A Short Monsoon Wedding Dress, Krispy Kremes and Hints of 60’s Style

Good afternoon guys n gals – ladies, is this the first time you have visited Love My Dress today? If so, I think you'll wanting to be bookmarking this page for later (unmissable wedding dresses to kill and die for).

This week's first real wedding took place on Saturday March 9th 2013 at the Quayside Exchange in Sunderland, when Steve and Nicki tied the knot in front of Newcastle based wedding photographer Matt Ethan.  I love the hint of sassy 60's style in this wedding  – the short dress, the beehive – it's something I think bride Nicki pulled off quite unintentionally but it works fabulously.  This is also the kind of wedding I hope inspires all you brides on a budget – it's also proof of the value of spending money on good wedding photography – just in case there are any doubters out there…

"We weren’t too sure that we would
even get a photographer at first, as the costs seemed a lot of money for
something we didn’t know too much about – and we didn’t want a load of
formal group shots. Matt was the first photographer’s website that we
looked at and actually liked, so when he was available, we thought it
was meant to be!

In the end, we are both so glad we
decided to have a professional photographer, Matt understood exactly what we wanted
and captured our day perfectly.

Love My Dress Wedding Blog – Photography Copyright (c) 2013, Matt Ethan

"My dress was from Monsoon.
I didn’t feel that a big ‘proper’ wedding dress would suit me and had
originally wanted a vintage dress, I saw a picture on the Monsoon website,
and this was exactly what i had in mind and a lot less hassle than
trying to find a similar genuine vintage dress.

I  knew immediately that
it was the dress i wanted but dithered over buying it, because I
worried about it not being a ‘proper’ wedding dress. So a few weeks
later when i went to buy it it was totally sold out. I got upset and
stressed, Steve called Monsoon, and they tracked one down in my size."

"When it came to the style of our wedding, I wasn't focussed on anything in particular – I tended to pick things I liked, looked at loads of blogs, and was a little bit Pinterest
obsessed.  I just picked things that seemed to work well together, and
that looked nice. I didn’t want to feel tied to one particular thing.
When it came to colours we tended to stick to grey and purples."

"My shoes were by Viviene Westwood – the amazing Ladydragon design.  They were amazing and they smelt of bubblegum! I actually bought those before we had a venue!"

"I walked down the aisle with my Father to the sound of ingrid Michaelson's version of 'Fools Rush In'." 

"I spent a long time looking at readings because i
wanted something that people wouldn’t have heard lots of times before.
We went with Love Monkey by Edward Monkton – again it was a little bit
different, and it was really nice. I knew it was the one because it made
my Mam cry when she first heard it."

"I made all of our wedding stationery myself. A lot of it was
hand stamped including the place settings and the table plan. It was a
bit of a labour love but something i really enjoyed doing."

"I made fudge which i cut into hearts and put into small cellophane bags. We had goodie bags for the young children." 

"I saw the ‘Mrs such and such and such’ type necklaces on a blog,
and knew that I wanted one, it’s such a lovely idea, and it was custom
made by Tatty Divine."

"When we were looking at cakes, we just wanted something a bit different, so used our favourite Donuts from Krispy Kreme…" 

"I’m not a ‘girly girl’ and don’t really like being fussed
over so I did my own make up.  I knew roughly how I wanted my hair but
only really decided on my hair with the hairdresser on the morning of
the wedding!"

"We hadn’t planned to have bridesmaids at all, but eventually decided to a few months before the wedding, so got some from ebay.

Our boys were dressed in matching dinosaur shirts and grey trousers from Next with bow ties."

"We chose the Quayside Exchange
because it was ideally located between both of our families. We loved
the building, and we knew immediately that it was were we wanted to get
married. It was the first and last place we went to view when we were
looking for wedding venues.

We didn’t do too much to the venue as we liked it so much how it
was. There were lots of flowers in jars that me, my mam and sisters
made up the day before. Table names were kids’ tv characters that our
3yr old son Thomas likes." 

Words of Wedded Wisdom…
 

"Most importantly, don’t feel pressured into having all
the things you’re expected to have. My Dad especially kept offering to
pay for things because he thought we weren’t having certain things
because we couldn’t afford them, but we really wanted to just do things
the way we wanted them, and that’s our biggest bit of advice, do things
how you want, and not just how you think they should be done.

We really enjoyed it all, I think the best thing was that all the
hard work was so worthwhile, to see all the smiles and laughter and see
how much our friends and family enjoyed themselves. It felt really good
when our guests were telling us how much the wedding reflected who we
are as a couple.

We could have probably just have done
everything a good six months before we did -  although its amazing how
much you can get done in a few days!"

A big thank you to Matt Ethan for sharing these fab images – couples looking for a wedding
photographer in the Newcastle/Sunderland and surrounding area would do well to check out Matt's website if they love his modern contemporary style wedding photography.

I'd really love to hear from our readers who are looking forward to wearing a short wedding dress – do we have any more Monsoon brides out there too? You can see more from Monsoon on Love My Dress here.

If like Nicki you were rather obsessed with researching imagery in the run up to your wedding, take a look at our Pinterest pages if you haven't done so already, they are choc-FULL of out of this world and very beautiful visual ideas for your nuptials – it's a feast for the eyes.

With much love,

Annabel

Photographer – Matt Ethan
Venue – Quayside Exchange in Sunderland
Wedding Dress – Monsoon
Brides 'Mrs Burke' necklace – Tatty Divine
Brides' shoes – Viviene Westwood
Grooms Suit – 3 piece grey suit via Slaters
Page Boys – Next
Cake – Krispy Kreme