Right, well, if any of you out there are mothers with children who are ill, you'll know why we're a little late this morning with our first post! Sorry about that everyone, but we're back on track, and now have some lovely posts to share with you today, starting off with this one, the wedding of Francesca and Andy, who tied the knot on 22 September 2012 at Newington
Green Unitarian Church, London, followed by a reception at Abney Public Hall, Stoke
Newington.
Francesca and Andy had acutally already been away to secretly get married, but they also wanted to celebrate the occasion with their friends, so this is what happened...
"We actually ran
off to Gretna Green just the two of us to get married in June, it was
really important to do that part on our own and while we still saw
September as the ‘wedding’, we knew we wanted to be the hosts of a party
that was just as much about everyone else as it was about us, so we
invited lots of people to come forward with ideas and contributions as
we really wanted to make it a party everyone would be excited about.
The
idea of a sitdown, formal bash filled both of us with horror! We didn’t
want fuss or huge detail and credit has to go to my good friend Beth
Murray, crafty extraordinaire, of 'Handpicked House' who had most of the ‘vision’ about style
and décor..."
Love My Dress Wedding Blog - Photography Copyright (c) 2012, Lisa Carpenter
I am in love with these LOVE letters from Vowed and Amazed! Did you know you can order your own personalised light up letter signs from Vowed and Amazed too?
"I wanted everything as handmade and mismatched as possible, in
keeping with our relaxed vibe and we were really looking to create a
sort of festival/village fete type style. So many of our creative
friends offered to help in designing, decorating and lending us
materials. Andy is a musician and we have many talented friends in great
bands, who were all delighted to be asked to play so it was more like a
big knees-up than a wedding!
As far as styling went, two things were important – no waste, and
everything just had to look pretty! This meant that instead of having
favours we wanted to decorate with things that our guests could take
home with them."
"As music is a big thing for both of us, we picked some of our
favourite love song lyrics, that meant a lot to our relationship. A
friend designed these into colourful prints in pastel colours which we
framed and hung round the hall, and people seemed to love spotting their
favourite lyrics. Guests were encouraged to take a print home with them
- they went very quickly!"
"We met online dating, and had been together about 18 months
when we got engaged. Neither of us are particularly traditional and
there was no huge proposal, we had talked about it for a while. One
evening, a bit drunk, we just decided to go for it. I later learned
there had been a planned proposal involving a hot air balloon trip that
had been previously cancelled 4 times due to bad weather so if he’d
waited for that to happen (it never actually did by the way!) we
probably wouldn’t be married today.
As above,
neither of us wanted ‘weddingy’ at all, we just wanted to throw a great
party. It was important that everyone felt relaxed, and free to just
enjoy themselves without the pressure of being forced to sit next to
someone and having to endure endless speeches. We were adamant we didn’t
want a massive fuss – having already done the marriage bit on our own –
and just wanted as many of our family and friends to come together for a
big party."
"Andy already had a tailor-made suit which he was fine to wear again"
"I had no fixed ideas about my bouquet, just that I wanted something
red in it. I went to Dansk Flowers as I pass them fairly often, had a
chat with the owner, she showed me some pictures of previous things
she’d done and together we picked red anemone, viburnum, white
snowberries, astrantia and bupleurum foliage. It arrived on the morning
and was spot on. Very reasonable too!"
"I had originally thought I wanted red shoes but couldn’t find
anything I liked. A friend of mine, Ellie, very sadly died two weeks
before her own wedding earlier this year and, in her honour, I bought
the same ones she had picked for her own big day from Rachel Simpson. It felt like she was with me that day."
What a lovely thing to do Francesca, this has really touched me...
"Our cake was made by the very talented sister of a friend, as a
gift. I hate fruit cake so chose a chocolate and white chocolate tier,
which was decorated beautifully with red flowers and fruits."
"To decorate the tables we used Michael Miller's 'Bird' fabric,
which we bought by the roll from eBay and cut into runners. We used
charity shop, china tea cups with candles, jars filled with sweeties and
lanterns.
We also used plain jam jars as candle holders, decorated with
both coloured patterned tape and lined with pages from a book on the
history of London to create a softer lighting glow. Bunting was again
from eBay, as were the bamboo tiki torches that made up the walkway
outside when it got dark."
"We didn’t want to spend hundreds on carefully crafted wedding
flowers that would just go to waste so instead ordered little pots of
herbs, which people were encouraged to
take home as a lasting, growing keepsake of the day - plus, they made
the hall smell wonderful! We chose herbs that had a historic connection
to love, and we put them in stainless steel pots to stop them looking
too twee. My friend Lisa designed stickers that went on all of the herbs
which asked people to take them home, which meant a lot of drunken
people weaving into the night brandishing rosemary pots!
We also went to New Covent Garden wholesale flower market
at 5am the morning before the wedding where we had our pick of the
freshest, cheapest flowers which we arranged in vases Beth had brought
from home, including rustic farm jugs and Rob Ryan vases. We used vast
bunches of multicoloured hydrangeas mixed with pink snowberries, using
small bunches in jam jars which we dotted around the hall. It was £4 for
a car to get in - and I'd recommend the early morning trip to any bride
as the whole room only cost about £70 to fill with flowers!"
"My dress was Katrina, by Anoushka G and it was from Morgan Davies in Islington. I
knew I didn’t want anything strapless with the typical big skirt. Andy
would have died on the spot if I’d turned up in something huge! I hate
shopping and gave myself one day to find a dress. I took a friend,
Laura, who had arranged appointments for us in three very different
shops/studios.
Initially we thought we had found ‘the one’ in the second
place we went to and even stopped for champagne to congratulate
ourselves.However this dress was quite expensive and even though I had reservations about Morgan Davies
(I really wasn’t keen on anything ‘bridal’) we decided we should go and
take a look anyway. Laura pulled out the dress and my first thought was
'it’s white. Absolutely not!'"
"It seemed so bright compared to the
racks of ivory. I tried it anyway and immediately loved it, it had such a
simple line which made the fairly heavy embellishments stand out on
their own without being too much. It also had a beautiful lace back
which provided enough detail without being garish. And it was half the
price of the first one!
Everyone had said “ooooh go for Jenny Packham”
but having already seen two brides with the same JP dress, I knew I
wanted something that not everyone would have."
"Our photographer Lisa Carpenter was recommended by a friend. Our aversion to all things
‘wedding’ meant that, initially, we were thinking we wouldn’t bother
with a professional photographer as we couldn’t bear the thought of
being made to stand against a tree looking wistful, yuk. But we were
rightly talked into it by friends and having looked at Lisa’s website
and her previous work as a music photographer in New York, we were
seriously impressed.
They say the mark of a good
photographer is that you don’t notice they’re there and I did wonder
whether Lisa would have got anything decent as we barely seemed to see
her all day. But when she sent the pics through, we were amazed. She
literally had been there at every moment. She didn’t make us do the
painful staged shots although did borrow us for half an hour for a walk
round the beautiful cemetery opposite and this was where some of our
favourite pictures happened. She also made a slideshow
of the pictures set to music, which was the most wonderful thing ever
and we have watched it about 100 times. The way she chose the music
meant it really felt like we were reliving the day, completely."
