Winter weddings hold a particular kind of romance that I don't think gets nearly enough credit. There's something about marrying in December, January or February that feels deliberate and a little bit brave, a choice made because the season itself means something, rather than simply because it was the date that happened to be available. Roaring fires, candlelit rooms, rich velvet and deep florals, an evening that feels dark and intimate by four in the afternoon rather than forced into artificial atmosphere. Done well, a winter wedding can feel more atmospheric than almost any other time of year.

If I had to name one design element that consistently gets underestimated by couples in the early stages of planning, it would be lighting. Flowers, dresses, cakes and stationery tend to dominate the mood boards, and understandably so, but lighting is what actually determines how a room feels once the sun goes down, and it's often the difference between a wedding that photographs beautifully and one that genuinely feels magical to stand inside.

Some of the weddings I've felt proudest to be part of are the ones that bring two different cultures, faiths or family traditions together into a single day. They're often the most complex to plan, and honestly, they're also among the most moving to be part of, because they're not just a celebration of a couple, but of two families and their histories coming together with genuine care and respect.

Of all the questions couples bring to me in the early stages of planning, colour palette is one of the trickiest to pin down, and also one of the most important. Get it right and it quietly threads through everything, from the flowers to the stationery to the way the room feels in photographs years later. Get it wrong, or simply leave it too vague, and you end up with a day that looks slightly disjointed even if every individual element is beautiful on its own.

There is a particular kind of magic to getting married somewhere that means something to you personally, rather than a venue you found online.. Over the years I've planned weddings in family gardens, on private estates that have been passed down for generations, and in fields that couples grew up running around in as children. Every single one of them has had an atmosphere that's genuinely hard to replicate anywhere else.

It's easy, understandably, for wedding planning to become entirely couple-focused, the dress, the flowers, the photography, the vows. But some of the very best weddings I've planned share one thing in common: the couple thought just as carefully about their guests' experience as they did about their own.

One of the first big decisions in any wedding is also one of the most consequential: do you host your day at an existing venue, or do you build your own from scratch with a marquee? I get asked this question a lot, and my honest answer is always the same it depends entirely on what matters most to you. Here's how I help couples think it through.

Somewhere between the engagement photos and the big day, wedding planning has a habit of quietly swallowing everything else. I see it happen to even the most level-headed couples: evenings disappear into spreadsheets, weekends get eaten by venue visits, and Pinterest becomes something closer to a second job than a source of joy. If that sounds familiar, I want to gently say it doesn't have to be this way, and it shouldn't be.

Every couple I meet for the first time arrives with a slightly different version of the same feeling: excitement, mixed with a bit of "where on earth do we even start?" That's completely normal, and honestly, it's exactly what this first meeting is for. You don't need to arrive with a finished vision, a colour palette, or even a firm budget. You just need to arrive as yourselves.

For years, the wedding calendar had a fairly predictable shape. Couples fought for June, July and August dates, venues were booked out eighteen months in advance for high summer, and autumn was treated as the fallback option for anyone who'd left it too late. That's no longer the case, and honestly, I couldn't be happier about it.

London is one of the world's great cities for a wedding but it is also one of the most competitive, most expensive, and most logistically demanding places to plan one. With hundreds of wedding planners operating across the capital, finding the right one can feel overwhelming.

A wedding budget of £200,000 or more is a significant investment and it deserves to be treated as one. Not in a transactional sense, but in the sense that every pound should be working hard toward an experience that is genuinely extraordinary.

At One Oake, we plan a number of weddings each year at this level of budget. What follows is an honest and detailed guide to what a £200k+ wedding involves, where the money goes, and how to ensure the result is truly unforgettable.

Essex is, in the most wonderful way, full of surprises. Mention Essex weddings and many people still picture the clichés but the reality is a county of extraordinary variety: rolling countryside, ancient barns, sweeping coastal views, grand country estates and some of the most beautiful private land in the south east of England.

As a luxury wedding planning company based in Essex, One Oake has an intimate knowledge of what this county has to offer and we believe it is one of the finest wedding destinations in the UK.

Something has shifted in how the most discerning couples think about their wedding. For years, the traditional formula held: a ceremony, a reception, a party, a farewell. One day. One chance.

But increasingly, couples who want their wedding to feel truly meaningful particularly those planning at a higher budget are moving toward a different model entirely. The weekend wedding. The multi-day celebration. A gathering that doesn't just happen; it unfolds.

There is something undeniably magical about a marquee wedding. The soft glow of festoon lights against pale canvas. Guests spilling out onto a lawn as the sun dips below the treeline. A space created entirely from scratch designed for you, shaped around you, existing for one extraordinary day.

Hiring a wedding planner is one of the most meaningful decisions a couple can make yet it's also one of the most misunderstood. Many people assume a planner is a luxury reserved for celebrity weddings or eye-watering budgets. The truth? A great wedding planner saves you money, time, and an enormous amount of stress, whatever the scale of your celebration.

This is one of the most common questions I'm asked, and it's such an important one — because the answer surprises a lot of couples.

"But our venue has a coordinator, so do we really need a planner?" I hear this regularly, and I completely understand the logic. If the venue is providing someone to help, surely that's the same thing? The short answer is: not quite. Let me explain the difference, because it could genuinely change how your wedding day feels.

Every year without fail, I get asked the same question: "What's trending in weddings right now?" And honestly, as a planner who immerses herself in this industry every single day, I love talking about it. There is so much creativity and beauty in what couples are choosing to do with their celebrations right now.

Let's talk about the question nobody quite wants to ask out loud but everyone is thinking: how much does a wedding planner actually cost?

With the right timeline in place, wedding planning doesn't have to feel frantic. Here's my expert guide to exactly what to book, and when, so you can approach your planning with calm and confidence.