I do' love to be beside the seaside: Fiona and Ian's beach wedding

Fiona Griffin and Ian Woodhouse headed to the sandy shores of Cornwall for their beach wedding.

St Ives is one of the Dudley couple’s favourite holiday destinations, so it made sense for them to invite their friends and families to the idyllic location for their long-awaited big day.

“Ian and I got together when we were just 18,” Fiona, 29, says. “We were together for 10 years before he finally proposed.”

In planning their beach celebration, Fiona and Ian, 30, knew they wanted a small wedding and found the perfect venue – St Ives Harbour Hotel and Spa – overlooking Porthminster Beach.

The couple wed on July 27, 2015 in front of 50 friends and family. “We wanted the day to be very relaxed with a personalised ceremony with our own vows, followed by Pimms and a barefoot walk along the beach,” Fiona says.

The reception was held at the same venue and the couple, with help from family, created a beachy, elegant theme.

“We wanted to incorporate an elegant travel theme so we used glass hurricane vases filled with sand to hold candles as our table centrepieces and asked guests to leave us messages in bottles to open on our first anniversary,” Fiona says.

The food also kept with the seaside theme – fish and chips with bread and butter and curry sauce, followed by traditional Cornish cream tea.

“Our wedding day was absolutely perfect,” Fiona says. “There was genuinely not a single element we would have changed.”

Photos courtesy of Alexa Poppe Photography.

Fiona describes her wedding dress as simple with a vintage feel. “I paired it with a browband and crystal shoes to keep with the Gatsby look I wanted to create,” she says.

Ian proposed while the couple was on a city break to Brighton. “The trip had been quite the disaster up until the proposal due to the appalling weather and it took Ian two days to pluck up the courage to ask the big question,” Fiona recalls.