You know how much we love a good wedding here at Jacaranda HQ, so imagine the pandemonium that broke out when Simon, our sous chef, proposed to Nickie, our office manager earlier this year on the last day of their trip back to his native New Zealand! We are all incredibly delighted that these guys have decided to tie the knot and even more thrilled that Nickie has agreed to share her wedding planning experience with our blog readers. Over to you, Nickie…
Simon & I met at work during the summer of 2009 when he started working for Jacaranda as the new sous chef whilst I was the event manager for Bury Court Barn. During our time at Jacaranda I have organised & event managed over 250 weddings and Simon has cooked for the same number again.
Simon proposed earlier this year during a trip to his native New Zealand – his first journey home for five years. It was also his mum’s 65th birthday, so we booked a flight to surprise her. She had no idea we were coming, so when we just turned up at her house it’s safe to say she went into complete shock!
The bombshells didn’t stop there though, as to my surprise he popped the question on our last night in New Zealand. My engagement ring has been handed down through the family from his great, great, great grandmother and sports 4 beautiful diamonds in a row set into a gold band.
We were immediately bombarded with questions about when & where the wedding would take place as soon as we returned home and told our family and friends. Having only just got engaged, we hadn’t even had time to talk about it between just the two of us! However, the excitement from everyone else got the ball rolling and very soon we had decided that we were going to have a short engagement of 9 months and marry in August 2013.
A summer wedding was always going to be tricky due to the business we are in (our busiest season at Jacaranda being between April & October), but we found a weekend in August that was relatively free in terms of events and booked the date, Saturday 17th August.
Between us, I think we have seen nearly every kind of wedding dress, heard all the usual speech jokes, served every kind of menu and seen pretty much all the flowers possible, so when Simon proposed we already knew what style of wedding we wanted. We are therefore not planning the most traditional of weddings, but much more of a party instead, taking inspiration from carnivals, festivals, the circus and enchanted woodland.
We ideally wanted a garden or field, with meadows, woodland and incredible views as our wedding venue. Thanks to some very lucky connections we have to a beautiful stately home in West Sussex, we have been granted permission to use their gardens for our wedding location and can’t wait for our guests to see it!
I’m already having a few Bridezilla moments, but I’ll get to those in my next entry in the New Year!
From January, Nickie will be regularly sharing her wedding planning journey with us, so we hope you will stay tuned to see how Simon and Nickie’s spectacular wedding comes together…