When I read that Adam (Adam is the name of today’s groom as well as today’s writer – hope that doesn’t get too confusing) was a massive Beatles fan I would have put money on “Something” from Abbey Road as first song Choice.
Kate and Adam choose the lesser known but stupidly beautiful “I Will” from The White Album. In her report Kate included a few lyrics but I’ve jumped in and stolen them to put you all in the mood:
Love you forever and forever
Love you with all my heart
Love you whenever we’re together
Love you when we’re apart.
So simple, yet so effective. I don’t think you could sum up that sentiment any more succinctly – and Lenon and McCartney made it rhyme the show-offs!
Anyway – on with the show. Today’s images are all by the simply marvellous S6 Photography.
Rock my Wedding; you gave me much joy searching through your pages while I was getting ideas for my wedding and I may add, I’m still slightly obsessed …
The Right Decision.
We wanted to keep our day really intimate, it was really important to us both to just have the people who mean a lot to us and that did mean not having all the extended family and friends, which was sometimes a difficult decision, but definitely the right one in the end. We also decided that we wanted the ceremony quite late, we got married at 4.30pm, and because of that we skipped the sit-down meal part – which I had worried about a bit, but so many guests told us how much they loved the informal feel to the day and the meal was not missed at all – phew!
We found the perfect location in the Leopold Hotel, which is a beautiful boutique hotel in the centre of Sheffield. It’s an old grammar school which has been restored, so is a lovely mix of vintage and modern – just what we wanted.
Heavy Cream And Lace.
I knew from day one what sort of dress I wanted, I’m quite particular in the style of dress I usually wear and someone gave me some great advice; on your wedding day you should look like ‘you’, but just a more polished, glamorous ‘you’ – this really stuck with me and because I never wear strapless in the ‘real’ world, I didn’t want to do it on a day when everyone would be looking at me and taking photos! So, I knew I wanted something with lace and sleeves (which was also appropriate given the time of year) and something with a bit of a 60’s style as I absolutely love the 60s, especially the clothes!
I found the ‘one’ on Etsy while looking for something else…it’s an original 60s dress made entirely of gorgeous heavy cream lace and was just perfect.
Lace And Pearls.
I have really short hair, so I felt a headband would have looked a bit wrong and any sort of clip would have just fallen out, but I really felt I needed something in my hair to finish the look off, so I didn’t look like just a normal day. My hairdresser, Leigh, from the Cutting Room in Rotherham has cut my hair for years so I know she does a fantastic job, and on the day she not only made me look lovely, but my mum, sister and sister in-law. It was a real pleasure having her there and we had such a laugh getting ready together. Leigh made me the most beautiful headpiece to wear. I gave her some bits of old lace and she lovingly cut out the tiny flowers and pieced them together to make the larger flowers which were joined together by wire and small pearly beads…then the best bit; she ‘stitched’ it into my hair!!
Adam bought me some gorgeous pearl earrings as a surprise, which he gave me a few weeks before (as he was worried I wouldn’t like them – as if!!) so with the lace and pearls in my hair, it really tied the whole look together.
Chunky 60’s Styling.
Because of the style of my dress, I felt the usual dainty, sparkly ‘wedding’ shoe wouldn’t really look right, so I wanted something a bit chunkier in keeping with the 60s style. I also needed something with a bit of height as I’m quite short and wanted to be able to look into Adam’s lovely eyes, not his chest! After searching, I eventually found a cream patent, mary jane style shoe in Topshop… I had wanted to treat myself to some posh shoes, as I do love my shoes, but when I came across these they just seemed so right and I think they looked perfect with the dress.
Ribbons In Her Hair.
I decided to play a bit of dress-up with my sister (my beautiful bridesmaid). My hairdresser did the most amazing beehive style up-do for her, which looked fantastic. I bought some ribbon in similar colours to her dress which Leigh then tied around her hair and clipped a bow which she had made in the same ribbon onto the side.
When it came to make-up, my sister and I decided to do it ourselves, although I don’t usually wear much, I do love make-up and enjoy putting it on. We treated ourselves to some lovely new Benefit stuff and I did the make-up for us both.
Wed In Red.
My favourite colour is red. So it was a bit of a given that we’d have red at the wedding. But, I didn’t want to go down the route of pillar box red and red roses etc, so we decided to have a dark red/burgundy, autumnal colour scheme, which actually fit perfectly with the venue too, as their décor is all dark reds and browns (which may have been why I loved the venue so much….!) I met our florist Sasha from Forget me Not some time ago so she was a perfect choice to do our wedding flowers. For my bouquet I asked Sasha for something naturally tied and not too structured and she made the perfect arrangement for me using some gorgeous red tipped roses, deep red (almost purple in fact!) calla lilies and dark red and green berries and foliage, which were all tied together with a lovely ribbon. My sister had just a smaller version of mine as I liked the idea of having them the same.
A top tip for all you brides to be; Sasha made me a smaller bouquet up as a little extra for me to throw, such a great idea, as the lucky girl who caught it got to keep a little memento from the day (and a reminder to her other half maybe…!!)
Terracotta Arrangements.
For the evening, we had four large tables in the room, but because we didn’t have a meal we didn’t need to have full place settings or anything. I do love flowers though so knew I wanted some flower arrangements for the tables, so my florist made up four terracotta pots of flowers, using slightly different colours to my bouquet; more orangey/reds which looked lovely and made sure everything wasn’t too matchy matchy. I wanted to get the most out of these flowers and use them for the ceremony also; so there was a large fireplace in the room which I placed two of the arrangements on and placed two on the table at the front. Reusing the flowers is a good tip if you want to keep your cost down and get the most out of your flowers.
My Only Bridesmaid.
My sister was my only bridesmaid, it felt right only having one as our wedding was small and we didn’t have a large wedding party as such. She was the best person to have by my side throughout the planning, getting ready (including all the prep of having our nails done and hair practices etc running up to the day…we had such fun!!), and on the day itself. She was a true star and also kept me on the ground a bit when I had a few bridezilla potential moments! She was also the entertainment for the morning when getting ready – having us all in stitches! I really wanted to play on the 60s style with her whole outfit, and I couldn’t find a traditional bridesmaid dress that I liked and wanted her to be comfortable in it too – so I went for a very ‘non-traditional’ short dress from Topshop, which she wore with black tights and skyscraper shoes! It was a lovely silky material which hung beautifully, with long floaty sleeves in a mink colour. The colour really set off the brighter colours of the bouquets, as well as the boys’ suits and together with her beehive I think she looked absolutely fabulous!
Simple Suits.
Adam had two best men (greedy I know!!) and we wanted to keep their outfits quite simple too and because of the autumnal colour scheme, grey or black would have looked totally wrong and neither of us particular liked morning suit style jackets – we also thought it would be a nice touch to buy them their suits which they could keep afterwards and hopefully get more wear out of them.
A Reason To Go Bespoke.
I’d seen Adam in his suit beforehand as I was quite involved in this part – but when I saw him stood there waiting for me, it was one of the most amazing moments of my life, and even through the tears (I cried pretty much all the way down the aisle) I could see he looked gorgeous!
Adam has always wanted the experience of having a suit made, so obviously our wedding was a perfect opportunity. And looking back, it is definitely worth the extra money to do this as we had such a good time during the fittings etc, which was mostly because of the amazing Fiona Greene at Greene and Clark, she was fantastic right from the start and helped us choose the perfect cloth, colours and even the lovely dotty cravat and hankerchief.
Simple And Beautiful.
After searching through loads of photographers’ websites, I came across S6 Photography. Jon’s images are simply beautiful and I knew straight away I wanted him to shoot our day and Adam agreed instantly. He managed to capture the day as it happened so when we look at them (and I can’t stop looking at them!) they tell the complete story of the day, and have provided us with a lasting memory of some fabulous, and sometimes extremely funny, moments which we can now remember forever.
Mum Made.
My amazing Mum (with a little help from me and my sister) made cupcakes for us, I didn’t fancy having a traditional cake and Mum had recently been on a cupcake making course so it was an obvious choice and was a great way for her to be involved in the preparations. The day before the wedding the three of us spent the morning in my kitchen decorating 100 cupcakes with red fondant and chocolate hearts and lots and lots of glitter!
A Good Mix.
The entertainment was something we took a long time thinking about. Adam and quite a few of his friends are what you may call ‘amateur’ DJ’s! And usually at parties and weddings etc they all chip in. But, we thought it would be nice to take all the stress out of this (because it usually ends up with them setting all the equipment up themselves and clearing away at the end of the night) and hire a DJ. We went with the company that the hotel usually uses 1DJ1 and they allowed us to give them a complete play list which was great – when we sent our invitations we invited all our guests to request a song to be played later on so it ensured a good mix of music and would hopefully get everyone up dancing!
I Will.
Adam absolutely loves The Beatles… I mean really LOVES them! So, they were an obvious choice for our first dance, especially with the 60s inspired outfits. He’s also a sucker for a good love song lyric, I don’t mean soppy love songs but ones which really mean something. We chose ‘I Will’ which is the most beautiful song, the lyrics are lovely, but it is not your usually soppy love song and meant we could have a bit of fun with the dancing – by throwing in a couple of spins! We had chosen the song quite early on, but a couple of days before the wedding we had a bit of a panic that we hadn’t practiced in any way. Adam is not without rhythm, until it comes to slow dancing with me…then he turns into a piece of cardboard and he was sooo nervous about this part of the day. So, we stuck the song on and had a little dance around our room, planning where we could do a few spins – it was lovely to take a bit of time out to have a dance, when do people ever do this normally?!
No Frills Vintage.
I really wanted a slightly vintage feel to the wedding, but without too much of the ‘frills’
The venue was beautiful in its own right and I really felt it didn’t need too much in the way of decoration, as it had all the original features such as oak panelling around the walls and a large fireplace with a clock in the centre. We had a little side room to the main ceremony/reception room where the food and cakes etc were which I decorated with red heart shaped bunting and sprinkled rose petals on the tables.
Something Really Special.
Apologies for a really soppy moment coming up…Adam is the most generous, caring, loving person I have ever met, and I know his close family and friends think this too. He’s had some tough times in his life and when I looked round the room during the speeches there was something really special going on – it’s difficult to explain in words, but the people who know him and have been there for him had a real sense of pride about them, which I’ll never forget. My Dad, who has always got on really well with Adam, had a lot, and I mean a lot, of love for him that day – it was brilliant!!
Ooh, I also want to tell you about my invitations – because (if I do say so myself) they were amazing! After looking at various invitations on websites etc, I felt like I wanted something a bit different and something which people would want to keep (and possibly use…!), so I collected a load of 7” vinyl that people no longer wanted from people at work, and had some stickers printed with the wedding details on for the centre.
We tried to give each guest a record which would mean something to them, either the song or artist, and we had quite a bit of fun going through them all and deciding who to send what. A couple of days after posting these, I was bombarded with texts telling me how much people loved them, so a great success I think!!
Venue Leopold Hotel
Dress Etsy
Shoes Topshop
Hair Cutting Room
Blooms Forget me Not
Tailor Greene and Clark
Photography S6 Photography
DJ 1DJ1
I LOVE the stationery – when I first saw it I though, cool – they’ve had stationery printed to look like 7″ singles. When I found out that in fact they had got hold of a load of actual vinyl and sent them out with home made labels on I nearly had an accident.
I am SO Stealing THAT idea.
What Idea? My Idea… yeah… my idea.
Adam.
.
