Groom Style

You are currently browsing articles tagged Groom Style.

Shalma & Leo are what I like to call friends of the blog. Not only did they find photographer David McNeil though a feature on Rock n Roll Bride, but I featured their gorgous A Bout de Souffle engagement session over the summer AND myself and the bride have exchanged regular emails ever since they got engaged about all things wedding! So when David asked if I wanted to feature them …well he didn’t have to ask twice!

“I am so pleased that you think my wedding is Rock n Roll enough for your website,” Shalma wrote. ”I would love for you to blog it! I have to say this again, but your blog has been such immense help over the past year. When I got engaged every childhood dream I had of the full Indian wedding just wasn’t an option anymore. To find a wedding site which thrives on individuality and the boldness to do what you want is refreshing and fun.”

Shalma wore a Candy Anthony dress – the first one she laid eyes on! “My dress was the first one I saw in the shop and I knew that was the one,” she explained. ”I tried on about 5 before hand (even the leopard print one which is gorgeous) but I kept going back to that one. They also made my fascinator in the same fabric. To keep with the 50′s theme, my Mother in law very kindly gave me her Mother’s vintage 50’s pearl necklace with a diamante clasp. It’s stunning I was really honoured that she wanted me to have it. At my hen party all the girls pitched in and brought me my Tiffany pearl earrings to match.  I was so touched that they all did that for me I couldn’t believe it. Luckily I had the shoes already which made the whole outfit complete!”

However for this Rock n Roll wedding it wasn’t just the bride who stole the show. The super stylish Leo was also certain that he didn’t want to look like every other groom. “Its so difficult for grooms to find something that isn’t your generic penguin suit,” Shalma said. ”He also can’t buy anything off the rack so finding somewhere that does cheap tailor made suits was hard.  He wanted a herringbone textured 3 piece suit in a brownish colour. There’s a great website called A Suit That Fits. They are brilliant. You pick the fabric, style, lining, everything and its made to measure.”

The couple didn’t want an obvious theme for their wedding, they just wanted to keep it simple, beautiful and perfect for them. “We both wanted to do things our way. We had a small budget and we’re both very creative so a lot of the design work was done by us. We basically wanted to incorporate all of our favourite things. I made my own bunting and cushion covers out of Indian silks brought from Southall. That was so much fun. I love Southall. I probably made 4 trips there in total and brought yards of coloured fabric, ribbons, jewellery. It was an epic task and so much fun.  Leo designed our invitations and he also designed the cocktail menus. We made a photo guest book using funny pictures of everyone.  We gave the kids little party bags so they had stuff to play with on the day. We painted glass jars different colours which were used for the flowers and candles.  Leo’s sister made our red velvet wedding cake which tasted amazing! We had a playlist on our ipod made up of our guest favourite songs which worked really well. We only had 1 bridesmaid and groomsmen each. My bridesmaid’s wore a dress from Coast which matched my petticoat, shoes from Carvela and the sash was brought from Candy Anthony. The groomsmen wore his own suit.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

I am a little bit over excited about featuring Danielle & Carl’s vintage wedding today. As soon as I laid eyes on her amazing dress I knew this wedding was going to be incredible… and you know what? I was right!

The couple, who met at school, got married in June at St Peter’s Church in Doddington, Lincolnshire. A 1950′s vintage theme was really important to the couple as it really reflected their everyday style. “Having been to a few ‘traditional’ weddings, as soon as we started to plan our wedding, we knew that we wanted to do things differently,” Danielle told me. “We wanted every part of our wedding to be personal to us, and be able to show our personalities.  We didn’t just want to do something because it was the way people usually do things at weddings, we wanted to put our stamp on it.  We both love all things vintage, particularly the era of the 50′s and 60′s, after all, our first car was a 1969 Volkswagen Beetle.  For this reason, having a vintage rock ‘n’ roll 50′s style wedding just seemed to come naturally to us.  Our inspiration came out of our love not only for the 50′s fashion, but the music and the whole lifestyle.  Having a dancing vicar was not something we planned but that was an added bonus!”

Danielle found her ridiculously gorgeous 1950′s dress at Love Miss Daisy and it was actually the only dress she tried on! “Searching for dresses was about the first thing that I did – I knew I wanted a 1950′s style dress, and so I started searching the internet” she told me. “The minute I saw this dress on Love Miss Daisy’s website, I fell in love with it.  I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to squeeze into it, but I just had to go and see it to find out! March 1st 2009, 15 months before our wedding day, I  got my mum and my two sisters, and we took a trip to Love Miss Daisy to find out if the dress would fit.  It was the first dress that I tried on, and it fitted as though it was just meant to be. I couldn’t believe it, I just fell in love with it, it was perfect!” She accessories with Vivienne Westwood shoes (bought for her by Carl) and jewellery and a birdcage veil made especially to match her dress by Kiss Curl.

Carl made just as much effort in a ruffled Vivienne Westwood shirt and a 1930′s tailcoat that he found on eBay. With this he wore black & white brogues and a vintage top hat.

The reception took place at Lincoln County Assembly Rooms, an Eighteenth Century building, in the historic Bailgate area of Lincoln. The couple DIY’ed as much as they could including the save the dates, invitations, church decor, confetti cones, all the reception decor and centrepieces, place names and table names. They chose not to have too many real flowers and only had a small selection as part of the centrepieces.

Rather than carry real flowers, Danielle and her bridesmaids had button bouquets made by Liza at Letters4Lilly. “She’s based in Australia and I happened to find her on etsy,” said Danielle. “I thought button bouquets were the perfect alternative to real flowers, because it meant that we each got to keep something special from the wedding day that can hopefully be passed throughout our families in years to come.  Each of the bouquets were completely unique with the bridesmaids initial in a diamante letter on each bouquet.  The best part of the bouquets was the fact that we could add something personal to them if we wanted to, and one of our bridesmaids chose to have her grannies thimble attached the bouquet, and I was able to have my grannies hatpin placed right next to the “I do” button.” 

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Oh I have yet another fabulous British wedding for you to le swoon over today. Joan & Tim’s English country garden theme was sure as hell given a Rock n Roll twist with the infusion of some seriously rad and personal touches. Not least of all, Joan’s incredible dress (actually a corset, skirt, bustle & train) from designer Jane Bourvis. It was all Vintage Couture. Jane was actually the designer behind Carrie Bradshaw’s famous ‘green seafoam ballerina dress’ that she wore in the final episode of Sex and the City (photo here) “Her shop is a wedding wonderland with vintage dresses and corsets dangling above you so you don’t know where to look at first,” Joan explained. “It was the first dress I tried on and within 5 minutes I knew that I wanted it.”

The bride made all the decorations, invites, place cards, table names, pom poms (from a Martha Stewart tutorial), and the seating plan by herself. ” We transformed the village hall, which was very much a black canvas, into a really beautiful room using the cream & caramel colour scheme which we got from my dress. We also carted around lots of picture frames, candelarbras and engagement congratulation cards from home to dot around the hall and make it more homely and personal to us. ”

They had tipi’s and campfires and everyone camped for 2 nights. They set up makeshift portable showers for everyone – complete with posh toiletries! In the toilets they put photos from the hen and stag (bachelor & bachelorette) parties!

“We both love music so we added this to the wedding with table names being famous duets. Our table place cards were our faces super imposed into duets and we had ”Rockaoke” our band so that our guests could live the dream for a night and get up and belt out some tunes with a live band. All the music throughout the day was chosen really carefully by us….we had Irish music in the church for ceremony to go village old (robin hood) feel of church, we walked out to O’Carolan’s concerto which is an irish jig. The reception music was a mixture of reggae/brazilian beats etc – feel good holiday music and it did briefly coax the sun out for us!!Music during dinner was 40′s and 50′s feel good music which we knew parents and their friends and grandparents (who sadly are no longer with us) would love. The dancing playlist after the Rockaoke was a compilation of requests from our guests.”

Be sure to check out their fab music themed engagement session here too!

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I’ve got another killer South African wedding to share with you today. Jess & Matt’s amazing individual style and totally out-there wedding may even make you squeal a little bit. This creative couple pulled off a wedding that was nothing short of spectacular in every way!

“We met at Burn (alternative nightclub in Durban) one night,” the bride told me. I spotted him at one point during a night out with friends and told my them that I thought he was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I asked my friend, Sam (bridesmaid at our wedding), to play wing girl for me. A little while later she introduced herself to him then said that she knew someone who wanted to meet him (me) so she introduced us and we chatted for the rest of the night.  I fell in love with him from the moment I met him.” 

“Our relationship was quite a strange one, we were on for a few months at a time, then broke up, then got back together and so on….But throughout it all we were always best friends and always living our lives together.  The last time we got back together was  on a new years eve.  The very next new years eve (at a friends house party)  Matt decided to surprise me and at 12 o’clock he asked for the music to be turned down.  In front of the entire party he made a beautiful speech and got down on one knee and asked me to marry him.”

Despite how incredibly polished their wedding turned out, the couple actually did everything themselves. Both of them are artists and they were blown away by people who offered to help to make their vision a reality. “As we were doing everything ourselves and trying really hard to do it on a budget, from the décor to organising the food. We went to hundreds of different places and met hundreds of new and interesting people.  I found that along the way we met some amazing people.”

“So many people were willing to help, who also had really good advice.  We met people who were genuinely happy to give of themselves for us, who really were strangers to them, I felt so deeply touched by this.  We were so disorganised (as artists generally are) and some of the people we met along the way really worked hard to pull together things for us at the last minute.  Not only were we impressed by the generosity of complete strangers, but our family and friends pulled together and all worked like crazy to help us create our dream wedding.  We still cannot believe the willingness and complete selflessness of all the people involved in this…We made many new friends along the way as well. THIS is what has made this wedding the most special for us (besides actually getting married!)”

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Oh I am EXCITED…like, seriously jump up and down and eat a big cream cake-excited about sharing Jamie & Neil’s wedding with you today. Why the extra enthusiasm you ask? Well Jamie & Neil were the lucky couple who won the contest for free wedding photography that I organised alongside the the fabulous Kat Braman back in January (you can see their entry here)

The couple got married in style on September 18th at the YMCA’s Camp Pendalouanin Holton, MI, a place that holds very special significance for the bride. “The whole wedding weekend from Rehearsal on Friday through Sunday morning took place at the Muskegon YMCA’s Camp Pendalouan,” Jamie explained to me. ”Camp Pendalouan has a special place in my heart as I attended girl scout camp there as a child.  The ceremony took place at the scenic Boyden Chapel situated on Big Blue Lake and the reception was held in Nikana Lodge.  The evening was concluded by a roaring bonfire that could be “seen from space” at the Council Ring of the Great Bear fire circle.  The camp setting was just perfect for us since love outdoor adventures.  It also gave us extra time to spend with our guests that were able to spend the night in the bunks!”

The entire wedding was an DIY and group effort, and the love and attention to detail really really shows (I am so in love with the car moustache!) Jamie’s Mum grew all the flowers, friends and family members made the deserts, they had a friend officiate and the whole wedding party got involved in the ceremony – and that’s just for starters! (make sure you check out the full list of everyone involed after the ‘jump’) ”Following our ceremony we armed all our guests with ribbon sticks, pinwheels, and kazoos and had a parade to the flagpole where we raised a flag bearing our family crest,” they told me. “TSY rounded out the parade playing the Jason Mraz version of “One Love.”

Jamie wore a vintage dress that she’d bought at a boutique Viavi (now closed) for just $15.  Some of Jamie’s colleagues helped her to modify the sleeves and the bodice of the sheath dress. With this she wore a Pixel & Hank (who I actually featured here) headpiece, Fossil tights and vintage oxford shoes from Tree & Kimball

Seriously, words can not express how excited I am that Kat (photographer) and I were able to give this couple the professional photography they deserved. How beautifully captured is it all?

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,