A Short Wedding Dress and Ballet Pumps ∼ Effortlessly Chic Style…

I put a little message out on Twitter yesterday about how Bride's don't HAVE to break the bank to obtain their perfect wedding dress.  Indeed, there are plenty of lovely options available on the high-street these days, as Bride Kath here discovered when planning her own wedding. Kath tied the knot with Husband Ian on 15 May 2010, at Friars Court in Clanfield, Oxfordshire.

I think it goes without saying what drew me immediately to this wedding – the beautiful short wedding dress!  Or, the 'Paula Rose Tunic' as it is better known – from Monsoon.  I love it's nod towards 1960's shift style;  "I had in mind something lacey and vintage, but having tried some more 'conventional (if that's the right word?!) dresses on I decided that a big or long dress was not for me, I just felt swamped in the ones I tried.  I also didn't want to spend so much money on a long beautiful dress and then drag it through the mud if the weather was bad!

I was horribly busy with work in the lead up to the wedding, and didn't really start looking for my dress until about 3 or 4 months before – most “proper” wedding shops have a turn-around of at least that long (if not longer), and I couldn't face the idea of only getting my dress a week before the wedding.  So with all of that in mind, off the peg seemed like the best idea…"  

These photographs were shot by Bournemouth Wedding Photographer Phillip Allen, who was assisted on the day by Simon Fazackarley; "We actually know Phill from when he was our lecturer at Bournemouth Uni. The photography was a really important part of our day, not just to have some nice photos of the two of us, but also of our amazing friends and families, and to document our day in general. Phill's style fitted perfectly with what we wanted, and on top of that he's a really great guy, so we didn't think twice about it. One of the best decisions we made was to have him do our photography (especially when he ended up bringing a second photographer, the brilliant Simon Fazackarley, with him on the day!)"

Love My Dress Wedding Blog – Photography Copyright (c) 2010, Phill Allen, assisted by Simon Fazackarley

Pretty High Street Find…

"My mum had been looking around and spotted that her local Monsoon had loads of wedding dresses in stock, so she booked me a personal shopper there – I can't recommend it enough (and I'm really not much of a shopper!) They had a lovely big comfortable room out the back with sofas, and the assistant had put out all the dresses in my size, as well as loads of shoes and accessories -  my Mum, sister Claire and I had a great time.

The first dress I tried I'd already seen on the website and thought it looked very “me”. When I tried it on I loved it, and both my mum and sister agreed that it was totally my style – a bit different, not too fussy but very pretty! The other dresses were all beautiful too, but I'm quite short and petite, and most of them would have needed some serious surgery to get them to fit me properly. So it was a bit of a no-brainer when it fitted me and looked lovely – I can't imagine having worn anything else now!

I also chose lots of little sparkly slide clips from Accessorize but decided against a necklace as the neck line on my dress was quite high.  I did wear a pair of little pale pink pearl drop earrings that my friend Danai gave me for my birthday a few years ago, and a freshwater pearl bracelet that Ian bought me for Christmas last year."

"For our invitations, orders of service and other stationary bits and pieces, we had used brown recycled card and recycled paper with flecks of grass or seeds in, and we used the same card and paper for some smaller decorations in the barn."

 

Wedding Day Heels? No thanks…

"I never wear high heels, but I thought I'd give it a try. I looked everywhere, but couldn't find anything that fitted and that I liked. I ended up buying my little gold flat shoes {they cost £16 from Dorothy Perkins!} as a back up plan while I carried on looking for something more fancy, but once I'd bought them I decided that I liked them, and also that I had more important things to worry about! Also far more practical for tromping round a muddy garden (we were convinced that the weather was going to be rubbish!!)"

 

Elegant Florals…  

Flowers were provided by Green and Gorgeous Flowers…

"Jo and Rachel at Green and Gorgeous were amazing. We explained the sort of look we were going for, and they were great at suggesting different flowers and foliage that would suit in terms of colours and for the time of year. We originally were going for a deep purple, but once I had bought my dress, it made sense to soften it up to tie the colours in with the embroidery on that, so we settled on a mix of pale lilac, soft apricots and lots of greens and creams, which looked amazing..."

 

Ian wore a Paul Smith suit… "I love that Ian's outfit cost about 5 times more than mine!"

Friars Court…

"We looked for quite a while for somewhere where we could have both the ceremony and reception. After failing to find anywhere that quite fitted what we were after, we decided that maybe a registry office ceremony, followed by a marquee-type affair somewhere pretty might be suit better. So we actually stumbled upon Friars Court as a marquee venue, rather than somewhere you could have the ceremony!  With Friars Court, we found that not only could you have the reception in the gardens,  the barn or in a marquee, but also they have several licensed areas (including some outdoors) to have the civil ceremony. Being able to have the whole day in one location was great, and to be able to have the ceremony performed outside was just amazing – we hadn't even considered that that might be possible!

Location wise it was perfect as most of our friends and family are based either in Abingdon or in London, so not too far for anyone to travel. After our first visit we knew it was perfect for the day we wanted. We ended up ditching the marquee idea as the gardens and barn were so lovely – we had the ceremony in the garden (with the legal bits under the Rose Arbour), a drinks reception / tea and cakes in the garden, and the wedding breakfast and evening fun in the Stone Barn.

Even though we were to have the ceremony outside, if the weather had been bad the back up plan was to have it in the little garden room instead (although we were prepared with wedding wellies!) Fortunately, even though every day before and after the wedding was cloudy and rainy, we had a lovely sunny day!"

Bridesmaids…

"My bridesmaid, Joli, and Matron of Honour, my sister Claire, both chose their own dresses. It wasn't important to me that they matched, wore a particular colour or something I chose – I just wanted them to wear something that they loved and felt comfortable and happy in! Joli wore a black and cream dress from Coast with a cream shrug, and Claire wore a lovely purple dress and wrap from Debenhams. I loved the fact that they wore what they wanted to, they both looked amazing!

My flower girls, my nieces (Claire's daughters) Emilie and Olivia, wore lovely dresses from Monsoon. We let them choose their own dresses, and they both wanted the same one – they've been wearing them as party dresses since, so they're getting their money's worth too!

Claire and Joli had the same flowers as I did – a beautiful mix of pale lilac roses, anemones and lilacs. The smell of the lilacs was amazing! For the button holes, we had the pale lilac roses for Ian and the best men, and a smaller version for the ushers. The best thing about G&G is that all the flowers come from their own cutting garden, so we were able to go there the week before the wedding, and they actually showed us which flowers were in bloom.

My sister took Flower-girls Emilie and Olivia to hobbycraft where they chose their own fake flowers – a much for durable option!"

 

Garden Decor…

"In terms of decor, the garden and garden room were easy enough – they both needed very little! We bought some lovely wooden hearts which we hung from branches of the tree and from the beams in the garden room using lilac, cream and pale green ribbons. We also hung some small mirrors inside the huge bush that you walk through after crossing the bridge across the moat..."

What a cute hemline! I really do love this wedding dress, it suits Kath so very perfectly…

Rings…

The couple's rings were by Chris Parry…

"We wanted to have our fingerprints on the inside of the rings, and also liked the idea of having them designed and made by someone independent. Through the magic of the interweb we found Chris Parry, who does fingerprint wedding rings. He's based in Gravesend, which is pretty easy to get to from from where we live in Wapping so we popped out to see him. I have Ian's fingerprint on the inside of my ring, and he has mine on his, both rings made of palladium. Chris also ended up making my engagement ring, which was a bespoke design and turned out beautifully. He's a lovely lovely guy, we were so glad that we found him!"

Venue Decor…

"Inside the barn we had lots of flowers – a large flower ball with lilacs and lots of greens and creams hanging from the central beam and greenery wrapped around the beams – you got a lovely waft of lilac when you walked underneath! The table centres were ivy and flower heads in similar colours, and then we had vases of lilacs in the alcoves and foxgloves along the front of the stage, all in the same pale apricot, lilac and green and cream mix.

In addition to the flowers, we had fairy lights and driftwood wooden hearts along the stage front, and lanterns hanging from the beams and in the alcoves. On the left as you entered the barn we put out some small tables and chairs for the kiddies with some puzzles and fun things for them to do (as well as some treats of course!).  The barn had some fairy lights and led uplighters already installed. The uplighters are great, you can adjust the colour to exactly what you'd like, so we ended up with a purpley colour, which looked fantastic! We were so taken with the uplighters that we ended up hiring some more so that they went all the way around the barn, and lit up the photo wall perfectly!

For the table plan we printed up lists with the table name and who was sitting on the table, decorated with our flowery motif on the paper, and taped them onto a blackboard. The table names were printed on the same paper and then sewn onto the card. For place names, we had some favour boxes (same card again!) which we stamped with peoples' names. Each box had a matchstick seed booklet and some badges (one chosen specifically for each person with some silly phrase or picture on, and then one printed with our flowery pattern)."

Food, Glorious Food…

Catering was provided by Sadlers Catering of Faringdon…

"We wanted something informal and relaxed, and decided on a tapas/mezze style starter, followed by a BBQ with lots of yummy salads and breads served to the tables. We didn't have dessert, as we wanted to make the most of our cupcakes, also supplied by Sadlers. Paul and Sietske were great, and loads of people commented on how nice the food was."

Love the table names! 🙂 {click to enlarge}

"We also pegged up loads of photos of us, our friends and family on some twine along the wall, which worked really well – people spent a lot of time looking and laughing at them!"

Finally, each person or couple was given a cd of our wedding mix (including the music from the ceremony, our first dance and few others). We had each CD printed to look like the card, with another flowery pattern on, and made up CD sleeves made of the recycled card. We used our Gocco machine to screen print the CD sleeves (we had also used it for the front of the invitations, orders of service etc etc)."

Cake…  

"Our caterers, Paul and Sietske from Sadlers Catering, supplied the cupcakes for us. We wanted cupcakes in different flavours, so we had chocolate, lemon and carrot cakes, with lovely colourful icing on top. They went down really well, and were all gone by the end of the night!

The caterers had a lovely wooden cake stand, and the florists decorated it with ivy and flower heads. It looked amazing!"

"Also for our cake toppers we had some little wooden people made by a lovely lady called Heather at a shop called “urastarhouse” on Etsy. We only ordered them 3 weeks before the wedding and she did a rush order for us – they're just amazing!"

Entertainment…

"We decided against having a DJ, and instead hired a PA and disco lights. We go to a lot of gigs and festivals with our friends, so it made sense to take advantage of that common interest and get everyone involved with the music! We had a little box on our RSVPs (which were tear-off postcards on the invites) for song requests, and we had some song requests from the kiddies too. Then we got a few of our close friends to each make a playlist of music that they liked. Our friend Simon then compiled it into a big play-list to run through the evening -  it turned out really well…"

One Day Like This…

Kath and Ian smooched to 'One Day Like This' by Elbow, for their First Dance…

"We were a bit apprehensive about the whole first dance thing, but it's such a great way to get people dancing and to transition from the afternoon into the evening party we decided to give it a go! When it comes to the first dance, you have to decide whether you're going to go all out with either having dance lessons or learning a routine, or just choose something that you can have a bit of a cuddle to. We opted for the latter, narrowing it down to three songs that we love and that had lyrics that were special and fitted for us. We then spent a few evenings attempting to dance round our living room (after a glass of wine or two!) and this was that one that worked.

The lyrics of 'One Day Like This' by Elbow are beautiful and appropriate (we discovered by going through our favourite music that we seem to like lots of music with really depressing lyrics!!), it was a nice speed for shuffling around to, and also it reminded us of going down to Gravesend and choosing our rings (the Elbow album it's from must have been on loop at Chris' shop!) Everyone joined in dancing with us after the first verse – it was such an amazing moment to look around and see all our favourite people in the world dancing with us…"

Wedding Day Inspiration…

"We started off by just thinking of all the things that we love to do the most – we love music, going to festivals, chilling in the sunshine having a picnic or bbq, and hanging out with our favourite people. So we just tried to incorporate as many of those things into our day as possible. Most of all tried, we to capture the mood of all those things – something relaxed, informal and fun. Once we found Friars Court, the rest just fell into place.

Our inspiration for a lot of the finer details came from trawling the internet for pictures of flowers, dresses, suits and decorations. We sent out our save the dates at Christmas, knowing that we were going to be busy at work and were quite likely to send out the invitations a bit late! They worked out so well that we carried the theme through with the invitations, order of service and in quite a few decorations for the barn."

"The most important thing about our day was that we got married. The next most important thing about our day was that we shared it with our very best friends and our close family. Everything else came far far behind on our list of priorities. I guess the big things to do were venue, caterers and florists, but once they were booked, we were so happy with them that we felt that any small details we could add were bonuses!

We kept this in mind, and managed to stay pretty unstressed throughout the whole process to be honest. I can only remember getting worried the last week, when our list of things to do was still huge! Also, we did it all together – from choosing the flowers, to staying up into the wee hours chopping up paper and gocco-ing invitations, to climbing up ladders to hang wooden hearts – so the whole thing was really fun, and I think brought us closer together in the end. It really was the product of all of our own choices, ideas and hard work. We both loved it!"

Words of Wedded Wisdom…

"I guess just try not to get too caught up in having the “perfect” day – I've spoken to friends who've got married and they've all said the same, that you end up stressing out about something small like the colour of the napkins, and then later realise that not one of your guests noticed them! Or other things like that. Remember that the most important thing is that you're getting married, and doing that surrounded by the people you love. That's all that really matters, everything else is just a nice bonus!"

Thank you so VERY much Katherine for sharing your wedding day story.  Special thanks too to the wonderful Photographers Phillip Allen and Simon Fazackarley. 

Have a lovely afternoon everyone 🙂

Annabel xXx

♥