Time for Tea?

How about a piece of cake?

Sounds delicious right? Well yes it does lovelies and that is exactly what this whole affair was.

DELICIOUS.

The Most Important Choice

Our wedding photographer was Simon Fazackarley. I’m a photographer myself so finding the right person to capture our special day was one of the most important aspects of the wedding planning for me. Phil and I both liked the examples Simon had on his website and his style of photography.

A Cosy Tea Party

I think the wedding really came together when we found our amazing caterer, Mrs Fitzpatrick’s. Instead of a 3 course meal, we had an vintage-style English tea party with scrumptious hot quiches, tarts, and the most divine homemade cakes: Chocolate, carrot, fruit cake, coffee and walnut and scones with cream and jam, all washed down with lashings of tea or coffee.

She also provided us with a fantastically attentive team of staff who were on hand to top up our teapots and serve champagne. The whole concept was such good fun!

Lady In Red

We chose ‘Let’s stay together’ by Al Green for our first dance. We’ve been taking Latin and ballroom dance lessons for a few years now so our dance teacher worked out a special Rumba routine for us to perform – I should point out that we are by no means professionals though! It was such good fun learning the routine and every time I hear that song now it makes me smile.

Retro Vintage

As reception was catered by Mrs Fitzpatricks, that specializes in vintage teaparties, and so because we were already providing our guests with a selection of cakes during the tea party, we decided that having a wedding cake as well would be overkill! We opted instead to provide a sweetie bar, stacked full of all the sweets we used to enjoy as kids, such as wham bars, sherbet fountains, gobstoppers, love hearts and flying saucers.

I collected loads of vintage glass dishes and baskets from charity shops to display the sweets in, and my Mum made pretty cones out of floral wrapping paper for our guests to collect their goodies in.

D.I.Y Decor

Our wedding reception was in the church hall so we decided to try and work with our surroundings as much as possible, rather than try to disguise them, which would have been impossible. We bought lengths of material from a fabric shop to make into drapes for the ceiling and we lit these with coloured lights.

We set out a few trestle tables around the hall and covered them with material. We used one of these for our sweetie bar and another one to display a selection of old family photos. I collected vintage teacups and saucers from charity shops, which we used as decorations. We also had lovely floral bunting to decorate the edges of the tables.

D.I.Y Entertainment

We brought along our own sound system to the reception and filled up my iPod with a selection of Motown classics to play while people were eating. We then had a separate playlist of livelier music to play in the evening.

Relaxed Fun

When we first started planning the wedding we knew that we wanted the day to be as relaxed and fun as possible. We certainly didn’t set out to be different, but we just couldn’t seem to find anywhere offering exactly what we wanted, so we decided to do it ourselves.

It was also really important to us that everyone felt part of our special day so we only had very close friends and family at the actual wedding and reception and accepted any help they offered us (we had a separate party for the rest of our friends when we got back from honeymoon) I had been told before the wedding that it would whizz by in a blur, but because our wedding was quite small I got the opportunity to talk to all my guests and really enjoy the day myself, and I do actually remember all of it!

Has this brightened up your day? It did mine – and every time I look at the images.

With special Thanks to Simon Fazackarley for the submission and Heather and Phil for sharing their Big Gorgeous Day with Rock My Wedding.

So I bet you’re a little bit sad that Vintage Real Wedding eye candy has come to an end right?

Well don’t be.

Because we have another stunner coming up tomorrow.

Oh Yes We Do!

Big Relaxed and Fun Love

Charlotte xxx

• Previous Entry: Brighton Rocks Vintage……..part 1
• Next Entry: What Jenny Did…….My Inner Marilyn