Our blogging bride and Lovettes member Caroline is due to marry her Cinematographer and super 8mm film maker fiancé Will on 12th September in Sussex and their wedding is due to be photographed by Tarah Coonan. You can connect with Caroline on Instagram and Pinterest and read her previous Lovettes features here. This is Caroline’s second post for Love My Dress. Enjoy!
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Every Bride that I’ve met since getting engaged has mentioned how quickly the time before the big day flies by, and with just four months to go until our wedding, I can totally see what they mean. Will and I are getting married in September at the Wilderness Wood in East Sussex – not strictly speaking a wedding venue, and therefore a bit of a blank canvas. Each time we visit the Woodland, we’ve been filled with excitement at all the creative opportunities this presents, but also a little trepidation at how much there is to organise.
With advice ringing in my ears (failure to prepare is preparation to fail – urghh!), I put all of our free weekends into a calendar and penciled in our tasks – quite a stressful and boring thing to do. We usually fill our free time with fun and whilst wedding planning should be fun, when you put anything into timetable it starts to look a bit like work. So we’re doing our best to keep it loose and to only look at the schedule as a rough guide.
When we first got engaged I loved the idea of creating and designing the whole day. Will and I would sit together for hours, dreaming up crazy ideas, like a miniature train carrying chocolates around the table. We soon learned that there is enough to organise at a wedding without designing your seating plan around a train-set, and also that there’s no harm in delegating. It’s wonderful to get everyone involved and a good excuse to Skype more often.
We’ve found it really touching that so many people have come forward to offer their skills and to get involved in the making of our wedding. My maid of honour (who is due to give birth 2 days after the wedding day!) is growing edible flowers for the salads, another brilliantly talented friend is helping build and decorate the bar, my Aunt has taken on the floristry, my Dad has drawn up a 3D architect’s plan of the marquee, the list goes on and on. Amazing. All of them.
Apart from films, Will’s favourite wedding activity is collecting. He loves few things more than rummaging through junk and finding bargains and is currently polishing his way through a job lot of 100 filthy brass candlesticks that he bought at auction. He’s also growing a great little collection of vintage cameras to place on the tables for guests to use. In fact I think the tables will be one of the only things we’ll hire – he’s been very busy at the flea markets and charity shops!
Many of the brides I meet while filming for Cine Reportage have also found their thing, and have put a lot of work into their weddings, whether it’s floristry, designing their invites, sourcing vintage items or making 200 perfect macaroons! It’s a great time to push yourself creatively, and to try new projects.
The milestone of entering married life has led me to take a closer look at who I am, what I want in life, and where I’m at in my career. I don’t think I’m alone here, and it’s no wonder that many people have developed these mini wedding projects into full on, grown up careers; The Fabulous Vintage Bride, Gillion Million and of course Annabel at Love My Dress to name but a few.
The wedding industry offers huge opportunities for creative careers – many people are looking for bespoke products, it’s about selling something incredible and beautiful once, or a few times. There are more possibilities to use materials and techniques that are too expensive for mass production, but never too lovely for that one special day. Short production runs also mean that start-up costs and overheads can be kept relatively low. The project that has most excited me is the design of the invitations.
In my day job I design almost entirely digitally, so it was really liberating getting back to paper and paint again. The arrival of the invitations from the printers was super exciting. I’d love to do it again for other brides and got to work designing some new ranges of stationery, but soon realized that there are plenty of other wedding related things to do for our day. For the time being at least, I’m going to keep my focus on our own wedding!
It’s been really lovely to document each part of our wedding planning and with so many more wedding projects to go for us before September, and so many lovely blog posts to read on Love my Dress I’m really looking forward to the next 4 months of our journey.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. I’d love to hear from others who are thinking about taking the ideas and skills that they’ve developed in their wedding planning to another level.
Caroline xxx