I deliberately left putting it on until ten minutes before I needed to head to the chapel. And as cliched as it sounds, I felt just like a little princess!
[Photography by www.damianbailey.com]
5. All bridesmaid dress battles will be forgotten
It was a struggle getting all ten of my bridesmaids into dresses they actually liked, but it was worth it in the end. My vision of 'ice cream colours' could’ve ended up looking more 'Eton mess' but thanks to a combination of delights from Coast, Boden, Mango and Monsoon – it bloody well worked!
[Photography by www.damianbailey.com]
6. And let's not forget the fellas…
Despite the fact that Ben and his two best men – his twin Joe and model mate Richard Biedul - spent a good part of the wedding weekend naked…
… luckily they had a clear idea of what they wanted to wear from the start. While Richard had his pick of designer clobber from his modelling contacts, it was actually in Austin Reed on the high street that they found their perfect suits. Using Daniel Craig in Casino Royale (in a Tom Ford suit) as their inspo they chose midnight blue tuxess for the best men and ushers, and Ben marked himself out with the addition of a grey double-breasted waistcoat. They all looked very dapper. Although they seemed to have forgotten their socks along the way…
[Photography by www.damianbailey.com]
7. Make sure your rings match your personality
We had our wedding rings designed by Duffy who we gave a clean slate to do what he thought would work best for us and the sort of people we are. Ben had a gold super woofer of a creation and mine was a masterpiece that merged my vintage engagement ring into a whole new creature entirely - Duffy’s design slotted it into the centre of a contemporary rose gold flower.
8. And why not get a transfer of your husband's face on your finger…
Not one for stuffy old tradition, I got Bioscupture gel nails to match the colours of my bridesmaids' dresses and topped it off with a transfer of Ben’s head on my wedding finger from the genius lazy nails. You know, just to give him a bit of a surprise when he went to put the ring on my finger. Here’s his face when he noticed it in the church...
[Photography by www.damianbailey.com]
9. Ditch formality in favour of a big ol' party
Having invited over 200 guests we decided not to have a sit-down meal, instead letting the party vibe carry through from start to finish. So there were drinks and canapés outside the chapel before we headed inside for speeches on a stage (being the foghorn I am, I did a speech of my own), and afterwards people helped themselves to food in the log room. That way guests could sit with who they wanted, where they wanted or just carry on boozing!
**10. Make sure you sneak off together **
After some wise words from a married mate of mine, Ben and I made sure we dragged ourselves away from the party for a few minutes just so we could take it all in and have a bit of a moment together. Our ‘moment’ also involved our photographer, ehm. But luckily his style (Damien Bailey) meant we hardly knew he was there all day yet he somehow captured every brilliant second. Oh, check us out snogging all spontaneous-like in the moonlight...
[Photography by www.damianbailey.com]
11. Get a dance lesson from a Strictly pro
Before the wedding I got very over-ambitious and thought Ben and I could wow the crowd with a high octane dance routine for our first dance. Thanks to the patience of the amazing Kristina Rhianoff from Strictly Come Dancing we had a brilliant two-hour lesson choreographed around our song choice ‘Love Is In The Air’. Kristina told us she gave us “ten out of ten for trying and not getting into an argument!” But after my failed attempts to coax Ben to practise in the kitchen I’m not sure we’d have got any marks for our finished effort. In fact, I think he just swung me round a bit.
12. Book a band that will have ALL your guests going nuts…
… And who better than the Cuban Brothers, who Ben and I have been obessed with for years. If you’ve never seen them … in their own words they are “entertainment personified. They will make you laugh, sing along, cry with joy, shit your pants and shake your booty”. They turned the wedding into a festival and everyone LOVED them (Ben’s sister Nikki loved them so much she decided to run on stage and flash her boobs. She then proceeded to do this several other times throughout the night).
[Photography by www.damianbailey.com]
13. Forget about trying to keep your wedding dress clean
The party carried on til gone 6am so by the time I crawled to bed I had most of the contents of the bar on my skirt (my plan is to get it taken up into a short dress I can wear with boots and a leather jacket). Meanwhile some of the bridesmaids and ushers decided to go for a swim in the pool in all their outfits. Here’s the state of Trish’s the next day.
14. If you hire a photobooth, be prepared …
We booked a photobooth for the reception area of Babington House – complete with props and a guest book to write in. One of the best parts of the wedding was the next day, looking through the drunken pictures. Most of which included exposed body parts, people eating each others faces or doing their best Mariah impressions with the wind machine. And most of which are too rude to show you in this blog.
15. Or get a cute wishing tree
[Photography by www.damianbailey.com]
Thanks to my lovely sister Hannah, we had the surprise of a wishing tree that she’d made herself the morning of the wedding – complete with pics of us and a call to action for guests to write nice messages. Once again most of the messages we got were drunk and unfathomable or pictures of willies. But, hey, when has a willy not been a sign of good times ahead?
16. And finally...hope you don’t wake up the day after the wedding with swollen glands and a face that looks like a cross between David Coulthard and Princess Fiona from Shrek
This actually happened.
To be continued…