Intimate Wedding at Home in Spain: Ames & Tel

Jo Crawford Photography

April 20, 2014

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Ames and Tel met when they were twelve, at school. Needless to say it wasn’t love at first sight! However eleven years later they virtually bumped into each other on MySpace and saw each other on a few nights out. Shortly after that they started dating.

“We didn’t set out with a theme in mind for our wedding, we just knew we wanted a laid back relaxed do with close friends and family”, Ames explained. “We didn’t have much money to spend (our budget was £3000) so we wanted to do as much ourselves as we could. I think in the end we had a laid back, homemade vintage feel to the day.”

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The wedding was held at the bride’s parent’s house in Spain. It was important to the couple that their day was small and stress-free. “I’ve struggled for years with depression and social anxiety so much so that I even ducked out of being a bridesmaid at my sisters wedding because I just wanted to blend into the day, rather than be part of it”, the bride continued. “At the start we spent hours looking for inspiration for our day. We wanted something really understated that our budget could stretch to (I have a large family who would travel far and wide to go to a wedding so we needed to take those needed to keep numbers in mind). We toyed with ideas of parties in marquees and village halls and even booked and paid a deposit for a venue in Scotland (close to my Scottish family).”

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“But as the date drew closer and we had more contact with the venue, all the things they said they could do were suddenly going to cost us much more than they originally let on. It got to a point that we were looking at the food we could afford to put on and it would have been a buffet of beige (scotch eggs and sausage rolls), which there’s nothing wrong with, it just wasn’t how we’d imagined the day.”

“We woke up on a miserable raining Sunday after a particularly stressful evening of trying to figure out what we really wanted for the day and what was probably going to be beyond our budget. We decided there and then we would cancel everything we’d made arrangements for and just have it in Spain. My mum and day have lived there for nine years and Terry and I have shared many holidays there. I always go if ever I’m having a tough time of it, and have been know to spend months out there at a a time as its just such a beautiful place. Everyone who came to the wedding knew what we were going for and helped out with bits a pieces throughout the day.”

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“My mum was super amazing throughout, she helped with the embroider invites (six fabric pages, all embroidered with the wedding info), stitched over 70 meters of bunting, and sourced enough tables and chairs to seat all the guests”, she continued. “She was my rock throughout, my poor pops had to drive us about I don’t know how many shops to buy enough plastic glasses for all the drinks and find wire and tape to make the bouquets!”

“One of the things we put spent a lot of time sorting was the food. You forget when you book a wedding at a venue that they deal with all of that stuff (table cloths, plates, glasses, cutlery and of course washing up afterwards). There was no way my parents were spending the evening washing up so we decided plastic was the way forward (classy!) We sourced plastic plates and glasses from the UK and Mum made all the food for 50 people which was a warm buffet of paella, chorizo in red wine, roasted vegetables, salads, bread, a giant ham leg and cheese.”

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“We knew early on that we didn’t want cake on the day, so we had cheese instead. We loved the idea of all the cheeses being served as part of the meal. we got the cheese from a stall at our local farmers market and had to fly it over. My poor sister had 5kg of Wensleydale in her hand luggage and cause an all out security alert at Stansted airport, much to my brother in laws delight!! He stood back with the kids whist she was taken away and questioned about this very dense package in her suitcase!!”

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Ames’ dress was made by her aunt, who is a dressmaker, and her shoes were from Office but she customised them herself with the blue crystals. “My aunt made my dress as her wedding gift. She was really nervous about dip dying especially as it was 100% silk which is prone to shrinking. We used Dylon dye for hand use. It was dead simple to do. We used a large plastic tub that was filled with the mixed hand dye. We dipped the dress to the point we wanted to dye to start. Every five minutes we raised the dress out of the bucket by about an inch until it was fully raised out. We hung it in the shower to dry and then showered it down the following day to lift any of the loose dye. It did shrink a bit after it was dry so I had to get a lower pair of shoes.”

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“I was really sad about my new shoes, I thought they were really ugly so had to come up with a way to pimp them out. I bought some Swarovski crystals from an eBay shop and the glue that they recommend to go with them. I spent an afternoon with a wax pencil (to lift up each crystal individually), the glue, crystals and my shoes. By the end of the day I had a pair of wedding worthy shoes!”

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“My mum and I also made the broach bouquets. We trawled the charity shops and everyone’s jewellery and button boxes for anything they didn’t want any more, including some key pieces I got from my grandma who couldn’t travel to make the day, and my other grandma who had passed away. Using florist wire, a glue gun and electrical tape we glued each piece individually on to wire to make stems. We then bunched 4-5 individual stems together and wrapped them in electrical tape. Once all the individual stems were bunched together we began to build up the bouquets by grouping together the bunches and securing them with more electrical tape. Once we’d done that we split a kitchen roll middle down the centre and wrapped it around the stems to neaten it all up. Then we just wrapped it all in ribbon.”

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