Showing posts with label Rain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rain. Show all posts

Wednesday 31 May 2017

Real Vintage South African Wedding: Marzaan & Joe

This vintage wedding comes all the way from South Africa. Marzaan and Joe celebrated their wedding in the wine region of the Western Cape, in a cute village called Fraanschhoek. Marzaan had two heavenly dresses, and wore a gorgeous garland of flowers instead of a veil. I'm loving her garter and her lovely laid-back hair-style. It rained all day, but who cares when you've got a stunning gallery-style venue. My favourite details? The pairing of a modern setting with vintage detailing - check out the lovely antique silver candlesticks and flower containers, plus the old books and monochrome ribbon. Throw in a blackboard menu, and a pile of fancy-dress for the photobooth, and you've got a wedding made in heaven. Huge thanks to the team at We Love Pictures for their fantastic photographs from the day.


Thursday 16 May 2013

Real Glamorous Barn Wedding Video: Hilary & Trevor

How many weddings are you going to this year? I've got two this summer and I'm exceedingly excited about both. One is going to be at Cripps Barn in Gloucestershire, and after watching this emotional wedding video trailer for Hilary and Trevor's wedding, I couldn't be more thrilled. It looks like a truly fabulous wedding venue - a lovely mixture of modern and rustic, with stunning views across the countryside. Hilary and Trevor chose rich purple and soft cream for their wedding colour palette, and I love how it ties together all their wedding details. Hilary's rocking a Great Gatsby 1920's look for her wedding, with Art Deco-style earrings, and a glamorous taffeta wedding gown teamed with a stunning glittery sash - a great way to personalise any wedding dress. Other wedding-details-to-love include the rustic luggage tag place-markers, the pretty mini-bunting cake topper, and the beautiful spring wedding flower arrangements. Huge thans to White Dress Films for their fantastic wedding video trailer. It might be the new baby hormones, but I sobbed all the way through this one!

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Monday 19 November 2012

Real Rustic Barn Wedding: Vanessa & Aaron - Part 2

With more fabulous wedding details than you can shake a stick at, plus lots of wonderful DIY ideas, this wedding is a keeper! I'm completely in love with Vanessa and Aaron's quirky vintage style, from Aaron's mismatching socks, Vanessa's happy yellow bridal shoes {from Clark's}, and the bridesmaids elegant sage green gowns. But it's the DIY details you're going to love the most, because they're going to inspire you to create your own. Vanessa designed her own wedding stationery, but she didn't stop there - scroll down for the stunning rustic details, including 'words of wisdom cards' by way of a guestbook, homemade honey, pompoms, striped straws and tonnes of burlap accessories. Don't miss the quintessentially English lawn games, including giant chess and Connect 4, plus a classic old-skool ice-cream van. Vanessa also created fun packs for children, to keep them busy during the wedding reception. Huge thanks to Lawson Photography for their beautiful pictures - don't miss Part 1, and be sure to check out Vanessa's stationery company, Beautiful Ink.


The bridesmaid’s dresses were from Celebration Bridal near my home in Yorkshire and were long chiffon dresses in sage green, which suited my blonde bridesmaids perfectly. They also had flowers in their hair and their bouquets had long trailing yellow ribbons trailing.


My mum loves flowers, so she took the helm in finding the florist, and fell in love with Blossom Flowers in Chorlton, who create really natural and seasonal wedding flowers. Becky from Blossom created all the bouquets and buttonholes using yellow, cream and green flowers and foliage, that looked stunning. My bouquet was tied with tulle to match my dress, and the buttonholes had a hessian bow around them. 



Aaron and I met at University in Huddersfield over 6 years ago. We took a small weekend break to Edinburgh in October 2010 and unbeknownst to me, Aaron had already asked my Dad for permission to marry me. We did lots of sightseeing while in Edinburgh and took a ghost tour late one night. After this we went back to our hotel, where Aaron got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. It was such a lovely surprise, that it didn’t actually sink in until the next morning when the excitement really set in!

Our photographers were Lawson Photography and we just fell in love with their photography style - and how everyone is happy and smiling in such a natural way in all their photos!




Pete and Laura Lawson work as a team and captured every moment and tiny detail of our wedding; they are also lovely, friendly people who really put Aaron and I at ease in all the photos. They live just round the corner from Rivington Hall Barn, so it was meant to be!

Our venue was Rivington Hall Barn in Lancashire near where my parents live and where I’ve grown up.



We chose yellows and greens for our colours, to represent the country garden elements we were trying to achieve. We kept our colours running throughout, from the striped straws to the wedding stationery I designed. It all just felt very natural and personal which was what we wanted.

I really struggled to find personal and unique stationery that could reflect our day, so being creative I designed our own! I got the main invitations letterpressed by the wonderful Ashley Print & Design in Leeds. I enjoyed creating our stationery so much that set up a small business designing stationery called Beautiful Ink. This year, Country Homes & Interiors Magazine awarded us Runner Up in the Country Business of The Year competition, which is really exciting!


We had tonnes of DIY wedding projects! Aaron was very good at putting up with my requests to spend our Saturday’s decoupage or printing. We made so many elements. We made our table plan using a cheap frame, and tying string across it, and pegging tags to it. 

Instead of a guestbook we made 'words of wisdom cards' with sentences leaving spaces for guests to fill in the words/adjectives. It gave our guests an opportunity to pass on their advice to us as a couple - reading them back the next day was very entertaining.


My dad keeps bees in a field near his house so we decided to give mini honey jars as favours. My dad painstakingly retrieved all the honey and jarred it for us so we created labels and nametags so they could double up as place settings. Everyone seemed to love them!


The table flowers were all arranged by my mum and had a very natural 'handpicked' feel to them in vintage looking sweet jars with Hessian wrapped around them. Our table numbers were bought from eBay, and we decoupaged wallpaper samples onto them, and stuck them on tiles so they'd stand up. We also sourced wood cross-sections to act as bases for the flowers. 

I loved planning our wedding, and on the day I felt such an immense sense of achievement that everything looked and went as I’d envisaged. I don’t think I’ve ever taken on anything so demanding and time consuming, yet so much fun. I loved researching ideas, contacting suppliers and coming up with handmade touches and extra details to make our day special. And it was perfect. The sun even shone, if you can believe it!


Aaron and I stumbled across Claire from Just Darling Cakes when walking through Huddersfield one weekend. We went in for a chat and came out with a wedding cake order! She was so lovely and helpful and completely understood our wedding theme.


Our cake was a white-tiered cake in vanilla sponge, lemon cake and carrot cake. It had daisies, roses and other garden flowers cascading down the tiers, with hints of yellow and green. It looked stunning and tasted great!


My wedding shoes were a sneaky bargain. I’d dreamed of having designer wedding shoes but this wasn’t very realistic and then I stumbled across a pair of yellow suede heels in Clarks that were gorgeous and super comfy! In the evening Tom and I swapped our shoes for a pair of comfy Toms so we could dance the night away!

My advice would be to be prepared for different scenarios such as bad weather, so on the day you can relax, knowing everything has been organised, and if it rains you have a back up plan so won’t be disappointed. Everyone does say this but the day flies by, and it's not often you get all your friends and family in one place so enjoy every conversation, special moment and wedding detail, as it will be over so quickly. The other option is to hire good photographers who will capture it all for you!

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Real Rustic DIY Barn Wedding: Vanessa & Aaron

There's nothing I like more than hearing about a bride for whom her wedding day was the start of a whole new life. Obviously marriage is a fresh start for every couple, but sometimes, while planning a wedding a bride {or groom} discovers a whole new creative side to her personality, and that leads to a whole new business. My wedding led me to start Before the Big Day, and it's the best thing I've ever done! Vanessa's love was stationery, and after designing her own, she started a company called Beautiful Ink, which makes beautiful, fairly priced wedding stationery. But that wasn't her only wedding DIY project - between them, Vanessa and Aaron created most of their rustic wedding details, including the table numbers, table plan and table decorations. Wedding favours were mini pots of honey made by Vanessa's father's bees {wow!}, and Vanessa's mother arranged the venue flowers. Add in the prettiest pair of sunshine yellow shoes, Vanessa's gorgeous vintage-style wedding dress, and  handmade headdress by What Katy Did Next, and you've got a wedding that couldn't be more up my street! Huge thanks to Pete and Laura Lawson from Lawson Photography for their stunning pictures - don't miss the reception shots later today.

We got married this summer on 14th July 2012 at Rivington Hall Barn in Lancashire near where my parents live and where I’ve grown up.



I found my dress in the first bridal shop I visited. It’s by Augusta Jones from Limelight Occasions, and it's beautiful. I loved the lace, the tulle, everything about it just worked, yet looked effortless. The tulle draped behind me from my waist like a veil but cleverly was in two parts so it could be scooped over my arms to create a shawl.


As my dress had its own veil of sorts I decided I wanted a headpiece instead. I really struggled to find something that suited my vintage-style dress until I stumbled across Katy from What Katy Did Next. Her work is gorgeous - she really understood what I was looking for, and together we designed a headpiece, which she handmade for me. It was stunning and looked perfect with my dress. She also made my bracelet, and small flower accessories for my hair. She was great! I also added a pearl necklace and earrings from my late Grandfather, which was really special. 

Aaron chose a grey lounge suit from Carl Stewart Menswear near our home in Yorkshire, and co-ordinated it with a cream waistcoat and yellow cravat. His ushers wore the same suits, but with sage green cravats to match the bridesmaids dresses.

Aaron's always worn odd socks and didn’t want his wedding to be different so scoured the internet in search of yellow and green striped socks. Once he found them, he kitted out all his groomsmen in them as well! In the evening Aaron and I both swapped into comfortable Toms espadrilles for dancing in the evening.

My mum loves flowers, so she took the helm in finding the florist, and fell in love with Blossom Flowers in Chorlton, who create really natural and seasonal wedding flowers. Becky from Blossom created all the bouquets and buttonholes using yellow, cream and green flowers and foliage, that looked stunning. My bouquet was tied with tulle to match my dress, and the buttonholes had a hessian bow around them. 

The bridesmaid’s dresses were from Celebration Bridal near my home in Yorkshire and were long chiffon dresses in sage green, which suited my blonde bridesmaids perfectly. They also had flowers in their hair and their bouquets had long trailing yellow ribbons trailing.


We currently live in a small village in Yorkshire and have both embraced country living so were keen to have our wedding theme be rural and country. The barn was a perfect venue and this encouraged our ideas over our wedding theme to develop.


We chose yellows and greens for our colours, to represent the country garden elements we were trying to achieve. We kept our colours running throughout, from the striped straws to the flowers arranged by my mum. It all just felt very natural and personal which was what we wanted.


As a child we used to have school discos and barn dances at Rivington Hall Barn, but I’d never thought of it as a wedding venue until my mum mentioned it. We both wanted a relaxed wedding and felt the barn really made this possible; it’s stunning inside and has lovely grounds.




Our photographers were Lawson Photography and we just fell in love with their photography style - and how everyone is happy and smiling in such a natural way in all their photos!

Pete and Laura Lawson work as a team and captured every moment and tiny detail of our wedding; they are also lovely, friendly people who really put Aaron and I at ease in all the photos. They also live just round the corner from Rivington Hall Barn, so it was meant to be!



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Tuesday 6 November 2012

Real Red-Themed Wedding Video: Jenny & Rupert

There's something about wedding videos that make me seriously emotional! There were more tears this morning as I watched this wonderful wedding video by White Dress Films. It's a traditional Cambridge College wedding, a stunning wedding venue filled with beautiful wedding details. With a Scottish bagpiper, a rich red colour theme, Jenny and Rupert celebrated their wedding in some serious style, despite the rain! I love Jenny's stunning wedding gown, with its lace bodice and elegant train, her cathedral-length veil, and her gorgeous yellow and white bouquet. Enjoy!



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Wednesday 19 September 2012

Real Vintage-Themed Wedding Video: Jo & Phil

I'm fast becoming a huge fan of weddings videos as the ultimate source of wedding inspiration. It's all down to the wedding details to minutes ratio, and this fabulous wedding short by White Dress Films is chock-a-block! Jo and Phil chose the gorgeous Stowe School for their wedding ceremony and reception, and I'm blown away by it's stature and beauty. It's the perfect wedding venue for a rainy day, because the building is so gorgeous, you'd never notice the grey skies outside. Jo and Phil personalised their big day with tonnes of wedding details, including some seriously fabulous green grass table decorations, their candle-lit wedding ceremony, cricket ball cake {watch the video!}, vintage tea-cups and hilarious photo props. I'm also deeply in love with Jo's beautiful lace-edged veil - one of the prettiest I've ever seen. For more wedding hints and tips, don't miss Jo and Phil's wedding pictures on Rock My Wedding.


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Sunday 27 May 2012

Real Vintage Destination Wedding: Melissa & Ben

This is without a doubt, my favourite wedding of all time. You're not just going to want your own wedding to be like this one, you're going to want to live your whole life in this couple's style. Luckily, I managed to persuade Melissa to fill in one of my bridal questionnaires, so you can copy all her details, and the heavenly house in Croatia is for hire for events, so you too can get married with these views on the horizon. My favourite steal-worthy ideas? It's hard to count, but let's start with the lavender bundles, the covered hay-bale seats, their bespoke 'Tie the Knot' stationery {by Anthony Macbain}, the blue-edged linen table cloths, Melissa's hair-style, the bridesmaids Amanda Benefiel dresses, and the gorgeous flowers. Believe me, I could go on, but if you check out the pics, you'll see for yourself. Huge thanks to Nilu Izadi for these gorgeous photographs - she captured the day perfectly, and comes highly recommended.


The Before the Big Day Bridal Q&A - Melissa was kind enough to fill in our questionnaire, aimed at helping other brides with their planning process. Feast your eyes on her answers for helpful hints and tips from someone on the other side of her big day!

Where and when did you get married?
29th May 2010 in Croatia

What was your thinking behind choosing the venue and the decoration of the reception?
We chose to have the wedding in Motovun, a hillside village in northern Croatia as my husband and his family have had a house there since the late 70’s.  We wanted a location that was romantic and exciting for our guests - many of whom were coming from the States, as I am American - but we also wanted the location to have some significance - not just a destination wedding. As Ben had been working on finishing the property with his parents from the start of our relationship I had watched the project grow and take shape. So the house (which was completed just in time for the wedding) seemed the perfect location to host our celebration. We decided to have the wedding ceremony outside a tiny chapel surrounded by vineyards at the top of a neighbouring hillside. It had a panoramic view of the area with Motovun in the distance, and we held the reception at the house afterwards.

Did you have a theme, colour or motif in mind?
We wanted the ceremony to feel rustic and country with a vintage quality - it was important to me that everything should sit naturally in the environment. Our colours were based on a pastel palette and lavender, my dress was ivory with antique lace, soft pink/nudes for the bridesmaids and bluish-grey seersucker suits for the boys.

What type of cake did you go for, and how did you come to that decision? Who made it?
The cake wasn’t that important to us - we wanted something light and summery after so many canapés and courses - so the chef made a vanilla sponge with strawberries and cream. Although the guests seemed to enjoy it, we had masses left over which turned into an hysterical food fight in the early hours of dawn - the photos were so funny and luckily we’d secreted a bit in the fridge upstairs so I was able to have some for breakfast the next day! Ha!

What about your husband’s outfit? Where was it from?
My husband's suit and all his groomsmen's suits were from J.Crew - we had a hard time finding complete seersucker suits with trousers but we really wanted something mediterranean and summery with an informal feel, so it was worth the effort.

Who made your wedding outfit, and how did you come to that decision?
My maid of honour and closest friend, Amanda Benefiel, made my dress as well as the bridesmaids and flower girls dresses. She’s an amazingly talented designer and knows me better than anyone so of course the dresses were perfect. Her label is based in LA and called Another Happy Birthday (the website is being updated). I chose the bridesmaids dresses from her collection and she specially designed two dresses for the flower girls in a similar colour but more playful and princessy - they loved them!

Our rings and my necklace were made by one of my bridesmaids, Jessica Barensfeld, a gorgeous jewellery designer from NY. The rings were perfect for Ben and me - his is a soft hammered yellow gold band and mine is a yellow gold band with three flat cut cocoa diamonds (a marquise one in the middle with a teardrop on either side) and the necklace incorporates gold and cocoa diamond drops on a delicate gold chain. As we aren’t religious we decided to have a ring ceremony where all of our guests were passed the rings, and so participated in the commitment we were making to each other as husband and wife. As Jessica was the one who made the rings she was the one who tied them to the lavender and who started passing them around our friends and family.


Did you have any favours? What were they? Was there any particular reason why you picked them?
All of our guests received a cluster of lavender with their name hand drawn on a tag like the tags we had on our wedding invitations. We liked the idea of everyone taking them home and remembering us, and the ring ceremony as the rings were tied to the same cluster of lavender.

What florist and flowers did you choose, and how did you come to that decision?
My husband was the natural choice for the florist as he is a landscape garden designer. He and a few friends went picking local wild flowers the morning of the wedding, and they mixed them with White Anemone, Pink Astrantia, Scabiosa, Lotus Pads, Ferns, Gypsophilla, wild grasses and my favourite - Smoke Bush!

Did you have any entertainment at your wedding?
We had the Klapa - the local men’s choir from the village - perform at the ceremony. They were so wonderful and talented and made such an impression on our guests that they have since come to London to perform in a series of concerts! We also had our good friend Annie Bea sing 'It had to be you', accompanied by groomsman Robin Reeve on the guitar. For the reception we had two of my husband’s friends djing but everyone really got involved playing some of their favourite songs - dancing on the terrace each night was the height of the party!  We also had the brief and incredibly bad saxophone show put on by Mr. Sax, the captain of the ship we rented for a day-trip up the coast. After swimming in the sea and feasting and drinking it was a perfect day thanks to Mr. Sax Fish Picnic!

Who was your photographer and how did you choose them?
Nilu Izadi, a fine art photographer who shoots weddings in addition to her other photography practice. I met her through the gallery I work for, she’s amazing and I recommend her highly to any couple for her talent, professionalism and also her personality - which is key when you have a stranger documenting such an intimate and important event.

Did you enjoy planning your wedding?
I loved it.

What advice do you have for brides planning their big day?
Make it your own - from our invitations and rings to my gown and the bridesmaid dresses, the flowers, our venue, the service, the music, the guestbook, the speeches and photography, the setting and the feel - everything really was personalised with our closest friends contributing their creative talents and energy, which made the event both reflect and belong to us in such a uniquely special and memorable way.

If you want to hire this gorgeous venue, check out the website.

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