An Elegant Grey Chiffon Wedding Dress for a Spring Handfasting Ceremony

Hello again lovely ones, did you catch our latest £500 promotion this morning, in collaboration with Freya Rose (another genuine opportunity to win something wonderful through Love My Dress®).  And have you had a chance to immerse yourself in a world of Jesus Peiro yet?  I hope today has been kind to you so far anyway.

The wedding we’re featuring this afternoon is full of Love My Dress signature elegance and charm – Kira and Pete’s wedding took place on Saturday 17th May 2014 at the beautiful Walcot Hall in Lydbury North, Shropshire.  The couple were keen to draw on their love of afternoon tea and involve their family and friends in as much of their wedding planning as possible, so many of the elements were DIY, including that incredibly beautiful light grey chiffon dress you see below you – more on that soon.

“The style of our wedding day evolved over the eighteen month period since we booked Walcot Hall as our venue. We knew we wanted an afternoon tea as we had enjoyed these many times before and the vintage inspired styling of our wedding stemmed from there. We also thought this theme fitted Walcot Hall exactly.  The Hall is filled with unusual vintage pieces and we knew the vintage china and crystal glasses we chose would look right at home.”

Photography Copyright (c) 2014, Gemma Williams

“We spent the twelve months before the wedding going to antique shops and car boot sales to build our collection. We also wanted a very relaxed and laid back feel to the wedding rather than having everything perfect. Because we wanted to involve as many people as possible, we decided to enlist the help of our family and friends.

It is amazing how creative people are in different ways and lovely for us to know they helped make our day so special.”

“My sister, Lara, is a theatrical tailor and costume maker for theatre, film and television. She is very busy with her work so I was so happy when she said she would make my dress for me. At the beginning of the process we talked about how I wanted my dress to look. I knew I didn’t want a white or ivory dress as I am fair skinned and these colours don’t tend to work on me. I was really drawn to the light grey coloured dresses I had seen as I thought they were a bit different and seemed to suit me.

I also knew I wanted a lot of detail on my dress and some lace.”

“Lara asked me to gather pictures of all of the wedding dresses I liked. Lara then took elements of each of them based on what we knew would suit my body shape, created a design and a pattern. To be sure the style suited me, Lara did a mock up version of the dress using cheaper fabric. We then went for a day out in London to choose my lace and silk. We chose a silver coloured silk and Lara dyed the lace to match. I had many fittings and it felt so special to have something that was made just for me.

I was so happy with the finished product. It was better than I had imagined and incorporated the detail and simplicity I love.”

“Our wedding favours also helped to form our seating plan. In keeping with our natural theme, we named each of our reception tables after a particular herb. We grew individual herbs from tiny plug plants from Norfolk Herbs in the weeks leading up to the wedding and planted them in small zinc pots.

We displayed them altogether and asked our guests to find their herb and find their table.”

“Our photographer was Gemma Williams. Finding a wedding photographer was a harder job than we had realised. From looking at examples of wedding photography we could see that we preferred the more natural reportage style of capturing the day. We also felt there was so much detail that we wanted to capture in our day that we needed a photographer who really paid attention. When we came across Gemma’s work on her website, we knew straight away she captured her weddings in the way we loved. We snapped her up straight away and could not have been happier with her whole approach. Gemma was great leading up the wedding in keeping in touch and in helping us to think about what we wanted photography wise.

On the day itself, Gemma blended in so well it was like she was one of our guests. She worked her way around the guests so quietly and collaborated with us throughout the day. I certainly have never been to a wedding whereby the guests cannot stop talking about the photographer for good reasons but our guests kept asking where we found her and couldn’t praise her approach highly enough. The photography of our wedding was amazing and she most definitely captured the spirit of our day.“

“When we began planning our wedding, we knew we wanted to get married in a venue that would allow us the flexibility to choose how we wanted our day to be. We also wanted to give people the opportunity to stay with us and enjoy a relaxed weekend. It was quite a challenge trying to find somewhere that would meet our requirements and we feel so pleased we stumbled upon Walcot Hall in our search.

We loved the fact that we could hire the Ballroom for a few days and there was a choice of accommodation available to our guests for the weekend. This included The Chapel in the woods (where we stayed) and a range of apartments, tipees and yurts for our guests depending on how adventurous they were feeling! When we visited, we also fell in love with the setting of Walcot: in the middle of nowhere with beautiful mature gardens and an arboretum.

The wedding team at Walcot were also so friendly, accommodating and helpful that we knew we could have the day we wanted.”

“Pete and I have been together a long time! We met 15 years ago at a night club in Birmingham and have been inseparable ever since. Having lived together for 10 years, we decided it was finally time to make it official.  We got engaged during our 13th year together. Pete had told me he would propose but he wouldn’t tell me when. On a lovely summers day he said he was taking me out to Croome Park in Worcestershire and that he had organised a picnic.

I could tell before we got there that he was going to propose but spent most of the day wondering when he would pop the question.”

“We had enjoyed a beautiful day of sunshine until just after he had proposed and sat down for our picnic. With perfect timing, a massive thunderstorm reached us and the heavens then opened. We got totally drenched and wandered along the river in the pouring rain with a glass of champagne. I always said his proposal had better be spectacular after 13 years and he did not disappoint!”

“I chose a beautiful pair of Rachel Simpson shoes the ‘Mimi’ design in silver.”

“Duo Hair and Make-Up based in Shrewsbury made us ladies all look beautiful on the day. I had been seeing my make-up artist, Nichola Witcombe-Tant, for regular facials prior to the wedding itself., Not only was all the pre-wedding pampering good for my skin but because she got to know me so well she knew just what make-up style would suit me. Our hairdresser, Shelly, was also amazing.

Her experience in wedding hair really came through on the day. It was lovely to spend the morning with them both.”

“My Flower Girl, Isabelle, was dressed in a John Lewis outfit. Her Mum and my Sister-In-Law, Liz, chose this for her. She really was a princess for the day.  Jack was our second little Best Man, and he wore a suit from Next in navy to match the grown-ups.”

“My sister’s colleague threaded glass beads we bought in a craft shop and this was weaved into my hair.

My necklace and earrings were from Sarah Hickey who designs and makes her own line of jewellery. I have given Sarah’s beautiful creations as gifts before and knew straight away that I wanted her to make my wedding jewellery.”

“We decided quite late into the planning process to having live music for our ceremony and drinks reception. We came across Music Students for Hire and Robin Weil put together a brilliant string trio for us and helped us choose the music that would work the best.

The sound of violins in the gardens at Walcot on the day sounded wonderful and kept everyone entertained.”

“My Step-Dad, Geoff, walked me down the aisle – to the sound of Pachelbel’s Canon in D.  The ceremony took place in the garden at Walcot Hall, surrounded by our family and friends. We decided not to change the traditional civil ceremony vows and instead opted to have a Handfasting Ceremony.

Because a marriage ceremony is not legal outdoors in England we actually had to say our vows twice: once outside and then again inside the Hall to make it legal in front of our witnesses.

“Our Handfasting Ceremony took place outside following this and was conducted by our good friend, Ruth. Ruth is a bit of white witch herself and wrote us a beautiful ceremony.

After sealing a circle around us with salt, we lit a unity candle and each of our Mums, our Bridesmaid and Best Man read a blessing each and tied a ribbon around our hands to symbolically bind us together.”

“Pete always said that when we got married he would treat himself to a tailored suit. We decided to visit Clements and Church in Birmingham and were so pleased with the service we received from tailor Aaron.  Pete chose his silk tie and matching pocket square from Clements and Church also. His shoes were from Cheany in Northhamptonshire.”

“During the civil ceremony our friend, Helen, read the reading Blessing of the Hands.  We both really liked the simplicity of the reading and symbolism of this alongside our Handfasting Ceremony.”

Blessing of the Hands
These are the hands of your best friend, young and strong and full of love for you, that are holding yours on your wedding day, as you promise to love each other today, tomorrow, and forever.
These are the hands that will work alongside yours, as together you build your future.
These are the hands that will passionately love you and cherish you through the years, and with the slightest touch, will comfort you like no other.
These are the hands that will hold you when fear or grief fills your mind.
These are the hands that will countless times wipe the tears from your eyes; tears of sorrow, and tears of joy.
These are the hands that will help you to hold your family as one.
These are the hands that will give you strength when you need it.
And lastly, these are the hands that even when wrinkled and aged, will still be reaching for yours, still giving you the same unspoken tenderness with just a touch.

“We had our rings made in the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham by the Uncle of one of Pete’s friends. We both opted for plain platinum bands.”

“I was really hoping Lara would have time to make herself a bridesmaid dress, but this wasn’t meant to be. We found the perfect dress at Debenhams two weeks before the wedding from their Debut collection.”

“Our caterers were locally based, Aramayo’s. We had a traditional afternoon tea served on the vintage china we had been collecting. In the evening, we had a Moroccan themed sharing meal whereby dishes of lamb with dates, chicken with preserved lemons and fruity rice were served to each table for everyone to dig in and share.

We felt serving the food in this way added a communal and social atmosphere to the day.”

“Because my Mum likes arranging flowers, we decided to do the displays ourselves using locally grown garden flowers  from a local business called Wildbunch. This meant being happy not to plan specific flowers but to leave our wedding flowers up to nature to decide what would be in our displays.

The natural theme continued in the herb plant seating plan/favours we grew and the naked cake and cheese wedding cake my sister and Mum made. In terms of colours, we chose a range of different plum/purple colours mainly because this is a favourite of ours.”

We actually underestimated how many flowers we needed but we were fortunate that family and friends donated some from their gardens and Walcot Hall also allowed us some flowers from their garden. My Mum took charge of overseeing the displays with the help of other family and friends. We were so happy with the natural look of the flowers and had a beautiful selection in our displays.

My best friends, Ruth and Helen, were very kind also and put together our bouquets, boutonnieres and the flower crown for Isabelle. Looking around the room on our wedding day and seeing all of the hard work everyone had put in meant so much to both of us.”

“My very talented friend, Helen Morris, who has a local card making business, designed our wedding invitations and stationery. As she specialises in drawing birds, she drew us a pair of love birds in a tree. We used the outline of this for our guest book Fingerprint Tree.”

“In addition to the vintage glass and china we collected, we hired candleabras and candle votives from Chillie Breeze in Ludlow.

My sister, with the help of close family friends, put together our naked wedding cake the evening before our big day. Everyone thought she was joking when she left our Friday evening get together early to make the cake. Considering she is not a baker, we thought it looked impressive.

My Mum, decided in the weeks leading up the wedding to put together a cheese tiered wedding cake. She sourced the cheese from the local supermarket and decorated this with figs and grapes.  We joked that there should be a cake off but in the end they were both equally demolished by everyone.”

“For the evening reception we had DJ Mister Fox play for us. He got everyone up on the dance floor and incorporated the song requests our guests had made on their wedding acceptance cards.

We chose Sade’s ‘By Your Side’ for our first dance, as the words seemed to represent us as a couple and the length of time we had been together.”

“It is really hard to pick out a single part of the day that was our favourite because it just seemed the whole day was just amazing. It was so lovely to see the day come together in the way we had imagined and knowing how much effort everyone had put into making it magical was very special.

We wouldn’t change a thing about our day. Our day was perfect in a natural way and, yes, might have had its flaws but was perfect for us.”

 

Words of Wedded Wisdom…

“My words of wedded wisdom would be to follow the vision you have for your day and follow your instincts. Try not to listen to too many people’s opinions and trust that you will create the perfect day for you. That said, do get other willing people’s help in bringing your vision to life and use their talents.

Family and friends want you to have a special day and it is important to them to be part of it too. Most of all enjoy the process of planning your wedding and do as much or as little in this respect as you feel comfortable with.”

Love Annabel xx

 

Photographer – Gemma Williams
Venue – Walcot Hall in Lydbury North, Shropshire.
Wedding Dress – made by the brides sister
Shoes – Mimi in silver by Rachel Simpson
Necklace + earrings –  Sarah Hickey
Perfume – Carolina Hererra – 212 Sexy
Groom – Clements and Church tailor made + shoes via Cheany
Bestman + Groomsmen – hired via Peter Posh in Shrewsbury
Bridesmaid – Debenhams + shoes via Nine West at Debenhams
Flowergirl – John Lewis
Page Boys – Next
Florist – DIY using Wildbunch flowers
Cake – DIY
Entertainment – Music Students for Hire + DJ Mister Fox
Rings – Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham
Catering – Aramayo’s
Stationery – a friend (Helen Morris)
Hair + Makeup – Duo Hair and Make-Up