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For her bridal shoot Emma wanted to do something different, and after buying a simple dress she decided to alter it herself as part of the shoot. Scissors, glitter and metallic spray paint all played a role, and I have to say I think I actually prefer the dress afterwards! How about you?
Tags: DIY, Glitter, Trash The Dress
I’ve been obsessing over cinemagraphs for ages – in essence they are still images with a small isolated section that moves. When you first see them they’re quite confusing but totally entrancing! I’ve always wondered how they were made and how you can get essentially a still image to have bits of moving video within it but today (eeek) my questions have been answered. When I was sent this Photoshop tutorial by photographer Violet Short I literally gasped. Check out this cute one she made of her dog Marshmallow!
My name is Violet and I blog over at Blythe Ponytail Parades, a compilation blog featuring my photography and progress with the business, food and crafts! I am always trying to keep things fresh, new and exciting while posting throughout the week! Come on over if you enjoy vintage inspired photography, new decadent recipes or a load of inspiration to brighten your day!
Today I will show you how I worked through my video to create a cinemagraph. I will note, using living objects or anything near someone’s face (like moving hair as I did for this tutorial) can be difficult. I wouldn’t recommend it for your first one.
I will preface by saying that you will need a basic knowledge of photoshop to attempt this tutorial. If you aren’t sure how to use photoshop, than this tutorial might end up not being explained well enough. So bare with me and ask as many questions as you need to!
Step One: First, you will need to come up with a subject matter, decide what you want to be moving and what you are going to isolate. For my video, we set up a tripod (which is essential) in our living room and turned on the video recording spot on my camera. I sat on the couch with a fan blowing at me and I wanted to isolate everything but a few hairs that would move with the air.
Step Two: Once you have your video file, here’s what you do: File – Import – Video Frames to layers – locate your file.
Tags: budget wedding, DIY, Tutorial
Wayne & Mac were married at The Lodge at Loch Goil in Scotland. The beautiful venue and epic scenery really defined their gorgeous wedding. Newlywed Mac told me all about their fabulous day. “Rock n Roll Bride was a favourite blog for my when planning my weddings! It was a bit of a godsend actually as all the standard wedding websites and magazines made me feel a bit nauseas with twitterings on about favours and general frilly pinkness. Wayne and I are both fairly scruffy monkeys that don’t do a lot of dressing up so we were keen to have a do that catered to us and our friends tastes. We wanted a fairly small wedding with close friends and family to have a chance of spending time with them rather than a quick 5 minutes that some mates had endured at their bigger do’s. And we wanted to get some time together!”
“The original plan was poking around a snow wedding in Norway or away snowboarding but the practicalities of shipping 20 plus people north or to mountains proved epic, and Wayne chipped in his ‘must haves’ of Scotland, bagpipes, and being able to keep his mutton chop sideys. We stumbled across The Lodge at Loch Goil during my many productive hours at work Googling and from our first visit adored it. Alice Gill, the head planner, and her assistant Kelly sorted out pretty much everything from their list of regular bookings – they do in-house catering (even with our veggie and gluten bothering mates), a resident florist and use local staff and suppliers for as much as possible including their own kitchen garden in the grounds.”
The simple and stress-free wedding was perfect for this couple who decided the wedding fluff and stuff really wasn’t for them! “I wore a dress from Coast,” the bride continued. “I originally found a random pink version on a non-wedding shopping trip, and despite not liking pink it liked it as I knew I didn’t want a meringue. I tried it on with the boots I had on and the seed was sown. It took a bit of ringing round various branches and whispering credit card details in restaraunt toilets to get it, and then persuading them to exchange it a couple of months later when the white version was released!”
“Neither Wayne or I are particularly religious and we wanted a ceremony that was a bit less formal than some might expect. After Mum mentioned going to a friend’s daughter’s humanist wedding where the bride and groom skipped down the aisle to the Benny Hill theme tune I knew we were on to a winner. We booked our wedding at quite short notice, and were lucky enough to meet Linda Britton, our celebrant. Humanist weddings encompass the legal bits with whatever reflects the couples values as long as it is dignified and legal! We met with her and did lots of emailing about the ceremony and she did us proud, we can’t thank or recommend her enough. The Lodge gave us indoor/outdoor options for the ceremony depending on the weather. We had rain the day before and a pretty poor forecast but Alice came up trumps and gave the go ahead for the loch shore under the tree. (With the tyre swing, good fun). It was lovely and informal with a table, a few chairs and some flowers and everyone gathered round. People passing by in canoes and boats is a lovely bonus, and I’m so impressed that our photographer got such great photos as I spent the whole thing grinning like an idiot and doing thumbs up.”
“The Lodge has been designed and curated with vintage and retro pieces and Alice is an encyclopedia of beautiful things. We also brought a dressing up box of nonsense for people to take their own shots with and loads of spare flip flops for dancing. The ultimate decor was the Lodge’s treehouse which I still make little squealy noises about when it pops up on the Visit Scotland TV adverts. It was the perfect place to have our pictures taken.”
“We had a piper from the local pipe band playing as guests arrived and as I trotted through the garden with my Dad. As a sneaky surprise Wayne and I booked fireworks in the evening through Alice, it was a hard job keeping my trap shut about it. The village gets considerate advance warning that they will be happening, and we were told they would all be out watching from their gardens. What we didn’t know was that the grounds would be lit with candles and we would launch a fireballoon as a pretence for getting everyone outside. The fireworks lasted ages and it was a wonderful end to our day standing by the loch with all our family and friends. I was so glad I skipped favours and other things I was ‘supposed’ to have and went for something that everyone could share in.”
I think most of you will be aware by now that I love love love a rainbow wedding…why pick one or two colours when you can pick twenty seven!? So as you can imagine I squealed like a small child on Christmas morning when Jen & Ben’s wedding landed in my inbox. If I was less of a chatterbox I’d say that ‘I had no words’ when I saw these images…but in actual fact I had all the words in the world flying around my head as I made my selections for this blog post…
The wedding took place on 29th February this year. “We chose the date because we were so excited that there would be a 29th Feb this year!” Jen told me. “It was a Wednesday in late winter, but it didn’t put us off one bit. Our guests were a little surprised when we announced to them that the ceremony would be outside, but the weather was very kind to us and the ceremony was beautiful. Everyone also commented on how we won’t get an anniversary for four years, but (as my dad rightly pointed out in his speech) we get to have a two day celebration every year, on the 28th and the 1st!”
The outdoor ceremony and rainbow-covered reception were both held at The Matara Centre in the Cotswolds. The venue decor and rainbow touches were a real labour of love as the bride explains, “Working in the wedding industry (I make bridal headpieces and my company is called Head Full of Feathers), I knew I wanted to make things very personal to us. There are so many weddings that all look so very, very similar. We concentrated on having only the aspects of a wedding we liked the idea of, and got rid of the rest. We just wanted a huge colourful party with all our friends, and that’s what we got. We wanted the day to be as jam packed with things to do as possible, and the venue has such beautiful grounds that we wanted everyone to see them. So we got everyone to bring wellies and we went out to plant a cherry tree (Blossom flowers are my most favourite flower) It was a wonderful sight to see everyone playing about in the sunshine (in Feb!) all dressed in their best, and their wellies.”
“We wanted our wedding to be bright and colourful, so I suppose the theme multi-coloured fun-fest,” Jen continued. “So many people advised against it, saying we should stick to just 3 or 4 colours, but we knew it was going to work. Bright colours are just us. The invitations (drawn by me) were a magical wonderland inside a toadstool (the swing in the middle is in the grounds of The Matara Centre), so halfway through planning we decided to have as many toadstools at the wedding as we could. We printed off mini versions of the toadstool drawing on coloured card for our guests to write us messages on and peg them to our ‘guest book’ washing line and framed a large copy of it in the venue with our names and the date on. We also had a magic toadstool drawing tea-towel printed for favours for all our guests too. We even made 20 paper mache red and white toadstools which we put around the venue. The ushers had the job of secretly moving them around throughout the day, so it was like they were just popping up out of nowhere. Guests got to take these home at the end of the day too, which was lovely.”
“I had a dream during the planning process which featured a tree covered in cupcakes that looked just like blossom flowers. I just knew I had to recreate it somehow. I got in touch with my wonderful cake making friend, Sam, and she helped me bring the vision to reality, only better! She coloured all chocolate in all the colours of the wedding, and added them to the tops of all the little cupcakes. A true blossom tree. They were delicious too.”
“I bought a huge number of loose wooden flowers from Accents and Petals (their flowers are made of woodshavings from old pallets – amazing recycling!) and made all the table centres too. We concreted branches into pots and glued the wooden flowers onto them, to make a mini blossom tree for each table. Each table was a different colour, and thats how our guests found their seats.”
“We made so much of the decor ourselves – it made it so personal. We made so many different coloured pom poms – 200 pompoms in total, which took a whole lot of ‘froofing’ by very kind friends and family that had arrived the night before.”
Jen wore a 50s style dress which she had made by Honeypie Boutique. She really wanted a firey petticoats (oranges, reds etc) and Ann of Swank Underpinnings was up for the challenge! “When I first started looking for a dress I was do disillusioned by the whole process. I knew I wanted to have a short dress, because we would be dancing (a lot) and going to plant a tree, and I am a bit clumsy – I would have definitely got tangled up in it at some point. The first bridal shop assistant quite plainly told me that it was a ridiculous idea, and I wouldn’t feel like a bride in a dress that didn’t come to the floor – I was stunned (she has obviously never read Rock n Roll Bride!) Then I got in touch with a wonderful dressmaker who, it seemed, would answer all my prayers. Then she started ignoring my emails/tweets/phone messages. In the end I ordered a dress from Honeypie Boutique (lovely people that will do anything for you) and ordered a custom petticoat from Ann Swank. I customised the dress by taking the back out, and adding tulle to the bust, and I love it.”
The DIY didn’t stop with the wedding decor though as Jen painstakingly added 8000 Swarovski crystals to her Irregular Choice shoes. “I really didn’t think it would take too long to add the crystals to my shoes, I was wrong, it takes A LONG time. I even did my research wrong, thinking it would be 4000 crystals, but that turned out to be per shoe, oops. When I finally finished them I really wanted to show them off, but knowing I’m not allowed (and wanting to keep them a surprise for everyone for the day) I made a video and emailed it to Kat! I couldn’t help myself, I had to show someone! Luckily she loved them like I do!”
Being a headpiece designer of course Jen made her own headpiece as well as the ones her bridesmaids wore. “I made so many fascinators for the guests at our wedding and we had taken on so much in the way of DIY decoration, that I hadn’t even started to think about my hairpiece for the day three days before. I just kept getting on with other things that needed doing. Finally I got to it, and am really pleased with how it turned out. I made a mix of the wooden flowers that we used in all our decorations, and a version of my bleached peacock feather flowers, and finished them off with crystals and pearls. I wore a tangled pearl necklace and bracelet made by my good friend Helen (Fruitloop Designs) so this tied everything together”
Tags: Cupcakes, DIY, Irregular Choice, multi-coloured, Rainbow, Short dress, UK
Many couples shy away from heavily themed weddings, but I have to say when they’re done well they can be darn right incredible. Zoe & Chris’ masquerade wedding is testament to that! The Australian couple met before the ceremony with their closest family to have some quiet time, as well as time for photographs, before the festivities began. “Chris collected me from the hotel and we went to meet our close family at a beautiful inner city garden to crack some champagne and make a toast to the rest of the night,” Zoe explained. “This was a beautiful opportunity to spend some time with those closest to us before the party began. We got some beautiful photos in the afternoon light as well.”
Both the ceremony and reception were held at Uber Nightclub, Brisbane. “We are high school sweethearts and have been engaged for over 5 years,” Zoe continued. “During the ceremony we lit two pillar candles to symbolise Chris’ mum and brother who have passed away due to illness – these stayed lit all night in the room and was a beautiful reminder that they were there with us.”
“Our guests ended up nicknaming the night as the ‘Sexy Dream’ which is exactly what I was aiming for. I was inspired by burlesque, masquerade, sexy, mysterious and flirtatious. Chris and I both work in the music industry so our wedding was always going to be a little left of centre. Most of our friends are also in the music industry and I wanted the wedding to have the Rock n Roll element but wanted it to be glamorous and romantic at the same time. I also wanted the wedding to be interactive for the guests so when they arrived they were handed a small burgundy silk pouch full of gold pieces for the bar, they were asked to choose an antique key from a dress model at the door which they could then try in locks on bird cages throughout the venue which contained little goodies such as bottles of champagne, Charbonnel et Walker truffles etc. We also had an amazing photo booth running for the whole night which was a huge success and then once the guests had their photo prints, they could customer make their own take home mini photo album.”
“I absolutely recommend a DIY wedding,” the bride concluded. “You get so much more satisfaction with the final result and it means you can share some great experiences with friends and family bringing the whole thing together. It also means you can bring your dream to life just the way you pictured it.”
The bride wore a dress which she designed herself and handmade with the help of her mother. Her ‘mask’ was a black piece of lace, which she’d bought from etsy.
Tags: australian, black wedding dress, DIY, Gothic, Mask, masquerade
Hello and welcome to my little blog. My name is Kat Williams aka the Rock n Roll Bride and my aim is to provide a little haven of kick ass weddingness in a cookie cutter, pastel and often puke-worthy wedding world. If you’ve ever picked up a bridal magazine and felt queasy or trawled the internet and felt disheartened by what you didn’t find well, my friend, you are in the right place!
© 2008-2012 Kathryn Williams
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