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A Restoration Wedding: Neil & Becky

November 14, 2011 in British Brides, Wedding | 13 comments

I really love reading wedding stories from the groom’s point of view. Most of the submissions I get are written by the bride, but there’s something so utterly adorable about hearing about a wedding from the boy’s point of view…

“Our theme was always going to be eclectic,” Neil told me. “Bringing together all of our loves for the big day celebrating the people we are. We have a number of classic American cars, an old house and various other projects,  so restoration, progress, dressing up something old to really show off its beauty is what we do. I am told that is exactly what we achieved in the barn, working with what we had rather than against it. As for an actual theme, I guess it would be like some kind of redneck hicks doing Darling Buds of May in true Kentish country style.”

The bride traveled to the wedding in a VW camper van while the groom and the guests were treated to a ride in a steam train!

“We aimed to do as much of the work ourselves with the wedding,” he continued. “The barn was hired as a shell that needed completely dressing from scratch. The hired canteen style tables were covered in metres and metres of Ikea ‘Sofia’ striped red and white fabric. This was to help fill the huge and overwhelming space and create a centre piece, that also tied in with the ribbons stitched into the invite designs.”

“The tea tins were sourced over several month on eBay while Becky hand cut almost 100 moustaches and stuck to the stripey straws to be our table decorations with the sunflowers.”

“I am a font junkie, so we imported some vintage neon sign letters from the US in order to have the ‘YES’ word wrapped in ivy over the top table. We incorporated the design into our invites which I also made myself.”

“The napkins were linen glass cloths from Ikea for 19 pence each. They had the woven stripe through them and then a ‘Becky & Neil – Tie the knot’ label sewn into them by us. Weirdly loads of guests must have kept theirs as we only have a few left over.”

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An Informal Picnic Wedding with a Touch of Vintage: Michelle & Jodie

August 9, 2011 in British Brides, Wedding | 20 comments

Being a wedding planner herself, newlywed Michelle knew exactly what she wanted for her British Summertime wedding to Jodie. In the 18 months of their engagement she spent hours crafting and painstakingly putting together their  vintage and craft themed day. “I wouldn’t change a thing!” she explained. “We had so much fun planning the day, we did everything from choosing the playlists to writing our vows and designing the picnic menus.”

“Being a planner I wanted to make sure our wedding was different from all the weddings I’ve been involved with, ensuring that the day reflected us and our love of all things vintage.  The first thing for me was that the day needed to be informal, a family event. I remembered having big family picnic in the park when I was little and how happy everyone was, laughing, drink and playing games in the sunshine, and that was the feeling I wanted our guests to have. Jodie introduced me to Babycham a few years ago and since then it’s become one of our favourite tipples, so it was only right that we have a Babycham reception complete with original Babycham saucers and mini bottles with cute stripy straws.”

“Our wedding breakfast was a yummy picnic, with sweet course of afternoon tea cakes and goodies,” she continued. “I’d collected over 500 pieces of vintage china, which we used at the tea. All the produce was sourced from local farm shops and suppliers, and then put into beautiful vintage hampers that I had collected over the years. Each hamper was finished off with a flower arrangement in a vintage tin and a table name (all were places close to our hearts) in the style of vintage beer mats.”

“The evening was all about having fun, with a vintage ice cream trailer, personalised with Mr & Mrs Miles, retro sweeties in ornate jars, a swing out carousel and vintage board games.  The guest book was a type writer, where we asked guests to type us a message and hand it on the wishing tree (a hat stand lovingly decorated by Jodie). We hung pictures of Jodie and I from our engagement shoot in Bath, to bring some of his home town to the wedding.”

“The car park had homemade flags of our home towns too. There are so many more details that I loved, the for your tears of joy vintage hankies that I collected and people help themselves to at the ceremony (lucky really as it was such a tear-jerker), the lace jars, face frames, haybale covers with vintage fabric collected from markets, the floral arrangements in birdcages, lanterns and vintage tins, the paper pom poms and lanterns that hung between the barn and stretch tent…. there’s just too much to mention.”

The majority of Michelle & Jodie’s wedding was homemade by the pair – from the decoupage pegs, to the paper pom poms and face frames.

Gorgeous huh?

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A British Beach-Inspired, DIY Wedding: Emma & Matt

August 1, 2011 in British Brides, Wedding | 4 comments

I teased a photo of Emma in her amazing short short wedding dress on twitter as soon as photographer David McNeil sent over this wedding to me. Whoaaa, I literally had to share it with someone (well 12,000 someone’s) right away! I. Die.

“We got married in Bardsea (on the bay of Morecambe)” Emma told me. “It’s my parent’s village which is just such a gorgeous place near the moors and the beach. Even though we live in Camden and love it – we’re both down to earth and love being outdoors and away from the city, so it was a natural choice. We got married at Eden Lodge, on the outskirts of the village, which has recently been converted from a Edwardian home to a small, minimalist hotel in some AMAZING grounds. We got married in the hotel itself and then the reception was in a marquee in the grounds. It was the hotel’s first wedding and they were AMAZING. We can’t sing their praises enough. The staff were EXCEPTIONAL and really went above and beyond to make our day perfect.”

Emma’s amazing dress was a custom-made Suzanne Neville number. She explains, “I never thought Matt and I would get married. I knew we’d be together forever but we weren’t really the ‘marrying kind’. As soon as he proposed, I knew my dress would be something that reflected my character. I’m not a girly girl and I usually dress in biker boots and short skirts – so short was what I wanted. I wanted to feel like ME on the day not a BRIDE. I scooted through some websites looking for a short wedding dress and found one designed by Suzanne Neville. I fell in love but hunted for something cheaper that I loved as much. Anyway I didn’t. The dress was custom made for me at a crazy price. But it was the only one for me!  I’ve been taking some millinery courses so I wanted to make something for me to wear. Obviously our wedding was near the royal wedding, so as a joke I designed and made a crown out of silk and fresh water pearls to wear. In the end I chickened out of wearing it as I was already so tall in my platforms but you can see me holding it in this photo.”

The inspiration for the wedding came from the proposal and the things Emma & Matt love in ‘real life’. ”When Matt proposed we were camping in Dartmoor and driving back to London took about 7 hours. In these hours we talked through everything we wanted from our wedding. How we wanted it to reflect us and not be a cookie cutter wedding. We focused on the things that we love and most of all wanted the wedding to be fun. We decided that we would use things that meant a lot to us and reflected our life together. Basically, we tried to reflect the things we loved and tried to steer clear of doing things conventionally wedding like.”

“Matt proposed in a river by a rocky outcrop and as a keepsake I took one of the grey pebbles from where we’d been standing. I used this as inspiration for the wedding, i.e. grey and round. Once we had decided on the theme I started buying wedding props straight away – collecting them up for the big day. The sooner you do this the better as it saves money and really adds the little touches to the wedding. For example, I bought lots of Christmas decorations (white china bells and hearts) in the sales after Christmas and used these in the trees at the wedding. I like little details, so I also bought lots of wedding words and signs. Again, I got a lot of these in the sales (www.sheerluxe.com has a wedding section and does lots of money off offers. Also I found wedding magazines usually have a special offer on each issue, so I used these.)”

“I collected pebbles from the local beach and used these for the centrepieces and the name places. My dad also used grey slate to make the stands for the tables numbers which were bought from an online hobbycraft website really cheaply and spray painted by my dad. I also used the dress as inspiration and tried to reflect the poofyness of the dress in the choice of round chinese lanterns in the gardens, 3ft round balloons in the gardens, my round bouquet and the round “afro” like vases of gypsophilia.”

Beautiful, classy, stylish and personal. I love it! Although, Emma damn you for introducing me to Tina Lilienthal jewellery. I now need to own the whole ‘Skulls & Strawberries’ range.

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Tory & Joel’s Two-Day Vintage & Rock n Roll Wedding

June 10, 2011 in British Brides, Wedding | 24 comments

Tory & Joel’s two-day wedding makes my heart sing. These two totally different days worked so brilliantly for the couple. Both had a vintage and Rock n Roll vibe and I’m utterly thrilled to share them both with you today.

The couple were married at Marylebone Town Hall, London in an intimate ceremony on Friday 27th May. Tory wore a vintage dress by Armstrong Vintage and Joel wore a suit from Next . The couple chose not to have their reception directly after as they were dreaming of eloping, and having the ceremony separate to the reception party gave them this feeling without upsetting their family and friends!

“Part of us wanted to run away together and have a romantic eloping story to re-tell but in reality we both wanted our parents and siblings there at the ceremony,” the bride told me. “It turned out to be exactly what we wanted: incredibly romantic, very intimate and with our nearest and dearest there to squeeze our hands when things got a bit emotional.”

The reception was held on the 29th at West End Farm, Bedfordshire and certainly had the Rock n Roll vibe. The bride wore a second vintage dress from Love Miss Daisy and the event was a detail-perfect party for all their friends and family.

“Sunday was a flipping blast!” she continued. “We were very clear on this day: Get a barn. Fill it with fun. Have a party. We’d seen some beautiful wedding ideas (some of which we borrowed from Rock n Roll Bride in fact!) so took inspiration from them and added our own Very English twist. Highlights for me were the pony rides, watching our dear friend Miss. Jayne Hardy sing the Joel + Victoria mini musical and feeding our dog Glory a Mr+Mrs ice cream sundae. Woah fun!”

“Our theme for the reception was vintage village fete, so we really put our families to task in order to get that community feel about our day! My aunty made all the bunting, napkins and jam jar toppers. The whole family spent 6 months prior collecting jam jars, sourcing vintage lace to wrap around them and finishing with twine to give it a farmyard look. The card basket is actually my grandparent’s picnic basket found in their loft 2 months prior. And all the old couples pictures were gathered together to celebrate couples we’ve known in the past and present who represent marriage success stories. We wanted something to aspire to!”

“The drinks dispensers and Pimms beermat were great finds on eBay and Amazon had some irresitable red and white paper straws that we fell in love with. The cake was all about positivity and saying yes to each other, yes to the good and bad times and yes to the life ahead. Just say yes!”

Wow. I have serious wedding admiration right now. How about you? Check out the beautiful video from Sassy ‘n’ Frank too!

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Ronnie & Craig’s Cooler than Cool, Multi-Coloured DIY Wedding

June 7, 2011 in British Brides, Wedding | 35 comments

Did you ever look at someone’s wedding pictures and know instantly that you would be friends if you met in real life? Well that’s kinda how I felt when photographer Emma Case sent me Ronnie & Craig’s wedding last week. I know it sound superficial and a bit weird but these guys have got style…and there ain’t nothing cooler than a couple that bring that unique style into their wedding. See what I mean….?

Let me lay a few things out for you to try and explain my obsession with these guys. So Ronnie & Craig were married at Trunkwell Mansion House, in Reading (READING!? You know that’s where I live right?!..And Reading isn’t a huge town or anything. This excites me.) They pretty much DIY’ed anything and everything they could including the reception décor, the cake, the flowers, the car (yes, really – Craig restored it for the wedding) the stationery (Be sure to check out Ronnie’s website to see more of her work) and the bride and bridesmaid’s dresses! Ronnie’s Mum who made the dresses from Ronnie’s design also just so happens to have trained Ian Stuart, who is arguably one of the biggest bridal designers in the country right now.

Ronnie even wore a plastic and sparkly “Mrs Dearsley” necklace. You get the picture right…?

“I am an artist and wanted to hand paint what I could,” Ronnie told me when I asked her about all these DIY projects. “I started with the invites and slowly developed a retro tattoo theme which continued throughout the wedding with the escort cards, table numbers and welcome sign. Now the wedding is over I intend to paint our vows into where there were numbers etc and display the work in our home. I really enjoyed working on everything and would love to work with other couples who might want custom artwork for their invites or any other aspect of their day.”

“We had a huge wedding DIY project with a difference. When we got engaged Craig said basically I could do what I wanted with the wedding as long as we could use his 1971 camper van. Unfortunately, after being screwed over by a restorer, the camper van was a (beautiful) shell and needed basically a new everything putting in. Our engagement was around 18 months long and I think Craig spent every weekend working on the van to get it going, it finally made its first journey 3 days before the wedding, but was AMAZING and gorgeous and I’m so proud of Craig for getting it together.”

“Our wedding was by no means wildly controversial but it was a true reflection of us,” she continued. “When we first got engaged I spent hours browsing wedding venue sites and freaking out about food as us and about 99% of our family are mad fussy eaters. To be honest, I had only attended one wedding as an adult so I was totally out of my comfort zone and was totally taken in by the prescribed way of doing things that seems to fill most of the wedding magazines.”

“It wasn’t until I snapped out of this and thought, “Hang the hell on – what do WE like to eat?” that I realised the wedding should be about US instead of set menus. When we got engaged we’d celebrated with a cream tea, and we are hard-core BBQ fans, and I know now both of these things might be pretty standard in the wedding industry, but they are totally what I’d eat everyday if I could and we shaped our day around them.”

“So we found a venue that would accommodate our wishes for less than a billion pounds (seriously what is that all about?) and went from there. Eventually (way too late!) I discovered blogs like Rock n Roll Bride and the endless sources of inspiration out there for alternative weddings and our wedding started taking shape. The one thing we did get from bridal magazines was our colour scheme. We were pretty uninspired by the limited colour palettes we saw in most wedding pictures, until we saw an Indian themed wedding full of rich, vivid colours and we knew that was something we’d like. It evolved during the planning to pink, purple, yellow and turquoise, I had to spray paint the bridesmaids shoes to coordinate!”

“Also I mentioned that we’d like mismatched china and my mum immediately went on a madcap mission around every boot sale in the country until basically her whole house was full of old crockery. A few days before the wedding we glued together some homemade cake stands after I’d see a tutorial on GMTV. Our ceremony was very us, our vows were from some of our favourite songs, our readings were daft and we walked out each of us carrying one of our kids, they were wriggling all the way but it was lovely to have them with us.”

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