This morning we're in the heart of London for Rachel and Max's City celebrations. The cute couple are both born and bred Londoners, so naturally the big smoke was the only place they wanted to get married.

Rachel is a lawyer from a family of lawyers - so getting married at Lincoln's Inn was particularly significant for her. Every morning on her commute to work she walks through her wedding venue and gets to reminisce. Probably THE best way to make going to work less painful...

I think it's fair to say that the shot of Rachel and Max kissing on the dance floor is one of my all time favourite wedding photos - a moment of pure love and happiness captured by Lily & Frank Photography.

And as it's Friday, we've got the wedding film from Simon Clarke Films for you too. Because we're nice like that.

Get ready to swoon over the roses...

Rachel The Bride: We wanted to create a wedding day which was classical and elegant and which wouldn't date in photos. We were constantly bombarded by suppliers asking us what our "theme" was and everyone seemed to tell us that we should have a vintage theme. Our response was generally "errrrrr our theme is wedding??" To pacify those that demanded it, we decided that our theme would be classic with a few touches of a London transport theme.

I probably shouldn't say this, but I didn't actually enjoy shopping for the wedding dress itself, I did however enjoy choosing the accessories. I spent hours trawling the internet for a bolero to match my dress and found a wonderful Etsy seller in California called I Heart Bride who made the most beautiful bolero for me. The only difficult thing was asking Max to take 15 different measurements of parts of my back and shoulders without telling him why!

Max took a long time choosing his bespoke waistcoat from Gieves & Hawkes, his morning coat from Hackett and his bespoke trousers from Tom James.

We both were born and raised in the suburbs of London and therefore a country wedding would have been beautiful but not very reflective of our personality as a couple. We wanted to avoid a cookie cutter London hotel wedding and we spent a while looking for venues which were full of history, character and which were unique and meant something to us.

The Brompton Oratory was a natural choice for our service as myself and my family have attended the church for years and it happens to be one of the most beautiful churches in London, it has infinite history and character and was the largest Catholic church in London before the opening of Westminster Cathedral in 1903. It was also used during the cold war as a meeting place for spies.

There is nothing cookie cutter about the Great Hall in Lincoln's Inn where our reception was held, Queen Victoria opened the hall in October 1845 and we decided that if it was good enough for her it was certainly good enough for us!!!

Lincolns' Inn Fields is the closest outdoor space to us living in Holborn and I walk through the 11 beautiful acres tucked away in central London every day on my walk to work. It is really special walking through your wedding venue every morning as the sun is rising. Every day I seem to remember another magical moment from the day. I am also a lawyer from a family of lawyers and so there were so many reasons why it was the perfect unique choice for us.

The Bridesmaids wore dusty lilac floor length strapless dresses which looked amazing in the fading light in which we took our photos after the service. The ushers wore matching waistcoats with their morning suits which were hired from Buckleigh of Lower Sloane Street with their ushers gifts of cufflinks.

It was incredibly overwhelming when my wedding car pulled up at the church and there were crowds of tourists watching me, waiting for me to get out of the car but soon regained my composure and loved every minute of walking down the huge aisle towards my future husband. I chose to give myself away to Max rather than being given away.

The confusion on his face in the ceremony when Max kept saying "I will" when he was supposed to say "I am" was one of the most endearing moments of the service, but without a doubt everyone's favourite part of the service was the singing of the 14 person Brompton Oratory Choir. We had 4 or 5 people say that they thought that they were angels.

We spent a while thinking about our cake (neither of us like fruit cake) and nothing we found compared to our two favourite cakes - Hummingbird Bakery Red Velvet Cake and Konditor & Cook Curly Whirly Cake, so we decided to have two tiers of Red Velvet and one big bottom tier of Curly Whirly. On the day the cake didn't exactly look like I had imagined, the bottom tier wasn't supposed to have brown decorative swirls in order that it matched the top two tiers, in the grand scheme of things if something had to go wrong then this wasn't so bad.

For our canapés we had Mini Yorkshire Puddings with Roast Beef, Monkfish wrapped in Pancetta and Mini Falafels with Houmous and Lemon. For our starter we had Roast Escalope of Salmon, Smoked Salmon Croque Monsieur with Dill Hollandaise. For our main course we had Confit of Duck Leg, Warm Potato, Orange, Shallot & Roquette Salad and for the pudding we had Granny Smith Brûlée Tartlet with Blackberry Sorbet. We specifically wanted to choose a venue which catered for large meals frequently and which wasn't a hotel. Lincoln's Inn serve a 3 course formal lunch for 350 barristers and judges (among them have included sixteen prime ministers) every day and so we knew that they would be used to serving large numbers of people at a high standard and they didn't disappoint on our wedding day.

The choice of photographer and videographer were the most important choices for us for our wedding day. Looking at Catherine's pictures, they were so beautiful I knew that she was the right photographer for us. Max frequently would come home to find his fiancé who had never really thought about her wedding day before, obsessively watching (and crying to) Simon's videos. I spent longer choosing Lily And Frank and Simon Clarke than choosing anything else for the day (including my dress and venues) and found them both on Rock My Wedding.

Spend some time making something personal for the tables. Like most Brides I made the choice not to make a speech, however instead I wrote a fun description of the story of our relationship from the start to our wedding day. I kept it a secret from Max so that he had a surprise on the day and it was my way of contributing something on the day without making a formal speech.

My overall advice would be, if you want something find a way to have it. You can find a way to fit things in your budget by shuffling other things around so concentrate on the elements which are really important to you. We didn't book our photobooth until 4 weeks before the wedding and it was one of the best decisions we made. The guests loved it.

Photography by Lily And Frank
Dress & Veil Pronovias | Shoes Jimmy Choo | Bridesmaids Coast | Hair & Make Up Slap Artists | Florist Love Blooms | Ceremony Venue Brompton Oratory | Reception Venue Lincolns Inn | Cake Hummingbird Bakery & Konditor And Cook | String Quartet Apollo Strings | Videographer Simon Clarke Films | DJ Max Mistry | Stationery Gee Brothers | Buses Routemaster Hire | Car A Vintage Occasion