Hello!

Hello! We’re Ben and Lucy Nott and we love the simple things in life. Good food, good wine and good company. We love to host and fill a beautifully laid table with our favourite people, lock the world away and enjoy a cosy evening with home-cooked food. 

Wedding planning can seem daunting, but really it’s the same three dinner party items – just scaled up. Get the venue, guestlist, food and drink chosen correctly and the rest will fall into place. 

Your wedding is the ultimate party. It is also a celebration of love and human connection. Whether Oak & Opal helps you with wedding planning, on-the-day coordination or with your wedding styling, we want to relieve you of all the stressful parts of wedding planning, leaving you more relaxed and with more time to cherish those once-in-a-lifetime moments with your friends and family. 

Right back to us, there’s no interesting love story we’re afraid. We met in our local nightclub, a delightful place called Sin – if you’re local to Worcester you’ll know the vibe. Fast forward 10 years and, after enjoying being young wild and free in Cardiff, we have moved back to the family farm to settle down and raise our beautiful children Daphne and Arthur-John. 

A few CV facts for you. We both have first class degrees and masters. In fact, we loved academia so much we both nearly stayed on to do doctorates. But instead, Ben pursued a career in sustainable agriculture and Lucy became a Fundraising Manager in charge of seven figure budgets for charities such as the RNLI and British Heart Foundation. We both love sport, before the children Lucy was a competitive rower and cyclist and Ben was a successful mountain biker – a former Welsh Champion and top 10 in the UK. Lucy also plays the violin, but please don’t ask her to play at your wedding as she is very rusty now!

So, what are we up to now? Well Ben is about to take charge of the family farm, as his Dad will soon be retiring, which is equally exciting and terrifying. He also supports Oak & Opal from behind the scenes – apart from when he gets roped into helping set up a wedding! Whereas Lucy is the jazz hands at the front of Oak & Opal, she’s the person you will chat to on the phone and will be the friendly reassuring face on your wedding day.

Why Oak?

We adore oak trees and we are lucky enough to have several 200 to 300 year old oak trees in fields on our farm. We love to daydreamer and imagine the people in years gone by who have walked past the trees, gazed upon them and the stories the trees could tell. Old oak trees create a wonderful sense of place and heritage and we always feel inspired when we see one. We love working at venues with heritage or a story and then creating a sense of place through our styling. Oak leaves are also symbolic of the strength of enduring love and that speaks straight to the romantic in us. 

Why Opal?

Opal is Lucy’s birthstone so it’s always been a special stone to her. A dear aunt of Lucy’s also shared the same birth month and, on milestone birthdays she would often gift her Opal jewellery, so Lucy has fond childhood memories of the stone. Unsurprisingly, Lucy also wore Opal earrings on her wedding day! We love the delicate shimmering pastel colours of Opal too and how each stone will catch the light differently. The Opal stone symbolises many things but our favourite three values are: hope, happiness and loyalty.