With more DIY wedding details than you can shake a stick at, this is easily one of my favourite weddings of all time, not least because the bride is a regular reader of Before the Big Day! Lovely Catherine is a textile designer, and you can see her creative talent in every element of her and Matt's beautiful rural wedding. They chose Canterbury in Kent as the location for their big day, and celebrated their wedding ceremony in a village church, surrounded by poppy fields and rolling hills, followed by their wedding reception in the village hall. Catherine designed and handmade many of her wedding details, including the stunning floral bridesmaids' dresses, her hand-printed wedding stationery, and she even altered her second-hand wedding dress - an amazing Enzoani Diana gown she found on eBay! You'll love all the rural vintage touches, enjoy these gorgeous pictures by Lily Sawyer Photography - I'll be posting the poppy field portrait pictures and reception shots later today!
We celebrated our wedding in St Mary Bredin Church in Canterbury, in Kent, and hosted our wedding reception at Chilham Village Hall.
Our wedding invitations and order of services were probably the most ambitious of all our DIY projects due to the vast amount of them needed! I painted a floral heart shape design, scanned it into the computer, and printed on handmade paper on our printer at home. These were folded, with a pocket for the wedding details, and hand-tied with rustic raffia.
Being a textile designer, planning and making things for our wedding was the ultimate project! For inspiration I bought a couple of magazines, but found most of the best ideas on wedding blogs. I created pinboards on Pinterest to collect all the images I liked, and sorted them into dresses, reception ideas, bridesmaids and so on. It was so useful to be able to refer back to these throughout all the planning, and to show my then fiancé images of the kinds of ideas going round my head!
I tried on lots of dresses and fell in love with Jenny Packham's Willow wedding dress, but it was rather out of my price range, and I then found it hard to love anything else as much. I eventually fell for Enzoani's Diana dress which I was amazed to find second-hand on eBay!
It was a couple of sizes to big but was easy enough to alter and meant I could make it a really good fit. The eBay bride also gave me her veil, which I personalised by sewing some lace onto the rim.
Then one day afterwards, I saw a beautiful one-off vintage dress in the window of Annie's, a vintage clothing and costume shop in London. Having saved so much on the main dress on eBay, I thought this vintage gown would be a perfect, comfortable dress for the evening, so I bought it! It also needed slight alterations and a slip, which I made the week before the wedding.
The flowers, corsages and bouquets were made to match each of the bridesmaids dresses by the most beautiful dried flower shop in Bishopsgate called Essentially Hops.
The really lovely thing about dried flowers is they last for so long, and my bridesmaids and I still have our bouquets!
For my bridesmaids' dresses, I was really inspired by the dresses made by Sohomode on Etsy. I wanted similar vintage 50s-style dresses, with patterns and colours that reflected each of their personalities. I found a combination of Liberty Prints and William Morris fabrics, and got them to chose each of their favourites, and thankfully they all liked something different!
I bought a dress pattern from a really cute shop called The Sewing Shop in Canterbury {which has the most amazing range of printed fabrics!}, and made dresses from their favourite fabrics, which I bought again on eBay!
{Wedding Vendors}
Caterer - Chaucer Gourmet Catering
Florist - Essentially Hops in Bekesbourne
Wedding Stylist - Add a Little Sparkle
Main wedding dress - Enzoani Diana gown (without the straps and sash)
Evening wedding dress - Vintage bridal gown from Annie's Vintage
Bride's shoes - Floral peep toes from Debenhams
Wedding Band - Goosebumps Swing/Jive/Jazz band
Wedding rings - 77 Diamonds
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Before the Big Day - the Best UK Wedding Blog.
We celebrated our wedding in St Mary Bredin Church in Canterbury, in Kent, and hosted our wedding reception at Chilham Village Hall.
Our wedding invitations and order of services were probably the most ambitious of all our DIY projects due to the vast amount of them needed! I painted a floral heart shape design, scanned it into the computer, and printed on handmade paper on our printer at home. These were folded, with a pocket for the wedding details, and hand-tied with rustic raffia.
Being a textile designer, planning and making things for our wedding was the ultimate project! For inspiration I bought a couple of magazines, but found most of the best ideas on wedding blogs. I created pinboards on Pinterest to collect all the images I liked, and sorted them into dresses, reception ideas, bridesmaids and so on. It was so useful to be able to refer back to these throughout all the planning, and to show my then fiancé images of the kinds of ideas going round my head!
I tried on lots of dresses and fell in love with Jenny Packham's Willow wedding dress, but it was rather out of my price range, and I then found it hard to love anything else as much. I eventually fell for Enzoani's Diana dress which I was amazed to find second-hand on eBay!
It was a couple of sizes to big but was easy enough to alter and meant I could make it a really good fit. The eBay bride also gave me her veil, which I personalised by sewing some lace onto the rim.
Then one day afterwards, I saw a beautiful one-off vintage dress in the window of Annie's, a vintage clothing and costume shop in London. Having saved so much on the main dress on eBay, I thought this vintage gown would be a perfect, comfortable dress for the evening, so I bought it! It also needed slight alterations and a slip, which I made the week before the wedding.
The flowers, corsages and bouquets were made to match each of the bridesmaids dresses by the most beautiful dried flower shop in Bishopsgate called Essentially Hops.
For my bridesmaids' dresses, I was really inspired by the dresses made by Sohomode on Etsy. I wanted similar vintage 50s-style dresses, with patterns and colours that reflected each of their personalities. I found a combination of Liberty Prints and William Morris fabrics, and got them to chose each of their favourites, and thankfully they all liked something different!
I bought a dress pattern from a really cute shop called The Sewing Shop in Canterbury {which has the most amazing range of printed fabrics!}, and made dresses from their favourite fabrics, which I bought again on eBay!
{Wedding Vendors}
Caterer - Chaucer Gourmet Catering
Florist - Essentially Hops in Bekesbourne
Wedding Stylist - Add a Little Sparkle
Main wedding dress - Enzoani Diana gown (without the straps and sash)
Evening wedding dress - Vintage bridal gown from Annie's Vintage
Bride's shoes - Floral peep toes from Debenhams
Wedding Band - Goosebumps Swing/Jive/Jazz band
Wedding rings - 77 Diamonds
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Before the Big Day - the Best UK Wedding Blog.
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