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Edgar Allen Poe & A Day Filled with Love: Joann & Jacqueline

January 11, 2012 in Wedding | 14 comments

A quote by Edgar Allen Poe was the starting point for Joann & Jacqueline’s wedding plans. ‘We loved with a love that was more than love’ made them realise that really, their love was at that mattered. Luckily for these two beautiful women, they were surrounded by the stuff on their big day.

“No matter how much planning that went into that day, we were both blown away by the amount of love we received from our family and friends,” they explained. “We can’t fully explain or describe how it felt, but hopefully the love and laughter in the atmosphere of our wedding day had everyone just as thrilled and excited as we were. Our wedding was held at Penn Park, in Whittier, CA. The greenery was vivid and lovely just the way fairytales usually are, except this time there were two princesses.”

“Joann looked beautiful in her dress,” gushed Jacqueline. “I told myself I wouldn’t cry, but when we got to the front of the aisle and I looked at how gorgeous my bride was, and felt the amount of support we had from our family, we both couldn’t help but let the water works run wild.”

After a touching ‘sand ceremony’ (where each partner takes a different coloured sand and pours it into one vessel to symbolise the joining of their two families) they hosted a reception at Memories Dance Hall in Uptown Whitter. “The Ceremony was romantic and simplistic,”"  Jacqueline continued. “We used white, ivory and hints of black to show our softer, feminine side. An outdoor wedding with the greenery of the earth and a commitment of love between two people. We expressed our commitment through a sand ceremony to symbolize the joining of our families, while we read our vows said from personal feelings and poems by Edgar Allen Poe.”

“Our Reception was the complete opposite – fun and flamboyant. We both love black, so the theme and colors completely changed to black with hints of red and gold, showing our Rock n Roll side. We never would have expected the decorations and everything to look as beautiful as it did. It captured the very essence of us and we couldn’t be happier. Our friends and family are not shy when it comes to having a good time, and that was fine by us. The Curse and Cure cover band started off the night. Our first song was a cover by Adele ‘Promise This’, we both had left feet and had never slow danced before, but in that moment it was just right and everything fell into place. The DJ was up after the speeches and from that point the love, laughs, booty drops and kisses were endless.”

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A Village Fete Meets Tattoo Parlour Wedding: Jess & David

November 14, 2011 in British Brides, Wedding | 17 comments

Jess & David were married in All Saints Church in Kirby and they had their reception in the bride’s parent’s back garden. Jess wore a Candy Anthony Dress, Upper Street shoes (which she designed herself) and Vivienne Westwood jewellery. The lucky couple had Shell De Mar there to capture their day.

“We met at school and had been together 12 years when David proposed at sunrise on the beach in Mexico,” Jess told me. “Initially I’d been reluctant to get out of bed so early but something told me it might be worth it…and it was!”

“We always knew we wanted to get married in Pocklington, the small Yorkshire town where my parents live and where the school at which we met is. But finding a venue was a big problem as everything just felt too formal and wedding-y. In the end, it made perfect sense to do it in my parents garden as we had the space and freedom to do everything exactly as we wanted. We felt really strongly that if we were going to have all the people around us that we cared most about, we didn’t want to be standing on ceremony. That was one of the reasons we put our table in the middle of the room, because we didn’t want that us and them separation.”

“I knew immediately I wanted a 50’s style dress and as soon as I clapped eyes on Candy Anthony’s dresses it was love at first sight. The polka dots were just perfect and the red sash was brought everything together. I was worried that David would be disappointed that I hadn’t gone more traditional but the look on his face when I walked down the aisle told me I had nothing to worry about. The right shoes were proving extremely difficult to find and it was my Mum who eventually found Upper Street’s website. I designed exactly what I wanted and six weeks later they arrived and couldn’t have been more perfect.”

“My biggest thing throughout the planning was that I didn’t want to settle just because something was easier and I spent many hours trawling websites for ideas on how to do things,” the bride continued. “There were times, I think, when my Mum struggled with the idea that it wasn’t going to be a traditional, fluffy, sugar coated wedding, but she soon got what I had in mind and was amazing in helping everything come together. We couldn’t have done it without my Mum and Dad.”

“In the end the theme was a celebration of all things kitsch – or village fete meets Rock n Roll tattoo parlour as one of our guests described it. The biggest compliment at the end of the day was the number of people telling us how the whole wedding was totally ‘us’.”

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A Patriotic Red, White & Blue Wedding: Julia & James

October 20, 2011 in British Brides, Wedding | 11 comments

Julia & James had a handmade and patriotic Great British theme for their September wedding – red, white & blue. “I knew from the moment we started to plan the wedding that I wanted it to be DIY,” the bride told me, “and to be able to keep all the aspects to decorate our home. We had so many great comments on the day from the registrar and venue that they had never seen a wedding like ours before. I am a avid follower of Rock n Roll Bride, Ruffled blog & Green Wedding Shoes so I scrapbooked a lot of ideas from them all over the past 2 years!”

Julia wore two dresses, the first was made by her Mother which she wore with Union Jack Irregular Choice shoes. In the evening she changed into a dress which she bought from eBay. “I saw it one evening when looking for a joke dress to wear to a friend’s hen party and my heart stopped,” Julia continued. “It was the one! I bid as far as my purse would let me, and I didn’t win. I was tweeting away and some of my followers suggested I contact the seller directly.”

“So I did, and asked her how much she wanted for it. I was devastated when she told me the amount as it was more than I could pay at that time. Anyway, I kept tweeting my dismay and had resigned to the fact that the dress wouldn’t be mine. I had a DM from one of my friends saying that I could start a group on facebook asking all our mates to donate some money and that it would be a wedding present from them all. I didn’t think anything would come of it but not long after the same friend DM’d me saying ‘check your email’ and there was a PayPal amount awaiting me – to cover the WHOLE amount for the dress. As you can imagine I cried and laughed and jumped for joy!”

The reception decor was all DIY including the bunting, 400 pinwheels (which they had instead of flowers on the tables as well as instead of traditional bouttonierres for the boys), the string ball decorations and all the table decorations. Instead of a traditional wedding cake, they had a cake competition where they asked their guests to bring a homemade cake. They had all kinds of entries including a barbie doll cake, apple and cinnamon muffins and sparkly cake pops.

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Aimee & Ben’s Heavily Tattooed, Handfasting Vow Renewal

May 26, 2011 in British Brides, Wedding | 22 comments

Bride Aimee and photographer Naomi Kenton connected through Rock n Roll Bride. They both got talking via facebook about some weddings they’d both seen and liked on the blog and so after getting to know each other well in this informal way,  Naomi shot her vow renewal to Ben.

Can we also just please stop for one minute and share some love for Aimee & Ben’s ink?! Seriously…wow. “Tattoos are a big part of both our lives as Ben is a tattooist,” explained Aimee, “and we are both really into all things rockabilly, hot rods and VW lovers so that’s what we wanted for the day.  We are just ourselves and we do things the way we want and are happy as a result.”

The handfasting ceremony was held at Tutbury Castle in Staffordshire in April. “We wanted to celebrate our relationship and our two children, so we decided to renew our vows – we chose a handfasting as it was a lot more personal to us and was performed by a good friend Caroline Johnson.”

“I made the flowers myself and also used Jack Daniels bottles as decoration on the buffet table,” Aimee continued. ” I gave all the guests a favour bag that we got a couple of ‘meet & greet’ girls to hand out – which were white paper bags lined with tissue paper, in each I put a little spell bag, some heart bath fizzers for the women and skull shaped soaps for the men.  For the children I gave duck shape bath fizzers and rhubarb & custard soaps.”

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Leah & Peter’s Red + Black Rockabilly Wedding

March 29, 2011 in British Brides, Wedding | 16 comments

Leah & Peter had a red & black themed rockabilly wedding. They kept the fact that they had got married earlier in the day a surprise from a lot of their guests but made sure all the most important people were in attendance…including their two (very well dressed!) pugs.

“We were never officially engaged (Peter bought my my black pug Ziggy instead of an engagement ring!) we just always knew we would get married and with both of us turning 30 in June 2010 was as good a reason as any,” Leah told me. !We never wanted to be the kind of people who let the real reason for getting married to be overshadowed by stressing about table placings etc so we focused on what would make us have a good time at the party and turned the tables so people were leaving with things that we had bought!”

“We spent a lot of our budget on the sweet buffet/ice cream sundae bar and also put 125 little bottles of shots on the tables (Peter hand painted them with different designs) and had free champagne and cardboard cadillacs on the tables filled with all kinds of things like bubbles, lipglosses, toys, games, sunglasses, badges, mirrors, mexican jumping beans. We also made 100 cd’s of songs that we liked and we called it “Cats, Pugs and Rock n Roll!” We also had a lot of 1950′s pictures and we let everyone take them away with them. Someone even got the cardboard Marilyn Monroe cut-out, we just wanted everyone to have a good time.”

“When we made the announcement that we got married, most people were very happy for us and some asked us what we wanted for a wedding present and our response was (the same to the people) who knew about the wedding “nothing”, we’ve been together a long time, we have our own house, we don’t need anything, we just wanted to have a really good party and celebrate our way plus people will always remember it. We didn’t want people to get hung up on the wedding details or pay a lot of money out. All we wanted to do was get married our way and luckily we had my family who were slightly bemused but very accepting and some good friends who were sworn to secrecy about the day time but really helped! It was a real team effort and we got out of it what we put in! Planning a wedding doesn’t have to be hard and there are no rules that you “must” follow! My best advice is to go for what you both love!”

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