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A DIY Brazilian Wedding: Marcela & Paulo

March 15, 2012 in Wedding by Kat | 19 comments

Marcela & Paulo’s Brazilian wedding was a real DIY labour of love as their wedding photographers Frankie + Marília explained, “This bride is a nurse and very busy but she still somehow managed to find time to do everything for their wedding herself. She worked with a dressmaker that her family has worked with for years to come up with her perfect dress. It seems like everyone that has seen these pictures has fallen absolutely in love with it too!”

Marcela and her Mum also made as much of the wedding decor themselves as they could including the table runners and the flowers. “In Brazil, people usually give away little cakes called Bem-Casados as wedding favors,” they continued. “They are usually wrapped in some type of paper or cloth. Marcela ended up not having time to make the actual cakes, but she wrapped them in that awesome blue cloth to match the wedding theme. She even made an impromptu bouquet the morning of the wedding. She decided she wasn’t goning have one, but then decided to wrap a couple of tulips up with a bow and leave them sitting by the cake as decoration – we made her hold on to those for the pictures, that ended up being her bouquet.”

The wedding ceremony was also anything but traditional. The couple exchanged vows quickly followed by each sharing a touching sentiment about one another. “They are both very eloquent public speakers and it definitely moved everyone. Then their family and friends said a few nice words to bless their marriage, and that was it. They had gotten officially married in a courthouse the week before this, and didn’t think they needed any kind of fancy show. They didn’t exchange rings, but somehow it was one of the most emotional weddings we’ve ever shot.”

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Stripes, Pumpkins & Mean Looking Cars: Emma & Ross

March 9, 2012 in British Brides, Wedding by Kat | 13 comments

Emma & Ross’ black & white, vintage themed wedding was, above all, a day to celebrate their love with their friends and family. The couple wanted a relaxed atmosphere and one where their guests would really enjoy themselves.

“We wanted our wedding to be personal to us, we didn’t want guests to walk in and think they could be at just anybody’s wedding,” Emma told me. “We have been to a lot of weddings, which were lovely but we knew that traditional just wasn’t for us. We just had our day, our way and it was brilliant! It was the best day of our lives so far, I just wish I could do it all again as it went so quickly!”

Emma wore a black & white 1950s dress from Fur Coat No Knickers. “The wedding dress I chose was the first one I’d tried on, ever. I went to Fur Coat No Knickers because I knew I wanted a short 50s dress and I love vintage! I didn’t really have any colours in mind I was open to trying on anything but I did want something I could wear again, so it was a bit of a shock that I chose the first dress I tried on, I was expecting a big epic search! Obviously I tried on lots of others after that one too, they are all so nice that it would be silly not to! I really enjoyed going back for fittings, especially to nose at all the other dresses. Their shop and they are lovely, they make you feel so comfortable, I want to live there!”

“I ended up having three pairs of shoes to wear on the day (I’m a little bit of a shoe addict!)” the bride continued. “They were always going to be red, I have a thing for red shoes. I saw the Stuart Weitzman‘s when I went to Selfridges shoe land (I want to live there too!) I went to buy a completly different pair but fell in love with those ones, luckly I got last pair left in the country and they were my size, so it must have been fate! As they are quite high I was also forced to buy the Melissa/Vivienne Westwood Lady Dragon’s too. Finally, as I was planning on doing a lot of dancing I bought a pair of Converse that I designed myself on their website, they had skulls on and I got our wedding date embriodered down the back.”

The wedding didn’t have an obvious ‘theme’ but the couple made sure they included the things they really loved and wanted in their day. “One thing I always knew I wanted was a cool car, not a wedding car, I wanted something mean,” Emma explained. We both like American cars, especially muscle cars so it was a no brainer when I saw the Dodge Charger and the owner lived in Watford! We used to own a big yellow American truck but we had to sell it to fund the wedding, so having the Charger went some way to ease our loss. Ross wasn’t happy that I got to have the car and he didn’t as he stayed at the venue but the owner took us both out after the ceremony and went rather fast down the country lanes which was excellent!!! Its quite noisy, Ross said he knew that I was on my way to the venue because he could hear the car coming from about a mile away!”

“Most of our wedding was handmade by us or by family and friends, anything I or somebody we knew couldn’t make we mainly bought from Etsy which I’m VERY addicted to, I’m on there about 10 times a day, its like my drug! A lot of the stuff I did myself was made with about two months to go because we didn’t really get our colour scheme down until we decided to make our table flowers out of tissue paper, this was slightly stressful as we had only a small amount of time to make a lot of things! It kind of added to the stress when I decided three days before the wedding to not give the bridesmaids real flowers as they were too expensive and to make them myself from felt and buttons!”

“I made my own bouquet out of vintage brooches which I really enjoyed as it involved shopping for the brooches too! Ross and his Mum made all of the tissue paper flowers, pom poms and painted the inside of the jars aqua. My Mum made the younger bridesmaid’s dresses (the adults wore vintage and one from Coast) and the table runners and my Sister made our lovely wedding cake, cupcakes and all the wreaths.”

“The day before the wedding, with the help from the best man Dan and his girlfriend, we scooped, carved and drilled about 40 pumpkins! I’m still finding bits of pumpkin in my kitchen now! I’m also still finding black glitter everywhere from where we covered the table letters, it didn’t help that one of our cats kept rolling in it!”

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#BrunaDigaSim – A Twitter Proposal & A Geeky Wedding: Bruna & Alexandre

February 16, 2012 in Wedding by Kat | 13 comments

After a Twitter proposal (#BrunaDigaSim – there are a number of videos of them on TV on You Tube after it happened, unfortunately they are all in Portuguese!) Bruna & Alexandre went to work planning their ‘vintage geek’ themed wedding.

“The wedding industry in Brazil is so unfashionable, people concentrate on traditional things and it’s almost impossible find a service provider available to do what you really want,” Bruna told me. “We decided to have a personal wedding. To see this happening we asked most of our friends to help us. We love tattoos, rock/indie music, film photography and technology, and we tried to put everything together into our wedding. The results were above what we thought they could be. We were featured on almost every single wedding blog and site in Brazil as an inspirational wedding which was amazing!”

Be sure to check out their super-sweet video too.

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A Two-Day Hindu & Catholic Wedding: Lucy & Vish {Part Two}

February 1, 2012 in British Brides, Wedding by Kat | 12 comments

After the festivities of their Hindu ceremony, Lucy & Vish woke up on the Saturday morning ready to do it all again – this time in a Catholic church. The ceremony was held at St Patrick’s RC Church, Manchester, with the reception that followed back at St Peter’s Hall.

Their Catholic wedding has very British influences – from high tea to bingo! Lucy wore a vintage wedding dress from Elizabeth Avey. “I knew I wanted a vintage Betty Draper-esque dress, as the 50s is my style era! Elizabeth’s was my first stop, which was ideal as it was only up the road from where I live in Kentish Town. Although I didn’t find the dress straight away, Elizabeth knew exactly what I wanted and told me to return in a few weeks as she was due to get in more pieces. I’m so glad I went back as when I returned she pulled out THE dress, which was an original 50s number, fresh from LA! Although she needed a clean she was in pristine condition for her 60 years! It was originally a drop waist dress but the lovely ladies at Designer Alterations raised the waist to make it more prom style and lowered the neckline at the back, other than that she is exactly as she was the first time around!”

“I am obsessed with tea and cake, so my china tea-sets had to have a starring role, we had a tea-station serving masala chai, home-made cakes and Indian sweets on both days! We were able to supply all our own booze so we had a seemingly endless supply of Prosecco, which I drank from a tea-cup all night!  On the Saturday night, the wedding guests actually drank the bar dry twice which led to our caterers having to go out and buy more booze! This led to many, many drunken guests, which is exactly what we wanted.”

“Apart from the flowers, we didn’t really need to do much to decorate the building as the space itself was so impressive. I did make a few meters of Bollywood bunting out of Indian sari material to hang and we used Indian flower garlands to decorate the tea and cake station. My Dad found the vintage typewriter in the garage and spruced it up so we could use it for a guest book. We hired the Neon Light from Neon Creations and Vish also bought a Carrom board, a Indian board-game crossed between drafts and pool which kept the kids entertained for the weekend!”

“Although all the details above were important, we tried not to get caught up in all of this,” Lucy concluded. “Quite a few things went wrong over the course of our wedding days, but tried not to let it get to us as they were only minor glitches that now make for funny wedding stories to be told in the future! The most important thing to us was that all our close friends and family were able to share in our special day(s)!, especially my Grandparents who are both in their 90s and we weren’t sure if they were going to be able to travel to Manchester or not. Thankfully both Nan & Grandad made it and were the guests of honour! We had the most amazing 2-days with all our favourite people so we couldn’t ask for more than that!”

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A Simple & Homely Wedding in Milan: Roberto & Cherie

February 1, 2012 in Wedding by Kat | 10 comments

Italian Roberto & Chinese Cherie planned their Milan wedding from other sides of the world, “Until 2 months before the wedding, we had lived in 2 different countries (Hong Kong and UK) for 16 months, ” Cherie told me. “I had taken a sabbatical to spend time with my family in Hong Kong and the majority of our ideas exchange and planning was done on email or Skype. We found the organising super boring, couldn’t wait to party on the day!”

The couple met in London and so filmed their Save the Date video in the city, and they actually ended up having two weddings (the Italian one pictured and another in Hpng Kong) so it really was a multicultural, multinational affair!

“We decided on some values for our weddings, they were ‘simple’, ‘vintage’, ‘homely’ and most of all ‘fun’, the bride continued. “Our rule-of-thumb was, ‘if nobody would remember it in 2-3 years time, then don’t sweat over it.’ Therefore things like flowers, decorations and cake were at the bottom of our list of importance. We were so overwhelmed by the number of friends and families that flew over to Italy just for us so we wanted to make the whole weekend super fun. They were at the top of our priority list!”

“What you remember from an event is usually the atmosphere, special moments and people that you spend time with, so we made sure it was very relaxed with plenty of time and opportunity to mingle, created some crazy signature moments e.g. our pretentious celebrity red carpet type entrance to the reception in Muse’s ‘Feeling Good’ and got everyone to sing a few songs before dancing!  The rock star personalities were all coming out!”

“However simplicity does take effort,” she concluded. “It is often easier to just do what the world says you should do for weddings, e.g. the bride’s name must come first, the cake must look amazing, you have to do an impeccable first dance etc.  But there is no such thing as you ‘should’ or you ‘must’!  If it’s not important, produces minimal impact or easily forgotten, just scrap it. That’s what we did. Traditions can be changed so focus on a few things that matter to you and make them memorable.”

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