A Colourful, Contemporary Wedding at The Mitre, Hampton Court

Becca and Joe’s August wedding at The Mitre Hampton Court was modern, stylish and bursting with character. A vibrant palette of pinks, reds and oranges electrified the styling and set the tone for a joy-filled, celebratory day beside the Thames.

Becca wore a fitted, square-necked Alyssa Kristin gown that she discovered at the Lovely Bride London boutique – her gown choice was a perfect match for the modern aesthetic with scenes punctuated with colourful blooms and stylish details including stationery handmade by the bride.

Much adored recommended suppliers, This Modern Revelry, documented this beautiful day with their signature mix of energy and emotion, in both photography and videography. We couldn’t recommend them more – enjoy!

Our venue was The Mitre, Hampton Court, London. We loved how it was on the Thames, and loved the idea of a summers day with everyone outside (but also that everyone was covered if it rained). The interior décor is also beautiful, and it is only around 30 minutes from us. We had a relatively small day ceremony and invited all our friends and family friends to the evening, so this was quite important to us that no one had to travel too far.

I really struggled with a styling concept for our wedding, but when we found the venue, everything clicked into place and I mainly got inspiration looking at previous weddings at the venue. They hosted lots of styled shoots there too from floral and bridesmaid dress companies which I loved, which is how I found my other suppliers as I loved the overall vibe from those photoshoots.

The venue itself is very kitsch and had a unique style, so I knew I wanted lots of colour and nothing too formal.

My mum walked me down the aisle to the sound of ‘Here Comes The Sun’, by The Beatles. My two sisters who were bridesmaids walked down before us, with my nephew who was our Page Boy.

I had loved the flowers I’d seen in the photoshoots at The Mitre (which I’d spotted via @maidstomeasure on Instagram), and loved all the bright florals. I reached out to Chelsea of Fika Florals and had a zoom call with her and we got on so well straight away.

I was fairly chilled with all my briefs, as I wanted to leave things with the experts and let them have some creative freedom. I talked her through some pinterest boards and met her in person when she was at a wedding showcase.

I’d seen loads of pictures of gorgeous floral arches and pillars at the end of the aisle and knew I really wanted something like that as a feature. We made some tweaks throughout, as I changed from long tables to round tables a couple of months before the wedding, but she was amazing and I couldn’t have been happier with the result. I also thought she was super reasonable price wise for the results, as I think they looked really high-end.

My dad passed away in 2018, so I had a lovely pendant on my florals which my mum and sisters gave me. We opted for quite a short ceremony and instead made our speeches a bit longer – My mum, Joe, Joe’s brother (best man), and I did speeches.

Our photographer’s were This Modern Revelry – I’d seen a video of a wedding of some mutual friends, and I had watched it no joke 30+ times and followed them on Instagram since.

I thought if I had watched someone else’s wedding video that many times, how nice would it be to have something like that that people enjoy watching over and over.

I loved how our videographer created films that were like music videos. All the videos they created looked like such good, fun times. When they said they were free for our date we were absolutely buzzing. I’d recommend them wholeheartedly. I also felt we designed elements of the day with the photography in mind. We leant into more bright colours as we loved the way they edit their photos.

My friend Sophie captured the morning, ceremony and drinks reception as our content creator. We had her for four hours and she sent all the videos the next morning and had edited 3 gorgeous reels that let us reminisce literally the day after.

We both lived and grew up in similar areas, so always had mutual friends and knew of each other. We actually had our first kiss in Ayia Napa when we were 17, and eventually started dating at 19.

We got engaged in Dubai on New Years Eve, 2021 on a private yacht trip, which funnily enough almost got cancelled because it was torrential rain (and proceeded to be torrential rain for our entire holiday). Luckily the rain cleared enough for us to get on, and the sunshine came out for the afternoon. We had been together for 9 years when we got married.

We took the boat out down the Thames before the evening guests arrived and before our entry. This was so nice to have some more time together before the evening kicked off. It was golden hour and our first proper drink, so we had a toast on the boat and a bit of calm before the storm!

I designed and all our stationery myself, taking a lot of inspo from the likes of @peachwolfe, and got everything printed via Printed. We bought tassles off Shein to add to all the table settings which I loved, to double up as a bookmark favour (as we didn’t do table favours).

he invites were pink and orange, and the guests really took the hint and all dressed in bright summery colours, which meant our pictures looked even better!

We had a sweetheart table which I loved. It gave us time to decompress after the high emotions from the ceremony, and after saying hi to everyone at the drinks reception (which I found was the most overwhelming part of the day). It was so nice to have some time just together to catch up and not have to socialise with other people.

My friend’s younger brother, Tom T Bakes, made our cake. It was unreal, I think it was chocolate and Biscoff on one tier and traditional sponge on the other. He also made some tray bakes so we could make sure everyone had cake.

We had Emma James there all day – Joe’s mum actually heard her sing at a local pub and sent us loads of videos as she was singing all the songs we love Nora Jones, Luther Vandross, Joss Stone and Gabrielle etc. She sung us down the aisle to a slower version of ‘Here Comes The Sun’, by the Beatles and sang through our drinks reception. For our entrance to the evening, we got a boat down the thames into the venue and she sung Whitney Houston’s Million Dollar Bill which was amazing.

At around 9pm Joe’s brother and his friends DJ’d for us, as they have an amazing DJ group, Bedfactory Records.

Our first dance was to ‘Let’s Stay Together’, by Al Green. After we got engaged, we listened to Al Green all afternoon on the boat, so we always said we would want him to be our first dance. Afterwards, we had ‘Never Too Much’, by Luther Van Dross, to get people dancing.

Allow way more time than you think you need for getting ready so you don’t stress.

Drink water! Use the morning and wedding breakfast to rehydrate as it’s probably the only time you’ll drink water.

Pick suppliers you love and trust so you don’t have to micromanage them.

You can spend a fortune on the smaller details, try not to get sucked in by it all. People really don’t care about your wedding favours and they probably wont take them, so save yourself the money.

We loved not going on our honeymoon straight away. We had a mini moon to Prague a couple of days later, and went on honeymoon to Bali about 6 weeks after the wedding. It dragged on the celebrations and meant we could really decompress and get excited for the Honeymoon rather than it all being over straight away.

It really is the best day ever, so soak up every minute! Also, I didn’t drink too much which I’m really glad about. You’re so high on adrenaline you don’t need it, and it meant I woke up hangover free and remembered the whole day. I’d have been devastated to have forgotten any details.

We spent about £5K more than our initial budget and although it was a lot of money, I don’t have any regrets. We were very lucky to have help from family, and we had savings that we used, so we didn’t spend beyond our means and we paid it all off beforehand. I think if I was still paying off credit cards after the day I would have felt a bit regretful.

We decided not to do an open bar and this was one of our best decisions too. For the evening we pre-ordered bottles of wine and beer, and all our evening guests got a glass of prosecco on arrival. We told our venue to let us know when the drinks were gone so we could decide if we wanted to put money behind the bar, which we decided against on the day. People were drinking so much that it wouldn’t have made a dent and wouldn’t have been noticed or appreciated, so we were really glad we weren’t hit with a big bill the following morning.

We made a wedding website on WithJoy which we found really simple to use and loved the guest list feature. We did make a gift registry via Prezola which we linked, but we only added the option for people to send money, rather than adding gifts – adding gifts felt a little old school and we didn’t like the idea of sending a shopping list of presents. We’d been to a wedding in the summer and loved how you could send money via Apple Pay instead of having to bring cash, so we added just one Cash Gift option where people could give whatever they liked.

The only thing I think I would have done differently is take more time deciding on my dress. I got a bit sucked into ‘saying yes to the dress’ – when I tried it on I loved it and got emotional, but I think if I hadn’t paid for it right there and then, I would have been able to have a look around and have bought it second hand.

I don’t have any regrets about budget, but I dothink it was a lot of money to spend on a dress that I’ll never wear again. 

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