Charlotte and Sam called their wedding Warburing Heights, a title that merged their surname with the Brontë classic. The bride studied literature at university and they recently moved to Oxford so she could start her career in publishing, so the theme and location fit perfectly.

They got married at the iconic Bodleian Library, an Oxford landmark they had dreamed about long before the engagement. “When we booked the venue, we knew we had to play into the book theme”, the bride began. “It started with the save the dates, which we designed to look like library cards and check out sheets, went through every piece of stationery we had, and antique books were the main décor used throughout. My nails even matched the Penguin classics theme!”

After the ceremony, all eighty guests paraded through the city centre behind a custom banner carried by Charlotte’s stepdad, drinking fizz and dodging tourists who tried to slip into the photos. The reception carried on at Oxford Town Hall.

The book theme ran through everything. As well as the table décor and stationery, they built a two-and-a-half metre book arch from real Oxford University library books for guests to pose with. Tables were named after novels, place cards doubled as bookmarks, and antique books found on Facebook Marketplace were stacked around the venue. A telephone table covered in pages from Dracula became their audio guestbook station.

The DIY projects were everywhere. Charlotte’s mum baked the cake and added the couple’s dogs in icing as a surprise. Bridesmaids designed temporary tattoos, including portraits of the dogs and even a loaf of bread in honour of their surname. The dogs weren’t just on the cake and the tattoos though. Margaret and Oreo walked down the aisle with the bridesmaids and showed up again as cocktail names at the reception: the Espress-Oreo-tini and the Marge-a-rita.

Charlotte wore a dress from Wed2B which she customised to maker her own. And her veil, created by Holly Winter Couture, was five metres long and stitched with bespoke lace design based off of her own memorial tattoo for her little brother.

Planning was a spreadsheet-heavy process, but Charlotte enjoyed the research: “I’m a bit of a nerd, I really enjoy researching things (and chatting) so looking for suppliers and meeting them was really fun for me. The wedding planning spreadsheet had 13 tabs, and overall I got more than 100 quotes! But the spreadsheet has come in handy for my engaged friends, too. Rock n Roll Bride was also a HUGE help. I subscribed the same day as we got engaged! There’s something so lovely about cutting out photos for inspiration and saving them, like a kid with the Argos catalogue!”

“There are so many easy and cheap ways to make your wedding personal to you”, Charlotte advised in conclusion. “Music especially is an easy one, as well as food choices and making your own stationery. Re-using florals and décor was a big one for us too. If you’re making a decision because what you’re choosing means something to you (whether it’s walking into your wedding breakfast to Enter Shikari or having sausage roll cobs like we did!), it’s the right decision to make.”