Showing posts with label Gold. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gold. Show all posts

Tuesday 1 January 2013

Real Rustic Vintage Wedding: Camille & Chris

Here at the Before the Big Day studio, we're welcoming in the New Year the way we plan to continue; with a gorgeous, inspirational real wedding. I've fallen for Camille and Chris, individual rustic style, and I love how their DIY wedding reflects their personalities. Take a look at Camille's stunning layered wedding gown from BHLDN, Chris' stylish wedding look {love his checked shirt & the ushers' bare ankles!}, and the bridesmaids' fun parasols. Now that's a well-dressed wedding party! 
Huge thanks to Camille for filling in Before the Big Day's Bride's Questionnaire - don't miss her advice, and keep an eye out for Part 2, and even Part 3, going live later today. Beautiful pictures published with thanks to the hugely talented Jonny and Morgane from M&J Photography.

We got married on July 7, 2012 in Mille-Isles in the province of Quebec, Canada, at the Fiddler Lake Resort. We visited several venues looking for a country-ish place where we would be celebrating our wedding outdoors, with the sun and mild temperatures of summer. 

We opted for the Fiddler Lake Resort because all our guests would be able to enjoy great authentic country cottages for a weekend {and week for those coming from overseas}. Also the Resort gave us 'carte blanche' for our wedding preparation, including no time limit for the party!

We picked our wedding flowers at the last minute from a local florist, and ordered by phone a week before the wedding! The florist ended up being so helpful - after asking me about my wedding outfit, she included my bouquet enhanced with a couple of orange roses and pearls, and a boutonnière for my Dad with the same kind of rose. I was so touched! Without her help and anticipation, I would have made my own bouquet with flowers found onsite.


My dress was a love at first sight on the internet! I spotted it on the BHLDN website. It had everything I was looking for: cream and not white, the bottom looked like lace and the top was so refined, with touches of gold. I pictured the dress with some rays of sun shining through it, so it didn't take me more than a day to think about it, and order it. I felt like the wedding dress didn't need a lot of accessories so I only wore pearl earrings my husband got me, and a vintage look turquoise ring. My golden shoes were a steal at a sale from BCBG!


Chris wanted a sleek blue suit and found one from Tiger of Sweden. He accessorized his look with touches of golden yellow {ties and silk square from Valentino} and brown suede shoes from Minelli.



I let my bridesmaids pick whatever they wanted to wear, and they came up with a white chiffon dress from IKKS in France. They were perfect for our country ceremony. Their shoes were low beige leather boots, which stayed comfortable til the end of the night. We accessorized the outfit with nacre and gold rings from BCBG and a hair leather band, brown with a couple of feathers from Zara.



We chose M&J Photography for our wedding photographers. We flew them all the way from France because they capture moments in a way that is so natural, without posing too much and from two different angles. Each one of them also accompanied my husband and me while we were getting ready, to be pictured separately. 


Jonny and Morgane are so easy to work with, and use everything they can to make the shots interesting and reminding us of the venue we chose. They just blended in with our guests so naturally that we did not feel that we had "paparazzi" at our wedding, something that often annoying for guests who want to approach the bride and groom!







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Monday 17 December 2012

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!



♥ Click for more London wedding ideas! ♥ And tonnes of shabby chic weddings! ♥
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Real Stylish London Wedding: Caroline & Matt

There's a real soft spot in my heart for London weddings, particularly after we hosted our own 'official wedding' in the heart of Hackney. Caroline and Matt planned their own stylish big day at The Old Marylebone Town Hall, with their wedding reception at The Londesborough pub in Stoke Newington. I'm completely in love with Caroline's fairy-tale Tara Keely wedding dress, which was the complete opposite to what she had originally planned! Her dress matches the feminine mood of the wedding; reception decorations included shabby-chic bunting, stunning David Austin roses, with gold, pink and dark blue colour accents. There's tonnes more DIY wedding details in Part 2 of this lovely wedding, keep an eye out for the second post later this afternoon. 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!

My dress by Tara Keely by Lazaro from Morgan Davies in London. It was not an easy decision! I must have gone to about 20 bridal shops and kept waiting to find 'the one'. When I started shopping I said "I don't want a big dress and I don't want it to be strapless", so obviously that's exactly what I ended up with! I had a couple of dresses that I was choosing between, but I kept comparing everything to that one,so in the end I just accepted that it had to be the one!

My sister and I bought some fabric from a shop in Tooting, and I handmade my sash. I was then thrilled to find my Carvela shoes in the sale, and the colour matched the sash almost perfectly.

My florist was Elinor Walsh from Marlow, Buckinghamshire. She did such a good job, the flowers were exactly what I wanted. My ideal wedding flowers were 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.

My wedding jewellery was bought online from Glitzy Secrets and my veil was from Blissful Gifts. I really wanted a bubble veil, and was so happy when I found Blissful Gifts online as it was so hard to find one anywhere!



I didn't really mind what colour or style my bridesmaids wore as long as they all felt nice in the dress. The dresses they ended up in were actually the second set of dresses we bought, because the first dresses just weren't quite right, and I could tell they weren't happy in them but didn't want to say anything!


It was more important that my best friends and sisters were happy and felt nice on my big day than they were wearing a specific style. In the end we bought their dresses from French Connection and added some gold ribbon from John Lewis to link in with the colour of Matt's tie.

We got married on 21st September in London, our ceremony was in The Old Marylebone Town Hall and we held our reception in The Londesborough pub in Stoke Newington. I got ready at The Black and White House in Belsize Park.


We both knew we wanted a civil ceremony, and living in London means there are lots of Town Halls in the city that were big enough for our 80 guests. We only gave ourselves 7 months to plan the wedding, so it really came down to where was available, but Marylebone was my first choice as I love the drama of the building, so we were really happy to get it.




Matt's suit was tailor-made from King and Allen. He really wanted a nice suit he could wear again. He also wore the pocket watch, which I bought him as a surprise, to open on our wedding morning.


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.


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.



♥ Click for more London wedding ideas! ♥ And tonnes of shabby chic weddings! ♥
Have you discovered our free newsletter? Sign up for free! 
Before the Big Day - the Best UK Wedding Blog.
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