After yesterdays pale and interesting sophistication I thought we would do a one-eighty and inject some colour pop cool with Sara and Ali’s West Sussex affair. I’m not sure why exactly but we don’t tend to feature that many celebrations where the kids are key – i.e weddings that are just as much about the children having a good time as the adults.

Well prepare for some immense cuteness this afternoon folks as what with having a gorgeous one-year-old Max, Sara and Ali have made sure their day was about all ages. And as well as that they also had a brilliant guest book idea (feel free to steal – I would), beautiful D.I.Y blooms and some serious giant yellow balloon action.

Oh and the cake. Who doesn’t love a cake with lego?

All of the pretty images are courtesy of Mark Osborne.

Slightly Fancy

I did my own make up, though I went for a consultation at Bobbi Brown a few weeks beforehand, I highly recommend their long lasting makeup – the mascara and gel eyeliner did not budge even with gallons of tears. My hair was up, but just pinned the way I would on any slightly fancy day, my main aim was to be totally me, the me that Ali asked to marry, so no backcombing here. A local hair and makeup artist, Rachel Goddard was recommended to me, and she was a wonderful calming spirit to have around during the morning.

Feathers And Frippery

I met Ali at a wedding 5 years ago, and I was wearing a black feathered headpiece made by a friend, Bernadette Winter. When she was designing and making it for me, we decided it was totally Hitchcock. When Ali first spoke to me at that wedding, he said ‘nice hat, very hitchcock’ . And the rest was history…

So it seemed only right that I should ask Bernadette to make a bridal version of the original hairpiece. Based on one vague email and a couple of ‘idea’ pictures, 6 weeks later I received the most exquisite hairpiece in the post, made from ivory feathers and vintage jewellery and buttons. It was the perfect contrast to my plain dress.

Like A Glove

I wore pearl drop earrings by Glint and my Dad also gave me a beautiful moonstone bracelet just before he walked me down the aisle, which was totally magical.

I had my son Max in October 2010, so wasn’t ready to shop for a dress until April 2011, when I could just about squeeze into a ‘normal’ bra! When I got round to going to a shop, I was happily clueless as to how long it takes to get a wedding dress, but quickly put to rights by the sales assistants who pretty much all informed me that I wouldn’t be able to order anything for a September wedding, and would have to have a sample dress. That was all very well, but I’d seen a dress on ebay by Sarah Arnett (the ‘Claudine’) which I was pondering over, and decided to take a risk and spend a few hundred pounds on a dress I’d never seen in real life, unfortunately Sarah Arnett is no longer making bridal gowns so there was no chance of trying one on elsewhere. Ultimately, the dress arrived, it fit me like a glove, was made from miles of beautiful ivory silk and was everything I was hoping for. It felt good re-loving a dress from another wedding, and let’s just say I made a substantial (around £1400) saving on the original price of the dress.

Stylish Colour

My 4 bridesmaids are all very stylish women. Add that to the fact that they were in 3 different countries, had entirely different colouring and body shape (including one being 8 months pregnant), and I knew there was no way I could decide what these girls should wear. Ali and I had decided long ago that there was no colour theme, more an all-colour theme (I write a blog, colourlovingmother.blogspot.com, so I couldn’t exactly stick with one…) So I sent my lovely ladies a spec, that they should select dresses that weren’t full length, and that were part of a palette of jewel colours, and I left them to fend for themselves. This turned out perfectly, as we ended up with vintage, ebay and personalized, totally styled the way they were comfortable, and it turned out that the colours worked brilliantly together.

I’m not a heels girl and I wasn’t about to try and survive them on the one day of my life that I wanted to be comfortable. So I picked up a pair of flat gold Grecian style sandals in a sale a few weeks before. I also ordered a bespoke pair of bright yellow converse high tops, with ‘Mrs C 030911’ embroidered on the side, which I changed into when the sandals got too much (seriously, the flattest sandals in the world still hurt me after a while, I think I missed out on the shoe gene…)

Like Father Like Son

Ali bought a black 3 piece suit from Mr Start in Shoreditch, they make beautiful quality suits and the waistcoat took it a notch even further from your everyday work suit. His shirt and tie were from Paul Smith: we loved the contrast of the floral shirt with the striped tie. I also managed to get our son Max a floral shirt on eBay, perfect to match his Dad!

D.I.Y Blooms

It never occurred to me that I should use a professional florist. I totally admire their skill, but I just wanted to do my own, that was part of the fun to me. So my Dad and one of my bridesmaids Michelle came with me to New Covent Garden Market at stupid-o-clock on the Thursday morning before the wedding. I had an idea of the types of flowers I wanted, the brightest colours, but all from an English garden. I had been down to the market a week before to make sure they had what I was looking for. It was so much fun stacking up a massive pile of the best blooms, including small sunflowers, delphinium, pink ranunculus, and centifolia roses – my alternative to peonies, which I’d wanted, but were totally out of season. I managed to get a bunch of craspedia (billy buttons) from a local florist who ordered them in for me, the happy yellow balls echoed the round yellow balloon theme that featured in our invites, on our wedding website and in real life at the wedding. My bridesmaids, my parents, and I did all of the flower arrangements on tables and around the barn, in jars that we’d collected all year. The chap’s buttonholes were made up of billy buttons and ranunculus, while the bridesmaids bouquets were a combination of pink and purple hydrangea – so simple, one or two heads makes an instant bouquet! My bouquet had the hydrangea, roses, ranunculus, thistles (for our Scottish contingent), billy buttons and some daisies. My sister came up trumps remembering all her skills from a week’s work experience in a florist at school, and arranged, wired and bound all of the bouquets and buttonholes.

Just Great Pictures

So many people call themselves ’wedding photographers’ and seemed to have such varying levels of quality that I was concerned I wouldn’t find someone. However, Mark Osborne’s site showed that he was simply a very good photographer, I loved his colour balance and his composition, and the fact there was no messing, just great pictures. He and his girlfriend Jo were wonderful on the day, they were in control enough to get all the shots they needed, without being pushy – it must be so tough making sure you’re covering all of a brides possible expectations. But the majority of the day they were so discreet, some of the pictures that have come out were at brilliant angles where we had no idea where they were.

Plenty Of Cake

We decided that having one cake wasn’t really what we wanted, and that we would have tea and cake as our dessert (tea is so important to us that Ali promised to make me tea every day in his vows). So I put a call out to our closest cake-making friends and relatives, to ask them to make us something. Everyone did us proud, the cake table looked utterly amazing, with a stack of gingerbread, brilliant brownies, and amazing apple cake amongst others. Ali’s Auntie and Mum did us a surprise cake that featured tiny modeled icing elements of different parts of our life. It was such a treat to have something so personal that took so much time, no-one could cut it at the wedding, it was way too impressive! (tasted fab too, when we eventually ate it…)

Pretty Prints

I wanted to get my love of colour onto the tables, so I’d known for a while that I wanted multicoloured napkins as favours. I bought fabric by Amy Butler and Heather Bailey, as well as other offcuts, and was planning on making them myself, but my wondrous mum stepped in and whipped up enough napkins for everyone. We put the name-tags on luggage tags tied around the napkins, and included a poem with instructions for people to take them away and reuse them.

Something Borrowed

We borrowed lengths and lengths of bunting from a friend, which initially I was afraid would be overkill, but it looked fab and totally in keeping with the multicoloured patterns that reigned elsewhere. I bought vintage floral sheets to use as tablecloths and we used remnants from the napkin-making to decorate the jars that we filled with flowers. We also included individual big yellow balloons dotted around, as I’d designed a logo that featured a family of robots carrying yellow balloons, which appeared on our stationery and the wedding cake. The poms we had in the bar tent were recycled from a wedding a couple of weeks earlier who had left them for us, we just puffed them up again and moved them to where we wanted them.

A Perfect Ceremony

The most special part of the day was the wedding itself. You’d think that was obvious, but we had so many comments afterwards about how the ceremony was the ‘best bit’, when people are sometimes used to sitting through a service in order to get to the cake (and wine). The humanist celebrant we used, Kevin Murphy, made the ceremony immensely personal, and encouraged us to write our own vows. It just meant that every part of the whole standing-up-in-front-of-everyone-and-making-a-promise thing felt totally honest, these were promises we could keep because they were all about us and were our words.

..And The Perfect Venue

Rumbolds Farm in West Sussex was the only venue we looked at, it ticked all our boxes and Susie who owns the farm was wonderfully helpful and flexible to our needs. We wanted to get married outside in a humanist ceremony, and the farm had a choice of areas we could use. In the end we decided against doing it next to the lake in a wood as we didn’t want to cause any stress at all for guests not too firm on their feet. The lawn in the garden was blooming and perfect, and the bridal suite was divine!

Rockability

We had the rockabilly band ‘Derriere’ play in the evening, we were worried as we’d just found them online and taken a risk that they would do a good show. I’m a singer and Ali’s a DJ so the music meant alot to us, we were so lucky, they were phenomenal. Everyone danced from the moment they began and demanded an encore. I don’t think they were used to that kind of reaction from a wedding crowd. After the band our friend Toby flexed his considerable DJ-ing muscle and kept us all dancing until it was time to go down to the bottom field for a bonfire.

Do It Your Way

I would recommend to every bride and groom to be totally confident about doing things your way. People weren’t sure when I said I wanted to walk in to everyone playing kazoos – the bridesmaids led them in ‘You are my sunshine’ (or something approximating it). When we were deciding the music, I just couldn’t think of any song more fitting, and as we were getting married outside, I wasn’t sure of having a recording playing. Kazoos were the answer, it set the scene for the joy of the occasion, and essentially, I didn’t care if anyone thought it was a batty idea, it made me happy.

Do it your way and enjoy every minute, you don’t have to do everything the magazines and blogs say, it’s your day and your budget, spend it on the things that really matter to you.

Brides Jewellery – Glint

Brides Headpiece – Bernadette Winter

Venue – Rumbolds Farm

Photographer – Mark Osborne

Blooms – D.I.Y

And did I mention the shoes? how cool were they?

And the stationery… I vote more couples should have a W-day logo

Big All Ages Love

Charlotte xxx

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