Good afternoon loves :) I hope you've enjoyed the blog instalments of today already, which include this simply gorgeous mellow yellow inspiration shoot and this latest set of bridal inspiration boards {see all the inspiration boards on Love My Dress here}.
Now given yesterday was a little quiet with just one blog post, I'm making it up to you today with three. Three wonderful, inspiring and beautiful blog posts of course, the latter of which is this beautiful affair, the wedding of Lottie and Jamie, who tied the knot on 2 September in York, and celebrated with a reception held in a tepee . It is also the second post on Love My Dress today with imagery from the very talented York Wedding Photographer, Annemarie King.
Lottie's stunning dress is 'Eden' by Jenny Packham. Can you imagine anything else possibly suiting her anywhere near as good as this?…
Love My Dress Wedding Blog – Photography Copyright (c) 2011, Annemarie King
"I’d seen a few Jenny Packham dresses and loved how different they were to other dresses I’d seen so booked an appointment at her London Boutique. I love vintage dresses and in particular love Edwardian/1920’s style which Jenny emulates quite a lot in her designs.
The dress was in the window of the boutique and was a preview of the spring/summer 2011 collection and wasn’t meant to be tried on!"
"However It had been love at first sight and after a lot of persuasion the shop assistant let me try the dress on – immediately I knew that it was the ‘One’ I felt so elegant in it, loved the fact it looked like an heirloom, the fact it suited my pale skin, the intricate beading and as soon as I saw my mum and Jamie’s mums reactions I knew they felt the same. I also knew Jamie would love the dress and that it would suit the vintage, relaxed country theme of the wedding…"
"Our bouquets and buttonholes were created by Fiona Hogg who was lovely to work with – her passion for flowers really showed and she didn’t bat an eyelid when I changed mine and the bridesmaids bouquet design 2 weeks before our wedding day. I wanted the flowers to look hand picked and vintage and I really loved how they turned out!Cake (Please include your supplier details and describe your cake and why you chose it)…"
"My shoes were by Diane Hassall and were called ‘Pearl Drift’. I would really recommend any bride to be to check out her collection of bridal shoes as they are all handmade, vintage inspired and Diane herself worked for Jimmy Choo and Emma Hope designing shoes before setting up on her own, plus considering the amount of work which goes into making them they are reasonably priced between £160-200 a pair, making them more affordable than some designer pairs!"
"I did my own hair, as I like a fairly natural look and wanted to look like me but I did get very hooked on Lisa Eldridge’s website and her make up tutorials! I followed her cleansing advise after breaking out with adult acne 2 months before the wedding and not only did my skin clear up but it hasn’t ever looked better!"
How beautiful are these Bridesmaids dresses?
"We met 5 years ago after been introduced by my (the brides) parents, not arranged as such but my parents met Jamie in a bar where they used to drink and thought that we would get along. Obviously, they didn’t know at the time that they were introducing me to their future son in law!
James proposed to me in March 2010 whilst we were on holiday in a freezing cold cottage in the Dales with a ring I had seen in an antique shop a few months before, afterwards we danced to the Rolling Stones and got drunk on red wine!"
"So many things inspired us in planning our wedding day – I kept a scrap book (A4 lever arch file – ahem) with magazine cuttings of everything I saw which I liked, this ranged from DIY tutorials to flowers! We are both very creative people; I have a vintage clothes business and travel vintage fairs up and down the country selling clothes and accessories and Jamie is in a Band so we drew on these passions when deciding on what we wanted for our wedding.
We wanted a relaxed fun vibe with homemade touches. We also wanted to celebrate with all our closest friends and family and for them to feel comfortable and we knew if we had the tepees and organized the day ourselves we would have the freedom and flexibility to ensure that. We also wanted to support local small businesses and wherever possible did this; this influenced decisions from where I bought my fabric from to the Tepees…"
"The tepees have a lot of poles and unless you dress them look really bare, my Dad loves flowers and asked if he could do the flowers for the venue and tepee’s this meant not only were they really personal to us but also meant we were able to have exactly what we wanted. I must have cut hundreds of flower ideas from wedding magazines over the 16 months we planned the wedding for and recurring theme was English country garden, with lot’s of hydrangea and roses…"
"I also came across David Austin Roses when looking through the internet and fell in love with ‘Rosalind’ which I had in the flower buckets which we hung on the pughes in the church and the candleabrough table centres. We also used eucalyptus and lavender for added fragrance as well as Ivy for extra romance! I was so proud of what both my Dad and Ali achieved with the flowers and it help to make the day so much more personal to me and Jamie. After the wedding we gifted many of the buckets with flowers in to friends and family who had come to the wedding as a lasting reminder of the day."
"In the chill out area as well as squishy floor cushions for the wee ones to sit on we also bought a Card board pirate ship from the Bird Perch a shop on Clifton green – this was a big hit with the kiddos and went home with our friends son Billy at the end of the night! I also bought the kids some vintage 50’s snap and top and tale games which I put on their seats, some bride and bridesmaid sticker doll books for the girls and I also bought some vintage straws with hearts on and ‘drink me’ tags which I put on the neck of Coca Cola glass bottles for the kids to drink. There was also a sweetie bar for them to tuck into…"
"We spent a long time making things to go inside the tepees for our big day . As I said before the tepee’s can look Spartan if you don’t dress them and add colour. I bought over 100 metres of fabric in floral ‘libertyesque’ , spotty patterns in lot’s of different colours – I used this to make yards of Bunting {with help from my family}, ribbons to tie round the tops of washed out Jars which we put sand and votives in to create cheap and cheerful candles to decorate both the inside and outside of the tepees. I also used the fabric to create bows which I tied around the lids of my giant sweet jars for my sweet bar. As well as the fabric and flowers used to give the tepees an added colour boost we also wanted to make the tepee’s as child friendly as possible…"
"We purchased the 'All You Need is Love’ cake from Choccywoccydodah. There were many reasons for choosing this cake and supplier: firstly the cake was a gift from Jamie’s Mum, and I was really conscious the if we were going to spend a lot of money on a cake that it was something special and also something we couldn’t have done ourselves! I came across Choccywoccydodah in ‘Brides’ magazine and I loved how different their cakes are – to me they look like sculptures and the fact that they are entirely made out of chocolate was a clincher for me.
Both Jamie and I love ‘The Beatles’ and often listen to their albums together so when I saw the ‘All You Need is Love’ cake I couldn’t believe our look! It also not only looked good but tasted pretty scrummy too!"
The couple's love of The Beatles extended to the table names also!
"For our favours we had mini jam jars which I filled with favourite childhood sweets such as cola bottles, chocolate mice and magic gems. I then covered the lids with vintage fabric circles which I also used to make bunting and the ribbons we used on the candles we had dotted all over the tepees…"
Words of Wedded Wisdom…
"Enjoy every second of the day and appreciate the moment your in when your in it, stay true to yourselves as a couple and do things your way! You really can’t please everyone and at the end of the day you will only do this once so stay true to yourselves and don’t worry about what anyone else will think if you do things a bit differently.
As for marriage, we attended a friends wedding recently and her dad gave us these very wise words; there will be arguments from time to time it’s unavoidable but if you think you are right there is no need to be angry and if you are wrong you have no right to be angry! I love that bit of advice it’s honest and I think makes a lot of sense plus her Dad’s been married over 30years so he knows what he is talking about! What, if anything, inspired you to style your day the way you did? Eg, a particular era, muse, colour, place, or were you guided by religious or cultural values and preferences…"
Huge thanks to the wonderful Annemarie King who's work has featured twice on Love My Dress today! 😉
"Annemarie is a fantastic photographer, not only does she take amazing photo’s which we felt really capture the emotion of the day but she also is very good at putting you at ease and making you feel incredibly relaxed, if like me (the bride) you don’t like having you picture taken!
Annemarie also listened to us when we said we didn’t want the whole day to be taken up with posing for pictures and instead that we wished for the day to be captured as it happened with a few staged shots thrown in. This meant both myself and Jamie could enjoy the day and our friends and family could enjoy the reception and champagne!"
Are any of my blog readers also planning a tepee reception, or is anyone looking forward to wearding the 'Eden' wedding dress by Jenny Packham?
You can see a tonne more Jenny Packham Brides here, or check our 'tents and teepees' section
Much love,
Annabel xXx
♥
Photographer – Annemarie King
Tepee – Papakata
Brides dress + accessories – Jenny Packham
Brides shoes – Diane Hassall
Groom – York Hire Wear + Nicole Fhari shoes + Etsy cufflinks
Bridesmaids – Coast
Flowers – Fiona Hogg {bouquets & buttonholes} + Father {reception}
Cake – Choccywoccydodah
Transport – Family Friend