Love stories - Lucy & Ben
Next up in our Love Stories Series is Lucy and her husband Ben. Their wedding was really the beginning of the Wiskow & White partnership, where Lucy & Danielle first worked together.
Lucy & Ben met at a work Christmas party in 2005, when Ben asked Lucy to dance through a haze of alcohol. Lucy turned Ben down as she had a boyfriend at the time. 3 years later, Lucy and Ben became friends and it took over a year for them to finally go on a date. The date went well, but they had both recently come out of long term relationships and decided to stay ‘just friends’.
Fast forward about 8 months and Lucy was travelling in South America with her younger brother, Jack. They’d experienced a number of pretty dangerous things on their trip including an attempted mugging by the Venezuelan police and an attack on Lucy – so things were feeling a little more than uncomfortable! Lucy knew that Ben was in Peru at the time, a nifty 4500 km away, and gave him a call in the hope he was nearby and could perhaps join them for a bit.
5 days, 3 flights and 2 x 17 hour coach trips later, Lucy picked Ben up from Manaus airport and they say that from that moment on, they were officially a couple. Ben, Jack and Lucy enjoyed a further 3 weeks travelling Brazil together before they headed back to the UK.
Their love of Italy started when Ben suggested a trip to the south, a few years before their wedding. In 2013, Ben’s family went to Tuscany for his dad’s 60th birthday and it was here that Lucy and Ben fell in love with the villa they stayed in, later choosing it for their wedding venue. A few days after this trip when Ben and Lucy were alone, Ben proposed in Giardino Bardini, Florence.
Despite the 120 guests and teatro ceremony, it was truly a modest event, intended to be a big family style party on a budget. Their theme was simply the things that made them happy. Full of people they love; pizza, pasta, porchetta, vino and prosecco; lots of bright colours in the postcards they made of their travels, cushions hand crafted by Lucy and her sis in law, stationery designed by Ben and flowers made by Lucy – it was a true DIY project taken on by friends and family, and a real love affair in itself.
Lucy and Ben have now been together for 12 years and have been married for 8 years this coming August 2022. They say that time certainly flies!
Some of the highlights of their time together include having their son Ziggy around, who is now 4. They all thrive on their summers in Italy together. Lucy & Ben have made some crazy decisions together – running marathons, quitting their full time jobs, starting their own businesses (working together - not for the faint hearted!) and they wouldn’t change any of it.
Their top tip for a perfect wedding is, ‘Letting go and going with the flow. Some of the best parts of our wedding day were the bits we didn’t plan. And some of those we did, we decided not to do on the day anyway! You can plan and plan, but you just won’t know how you feel until you’re in the moment.’
Their top tip for marriage is, ‘Showing appreciation of even the most normal things, keeping a good sense of humour and sharing your dreams’.