Claire & Jon's wedding on the Yarmouth seafront.

Set on the Yarmouth seafront, The Towers wears its castellated turret and honey-stoned façade with the easy confidence of an old Isle of Wight landmark, and it gave Claire and Jon a backdrop that drifted between English country house and salt-air harbour town. The morning opened on the water, with Claire and her bridesmaids in painterly blue and white botanical print dresses laughing on a balcony above the Solent, neat posies of cream garden roses and eucalyptus in hand. After a church ceremony that ended in a pure burst of laughter and an applauding tunnel of guests down a narrow Yarmouth street, the celebrations spilled across the harbour, the groomsmen striding past the RNLI lifeboat station in black tuxedos, the couple ferried between moments by little red-canopied boat with the masts of the marina behind them.

In the gardens of The Towers, beneath the heavy canopy of an ancient oak, a sailcloth tent rose on timber centre poles entwined with young silver birch and a hanging foliage swag suspended above the top table. Long trestles ran in unbroken lines under strings of festoon bulbs, dressed with sage linen napkins, pressed sea-green goblets, dusky coral taper candles and softly gathered arrangements of white lisianthus, stocks and roses in clear bud vases, each table marked by a quiet, type-set card. As the sun dropped and the battlements caught the last warm light, Claire and Jon slipped down to the jetty, his arm around her bare shoulder, and walked the white timber boards together with sailing boats moored on the still water and the Solent pale and silver ahead.