burlesque

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To say that I’m excited to be sharing Sally & Mark’s wedding with you this afternoon would be an under-exaggeration of HUGE magnitude. Not only is their wedding freakin’ awesome on so many levels, but they pulled the whole thing off for £900!

Let me repeat myself to make sure you got that, because I didn’t quite believe it when I read it on Sally’s submission either – the whole wedding cost just £900!!

“We had approx 6 weeks and a budget of around £900 for our wedding,” Sally wrote. “Where we could we handmade items or got friends to help us out. We were lucky that our photographers, performers, DJ and cake makers were all friends so did us special deals. We were also able to get both our venues (the afternoon reception was held at William Steads Pub and the evening afterparty at the Tap and Spile Pub, Darlington) for free as we didn’t hire them exclusively.”

“Our inspiration came from our love of burlesque and the fact we wanted a fun day loosely based around the 50′s,” Sally continued. “Once we’d found the dress then we built from there. I had searched and searched for a perfect dress but couldn’t find one in my size. I very luckily stumbled across Pixie Pocket who hand makes dresses for amazing prices. I really wanted to add colour and we managed to find most things that matched my hair!”

The couple decorated their evening reception venue themselves, mostly using items they found in their local £1 shop! “Our sweets, table confetti, table gems and sequins all came from the £1 shop and we made the bunting ourselves from off cuts of old material.”

“It was a small intimate event (just 33 guests) but it was just what we wanted and we were able to incorporate our two children in with the day. The day was exactly what we wanted. We started at 9.30am (we had been told that the registry office was fully booked but one morning I decided to call them and BEG them to fit us in! Eventually they relented and said we could have a 9.30am wedding and they opened an hour and a half early for us!) Then we went to our local pub for bacon sandwiches and a full English breakfast. From there we came home for cocktails and popped to our local park for pictures. Our photographer was amazing! Just what we wanted nice and laid back with no pressure and added to the fun.”

“After my parent’s had taken our kids back to theirs, we had the evening upstairs at our local pub. An evening of booze and burlesque! The whole day was amazing fun. My face hurt from laughing and smiling!”

Sally & Mark have also been kind enough to provide a breakdown of what they spent for their day, as I know a lot of you are on the look out for money saving tips for your own weddings. Check out the ‘Supporting Cast’ credits list below the gallery for the amounts they spent on each item.

More loveliness in the gallery below. FYI, a few of the following images may not be safe for work…

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Burlesque performer Roxy Rose was the model for this wonderful gypsy bride (and no we’re not talking a ‘big fat gypsy wedding’ style gypsy bride, think more traditional!) for a styled shoot, the concept of which was dreamt up by Italian photographer Cinzia Bruschini. I am particularly loving the incredibly unique fan shaped bouquet – and yes that is made of real flowers!

Cinzia explains, ”This shoot is colourful and playful, in particular we wanted to redefine traditional wedding elements like the flower bouquet and the decorations; the flower bouquet is so daring, made by italian flower designer Roberto Monaldi using a Gregor Lesch technique. It is based on a radial weaved plot finished off inserting flowers (in this case: delphinum blu, dendrobium lilla, gypsophila paniculata).”

“We created other decorations using an old hand design tool: a spirograph! Spirals pattern is on the coloured garland and also on the handmade paper accordion; the result is a very gypsy fancy. The garland is really simple to do and I made it myself. First of all I cut coloured cardboard with round punches in different dimensions and then had a play about with multiple design combinations of spirograph. Then using a needle and sewing thread, I joirned the circles together as a garland.”

Super cute! Be sure to check out the adorable video too.

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This is one of those posts that’s going to have a lot of photographs (hello, burlesque Rock n Roll wedding – there’s no way I could leave any out!) When photographer Marianne Taylor showed me a sneak peek of Sophie & Jonny’s wedding a few weeks ago, I knew straight away that they were right up my street…you’ll see why!

The couple got engaged in Paris on Sophie’s Birthday. “It was a dream come true,” the bride told me ”Jonny had booked us into a plush Moulin Rouge themed hotel.  We sat on the steps of the Sacre Coeur and drank pink champagne and then he surprised me some more with tickets to the Moulin Rouge that night! I had no idea that he had not only secretly booked the trip but also tickets to The Moulin Rouge. My favourite film and as a burlesque fanatic, this was perfect. At the end of the show, on the red carpet, I was surprised with a box which I unwrapped to find a smaller box. Upon opening the small box and finding my Princess cut platinum ring (perfect!) he got down on one knee in front of everyone and asked me to marry him, to which I screamed and replied yes!”

The Paris proposal and Sophie’s love of all things 1940s and 50′s (she is a burlesque dancer herself) inspired the entire wedding which was a real DIY effort. She sourced the white ostrich feathers for a burlesque theme and the ‘Eiffel tower’ vases herself and set everything up for the reception. She also designed and made all the stationary and paper goods as well as helping out to make the cake. Instead of a guest book they dressed a vintage looking birdcage (found in a boutique shop) with feathers and pearls and had little black and white cards for people to write messages on and post them in the birdcage.

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I love these glamorous pin up girlies and their awesome vintage styling. I think you will too…

(Note: some of the photographs after the ‘jump’ may not be suitable for viewing at work. Boobies!)

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Toni & Richard had a gothic/burlesque inspired wedding at Prested Hall in Colchester in March of this year. “Our inspiration mainly comes from my admiration of burlesque and my unnerving love of Bettie Paige (who I have recently had tattooed on me)” Toni told me. ”Not being much of a girly girl and never one who ‘dreamt of their big day’, I didn’t actually know where to start after the proposal. I like wearing jeans, having a Mohawk and being covered in tattoos and wearing too much make up!”

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