A Short Wedding Dress for a Relaxed and Non-Traditional City Wedding

Good morning loves – how was your weekend? Did you receive a copy of our Sunday newsletter? (you can subscrive via the footer if viewing via desktop or via the menu system if viewing via mobile). It’s a great way to catch up on our weekly content if you didn’t get the opportunity to check in on Love My Dress over the past 7 days. We also shared this wonderful ‘from the heart’ piece written by one of our readers that tackles the tricky issue of dealing with divorce at weddings – we’d love for you to share your thoughts on that particular post if the content resonates with you (you can leave anonymous comments on our wedding blog by the way).

This morning’s wedding is a great example of how not all brides want to wear a typical wedding dress and how many couples these days prefer to follow a non-traditional wedding route. Celine, an Account Director working in healthcare advertising, married IT Consultant Paul on 12th September with a ceremony at Southwark Registry Office in London followed by a reception at The Greenwich Yacht Club by the River Thames. I adore Celine’s short, chic dress and those sweet flowers in her hair. Also my love and thank to our Little Book For Brides members, the wonderful Paul and Kelly of Paul Joseph Photography for sharing these images today.

“We met nine years ago at a friend’s leaving do in London. Our friend is my friend from school and Paul’s friend from university. Neither of us lived in London at the time, so we kept in touch after meeting.”

“We both moved to London separately a few months later, met up for a drink and got together! We got engaged in February 2015 – we went for a walk around Battersea park and Paul proposed by the peace pagoda. We then had a boozy lunch the 2 of us at Bluebird in Chelsea whilst we called everyone to tell them the news. We got married seven months later in September, almost to the day we first met.”

“We did not want a big traditional wedding. Having been together for so long, we wanted something more relaxed. First and foremost we wanted to have fun, bring everyone together and for everyone to enjoy themselves. We wanted our guests to look forward to the day and celebration.

I also love to organise so I did most of it myself. We did have help from my bridesmaid Charlotte, Will our venue manager and Emily from Purple Grape Catering on the day to set everything up.”

“I wore pearl earrings I received as a gift for my 30th; a bracelet my dad gave me when he came to pick me up on the way to the ceremony and my watch. I also wore the perfume Miracle by Lancome.”

“My dress was purchased from Georges Rech in Brussels (where I am originally from). It turned out later on that my mum also wore Georges Rech on her wedding day.”

“I tried so many dresses on, I went to bridal boutiques in Notting Hill, I tried Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, House of Fraser, you name it – but nothing felt right.”

“I ended up going home to find one and tried on a pale pink dress my mum had spotted in the shop. The dress wasn’t bridal but I knew it was the one when I tried it on. I loved that it was different, that it matched my personality and style, and that it was such a lovely unusual colour.”

“I only had one bridesmaid, my best friend Charlotte, and she wore her own clothes and shoes.”

“My hair was done by the talented Yukie at Malishi Hair Design at London Bridge, who is my hairdresser.

I chose to wear no accessories as such – instead, our florist prepared a handful of loose flowers that matched the bouquet to pin to my hair. I did my own make-up on the day. I went to the Dior counter at Boots near bond street for a consultation and purchased the lot.”

“Flowers were purchased loose from the New Covent Garden market in Vauxhall and arranged ourselves. We opted for white and pink hydrangeas, faded pink roses, green Sweet Williams and eucalyptus.”

“Paul wore a royal blue suit from Reiss. His light pink tie was also from Reiss and his white shirt from Aquascutum. His shoes were from Dune.“

 

Celine’s dad accompanied her down the aisle to the sound of ‘At Last’, by Aretha Franklin. The couple exchanged simple, standard vows.

“One of my oldest friend William and his husband Boris read a text in both French and English.”

 

“Our ceremony was held at the Southwark Registry Office in Peckham (London) and the reception took place at the Greenwich Yacht Club right by the Thames. We lived in South East London at the time and decided to keep it local. The Yacht Club is the first and only venue we visited and we loved it straight away – it was not a wedding venue, it had a large outdoor space overlooking the river and it was really flexible.”

“Wedding rings were purchased from Goldsmiths and engraved with each other’s initials and wedding date.”

“Our photographers Paul and Kelly of Paul Joseph Photography were amazing. We found them on a blog where they featured as part of someone else’s wedding. We loved their style and approach to photography and thought they suited our relaxed way of thinking.”

“We skyped them and they agreed to photograph our wedding. On the day they were fantastic, reminding Paul of things to do, liaising with guests and each other, calming me – just brilliant. We loved having them there and the photos were beautiful as expected.”

“We used taxis to get to the ceremony. We hired an open-rooftop double decker red bus to transport guests from the ceremony to the reception.”

“Philip from Traditional Travel was lovely and really accommodating (particularly with reserving a closed top bus in case of rain).”

“We wanted to keep with the theme and go hassle-free and paperless. We chose Greenvelope for all our invitations and thank yous. I highly recommend them.”

“Emily Gillan at Purple Grape Catering provided all our food. We asked Emily if we could have a BBQ on the amazing outdoor terrace of the GYC and she made it happen. She even kept the rain away!”

“Being Belgian, we decided to go for a sweet table made of Belgian specialties rather than a cake – this included  sweets, sugar and fruit tarts, javanais cake, belgian chocolates, speculoos biscuits and homemade waffles from my gran.”

“My parents brought everything from Brussels the night before. Tarts came from ‘Les tartes de Francoise’.”

“All small decorations were homemade, from the 150 gold sprayed glass bottles and jars for flowers to our large ‘C&P’ letters, wedding board and table runners.

The The Greenwich Yacht Club organised indoor and outdoor festoon lighting for us with his suppliers.”

“The speeches were amazing and had everyone in tears (happy tears!). I did not think Paul was much of a public speaker but he blew me away, his speech was really funny and touching. He even promised to everyone he would learn French, starting the following week – and he has been ever since!”

“We chose Sweet Disposition by The Temper Trap for our first dance. It’s a band we have seen live and this song always reminds me of Paul.”

Words of Wedded Wisdom

“One of my clients sent me an email just days before the wedding to wish me a beautiful day. In her email she gave me this advice; ‘make sure you both take a 10-minute time out just the two of you to take it all in as it goes so quickly’. I’d give the same advice to anyone getting married.

We had a lot of people attending from overseas and with foresight it would have been nice to plan something for the evening before or the day after the wedding. In all honesty there was already so much to do we couldn’t have done any more.”

Love and thanks to you Celine and Paul and congratulations from the whole team at Love My Dress.

Readers, if you love this photography, I encourage you to explore more from Paul Joseph Photography whose work regularly features on our wedding blog pages – I’m a huge fan and recommend them most highly indeed.

Have a lovely Monday all and good luck to those of you trying to juggle work and school holidays this week!

Annabel xx