A 1920s Inspired Gown For A Colourful and Eclectic East London Pub Wedding

Hello lovely readers, I can hardly believe how fast we are flying through this summer! With many a summer wedding upon us, we thought we would head back to earlier this year and more wintery climes for the wedding blog nuptials of fashion designer Becky and her beau Ed.

The couple wanted to stay close to home for their wedding and with Ed being an architect and Becky loving the Art deco period they both fell in love with Hackney Town Hall. Their reception was just a short walk away at The Prince Arthur pub, their former local of choice. I’m sure you will agree that along with a very stylish bride and groom, this wedding also boasts many a well-dressed guest.

Photography by Christopher Currie

I’m not surprised that Becky went ahead and bought her gorgeous glitter sole J. Crew shoes before her dress was finished, they would earn top billing in my shoe collection too!

Sparkly gold shoes by J. Crew

“My shoes were an unusual choice maybe, but I fell in love with them as soon as I saw them and bought them before I knew what the dress was going to look like.”

“Our florist Ying invited us down to his florist-come-coffee shop where we had a cup of tea and discussed ideas around the rough brief of vibrant, wild and eclectic. We matched the colours in my bouquet with my dress and shoes and chose bright colours for the other arrangements.”

Becky and Ed enlisted the super talent that is Christopher Currie Photography to take these beautiful images.  We’re huge fans of Christopher’s work and have featured it many times on Love My Dress already. Chris and his now wife (and yes, we’re hoping to feature that wedding pretty soon too!) are also the founders of the Glasgow Wedding Collective – one of the coolest wedding events in the UK.

“We can’t recommend Chris and Gillian ofChristopher Currie Photography highly enough – they were so sweet and down to earth. They made everyone including us feel utterly relaxed. The charm with which they organise formal shots is both delightful and effective. We absolutely love their reportage style, we got some terrific candid shots, capturing the feel of the day and the personalities of our guests.”

“Ed and I met at a party nearly six years ago through friends in London. At the time he was living on the west coast of Norway, so I took a brave first step of going to visit him and our relationship grew over alternating visits to Haugesund & Hackney. We got engaged on a beautiful private beach in Thailand where I spent most of the time trying to collect shells whilst Ed worked up the courage to spit out THAT sentence.

We were engaged for just over a year and a half before the wedding. We would have liked to do it quicker than that, but we were trying to buy a house at the same time, so that meant our time and available cash was limited.”

“We developed a loose colour scheme which complemented the pub and used lots of different things we like to inspire us, ending up with lots of bright, clashing colours and eclectic decorations. My Pinterest boards were out of control!”

Becky’s beautiful dress was made by Charlotte Wilden Design with some extra embellishment from an Indian source.

“Charlotte was invaluable to me. She had totally the right mix of voicing her knowledge and experience and letting me work out what I wanted my dress to look like. Her creative eye and ability to make beautiful unique details drew me to her instantly.

I loved the whole process of sharing ideas and discussing fabric and colour, especially as I am a designer myself. I felt I could be involved in the creative, inspirational first stages, and Charlotte would then take those ideas and make them real. It was a fantastic experience. She even embellished my vintage fur cape to match my dress.”

“We didn’t have bridesmaids. I had my ‘special ladies’, my sister and 3 friends who came and got ready with me. They all had great shoes!”

Noemi Klein designed Becky’s bespoke engagement ring using uncut diamonds from India and a smoky flawed sapphire. The wedding bands, also made by Noemi complement one another.

Becky walked down the aisle with her father David to ‘Comptine d’un autre été’ by Yann Tiersen. She walked out with her new husband to ‘Ever Fallen in Love (with someone you shouldn’t have)’ by The Buzzcocks.

“Our friend Kim read a love letter from Leo Tolstoy to Valeria Arsenev where he speaks about a love deeper than mere attraction and the need to work together to achieve it. Ed’s father John read the lyrics to ‘The Milkman of Human Kindness’ by Billy Bragg. We chose it because one of Ed’s earliest memories is of listening to it with his Dad and also because it talks about the little things you do for the ones you love.”

“Ed took the opportunity to get a unique made-to-measure suit with his brother and best man James. They found the whole process fascinating. Nathan at Tweed Addict is great – he has a wonderful passion for tailoring and his knowledge and experience come across in both his attention to detail and the speed with which he can guide you through his range of around 1500 tweeds to find the perfect cloth.”

“We loved disappearing off after the ceremony and having a little bit of time to ourselves. It was a great opportunity to talk, reflect on what we’d just done and grin a lot. To go from that, to walking into a cosy pub full of our cheering friends and family was brilliant.”

“We just loved The Prince Arthur as an informal venue, it has fantastic taxidermy and a beautiful traditional bar. We wanted our guests to have fun and it had a relaxed appeal that we loved.”

The couple had plenty of hands to help them get the pub ready for the wedding. Becky’s mother made incredible trailing stings of cut out hearts, using parcel paper and old gardening books and collected dried rose petals for confetti from the moment they got engaged.

Paper pom-poms, streamers, ribbons and fairy lights were hung from the ceiling and along the walls and their friend Phil provided the ‘Mr & Mrs’ banner hanging over the bar. Copper bouquets of ivy and leaves adorned the mantel pieces and another friend Tom made the tandem bicycle artwork that everyone had the chance to add their thumbprint to.

Ed’s talented mother Linda, made the 3-tier naked sponge cake and topped it with flowers from her garden. As recommended by a friend, they have frozen a piece to eat on their first anniversary.”

“Sadly neither of our Grandparents were well enough to attend but Ed’s 92 year old Grandfather, Les, has an iPad and we were really grateful to Ed’s brother’s partner, Jo, who used her iPad to broadcast the ceremony and speeches to him via FaceTime. We’d even set him up with a small bottle of champagne in advance so he was able to join in the toasts – he loved it and so did we.”

Words of Wedded Wisdom

“Someone had advised us to find some time during the day to reflect on what was happening and take it all in. We took a moment after the ceremony and again during the reception, to look around and take in all our friends and family enjoying themselves together.

Also, not being ones for tradition, we also stayed together the night before and having an early breakfast together in our room was a lovely way to start the day, a moment of calm before the storm of final preparations.

I also recommend doing a bride’s speech – there was no way I couldn’t say some thank you’s too.”

I just love a London pub wedding, thank you so much to the lovely Becky and Ed for sharing your special day with us. Also huge thanks to photographers Chris and Gillian for the beautiful images, I’ve loved perusing them and I hope you have too. Remember i if you love this particular style of photography, you can find more of Chris and Gillian’s work here on Love My Dress.

I hope this wedding has provided valuable inspiration to fellow pub brides. I’m off to try and track down a pair of those glitter sole shoes.

Love Caoimhe xx

 

Photographer – Christopher Currie Photography
Venue – Hackney Town Hall + The Prince Arthur, Hackney, London
Wedding Dress – Charlotte Wilden Design
Headpiece – Made by the Bride
Shoes – J. Crew
Accessories – Brussels Antiques Market + Etsy
Bride’s Scent/perfume – Balenciaga, B
Groom – Tweed Addict Suit + Charles Tyrwhitt Shirt +T M Lewin Tie and Pocket Square + British Braces
Florist – Ying at The Willow, Hoxton Street, London
Cake – The Groom’s Mother
Entertainment –
Rings – Noemi Klein
Hair Stylist – Mim Bissonet (family friend)