Fi and Diego Real Wedding ~ Polhawn Fort

Blog

Ideas

The proposal

Diego proposed at home.
He had planned to pop the question in our local water park whilst we were walking home from a meal out that evening.
Unfortunately, it was below zero as we walked home and I am utterly pathetic with cold weather – he abandoned the original plan and did it once we were indoors and had warmed up!

Where you got ready/got married/had your reception/why you chose these locations

I got ready at Polhawn Fort and Diego got ready with his and my family at a big property in Looe that we had rented for the week of the wedding.
We had the whole party at Polhawn – ceremony and reception.

Location wise, Polhawn jumped out at us for a few reasons:
I am originally from Cornwall and so wanted to go ‘home’ to get married.
Diego and I both lived near coasts when we were children and we wanted it to be a coastal location as we adore the sound of the sea and the nature associated with it.

Finally, we wanted to have as much freedom as possible with regard to organisation as it allowed us to incorporate elements from both Cornish and Venezuelan cultures.

What you wore, where you bought your outfits – hair, make-up and accessories (including bridal party if you like)

I wore a Justin Alexander dress which I bought in Manchester at an amazing bridal shop called Puure Bride.
My bridesmaids chose their dresses at a bridal shop in Newcastle (one lives near London and the other near Aberdeen so we all met in Newcastle to go shopping)!

All of our hair and make-up was done by the incredibly talented Adele Hack from Plymouth.
Accessories wise, my dad bought me some pearl drop earrings for the day and my mum and I bought a similar pair each for my two bridesmaids.
I’m not really into jewels and glitter, so my hair had some gypsophila flowers in it.

How did you style your day?

Diego and I are a very relaxed couple. We are not into anything expensive or luxurious and we wanted the whole vibe of our day to be relaxed and fun.
We had no real theme or colour scheme, but kept the idea of the coast in mind. We didn’t bother with chair covers or anything like that as it just felt too ‘over the top’ for our tastes.

Polhawn is already so different and beautiful inside that we didn’t really add much.

We had white table cloths with a hessian runner. On top of the hessian runner we scattered some shells, sea-glass and driftwood and also placed jam jars of flowers.
We used cocktail umbrellas for seating places and mini rainbow colour donkey piñatas as the favours.

To us, it looked great – touches of the coast but with splashes of colour from the cocktail umbrellas and the mini piñatas – very individual and not super co-ordinated or designer-y! We just did what we wanted and kept everything fun/not too serious. It seemed to work as so many of our guests said how they had never felt more relaxed or able to just enjoy themselves at a wedding, which is exactly what we wanted.

Did you have bouquets/flower decorations?

My mum’s friend Karen did some beautiful flower arrangements for us – most of the flowers for which were grown by Karen and my mum in their gardens.
I know pretty much diddly-squat about flowers, so asked for natural/wild flowers with a coastal feel.
Karen made jam jars of flowers for the tables and a few jugs of flowers for the windowsills and the table where we signed the register. They looked beautiful.

Ruth Andrew kindly made three bouquets for me and my two bridesmaids using the same types of flowers as Karen had for the decorations, which were also beautiful.

We did send save the dates as our guest list was pretty international so we wanted to make sure people had plenty of time to arrange flights. Diego and I designed them ourselves on the computer and e-mailed them out – cost nothing!

Invitations wise, we used an online design from a shop on etsy. It was a world map design and we could change the wording to whatever we wanted. We sent these out mostly via Whatsapp/e-mail, although printed a few for some of our ‘older’ guests who would’ve preferred a more traditional ‘paper’ invitation.

My mum and I made the table planner using a cork-board, white travel tags and some mini bunting. The whole thing probably cost about a tenner and looked simple but effective!

Who took your photos?

Our photography was done by Liberty Pearl. Amber was fantastic – she took the time to find out what we wanted and stayed until late snapping pics of all the dancing.

We didn’t bother with a videographer.
Photo booth wise, we did a DIY version – we bought an instax camera and some silly hats/moustaches and put it next to our guestbook. People came up, snapped a photo of themselves and stuck it in the book along with their message.

Did you have a wedding cake?

Continuing with our theme of not wanting anything too fancy or forced and avoiding the ‘set traditions’ of many weddings, we didn’t have a cake as such.

Diego’s favourite dessert is chocolate brownies and mine is carrot cake. So we made a huge stack of chocolate brownies from a Green and Black’s recipe a few days before the wedding (we froze them and then defrosted them the night before), and my cousin Sarah made a similar amount of carrot cakes as she is a great baker.

So we had a table with chocolate brownies and carrot cakes on a cornishware cake stand with some daisies from the garden for decoration.

Who were your food and drink suppliers?

Food wise, we wanted to recognise both of our ‘cultures’ so to speak.

After the ceremony, we had a table laid out with Pimms or orange juice and chips and dips – the ‘chips’ bulk bought in M&S and the dips from Waitrose! We also had crudités of carrot and cucumber with hummus.

Venezuelan weddings don’t tend to have a three course meal so for the main meal we had the most amazing paella buffet made by Hermanos Paella – three massive paellas (chicken and chorizo, seafood and vegetarian) that were delicious. They came with salads and breads too, which were also amazing.
Hermanos paellas also made our puddings – crema catalana or chocolate mousse – again, amazing!

In the evening we had a buffet of mini Cornish pasties – either steak or vegetarian. They were made by Malcolm Barnecutt Bakery – me and my family have eaten their pasties all of our lives so they were the clear choice!
We bought wine for the tables – one red, one white and one prosecco. We bought it all on Easter bank holiday weekend when Sainsbury’s had a massive sale on.
Bar wise, Tony Crook did a pop up bar at the fort. They were fantastic, a great selection of drinks at local pub prices instead of inflated hotel costs.

Once the vows and the formalities were over, how did you party? Disco/band?

So Diego is a professional musician and we were trying to cater for a half english, half south american guest list. Tricky.
The only bands we know that do Latin and British music are those that Diego and his friends are part of, and so we really didn’t want them to have to work at our wedding!

In the end, Diego and I joined spotify premium and made a 5h playlist of latin and british music!

The venue had disco lights and amplifiers, so we just plugged in the laptop and let the playlist role.
We could not have imagined how well it would work. We had people dancing for every single song – we had never seen that before at any weddings we have been to. It was just brilliant.

What was your favourite part of the day?

Way too hard – all of it. Actually marrying each other was obviously a highlight!

What advice would you give to others ?

Do what you want to do! People get really frightened about ‘rules’ around weddings. For us, the most important thing was having the wedding we wanted with the people we wanted.

Organisation wise, it didn’t feel stressful at all. The fact that we are both really laid back helps with that, but we also didn’t look at too much ‘stuff’. If you see 100 dresses and 100 venues and try 100 foods, it is guaranteed to be stressful – the paradox of choice. We just picked the first of each element that we liked and then looked no more.

On the day?

Everyone says it but it is so true – it goes so so quickly. Try and take 5 minutes at some point for just the two of you. Our attempt at this was gatecrashed by one of our nephews, but we enjoyed our 45 seconds just the two of us looking out over the sea in the middle of the evening do.

Favourite things about Polhawn Fort?

Oh gosh – the fort, the beach, the scenery, the location, the amazing staff (Gemma and Jim were just incredible people to have on board to help). I have no suggestions!!

Did you have a honeymoon? Where did you go and for how long? How soon after the wedding did you go?

We did have a little honeymoon – we went to Madeira for a week which was lovely. We left just over a week after the wedding and spent our time hiking in the mountains, eating way too much food and chilling at the beach/lido.