Fareham couple tie the knot at 'extraordinary' New Forest venue in big celebration

Jemma, 31, from Fareham, says: ‘We’re very picky on our friends.

‘We wanted people there that we actually really liked and didn’t just invite for the sake of it.’

The couple got engaged on March 14, 2020.

Jemma said: ‘I didn’t think we’d actually end up getting married, I thought we’d end up going back into lockdown or something would go wrong.

‘But we managed to do it so it was great.’

While for some, the occasion started with wedding day nerves, ‘Luke was really really nervous actually, he kept saying that he was pacing up and down so much that he probably wore out the carpet’ says Jemma.

But for those close friends invited to join the couple on their special day, it was a meaningful ceremony followed by a delightful evening complete with southern based children’s entertainer, Crazy M.

He kept the kids engaged with jokes and games so the adults could dance all night long.

‘The dance floor was never empty, that’s what we wanted’, says Jemma.

SEE MORE: Waterlooville soulmates party hard in ‘accidental’ Hangover-style wedding

Although Luke, also 31, says his favourite thing about Jemma is ‘when she’s not talking’, he regularly let’s her know that since the day they met at a nightclub, then known as Chicago Rock, in Fareham, he knew she was the girl he was going to marry.

It was a sentiment even more poignant upon learning that Luke spent his first night of knowing Jemma, holding back her hair as she was sick after one too many at the club that used to be, as Jemma describes, ‘the best place in Fareham’.

Luke stayed true to his word.

He married Jemma (née Baker) four years later alongside their nearest and dearest including their two young girls Jemma’s daughter Lexie, aged eight, and Luke’s daughter Harriet, aged five, on a wedding day that the pair are desperate to relive.

‘It was a great day, amazing.

‘We keep saying now that we just want to do it all over again’, says Jemma.

Jemma says her favourite thing about Luke is his smile, a quality which he upheld throughout their dazzling wedding photos which feature the hazy backdrop of the Balmer Lawn Hotel’s grounds within the New Forest.

‘Luke kept making our photographer Carla laugh, with his odd, witty comments that he makes’ she says.

With a background in childcare, Jemma is now focussing on her and Luke’s new business venture. Herltrix.

It is a printing business that specialises in an array of custom-made products from clothing and accessories to personalised stickers and business cards.

With a taste for the finer things in life, the first-class couple like to hit all the Michelin Star restaurants on their date nights, with a soft spot for Restaurant 27 in Southsea.

‘We’re working down the list,’ Jemma says.

Having just returned from their ‘mini family-moon’ in Tenerife with their friends and children, the pair are settling down after the excitement, but gearing themselves up to plan a road trip of America for a second honeymoon for just the two of them.

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

You can subscribe here for unlimited access to our online coverage, including Pompey, with 70 per cent fewer adverts for less than 20p a day.