Today’s photos are some of my favourite from our wedding and I’m really excited to be sharing them with you all.  After the church ceremony and ice cream outside, Nick and I left across the field on a simple pony and carriage, which took us down the country lanes for a short while just the two of us.

My mom is solely responsible for organising this – as a teacher in the village primary school she knows a lot of local people, and John who took us out in his pony and carriage is one of them.

I’ve had a love of horses and riding since before I can remember, as a little girl growing up in London I used to dream of moving to the country and having riding lessons.  That finally happened when I was six, and I think for my 7th birthday I got my first lessons.

Yup that’s me and Basil – we’re at a show, we never looked that smart normally!

John was so lovely, he doesn’t do weddings, he just has his pony – called Carrots – and carriage for pleasure, going out in the evenings, what a wonderful thing to do after work!  He even turned up the week before the wedding and took Nick and I out for a drive, which was one of the best moments and made it feel like our wedding was really happening.

John and his wife offered to put flowers or ribbons on the carriage, but we told him we didn’t need any of that, and I’m so pleased we didn’t deck it out – it was just right for us plain.  What I did love was that John wore a fabulous country tweed suit and wore a sprig of cow parsley in his buttonhole – even Carrots the pony had cow parsley poking out of this bridle.

And the good news for any other Cotswold brides is that John is looking to do more weddings – if you’re interested let me know and I might be able to put you in touch.  It was so much fun to ride off across the field with all our family and friends watching – I love this photo of everyone…

The field was pretty bumpy though and we were trying to open a bottle of champagne – drinking it was impossible so we waited until we were on the lanes.  Ashamedly I hadn’t eaten in over 24 hours – I just genuinely lost my appetite – so I think the champagne went to my head quite quickly!

How pretty do the yellow buttercups look – its times like that when you realise that nature really does do it best.

Mark our photographer followed in his car, occasionally leaping out to take some photos.

We stopped for a bit in the entrance to a field to let Mark take some more photos – these were the kind of photos I was nervous about as Nick and I aren’t that keen on having our photo taken.  I must admit that we were just both so happy that we didn’t find it is terrible as we thought it might be – it just seemed easy to be ‘happy and in love’ looking.

I’m not usually one for posed shots, but Mark did capture some wonderful pictures of us and in such a beautiful setting – and one that is even more special because  I have grown up in it and it is so familiar to me.

These are also the photos you find your granny wants on her mantlepiece.  And granny’s wishes, I find, can’t be ignored.

I prefer candid photos like this one…

Mark also got a few lovely shots of my bouquet – oh, how I miss it!

And Nick’s buttonhole with rosemary and sage…

Finally we headed back my parent’s house – I just wish it hadn’t had to end.  It was really nice to get some time to ourselves.

After we got back to the garden, John was kind enough to take people out around the field – like my flowergirl Emily (another horse lover) and my Auntie Heather…

This one below is one of my favourites out of our wedding photos, even though I guess it falls under ‘posed’, I think it’s one that we will look back on when we’re old and remember our wedding fondly.

All images: Mark Tattersall Photography