Good morning lovely ones, I'm hoping you're reading this whilst sat comfortably with a nice cup of tea and looking forward to the week ahead. And to give you a great start to the week, I've chosen the most beautiful wedding to share with you - this really is something special and I hope that it touches your heart as much as it has mine.
Ricky and Laura tied the knot 'Wed Fest' style on 23rd June last year at Cornish Tipis in Pendoggett, Cornwall. There are so many things I am in total love with about this wedding, but I think what melted my heart from the start was Laura's divine wedding dress...
"I
think I always knew that I wanted an original vintage wedding dress. I
tried on lots of dresses and as a result, I loved pretty
much everything I tried on! Because of this, I decided that I wasn't going to be one of those brides who had an ‘I just knew’ moment. But then I went to The Vintage Wedding Dress Company!
Love My Dress Wedding Blog - Mike Kelly + Kim Appleby (via the venue, Cornish Tipis in Pendoggett, Cornwall)
"I selected some dresses to try on and
when I tried on the first one I had chosen I just knew! I absolutely
loved it and I just knew that if anyone else bought it I would be
devastated. So we put down a deposit on it and from then on I didn’t
look back.
I loved that my wedding dress was original vintage, I loved the lace
sleeves that came down to a point on my hand, I loved the detail on the
back and the fact that it was quite full while still being fitted in all
the right places and without being a meringue. Mostly I loved how it
made me feel – like a bride and a bride at exactly the type of wedding
that I was having."
"We used Daisy Roots Florist
based in Truro because I felt like they really ‘got’ what we were
trying to achieve. My specification for the flowers was that I wanted
the bouquet to look like I had run through a field gathering flowers on
my way to the ceremony, which was exactly what it looked like! They used
local wild flowers and put together bouquets for me and the bridesmaids
and even the button holes were really individual and included local,
wild flowers which really suited the venue and the style of the day. I
also bought lots of the flowers at a local wholesale flower market which
enabled us to make all the table decorations and the wedding pavilion
the day before.
Doing it this way saved so much money, although took a
good few man hours on the day before the wedding. They looked great
though and it’s an easy way of saving some money if you’ve got people
that can help."
"I knew that I wanted to have flowers in my hair so I spoke to my
florist really early on to get some ideas of what she would be able to
do. I couldn’t believe what she came up with, they were so perfect
really subtle, intricate and delicate and even had bits of ‘lambs tail’
in it which was a plant I really associated with my childhood."
"We got married at Cornish Tipis in Pendoggett, Cornwall.
We decided that we wanted a wedding that was like a music festival
really early on in the planning stages so our venue choice needed to
reflect the theme. We wanted somewhere where all of our guests could
camp, somewhere where that reflected the spirit of the Glastonbury vibe
we were going for and somewhere where we could get married and have the
reception all in one place.
When we found Cornish Tipis, we just knew it
was the right place for us – we stood in the wedding pavilion in a glade
in the woods with a stream running past us and it just summed up
everything we wanted it to be."
"Glastonbury
is a big part of both of our lives, as well as something that brings
all our friends together once a year. The fact that it wasn’t happening
in 2012 opened a window for everyone to spend that weekend at our
wedding instead.
We quickly decided that Glastonbury (and festivals in
general) would be the inspiration for our day and thus, Wedfest was
born!
My husband is a music promoter so it was easy for
us to find lots of bands and acts that would perform on the day. In the
end we had two full bands and four singer songwriters perform during the
course of the day. As well as a music festival theme I really wanted
the day to have a casual, outdoor country fair type feel and so the
choices of dresses, suits, activities and overall style followed on from
that."
"I am a very optimistic person and I was adamant that it wasn’t
going to rain, despite the forecasts consistently predicting rain. In
the end it only rained after our photos were taken and we were tucked
away in the marquee but it did mean that all the outdoor games we’d
hired went to waste (although having now watched the video there were
some brave souls bowling in the rain and they did get used the next day
when we had bacon sarnies all together in the sunshine!).
So therefore, I
guess I would say that as hard as it is, try not to get blindsided into
only planning for one weather type – we do live in England after all.
What was I thinking? Of course it was going to rain – I did want a
Glastonbury wedding after all!"
"I loved being walked down the aisle by my Dad. When we pulled up
at the venue and the music started I realised that I was going to start
crying. My bridesmaids and my page boy got out of the carriage and
started walking towards the pavilion and my Dad just looked at me and
said “it’s ok to cry, just take your time” so we sat in the carriage for
a little while longer and then when I felt like I’d pulled myself
together we got out and walked towards the pavilion with all my friends
and family looking at me. I cried all the way, but having my Dad with me
and squeezing my hand was really beautiful.
When I first met Ricky he introduced me to a musician called
Bright Eyes and there was a particular track that I had a real affinity
to. From the first time I heard ‘First Day of my Life’
I knew it would be the track I’d walk down the aisle to and that was a
long time before I knew it would be Ricky that I was marrying. It’s a
really meaningful song to me and to us as a couple so no wonder I found
it difficult to hold it together while I was walking towards my future
husband and all my friends and family!"
"We had an artist friend of ours design our wedding invitations in
the style of a Glastonbury ticket and along with the invitation we sent a
wedding booklet which we designed ourselves. We had a local
reprographics centre print them all out for us and we organised for the
front cover to be cut out which gave it a really festival-ly feel!
We
had the front cover cut out in wood and made into the sign that welcomed
people into the site. We also had an artist design a map for the whole
site which we put up around the site so that people could find their way
around."
"We both absolutely loved the ceremony. I’ve been to weddings before
where the ceremony feels like the bit that people want to get out of
the way so they can have a big party. I wanted it to be absolutely clear
that the reason that everyone was there to watch us get married and to
share the moment with us when we became husband and wife.
We worked
really hard to make the ceremony personal to us, with lots of music,
singing, readings, a handfasting ceremony and even a flash mob! The
ceremony was incredibly emotional, I could cry now just thinking about
it, but that’s just because it meant such a lot to me."
"I was living in Manchester in 2008 and I was looking
for a new flatmate. The girl I chose was called Paula and she introduced
me to Ricky who was one of her best friends and lived just round the
corner from us. We started seeing each other pretty much instantly and
then when we’d being going out for around a year Paula decided to move
out so it was an easy decision for Ricky to move in with me. A year
later and Ricky was taking me to New York to celebrate my 30th birthday.
On the actual day of my birthday Ricky took me to Central Park and we
had lunch at the restaurant on the lake and went on the carousel.
He then took me to poets walk and we took photos of Shakespeare
and the other poets statues. As we walked along Ricky was slowing down
and I couldn’t figure out why as it was so cold! He then turned to me
and said “actually, I’ve written a poem for you”. He then spoke out his
poem, the last line of which was “will you marry me?” and he got down on
one knee and proposed. I instantly started crying and said yes. We
decided to get married a year and a half later in June as it coincided
with the fallow year of Glastonbury so the idea of having a festival
wedding all tied in with the date as well."
'Whilst we didn't hire a wedding planner, we did have enormous amounts of help from my Mum and my amazing friends! "A couple of weeks before the wedding I invited lots of my most
creative friends over for bubbly and cake and we decorated hundreds of
jam jars with sequins, material and glitter glue. We also made flags for
people to wave at the ceremony which said things like ‘yey’, ‘wohoo’
and ‘yippee’!"
"I originally wanted my bridesmaids to wear different
dresses in a single colour theme, but finding dresses that are different
but the same colour is harder than you might think. Then I saw an
article about twobirds Bridesmaids on Love My Dress
so I wanted to take my bridesmaids along to the store to see whether
they’d like them. We all fell in love that day, the colour that we all
liked seemed to look good on each of them in different ways and they
each found a style and way of wearing the dress that they were happy
with."
"The bridesmaids all chose their own shoes but there was a long
period of emailing suggestions between themselves. I wanted them all to
wear wedges and in the end they all chose something very similar.
As the presents to my bridesmaids on the morning of the
wedding I gave them each a vintage brooch to wear on the day. I had been
scouring vintage shops along Brick Lane in London for weeks before
until I found the perfect ones!"
"Since the whole day was outside and mostly on grass I figured that
wearing wedges was probably the best idea. However, finding wedges that
would match my dress and were the right height was particularly tricky.
Then I accidentally fell into Jimmy Choo
and there they were! I spent a little bit of time deciding whether I
could justify the money and pretty quickly realised that my wedding day
is the one day that I’m happy to spend money on!"
As it was a festival
wedding I thought I should probably also have some wellies and found and
ordered some Weddington Boots
online. Looking back I’m glad I did as the weather wasn’t particularly
kind to us so I was really glad of them when I was dancing in the mud at
the late night party!"
"My veil was from Luellas Boudoir. I
needed the veil to suit the dress and I went along to Louella’s Boudoir
where we looked at a range of materials, trims and lengths – they even
arranged to have the veil dyed to match the colour of my dress. The veil
we chose was absolutely perfect, matched the dress and the day in the
best way possible."
"Ricky really wanted something with a vintage feel so we spent a lot
of time looking for a vintage suit, or at least vintage accessories! We
eventually were surprised to find the ideal suit in Top Man so we bought the jacket and trousers there and got a vintage waistcoat from Absolute Vintage and a gorgeous hat from Beyond Retro
(both in Shoreditch in London).
We also got Ricky’s shoes from Topman
and as a wedding present I bought him a vintage pocket watch from a shop
on Brick Lane and had it engraved. It looked really great on his suit
on the day!"
"I was lucky enough to end up having two photographers which was
amazing! The photographer we chose was a friend of ours, Mike Kelly,
which lots of people said was a risk but for us it worked perfectly. Ricky isn't a massive fan of having his photograph taken so having
someone that we knew behind the camera was a really lovely addition to
our day. Not to mention that he's also FANTASTIC and took so many
beautiful photos that I love pouring over them again and again!
Our
second photographer Kim Appleby was provided by our wedding venue Cornish Tipis in Pendoggett. It was amazing to have two photographers as it meant that while
Mike was with us, Kim could be off photographing the guests and events
that we missed! It also meant that the venue had some photos that they
could use to publicise their site."
