Kate + Liam | June 2024
“We had such an amazing time”
Having met at a Young Farmers’ Ball, it seemed only right that Kate and Liam’s wedding should be on family farmland. And like so many of my 2024 outdoor weddings - with the wash-out summer we had - I was refreshing my BBC weather app from the allotted 10 days out. Nearly 12m (TWELVE MILLION) people on instagram have seen Love Unfiltered’s content of Kate burying a sausage (oo er, vicar) the night before her wedding, in keeping with the hilarious old tradition that it will make for good weather on your Big Day. And boy oh oh boy oh saveloy did it pay off. The weather wasn’t just sunny it was baking hot. I was delighted for them…but I felt for the groom and his cohort in velvet dinner jackets!
Photography by the lovely Claire McGowan for Sean Elliott Photography
A path had been mown down from the country lane to the ceremony space, and it felt like a secret garden as you meandered down into the field, the chairs and flowers appearing before you. Although, waiting in the open field in the hot sun for the wedding party to arrive, the tiny section of shade cast by the bushes at the bottom of the path became a little oasis where a few of us crowded in together.
I’m very happy to share the limelight leading at the front (my husband might disagree); it’s fantastic when a loved one comes forward to do a reading and really delivers. Good friend of the couple Ed Dungait (who - in the farming theme - happens to Chair of the National Federation of Young Farmers Clubs) absolutely stole the show in Kate and Liam’s ceremony, reciting - from memory - an altered version of the St Crispin's Day speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V.
Here’s just a snippet (for dear Ed had memorised ten times this length!):
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words—Lamby and Kate
He confidently and melodramatically acted out every line and the congregation - his audience - were in the palm of his hand. It managed to be both hilarious and moving. But mostly just hilarious.
We made the most of having a live pianist present - friend of the family, the lovely Alan on keyboard - and had not one but two sing-a-longs in the ceremony: Jerusalem, for rugby-loving Liam, and Elton’s Are You Ready for Love because it’s a banger everyone knows.
Bride Kate, Claire the photographer and I had been back-and-forth a little on how the confetti-throwing moment might work. Confetti is one of my favourite moments in a wedding - it can be so joyful and create such gorgeous photos - BUT it’s sometimes more “orchestrated” shall we say than the resulting pics would have you believe. But that’s usually necessary; it requires gently herding the guests into formation, making sure the confetti has been grabbed or handed out, getting the newly-married couple into position to walk back into the throng. With Kate and Liam’s ceremony we agreed to have them process out, while the guests formed two lines down the aisle and out into the bottom of the meadow. Kate and Liam then did a loop back to the top of the aisle while confetti was being handed out - all this still within the end of the ceremony itself.
We had to do a take two. And that’s why I wanted to lift the lid a little on The Confetti Shot. I’ve not done a take two before but I’m glad we did - second time guests were all in a better position, more people had confetti and we all really WENT FOR IT. Plus we had the advantage of live piano music so we could go again in a smooth way.
Kate and Liam’s wedding felt like it was geared so much around their amazing friendship group - and how up for a good time they all were. From burying the sausage to popping bottles in their pyjamas before the ceremony (the girls), and from belting out Jerusalem in full rugby-match-style (boys) to dancing to Pitbull on full volume in the field as the official group photos were being taken (all of them…and I joined in), these farmers-n-friends were a VIBE.