Music

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Claire & Scott chose an old movie theatre in as the setting for their ceremony, The Lantern Theatre, Sheffield. Although they hadn’t even thought about marrying in a theatre, after seeing one in Whitby they loved the idea. “We’d originally planned to marry in Whitby, as it’s a special to place to us both,” Claire told me. “Whilst looking at venues there, we were shown a theatre hidden away at the back of the sea front community centre. We hadn’t thought about marrying in a theatre, but we both fell in love with the idea. In the end, we decided that we’d rather marry closer to home in Sheffield, but the idea of marrying in a theatre stayed with us.”

“After an afternoon on Google, Scott emailed every theatre within a fifty-mile radius of us to ask if they did weddings. The Lantern Theatre was one of the few that replied and it turned out to be barely a mile from our house. When we arrived we fell in love with the place. It’s an old 84-seat Victorian theatre with anaglyph wallpaper and red velvet seats. The staff there were so flexible and open to all our ideas. They even bought a mirrorball so that I could walk down the aisle in spiralling light. They served cocktails in teapots, put together a lighting and music programme so that the ceremony ran without a hitch and Keith – the volunteer who ran the bar – even dressed up in a dapper waistcoat and tie.”

After the ceremony the couple and their guests boarded a old London bus to The Countryside Centre. “We chose The Countryside Centre because it gave us a blank canvas to work with,” Claire continued. “There are no staff there on the day itself so you have complete freedom to use whichever suppliers you want. Though there’s a converted barn and grain store, we chose to hire a marquee to make the most of the beautiful grounds and asked our caterers to set up a steak and fish barbecue, which was fantastic.”

The couple chose a music and literature theme for their day. “Literature and music have always been important to us and during the planning it soon became apparent that though we hadn’t intended to have a theme for the wedding, words and music were a recurring motif. Our invites were designed to look like classic orange and white vintage Penguin paperbacks, with library tickets inside for the RSVP (we’d stamped the wallet in which the library ticket sat with the key dates of our relationship). We used the Smiths’ song title ‘There Is a Light That Never Goes Out’ as the title of the paperback/invite.”

“Our place settings followed the Penguin theme, with the guests’ names replacing the author’s and a lyric we’d individually chosen for each guest replacing the title. Inside the place settings were CDs with the key songs from the wedding day. The orders of service that were handed out at the theatre were designed to look like vintage Penguin Plays paperbacks, with the title on the cover taken from a Velvet Underground song. Our readings were taken from books, except for one, which was the lyrics of the Pulp song, ‘Something Changed’.”

“During the service, we exchanged copies of our favourite books, around which the rings were tied on a ribbon. Even the confetti followed the literary theme. Using a heart-shaped holepunch, we punched confetti from the pages of our favourite books.”

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Amberly & Gabe’s September wedding was held at the Bakersfield Museum of Art. A Rock n Roll wedding to the core, music played a huge part in their day. “We are music lovers and the cocktail hour music was a custom list of electric violin covers by Ms. Jennifer Spingola,” the bride told me. “The music over dinner was provided by the Vitamin String quartet featuring our favorite songs. These included versions of Sweet Child of Mine, Stairway to Heaven, Rocking in the Free World, Purple Haze and November Rain. Our first dance was to an Adele’s cover of the Cure’s Love Song.”

The table names were also music inspired – the couple’s favoruite bands – and were made by the bride and groom themselves. “We photo-shopped the band logo and lead singer on to a 4×6 photo paper and framed them,” Amberly explained. “Other DIY details included the silhouettes of us which were made by a childhood friend. We transposed them on to canvas and displayed them at the reception.”

“We are lovers of classic rock, classic alternative and metal,” the couple concluded. “We wanted to capture what we love to do (go to gigs) and love to listen to (our favorite music). We wanted to express our creativity and love for all things rock. Our theme was ‘vintage Goth meets glam heavy metal with a pinch of glitter’.”

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**Warning before we begin, some of these photos may not be safe for work, so don’t say I didn’t warn you. There are boobs…nice boobs…but boobs none the less…**

Most of you will have noticed that I don’t feature a whole load of boudoir on Rock n Roll Bride. It’s not that I don’t like it, but I guess my opinion is the same as that on engagement shoots – the photos are amazing for the people involved (show me a man who wouldn’t want to see his bride to be all sexified-up for him pre-wedding?) but for us non-involved people, once you’ve see one hot lady in sexy undies jumping around on a bed you’ve seen ‘em all…

Which is why I was chuffed to bits to receive Casey’s boudoir shoot from photographer Nikita Gross recently. Something a bit different and hella hella sexy hurrah!

The inspiration for the shoot was “a crazy, psychedelic, Rock n Roll, fantasy dream,” explained Nikita. “Inspired by 60′s and 70′s music and the feel of old album covers,  I wanted this shoot to be wild and hot. Casey was so awesome! She got my vision completely and dug out some amazing pieces from her own wardrobe…. the smoke is actually from left over smoke bombs I had from Independence day.”

“We started the day out in my car jamming The Doors which inspired a heated discussion about how hot Jim Morrison was. After about a 20 minute ride we arrived at the location I picked out for the shoot, a field of wild flowers in KY, my favorite place to be. Here we were, on a long gravel road in the middle of nowhere, clothes and cameras everywhere, Casey half naked and here come the police! You should have seen the look on their faces, priceless. Thanks to Casey’s power of seduction they were super cool about letting us stay and shoot. How could they say no, right?”

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Meeting through a love of 60′s girl bands and 50′s Rock n Roll, it was inevitable that the wedding of Laura & Daniel would be made for this little blog of mine. Combine this with a penchant for vintage clothing and you’ve just about created the perfect Rock n Roll Bride wedding.

“It seemed natural for us to reflect the way we met in our wedding,” Laura told me. “I’m an artist, designer and one half of 50′s Rock n Roll DJ duo The Truckin’ Laura’s, and Daniel is guitarist in The Special Needs, so music was a big part of the wedding. I walked down the aisle to a piano version of ‘Sea of Love’ by Phil Phillips played by our friend Galia. Our friend Anna and her all singing all dancing Ronettes played a beautiful ukelele version of Phil Spector classic ‘Be my Baby’ at the end of our ceremony which set the tone for the day perfectly. Another really special moment was Daniel singing The Tempations ‘My Girl’ after his speech and all our guests joining in with the chorus. After our first dance to The Ramones ‘Baby I Love You’ our DJ friends took turns on the decks and kept the guests dancing all night!”

“We wanted to create a fun, down to earth day with lots of heart and some personal touches”, she continued. “As we didn’t have a huge budget we enlisted the help of our incredibly talented & kind friends and family! Everything from our cake, to the flowers, decorations and all the wonderful food (including some particularly cute pink coconut mice) were made by us, our friends and family. It was a huge amount of work but worth every moment. We felt so honoured to have so many people involved in making the day so individual and special.”

“For our table names we took our two carved Liger cake toppers (our favourite animal) and photographed them in the places around the city that were special to us. Each location was used as a table name and the photographs were placed in frames on the table. Guests really enjoyed chatting about them, especially the ‘Tufnell Park Kebabs’ table!”

“The day not only reflected our love for each other but also all the amazing creative people we are lucky enough to have in our lives. In honour of Daniel’s Polish heritage the guests toasted us with traditional double vodka shots when we entered the reception which was blamed for a lot of rowdy behaviour later in the evening. Rock ‘n’ Pole!”

Laura’s vintage dress was bought from Elizabeth Avey in London. “It was the first place I went with my Mum and we came away two hours later with my perfect frock,” Laura explained. “I always wanted a 50′s lace dress, but hadn’t considered anything backless until I came across this beauty. My friend Lizzie who owns Mishka Vintage gave me my jewellery and very kindly let us get ready for the day in her beautiful shop.”

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“For us, we wanted our wedding ceremony to be kept simple – no flashiness and relaxed,” newlywed Valerie told me, “which is just the way we are. We wanted intimacy and for it to be very personal which I think was reflected in our music, readings (the lyrics of the Adam Sandler tune from the Wedding Singer and an extract from the Irrational Season, Madeleine L’Engle) and having our little boy with us. However, we definitely wanted a big party afterwards to celebrate.”

The ceremony was held at The Recital Rooms, Candleriggs, Glasgow and the recopetion that followed was at The Old Fruit Market, a concert hall also in Candleriggs. ”There was a large visual and atmospheric contrast between our ceremony and reception but both were reflections of us as a couple,” the bride continued. “But we’re also an outgoing couple, for whom music and dancing is part of who we are.”

“The themes that ran through the wedding were peacock feathers and colours (greens and purples) so they featured on my hairpiece, the boutonnieres, page boys, flowergirls and bestmen outfits, the favours and place names. When we found our venue we wanted to stay in keeping with the rooms we used themselves. The ceremony room was a plain white room with art deco windows and draping at the head of the room. The lighting gave it atmosphere and these were subtly in our wedding colours. The only other decorations we used were the papal picado banners (found on Etsy) along the walls. For the reception room we wanted to keep with the rustic character of the room and I feel that everything from the flowers to the favours reflected that. For example, our placecard holders were simply made from branches from the tress in our garden and I made the favour CD holders out of hessian material for that natural feel. The Old Fruit Market is grand without being imposing and we felt it really matched what we wanted to create the party atmosphere for our wedding.”

With the reception being held in a concert hall, clearly music was a big consideration for the couple. Valerie explained, “The music for our wedding was always going to be really important to us, music is a big thing for both of us (even if our tastes can widely diverge at times) and we chose everything from the ceremony music to playlists for after the ceremony and during dinner. Friends of the Stars and James Summerfield played at the ceremony. Anna (from Friends of the Stars, the band that Craig sings and writes with) and James sang an acoustic version of Islands in the Stream for me to walk up the aisle to. It was lovely to have them sing for us as it made the ceremony feel so personal and intimate from the very start.”

“For the reception, our friend Kev Kiernan, DJ’d. We knew he’d rock it because of his wide and eclectic style of tunes. I’ve known Kev for years and have spent many nights dancing to Kev’s DJ’ing at house parties into the wee hours. He played everything from 60s funk, early 90s house and country tunes…And then of course, we had Elvis.”

“We knew early on that by choosing to have an Elvis, it couldn’t just be any Elvis. He had to be amazing for us to pull off this old wedding cliche. We did our research and pulled a blinder when we found Paul, a twice UK tribute winner no less. We chose the playlist of songs that he would sing too. He came out to the Space Odyssey 2001 theme and then went straight into See See Rider. The crowd literally went wild.”

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