This London Gardener Got Married Surrounded By Home-Grown Flowers And Foliage

Our invitations – designed and hand-painted by Caroline Kent of Scribble and Daub – had two venues on it: St Dunstan in the East and Brunswick House. Both good London secrets. Churches have been built, destroyed and re-built on St Dunstan’s Lane – a hidden pocket of the Square Mile – since 1100. Now, the remnants of Christopher Wren’s 17th-century design stand in the open air for a congregation of palm trees, vines and moss. I find deep beauty in the life that grows from manmade ruins, and it seemed like a hopeful place for us to share the story of our love and make promises for its future.

I’d found the dress during an efficient high-street safari a year earlier. Off-white and pleated from Self-Portrait, it felt contemporary and unfussy for this reluctant bride, and I liked the vintage references of the crochet and high neckline. I had it altered by an older unsmiling French woman in Chelsea, who was pleasingly insistent that I mustn’t lose any weight before the wedding, as the fit was now perfect. My mum made the hair bow from a silk remnant she had hanging around. My bridesmaids were good enough to unearth their dresses: dark green, ’70s-inspired and babycord (for less warm April weather) from Warehouse. The puffed sleeves and ruffles echoed my twin nieces’ flower girl dresses, which mum made from a ’90s Laura Ashley pattern.

Ushers passed cremant around in paper cups before guests boarded routemasters for Brunswick House, a Georgian mansion improbably perched on Vauxhall roundabout. Matt and I jumped in a black cab to try and make sense of the giddy groundswell beneath our feet.

We’d chosen Brunswick House because we hoped the place – part-restaurant, part-architectural antiques company – would make our wedding feel like a house party, and it did, albeit one with priceless furniture and a grand piano (duly played, at one point by a rock star and a five-year-old simultaneously). It’s a beautiful, unprecious place; one where children ran feral up and down the spiral staircase and friends and relatives introduced themselves outside the loos. They served up a seasonal menu, which meant we didn’t have to think about the food much.

There were no favours; I scribbled out the table plan and name places a couple of nights before. We didn’t decorate beyond an Alice Gabb banner inspired by one of our readings and flowers; I asked India Hurst of Vervain Floral Design to do as she wished. I’m a gardener, so there were always going to be flowers, and they were always going to be seasonal, British and, for the most part, home-grown. India filled the place with fritillaries and blossom; she grew meadows from mantelpieces.

Matt said he wanted a pile of beignets instead of a wedding cake and so that’s what we had, the end result being everyone scoffing doughnuts before cocktails were served in the cellar, and a few making their way into handbags for the way home. I had a costume change for a dress better suited to dancing – a simple LBD I found when I wasn’t looking in Cos last winter and my grandmother’s pearls around my neck. We interrupted the gaggle of under-eights raving to “Don’t Stop Me Now” to have a first dance (Syreeta Wright’s “I Love Every Little Thing About You”) then Britney, Paul Simon and Robyn all played out beneath the glitter ball until the splintering synths of Candi Staton’s “You’ve Got the Love” marked the final song of the night. My parents had barely left the dance floor.

Our wedding ended where it had begun: at home. That morning, my bridesmaids and mum had arrived so we could get ready in the comfort of knowing where the tea bags were. In the first minutes of the next, our living room filled with those hardy enough to keep the party going. A lone genius ordered in pizza, another cobbled together some drinks, and Matt and I embarked upon our marriage as we had begun it – surrounded by love and laughter greater than we could have imagined.