Miss Peacock, Chicago
Age and Occupation: 26, PhD Student
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 29, Internet Whiz
Engagement Date: December 5, 2006
Wedding Date: September, 2008
Blogging Since: December 13, 2007
Venue: St. Clement Church, Cafe Brauer (or a big church wedding and a fancy party at a cafe in Lincoln Park.
About Me: I am a grad student with a secret obsession for all things wedding related. I also love to read, travel, drink champagne and go for walks with our dog, Maisy, and Mr. Peacock. We are planning our very vintage wedding in the greatest city in the world, our hometown of Chicago. I am so proud to be a Bee!
I Heart The English Countryside
December 21st, 2007 @ 12:06 pm by Miss Peacock
Bridal magazines keep telling me that I can have my dream wedding. To me, “dream wedding” means no budget and I can be as bridezilla-ish as I desire. I can’t really ever have my dream wedding because I have a budget and I want to keep my friends. I can, however, dream- and this is my dream:
That, my friends, is Hartham Park. The estate is in Wiltshire, England and it reminds me of every Jane Austen novel I have ever read. Mr. Darcy is just waiting behind those doors. The wedding would start with a welcome dinner at Hartham Park on Thursday night, with white gloved servers and lots and lots of champagne. Friday would be full of cricket playing or long walks on the grounds. On Saturday, horse drawn carriages would take everyone to the ceremony, held at a stone chapel kind of like this one-
My dress would be enormous and lace and I would wear a loooooong lace veil. The bridesmaids could wear whatever crazy thing they wanted to, as long as they agreed to the one rule for all the lady guests: hats required (that is where I would lose most of my guests in the real world, but I am still dreaming).
After a little carriage ride back to Hartham Park, guests would be greeted by yummy comfort food hors d’ouvres and cold glasses of Fat Tire beer. For dinner, I hate English food and since this is my dream everyone would eat sesame encrusted seared tuna, sweet potato fries and grilled asparagus. Dessert would be Bailey’s Irish Cream ice cream cake, McD’s shamrock shakes and my mom’s cranberry and white chocolate cookies. There would be a barista from Kaldi’s coffee making lattes and mochas for everyone. Michelle Rago would be on hand to design my flowers and lighting. Guests would receive Cartier cuff links or earrings on their way back to their rooms.
Our honeymoon would last months, starting with a tour of Europe including a week in Lake Como. We would then hop a plane for a tour of Australia and a few days at Bedarra Island. I guess we would come back home after all that fun. No one would be upset with us for making them wear hats and fly to Europe because we paid for the whole thing. That was fun to think about, now back to planning my pretty Chicago wedding with as much of England as I can bring into it.
9 Responses to “I Heart The English Countryside”
Hartham Park is beautiful! I too would love for my guests to wear fancy feathered or flowered hats for my wedding but I doubt it’ll fly on this side of the pond.
I would love to be a guest at your dream wedding– I always wanted to an excuse to wear a fabulous hat 
i love how you snuck in the shamrock shakes! i went on a search for one this year and was horrified to not find it anywhere.
I would have loved to have gotten married in Hay-on-Wye, the town with the highest per capita number of bookshops. I briefly researched a couple of the small hotels in the area that host weddings.
Of course, I also briefly researched Christchurch, NZ. There are some super cool tiny churches there, but I just couldn’t see myself on a plane for more than a day before and after the wedding. I felt bad making people travel 800 miles!
This post made me smile b/c in one week I”m getting married in England. We’re not getting married in the countryside, but we are marrying in one of the college chapels at the University of Cambridge. We are having english food–Roast Beef and Yorkshire pudding–at our dinner or “Wedding Breakfast” as they call it over here.
::giggle::…….sounds loverly my dear…loverly
I’m so glad you mentioned Mr. Darcy! Haha Pride and Prejudice was the very first thing that came to my mind when I saw the picture in your post.
[…] back to my dream wedding. I found these gorgeous invitations on {frolic} from Atelier Isabey awhile back and they would be […]
I love this post! It reminded me of a photographer I was looking at in Atlanta, Thomas Fahey.
http://www.elizabethannedesigns.com/blog/2007/11/16/an-english-garden/
