We love it when a couple makes their wedding totally, 100% them – and that’s exactly what Kelsey, hailing from Boston, Massachusetts, and Owen, from Sydney, Australia, did. The pair met at the University of Cambridge in 2019, and ever since they’ve been building a life together in the UK. When it came time to plan their big day, they knew they wanted to showcase their newfound home while reflecting the places they came from – and did they ever do an awesome job, with everything from Australian meat pies for late-night snacks to cranberry cocktails as a nod to the bride’s family home on Cape Cod!
Kelsey and Owen opted to wed at Smashing The Glass Recommended Vendor South Farm, a beautiful working farm that showcases the best of the English countryside. In addition to the gorgeous indoor and outdoor spaces (and the fact that the venue grows lots of the produce used in their catering on-site), in Kelsey’s words,
We also immediately found the entire South Farm team to be consistently kind, welcoming, and supportive throughout the planning process. We felt completely looked after from start to finish… Even though South Farm host weddings almost every day of the year, they made us feel like ours was the only wedding they had to pay attention to.
Friends and family also played a huge part in the day: a friend served as the couple’s celebrant, another friend created all the floral arrangements, and various loved ones offered personalized blessings to the couple instead of the traditional Sheva Brachot. We also love that Owen composed the piece of music to which Kelsey walked down the aisle – which was performed by friends! Don’t miss all the love and emotion in the wonderful photos by Lee Allison.
Now over to Kelsey…
How We Met
Kelsey, the bride: We both arrived in Cambridge in 2019 to study at the University of Cambridge. Kelsey came from Boston, Massachusetts to do a PhD researching the role of play in children’s healthcare, and Owen came from Sydney, Australia to do an MMus in Music and sing with the Choir of King’s College. We were both members of Hughes Hall and met on our very first night in Cambridge the college hosted welcome drinks at the bar. We got to talking that evening and quickly became close friends during those first few whirlwind months of settling in.
Then, abruptly, the pandemic. As international students, we both made the difficult decision to stay in Cambridge amidst the uncertainty of those early months of 2020. As some of only a handful of people still in our college, we spent an inordinate amount of time together going for long walks, cooking together, online pub quizzes, meeting each other’s family and friends via video calls – we had basically started dating before we were actually dating. Friends and family, both near and far, were constantly asking us what was going on between us… it took nearly nine months of friendship for us to realize it too!
