A planning studio in Alderbourne. One planner on your calendar, a room that is ready before you walk into it, and a folder that answers the question before you think to ask it.
Every package is a fixed fee agreed before we start, not a percentage of what you spend. Suppliers invoice you directly, so you always see what a thing actually costs.
You have planned it. We take the folder six weeks before, confirm every supplier, write the running order to the quarter hour, and run the day so that nobody asks you where the cake knife is.
From the first venue visit to the last van leaving the car park. Venue search, supplier shortlists, tastings, floor plans, stationery, the budget sheet, the timeline, and both coordinators on the day.
A registrar, twenty chairs, one long table and a dinner that runs late. We book the room, the flowers and the food, and stay from the first arrival until the coffee. Saturdays add $400.
One hundred ribbons leave the kitchen on the same curve and land on the plate in front of you. Scroll, or drag the handle, and the four stages of service run in order.
The pass calls the wave. One hundred covers leave in a single run so that no table watches another table eat.
Eight servers, one aisle each, a fixed share of the run per pair of hands. Nobody crosses the dance floor with a hot plate.
Tables are served as whole rounds. Sauce and garnish go on at the table so the last plate looks like the first.
The music drops, the photographer sits down, and the toastmaster gets the nod. This is the quietest four minutes of the evening.
Partner venues within forty minutes of the studio. We have run a celebration in each of them at least six times, so the floor plans, the power sockets and the noise curfew are already in the folder.
Cast iron and old glass, warm at four and lit by candles by eight. Rain plan is the same room, which is why couples keep choosing it.
Oak frame, a long aisle and a yard for the drinks hour. Music off at half past midnight, and the curfew is taken seriously.
A walled garden four minutes from the studio. Ceremony under the pear trees, dinner in a stretch tent that goes up the day before.
A tall room over the water with a kitchen that can plate a hundred covers in four minutes. Best for a late ceremony and a long dinner.
This is the full-planning calendar. Day-of coordination joins at step six; a small ceremony compresses the whole thing into ten weeks.
We sit down with the guest list and an honest budget. You leave with a range for the day and a sense of what a hundred and twenty guests costs in this county. No fee until you say yes to the next step.
Two or three venue visits in one afternoon, with a floor plan for each and the real cost of the rain plan. Provisional dates held for fourteen days.
Photographer, caterer, florist, band, registrar. Three quotes each, compared side by side, and you sign with the supplier, not with us.
A menu tasting, a table mock-up with the real linen and glass, and the stationery proof. This is the month you stop imagining and start seeing.
Print run, addressing, postage, and the reply spreadsheet that turns into the seating plan. Dietary requirements go to the kitchen as they arrive.
Six weeks out we write the day to the quarter hour and send it to every supplier. Every question a guest could ask now has a written answer.
One evening walkthrough at the venue, then fourteen hours with two coordinators on the floor. Your phone stays in a pocket.
LANTERN & LACE started in 2013 above a stationery shop on Fennel Court, folding invitations by hand. The folding is still done here. Everything else grew out of one habit: write it down, then confirm it twice.
We take eighteen celebrations a year. That number is not modesty — it is the number one planner can hold in her head while still knowing which of your aunts cannot sit near the speakers.
“A wedding is not a design problem. It is two hundred small promises that all have to come true on the same afternoon.”
Marguerite plans; Dorian runs the floor on the day and has never once let a speech start before the glasses were filled. On the day itself there are always two of us, and one of us is always where you are not.
We booked coordination only, six weeks out, and I did not understand what we had bought until the morning itself. The florist was late, and we found out three days afterwards, from someone else.
Full planning, eighteen months, two countries and one very opinionated grandmother. The budget sheet never moved by more than three percent, and Marguerite said no to us twice. Both times she was right.
Eighteen guests, one long table, a Tuesday in October. It would have been easy to treat a small wedding as a small job. Nobody here did, and the dinner ran until one in the morning.
Second door under the arch, one flight up. Ring the brass bell — the buzzer has never worked and we have stopped pretending.
| Monday | 10:00 – 18:00 |
| Tuesday | 10:00 – 18:00 |
| Wednesday | 10:00 – 18:00 |
| Thursday | 10:00 – 20:00 |
| Friday | 10:00 – 18:00 |
| Saturday | Wedding day — no meetings |
| Sunday | Closed |
Bring a rough guest number and the highest figure you are genuinely comfortable spending. Not the number you would like it to be — the real one. Everything useful in that first hour follows from it.
Send the date and the rough guest count. We reply within one working day with availability and a fee, and hold the date for fourteen days while you think. Nothing is charged on this page.
We have the date on the studio calendar. Marguerite will reply by email within one working day.