Real Sunshine-Yellow Themed Cornish Wedding: Gary & Lian - Portrait Pictures

This Cornish wedding has me longing for some sunshine and the seaside! The lovely Gary and Liam celebrated their big day at The Carbis Bay Hotel in St Ives. Liam was seven months pregnant, and looked amazing in her silk Tiffany Rose dress - definitely a great option for maternity wedding dresses. With tonnes of wedding pictures to show you, I've split the wedding into three - these are the imaginative portrait pictures by Keith Riley Photography. I love all the beach shots {didn't they have fab weather for autumn!}, in particular the No.29 beach hut picture {they got married on 29th October}. Gary and Lian’s happy place is an upside down pear tree - whenever they are apart they say to each other “meet you under the upside down pear tree”. So, Keith and his wife, Neda, bought chalk with them so Gary could draw a tree on the beach hut! Doesn't it look fantastic, and such a wedding portrait idea.

We met at a nightclub in our home town of Southend on sea. The first time I saw Gary was when he was dirty dancing with a bar stool trying to impress some other girls. For some bizarre reason I found his dancing attractive and went over to talk to him later on.

When we were all outside leaving we were chatting and he gave me his business card to which his friend said you don't want that, and gave me his train ticket instead! Later on that night we talked on the phone until Gary fell asleep under his dining room table.

Gary was going to propose to me whilst we were in New York. He had booked the table, set the house up for our return as an engaged couple, and even asked my uncle's permission. Unfortunately we never made it to New York, as snow left us stranded on the run way at Heathrow airport and eventually our flights were cancelled.

He proposed to me at home in the front room the next day while the rugby was on, which was still incredibly special, as we are both rugby fans! Even though it was not how he planned it, his proposal was off the cuff, real and honest from him.

We chose our wedding photographer by doing lots of research online. We knew we didn't want a traditional wedding photographer, and the typical line-up style of pictures. We liked Keith Riley Photography as his website showed a diverse range of work, including tattoo photography!

When we met Keith and his wife Neda, we completely jelled with them. Their work and ideas were brilliant, and we now consider them to be friends, who we'll always go and visit when we are in Cornwall.

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Real Sunshine-Yellow Themed Cornish Wedding: Gary & Lian

With stacks of creative wedding details and mustard-yellow wedding theme, you can't fail to fall in love with this sunny seaside wedding. Gary and Lian celebrated their big day at The Carbis Bay Hotel in St Ives, and with its gorgeous views over the bay, it was always going to be a special affair. All the wedding details fit perfectly together, and I'm head-over-heels in love with the pretty wedding flowers - a mix of formal and wild arrangements. Miniature daisies are definitely my favourite flower for 2013. Lian was lucky enough to be seven months pregnant on her big day, which meant a change of wedding dress, but she ended up preferring her Tiffany Rose maternity gown over her original choice. Teamed with Aldo wedding shoes and unique Etsy jewellery, she looked fabulous on her wedding day. I'm also seriously impressed by Gary's dapper Ted Baker suit and Liberty London mustard-yellow tie. Huge thanks to Keith Riley Photography for his beautiful wedding pictures. Don't miss the Portraits and Reception Details, coming later this afternoon.

We got married in Cornwall, which is our spiritual home, and somewhere which has always felt like home. We were lucky enough to find the wonderful Carbis Bay Hotel in Carbis Bay in St Ives. It was so beautiful. As soon as we drove down the hill to see it we knew it was something special.

Gary's wedding outfit came from Ted Baker, tie from Liberty London, shirt came from the Savile Row Company, cuff links from Mulberry, hankerchief from Aubin & Wills and deer brooch from Etsy.

I had my first wedding dress made by a local dressmaker I have used in the past. I didn't want a traditional wedding gown so we designed something which was classic, but different. Five months before the wedding we were lucky enough to find out I was pregnant, so my dress had to be changed!

I found a company called Tiffany Rose who specialise in maternity wear and bought one of their wedding dresses. In actual fact I massively preferred my maternity wedding gown to my first - it must have been fate! My shoes came from Aldo as I wanted a particular mustard-yellow shade, and they happened to have them. My jewellery was simple and classic, and came from Etsy.

We chose our wedding florist from doing research online {from home in Essex}, and then going to see them in person in Cornwall. We decided to use Anna Sawle of Wedding Flowers in Cornwall because she seemed to completely understand what we wanted, while having lots of her own ideas as well.

We celebrated our wedding ceremony in the conservatory overlooking the sea with beautiful blue sky and sunshine. The backdrop of the sea and beach was perfect.

We didn't have to buy many decorations, as the hotel is decorated beautifully and fitted with our theme easily. We had mustard and grey as our theme, because we wanted autumnal colours.

We chose our wedding photographer by doing lots of research online. We knew we didn't want a traditional wedding photographer, and the typical line-up style of pictures. We liked Keith Riley Photography as his website showed a diverse range of work, including tattoo photography! 

When we met Keith and his wife Neda, we completely jelled with them. Their work and ideas were brilliant, and we now consider them to be friends, who we'll always go and visit when we are in Cornwall.

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Real Persian London Wedding: Sarah & Sam

We love hearing from Before the Big Day brides! Lovely Sarah discovered her wedding photographer, PhotoMadly, via Before the Big Day, and I'm thrilled to now feature her beautiful wedding to Sam. With a wedding reception at historic Inner Temple and a Persian ceremony, this stunning big day is packed full of delicious wedding details. Sarah chose a peach and yellow colour theme for her wedding flowers, and carried the natural theme through to her {DIY'd} wedding invitations and wildflower seed wedding favours. Vintage wedding details included handmade place-markers, and the personalised memory table, decorated with Sarah and Sam's parents' wedding pictures and a vintage suitcase. With Sarah's exquisite Manuel Mota wedding gown, a naked wedding cake, and amazing deserts, this is definitely one of my favourite weddings of the year! If you'd like to submit your wedding to Before the Big Day, please do contact me.

I always thought my dream wedding dress would be made of white lace with ¾ sleeves! However when I tried a dress like that, it didn’t catch my eyes. I tried a few different styles and ended up with a dress totally different from my imagination! I tried a champagne satin gown designed by Manuel Mota, from Pronovias 2012 Collection. 

It was the only dress that increased my heart-rate and felt absolutely unique and special wearing it. However to make sure that was the best choice, I went to a few other designer shops in London and Paris, but in the end I went back to my original choice.

Our florists were the lovely Simon and Victoria from Euphoric Flowers. I chose peach and yellow as the colour theme for my bouquet, which beautifully matched my champagne wedding dress. The tuberose released an amazing scent around me all day and evening! Sam and the ushers had matching buttonholes with yellow craspedia added. 

My mum handmade my veil! Sewing has always been a hobby for her and she is great at it. I told her what style of veil I want and despite being in another country, she purchased the fabric and made a beautiful veil for me, with small sparkles towards the hem.

Finding the right suit for Sam wasn't too easy. In our search, we heard there was a guy called Ian who was 'the master of suits' based in Reiss Oxford Circus, who could potentially help with a made-to-measure suit! We found him, and he was indeed the master of suits! He helped Sam to design his three-piece suit from the scratch - from the material and colour to the lining, buttons and so many other details - Sam chose everything. He looked fabulous on our wedding day!

I was so lucky to find my shoes which were not only the right heel size and comfortable, but also had the exact colour and details as my dress. I found them in Dune in Covent Garden. Sam's shoes were from the same shop!

We celebrated our wedding on Sunday 23 September at Honourable Society of the Inner Temple in London. Inner Temple is a beautiful historical venue in the heart of London with a three-acre garden overlooking the Thames, a 12th Century church, and lots of different halls and rooms you can use for different parts of your celebration. 

Sam's dad is a barrister and his family had a long term relationship with Inner Temple - having celebrated many big events in the Hall. Meanwhile, I loved the Englishness of the venue and I was sure my Iranian friends and family would love to experience the Britishness of the venue for our wedding!

Having a Persian ceremony meant our wedding was always going to be glamorous and full of details, so we didn’t need to worry too much about having a particular wedding theme. Plus we wanted the beautiful backdrop of Inner Temple to shine through.

Sam and I met for the first time at the birthday dinner of a mutual friend in a bar and restaurant in Camden in May 2009. We happened to sit next to each other and had a long chat about politics, languages, animals and ourselves.

Sam's plan for proposing didn't go exactly as expected! In November 2011 he took me out for dinner in a cute French restaurant in Hampstead, where we had lots of nostalgic memories of our early relationship, but according to him, the right moment never arrived to ask the big question that night! The following morning, I was still in bed, when Sam brought me a ring, went on his knee and said he couldn’t wait for another special occasion. 

Rather than the traditional wedding photography, I wanted a more modern approach into my wedding photos. I did a lot of research and came across Erika from Photomadly through Before The Big Day. Her photos were very creative but in the meantime very natural and didn't feel commercial.  Erika had a lovely personality and very pleasant to work with. She suggested a free engagement shoot to give us a chance to practice how to work together, before the big day! You can see our engagement photos via her blog.

There were days that I enjoyed planning our wedding, but there were moments of frustration and feeling this is all crazy and too much! I spent six months on the whole thing, from the day we decided on the venue and date, and I don't think I could manage to spend even one more day on it! 

My advice is, don’t let your passion and interest for any aspect of your wedding become an obsession for you! Do your research, but also be able to make a decision and tick it off your list. I didn't delegate enough and I was left with too much responsibility up to the actual day, so please delegate to your friends and family as much as possible. Finally be happy and relaxed on the day, even if it rains all day - what matters the most is the celebration of your marriage with all your loved ones, which is overwhelmingly incredible.

We had lots of DIY wedding projects. We welcomed our guests with a memory table of our parents' wedding photos, some pictures from our childhood, a hand-made guest book and a vintage luggage full of fresh flowers. I also created the order of ceremony, which explained what is the history of Persian ceremony the symbolism. I used a template from Vistaprint  and added Persian poems and our engagement photos.

I designed our wedding stationary, using a simple floral template from an online printing company {Vistaprint}, which we then decorated with lace and sheer ribbons to give them a bit of a glamour and a vintage look. My mum {who lives abroad} managed to visit me for a few days in London, and we made the cards together. She also helped me with other important decisions I couldn't make without my mum! 

We had lots of DIY wedding projects. I made all the table names out of luggage tags, glamorised with lace ribbons and vintage buttons, with our guests’ names in both English and Persian to highlight our multicultural celebration. I also made the table names, using stamps and images of the cities Sam and I visited or wanted to visit. Sam did most of the seating plans and put a lot of care and attention on how to mix and match the guests for everyone to have a great time and enjoy a nice chat over dinner.

To go with the natural theme of the wedding, I ordered personalised flower seed packages for our guests to take home and grow in their gardens, in memory of our wedding. I chose the seeds from Wildflower Favours, and ordered three different styles of packaging - all natural and vintage looking.

I discovered Euphoric Flowers via a wedding magazine, and Simon and Victoria worked closely with me, with lots of patience and experience. In the end the flowers were better than I imagined! I chose bright and colourful centrepieces and a vintage suitcase of flowers on the memory table, plus displays for the ceremony room and entrance hall.

In my wedding research I came across images of natural wedding cakes {cakes without icing} and absolutely loved the idea. Finding the cake-maker was allocated to Sam’s to-do-list and he did a great job finding the Abigail Bloom Cake Company. We had a 3 tier natural cake, with different flavours for each tier. It looked beautiful, with butter cream and raspberry conserve between each layer, and tasted absolutely gorgeous. 

Persian weddings normally have a charming cake cutting ceremony, when the knife is handed to the bride and groom, by their female cousins and friends, after lots of dancing!

{Wedding Credits}
Videographer: Karl and Nicole from Moment Media
Make-up Artist: Maryam Jensen
Hair stylist: Kassandra Rizzuto
Event Manager: Vicky Portinari
Music: String Quartet at the reception and DJ for the party - contacts by request

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Real Stylish London Wedding: Caroline & Matt - Part 2

London brides are going to love this inspirational wedding, with its fun pub venue, shabby-chic wedding decorations, and pink and gold colour palette. Caroline and Matt stamped their personality on their big day with unique DIY'd wedding details - Matt designed their wedding stationery, Caroline's mum made the wedding cake and Caroline created the tankard table plan. Stunning table flowers as well - I love David Austin roses! Huge thanks to Erica from Photo Madly for capturing the wedding so perfectly, and to Caroline, for filling the Before the Big Day Brides' Questionnaire. Don't miss her fab hints and tips, and take a look at Part 1 of this wedding here.


Matt and I met at work but we didn't get together until one Christmas party when Matt was dressed as a Lego man and I was dressed as Madonna in the Material girl video. 

We were together for 3 and a half years when Matt surprised me with a weekend away to Norfolk which is where we went for our first weekend away together. He'd booked us into a romantic yurt and took me out for an amazing eight course meal, when we got back we sat next to the camp fire with our glasses of champagne and Matt got down on one knee and asked me to marry him.

We got married on 21st September in London, our ceremony was in The Old Marylebone Town Hall and held our reception in The Londesborough pub in Stoke Newington.

We looked at lots of different types of buildings for our reception but decided a pub would work well for us as we really wanted the day to be really laid back and relaxed. I was also determined that our venue should have just one room to create a really intimate atmosphere. 

The Londesborough is one of my favourite London pubs and they really ticked all the boxes for us, we had the whole pub to ourselves and they have outside space and the food was amazing! We felt bunting would work best in the pub and other than flowers we didn't need to do much else as its such a lovely space already. We really couldn't have been happier with our venues.

I didn't want a particular wedding colour theme, but instead worked to a colour palette of soft pinks, greens, white, pale gold and navy.

My florist was Elinor Walsh from Marlow, Buckinghamshire. She did such a good job, the flowers were exactly what I wanted. I really wanted pink and white peonies but in September that's not really an option so we chose pink David Austin roses mixed in with white hydrangea. I chose to have them tied with twine.

I was very keen that the table decorations should be in low vases as I wanted people to be able to chat over them easily without wanting to move them out of the way. The flowers were one of my favourite things about the day as it was so exiting seeing them in the pub, I was so happy with how they turned out.

Matt is a graphic designer so he designed our wedding invitations. I came up with the idea of using beer mats, and he created the look. We used the same design for our wedding menus, which also doubled as the table place names.

My DIY projects included our table plan. I wrote the names of our guest on glass tankards, using chalk pen, then stacked them on a set of shelves. We also made the table names by buying clipboards and sticking struts on them. We then printed out each table name to look like a pub sign, and clipped them on.

We wanted wedding favours that were fun, and we spotted the chocolate lips and moustaches in a wedding magazine. We bought them from Creightons Chocolatiers in Leighton Buzzard, and were so pleased with them. They looked great and tasted amazing, and everyone commented in how fun they were!

I saw a cake online that I fell in love with, and my mum said she would try and replicate it. I bought the cake stand online and my mum did the rest. I don't like fruit cake so we had a lemon drizzle cake. It was delicious and looked amazing, I'm so pleased my mum made it, as it meant so much more.

I loved planning my big day! There are so many different ways you can do a wedding and they're all amazing, I could do it all over again - although only if it was with Matt obviously!!

Our photographer was Erika Szostak from Photo Madly. We picked her because we loved her work, and we felt really comfortable with her straight away. Your photographer is such a big part of your day it's so important you choose someone who you like having around! We're thrilled with how our photos turned out.

My advice for future brides is to remember that on the day you can't change anything so just enjoy it! Things will go wrong but it's not important, the main thing is that you enjoy the day you've spent so long planning. Also don't stress about your decisions once they're made, I can't tell you how much I stressed about things that looking back on it just weren't important!

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