Showing posts with label Outdoor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Outdoor. Show all posts

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!


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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.

Monday 25 March 2013

Real Simple Green Wedding: Janina & Lean - Reception Details

It's the moment you've all been waiting for - the amazing reception pictures from this eco-friendly wedding. With simple but sweet details, including bunches of fragrant rosemary hanging from the roof of the wedding venue, the wedding decorations perfectly matched the venue. I love it when brides and grooms use vegetables instead of wedding flowers, and Janina and Lean chose artichoke flowers and cabbage leaves, dusted with what looks like icing sugar. Rustic sticks add to the outdoor-indoor feel, and naked {un-iced} wedding cake continues the homespun feel. Guests ended the night dancing under a canopy of lanterns - an idea I'd love to imitiate. Huge thanks to  We Love Pictures for these beautiful pictures, don't miss the Ceremony Pictures and Portrait Pictures from this gorgeous wedding.










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Real Simple Green Wedding: Janina & Lean - Wedding Portraits

In the golden afternoon light, fabulous wedding photographers We Love Pictures,  captured these stunning wedding portraits at Janina and Lean's wedding. I've fallen for Janina's natural wedding style, her bridesmaids' pretty peach gowns, and the ushers' cute bow-ties. If only we could recreate the weather in the UK! This stunning wedding was all about the beautiful kitchen garden venue, so I love how Janina chose simple, green rosemary leaves as the main feature of her wedding bouquet. It was so eco-friendly, even the local, giant tortoise wanted a nibble! There's more from this incredible wedding in the final feature this afternoon - you won't want to miss the reception pictures - have a sneak-peak We Love Pictures' blog.










♥ Want to see green themed weddings? ♥ Or how about more eco-friendly wedding ideas? ♥
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Before the Big Day - the Best UK Wedding Blog.

Real Simple Green Wedding: Janina & Lean

It's easy to get caught up in the razzamatz of a wedding, and obsess about every single wedding detail, cluttering your big day with too much fuss. At its worst, this can leave no space for the natural love and magic of a wedding day. Janina and Lean chose a simple green garden theme for their wedding, and let the natural beauty of the venue do the talking. The Babylonstoren is one of the oldest Cape Dutch farms in South Africa, with a beautiful kitchen garden. Janina and Lean drew on the garden's ingredients for wedding inspiration, and you're going to fall for every detail. Huge thanks to We Love Pictures for their beautiful images - I've had to split this wedding into three, there was just too much for one post! More coming soon, later this afternoon!
















♥ Want to see green themed weddings? ♥ Or how about more eco-friendly wedding ideas? ♥
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Before the Big Day - the Best UK Wedding Blog.
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