Showing posts with label Civil Ceremony. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Civil Ceremony. Show all posts

Tuesday 9 April 2013

Real Alice in Wonderland Themed Wedding: Cheryl & Jack

Weddings with a fabulous theme make me happy! And there's nothing I like more than an Alice in Wonderland tea-party - there's just so many fabulous details to choose from. Lewis Carroll was a genius! So when Louise and Sam from Pavone Photography got in touch with Cheryl and Jack's amazing monochrome Alice in Wonderland themed wedding, I jumped at the chance to feature it on Before the Big Day. Many months later, and here, finally, it is! Don't miss all the DIY wedding details - Cheryl and Jack came up with everything, including their brilliant themed portrait pictures, complete with Alice in Wonderland props. It's such a clever idea to come up with a few props for your portrait pictures, particularly if you're slightly nervous in front of the camera. Other wedding details to steal include Cheryl's gorgeous second-hand wedding gown {which she personalised herself}, the flower girl's alternative bouquet {a clock!}, and the hilarious fancy dress kit for classic guest entertainment. Huge thanks to Pavone Photography for their stunning shots!


We got married on 2nd July at Little Hallingbury Mill in Essex, surrounded by our family and close friends. Our theme was vintage Alice in Wonderland with a black and white stripped twist.


The venue was a quirky old mill surrounded by fields and just seemed to scream 'Tea-Party'!


I bought my wedding dress second-hand, and customised it by adding as much black as possible. My shoes were an old pair from my wardrobe which again I customised in black.


My dress was so beautiful {and totally over the top}, that I didn't want to distract too much attention from it. So I didn't wear a veil and chose understated accessories, which were of course, black and white.




My husband’s outfit was a plain black suit, with an all-important waistcoat. He wore my great-grandfather’s pocket watch to add a hint of ‘Mad Hatterness’ to the day.




My bouquet was a single large black rose head which matched the black roses in my hair and on my shoes. 



Apart from this, we didn’t have anything other flowers as instead chose to decorate the venue with playing cards, spoons, teapots, teacups, clocks, books, white rabbits and any other Alice in Wonderland item you can conjure up!


My flower girl was mostly in white, but instead of carrying flowers she held a black old-fashioned alarm clock, set to the time we got married.


We tied black and white stripped ribbon to it in keeping with the theme. It added a fantastic element of ‘Don't be late, don't be late for an important date!’






Jack and I me on a night bus in 2007! Jack was my knight in shining armour, as he made sure I got home safely. We got engaged on Christmas Day in 2010 in front of our twinkling Christmas Tree.


We chose Pavone Photography {Louise and Sam} as our wedding photographers. We felt they were the only people who had the talent to do our unique wedding day justice, and we were so right!


Our entire wedding was a DIY project – nothing was pre bought, and we put all the ideas together ourselves. I really enjoyed planning every part. My advice to other brides would be, leave yourself plenty of time. Make as much as you can to give you a truly original wedding. Go wild – you will only do it once! Enjoy every last second.
 


We made our own wedding invitations. They were made to look like 4 large playing cards held together by black and white ribbon, and a small silver key. All the phrases on the invitation, directions and RSVP were taken from the original Alice in Wonderland Film - e.g. ‘Help us Paint the Roses Red’.


For our wedding favours, we bought miniature 2cm high glass bottles with a cork cap, filled with red wine, and labelled with a 'Drink me' tag.


We slotted a playing card into the corks of each of the bottle favours, and they doubled up as place markers too.


My sister-in-law handmade our wedding cake! It was three layers, and covered in black and white Alice in Wonderland decorations, like clocks, teaspoons, books, teapots and teacups. It was amazing!


♥ Want to see wedding detail ideas? ♥ Or how about more wedding favour ideas? ♥
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Tuesday 2 April 2013

Real Marquee Tea-Party Wedding: Holly & Jason - Reception Details

You're going to love the quirky, vintage wedding details from the reception pictures of this homespun wedding. With tonnes of DIY projects, and a colour theme based around vintage china, it's super-inspirational. With the help of Rosebud Vintage, who catered and styled Holly and Jason's wedding day, they created a detail-filled day, with tonnes of original touches. I love how they used vintage music-scores in their table stationery, and heart doilies for writing messages to their guests. Jason's mum hand-knitted a bride and groom for every female guest - a true labour of love, and their table plan was a grand, gold-rimmed mirror. Other stealworthy ideas include the luggage tag place-markers, the vintage china and old-embroidered table cloths, and the fun fancy-dress wedding favours. Huge thanks to Dominic Whiten Photography for his brilliant wedding photographs!


We chose Dominic Whiten as our wedding photographer. He’s amazing and we've had so many comments from guests about a) his presence being unnoticed, not bossy or demanding and generally being a great guy, and b) his amazing photos! 


When we were choosing our wedding photographer, we had an instant rapport with Dominic and his easy-going attitude, so we didn't bother meeting any others! We found him by looking at some of his work online. We knew we wanted something creative and arty, that would capture the day, and this is exactly what we got.


For our wedding theme, we wanted something really different and relaxed, so we set out with a mixture of ideas based on a vintage, quirky, fairytale, Alice in Wonderland type of wedding and came up with ours, which I suppose we’d now describe as a quirky, whimsical, country garden, afternoon tea wedding! 



We wanted it to be really visual, so we didn’t stick to one colour scheme. Instead we ensured we had a mixture of all colours, and brought in Rosebud Vintage to do our catering and wedding styling, which worked out better than we had ever dreamed.


For our wedding cake, we had 75 cup cakes on tiers, with a round cake on the top tier. My amazing cake-maker friends, Lindsay and Jenni made it for us. We wanted it to fit in with our vintage fairytale theme, so we chose yellow buttercream with more than 1200 cut-out flowers and buttons covering the cakes. 


The colour theme was blues, pinks, whites and yellows - our colour inspiration came from a 1920's vintage china plate!




We had lots of DIY wedding projects. I handmade our wedding invitations, even though it took months! I used a heart-shaped stamp and a butterfly-shaped stamp, and designed the invitations using colourful card and vintage music sheets. Each one was individual, and we hope to make a collage/canvas out of them all, as a special reminder of what was the beginning of our dream day and hopefully a colourful addition of art to our house!


We loved planning our wedding, and it was only stressful on a couple of occasions throughout the whole 10 months, and that was generally when Jason and I could not decide on the smallest of details! We loved visiting suppliers, getting inspiration from blogs, magazines, web sites and wedding fairs and also shopping weekly for all our vintage accessories from boot fairs and charity shops!



Our wedding favours were our pièce de résistance! The girls all had knitted bride and groom dolls that stood about 8 inches high, and were so detailed the hair alone on each groom doll took 2 hours to thread through!! We chose these as wedding favours because Jason's mum is a fantastic knitter and literally knits for England! She spent 5 months making these for us and everyone was delighted!



My advice to brides is enjoy every minute of the planning and don’t get too stressed! Easier said than done, but always remember that your guests have been chosen by you to share this special day and to celebrate your love. 


So if a table doesn’t have an accessory or the flowers aren’t quite as nice as you can afford, or any other detail is not quite right or going well, it is not be the end of the world and the chances are no one will even notice as they’ll be swept up in the ambience of the day!


♥ Want to see outdoor wedding ideas? ♥ Or how about more colourful wedding ideas? ♥
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Real Marquee Tea-Party Wedding: Holly & Jason

One of my favourite wedding themes ever, is a vintage tea-party. It's the theme we chose for our London wedding, and it's quintessentially English! Holly and Jason wanted a unique wedding day that reflected their personalities, so they added an Alice in Wonderland twist to their vintage tea-party. With tonnes of DIY details, they truly personalised their big day, starting with handmade, individually designed wedding invitations for each guest! I love how Holly wore fresh flowers in her hair, and dressed her bridesmaids in vintage-style floral dresses. Jason looked seriously dapper in his high-street suit - would you believe it came from Zara? Along with Reiss, it's the go-to shop for well-dressed grooms. And as we struggle with yet another cold day, take a look at that sunshine! It was even warm enough to host the ceremony outdoors. It's almost enough to persuade me that it can be sunny in England! Huge thanks to Dominic Whiten Photography for his brilliant wedding photographs. Don't miss the reception pictures, in my blog posting later this afternoon.


We celebrated our wedding at Swarling Manor, near Canterbury in Kent on 12th May. We wanted a really beautiful venue that would firstly compliment the theme we had in mind and secondly that had a lovely garden to have the ceremony in but also a nice indoor alternative should the great British weather be mean to us!

My wedding dress was by La Sposa. My veil was by Pronovias, although it was actually a lovely soft, tulle long jacket that originally came with another dress, but my fab bridal shop, Bows in Ashford, got it made into a floor length veil for me. 


My bridesmaids' outfits were from Coast, but we customised them. I saw them and instantly knew they were perfect. They had a vintage look, with a large pale pink, cream and lilac rose print, but a great contemporary shape, so I knew the girls would like them.

We had the dresses taken up a little so they were a bit shorter than knee length, then my truly talented friend Jo {from the blog Mrs Day Makes} created a 50's style sticky-out net layered underskirt. The girls looked amazing!



Our florist was Wild for Flowers in Folkestone, and we chose peonies, roses and gypsophila. We met with Carol, showed her our ideal photos of flowers and bouquets, and explained we wanted vintage style flowers in certain colours. She then suggested all the flowers we could choose, and the looks we could adopt. So her advice, combined with being able to do everything we wanted {decorating gazebo, flower mangers, etc}, and the fact they were great on price, made our decision easy and Wild for Flowers the perfect choice.

Having spent numerous hours {14 to be precise} shopping around Bicester Village for a snazzy designer suit, Jason ended up getting his suit {blue, skinny fit with black lapel detail} from Zara! He also bought a gorgeous grey tweed waistcoat, and striped tie to go underneath it, so the Bicester trip was not such a waste of 14 hours after all!

Swarling Manor had the most amazing gardens, and a lovely barn which we could decorate if we needed an indoor alternative for the ceremony. Luckily we didn't need the indoor option!



My shoes were from Irregular Choice and my hair accessories were individual fresh flower {gypsophila and wild orchids} stems on wires.





We chose Dominic Whiten as our wedding photographer. He’s amazing and we've had so many comments from guests about a) his presence being unnoticed, not bossy or demanding and generally being a great guy, and b) his amazing photos! 



When we were choosing our wedding photographer, we had an instant rapport with Dominic and his easy-going attitude, so we didn't bother meeting any others! We found him by looking at some of his work online. We knew we wanted something creative and arty, that would capture the day, and this is exactly what we got.


♥ Want to see tea-party wedding ideas? ♥ Or how about more vintage wedding ideas? ♥
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Before the Big Day - the Best UK Wedding Blog.
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