My Big Day: Claire &Amp; Andrew

My Big Day: Claire &Amp; Andrew
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After spending the last six years living abroad in San Francisco and Sydney, Claire and Andrew knew that they wanted to get married in their native UK. They settled on Queen's Eyot Island, near Windsor, for their big day, captured by wedding photographer Paul Read.

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Paul Read

"We wanted to be married somewhere near water," says Claire. "Andrew has always loved surfing and sailing, and as we knew we wanted to be married at home in the UK, Andrew had the idea of an island on the Thames.

"We researched Monkey Island, Temple Island, and Queen's Eyot, finally settling on Queen's Eyot as we loved the grounds, the wooden beams and rowing memorabilia within the building, and it suited our numbers as we knew we'd have around 65 people."

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Paul Read

The couple included plenty of personal touches on their wedding day - Andrew designed the stationery using multi-coloured "confetti" dots, whose printed size was the same as hole-punched paper dots, and the couple placed paper dots into envelopes and sprinkled paper dots over tables for a confetti effect.

Bridesmaids were decked out in Claire's favourite colour, donning blue frocks from ASOS for the occasion.

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Paul Read

Even though the couple planned their wedding entirely from abroad - they live in San Francisco - they even managed to save money in certain departments, like the wedding cake, selecting a scrumptious a four-tier chocolate design, filled & topped with chocolate ganache and surrounded by chocolate hoops (the couple added fresh berries to the tiers).

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Paul Read

"It's very easy to cut costs in areas that can seem exceedingly expensive just because they're 'wedding' items," says Claire. "We found 'real' wedding cakes from bakeries extremely expensive. The online Marks & Spencer range of wedding cakes is extremely well-priced, modern, fun and delicious."

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Paul Read

Don't miss all of the couple's top tips for wedding day bliss and all of the gorgeous snaps from Paul Read in the slideshow below...

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All imagery is from Paul Read - paulreadweddings.com