Today we have a simple and sweet wedding by Christian Ward Photography. Jane and Neil got married in Sheffield, chose a winter city hall wedding and a chic all white with purple accents colour palette.

Read on for some gorgeous eye candy of the very achievable variety! We love do-able inspiration!

A City at Christmas

Our wedding was on 12th December 2009. We wanted a pre-Christmas wedding as we both love that time of year, plus a family get together before Christmas was a lovely idea also. The ceremony took place at the Sheffield Town Hall Register Office and the reception was at the Sheffield Hilton. We chose Sheffield Town Hall register office because the building is very old and grand, it has some amazing photo opportunities. The Hilton was our favourite location that we visited when looking for a reception venue. The inner city quay side setting won it over for us. It is a real unusual setting for wedding photographs.

A Monsoon Wedding

My wedding dress was from Monsoon. I always knew I didn’t want a traditional style wedding dress. I wanted more of an evening dress style. Plus I didn’t want to spend a lot of money but wanted it to be special. Monsoon had lots of gorgeous dresses that fit my criteria and budget. I knew my dress was the one when I tried it on, it fit and hung beautifully. The beading detail really made it sparkle too.

I only wanted something simple for my hair so I chose a beautiful diamante comb from Accessorize.

I knew I wanted my shoes to be different and not traditional wedding shoes. I found them in Schuh, they are part of the Irregular Choice range, and they had a 10cm heel which was the perfect height for the length of my dress. They were cream in colour with a gorgeous corsage on the toe of each shoe, which made them really unusual. It was a bonus that they were really comfortable on the day!

I did my makeup myself and my hair was done by Clare, the owner of Halo Hair, Dronfield Derbyshire. I had a practice session with Clare and my criterion was that I wanted all my hair up so I knew I wouldn’t have to worry about it during our wedding day. She came up with the style to suit my hair and I loved it.

Winter whites…

We chose white roses for our wedding flowers which featured as the button holes and mine and my daughter/bridesmaid Ellie’s bouquets. I wanted the bouquets hand tied and mine was slightly larger than Ellie’s. All the flowers were done by a friend of my Mum’s.

Neil’s suit was a grey lounge suit, he added a dark purple tie and handkerchief to match Ellie’s dress and his best men. Neil looked really handsome in his suit!

Unique Photography

We were introduced to Christian Ward Photography, run by Christian and his wife Erica, by Neil’s Mum as she knows them and even attended their wedding! We looked at their website and thought their photos were amazing. We then set up a meeting with Chris and Erica. The albums they showed us were very professional and we had never seen anything like it! We instantly knew they were the couple to capture our special day, we knew we could totally trust them with our wedding photography. Now seeing our photos that they have taken of our day it’s obvious we made the right decision.

Cupcake Cool

Our wedding cake was by Audrey Likes To Bake Things and she made us 100 miniature cup cakes. We had half chocolate and half vanilla. Each one was decorated with vanilla/purple icing and little flowers. They were displayed on a lovely four tier stand. We don’t like fruit cake so we wanted sponge and thought miniature cup cakes were a little unusual.

Keeping it in the Family…

Our table decorations were very special, designed and made by Neil’s Mum Jan. Jan is very creative and we pretty much left her to design them herself and we were really pleased with what she came up with. We had silver plates with purple glass nougats to match our colour scheme and a pillar candle in the centre. The tables looked really stunning when all the candles were lit at the meal.

Photography Advice

Our wedding was special to us because it was everything we wanted and more.
My advice for future brides would be to really research your photographer because when your special day is over it really is important to look back at photos that captured the mood and emotion of the day. We are really lucky because ours do that perfectly.

I love that this weddings has loads of pretty details and budget friendly ideas – especially those centre pieces – getting the family involved it always a great money saver and a really special way to make everyone feel included. Candlelight is always perfect for a winter wedding. Plus the stylish photography gives a really vintage feel to proceedings despite the modern touches… we heart Christian Ward Photography.

Thanks to Jane and Neil for allowing us to share your special day, Congratulations from all of us at RMW!

Yours Truly,

Rebecca
xoxo

Welcome back for Part 2 of Pippa and Bruces very chic wedding day at Le Manoir. Read on for Pippa’s info on how to make the most beautiful DIY bouquet and all her other planning ideas.

Once again, all the stunning images are courtesy of (and copyright of) Christian Keenan at CKP Weddings.

Forgoing Flowers for DIY Decor

I decided not to have flowers at all and instead made my own bouquet and table centerpieces. I wanted to create a wintery and christmassey feel to the day so I made a centerpiece for the ceremony room by filling large glass vases with pinecones and Christmas baubles in the colours of our wedding.

*Images are courtesy of (and copyright of) Christian Keenan at CKP Weddings.

I used baubles, pinecones and dried limes to make my bouquet. I used a variety of textures and sizes, glued the ‘blooms’ to florist’s wire and stuck them into a pomander base. I used some of the leftover silk from my dress to wrap around the ‘stems’ and secured it with some florist’s pins onto which I glued some olive green Swarovski crystals.

I also made the orders of service myself using some stiff card, chocolate silk and ivory silk ribbon. I made the embellishments by threading more swarovski crystals onto the green wire again and just wrapping it around the ribbon. This worked out to be a lot less expensive that buying embellishments and kept the theme running throughout all our décor.

*Images are courtesy of (and copyright of) Christian Keenan at CKP Weddings.

For the table centerpieces, I carried on the pinecone and candle theme and filled vases with them, then attached hanging tealight holders to wintery branches with coloured wire. I glued Swarovski crystals to the wire to give additional sparkle. Unfortunately, I could only find light coloured branches, so had an amusing afternoon spraypainting the branches to the chocolate colour I wanted (one day, I will look back and laugh!) I decorated the ceremony room with candles, and we lit the open fire to give a cosy and christmassey feel to the room.

I was aided and abetted by my fabulous Usherettes (and my groom and his best man in the end!) who assembled all the decorations – they really were such stars!

Passing on Tradition

We chose not to have attendants, The groom had a ‘best man’ but we didn’t really feel it was necessary for us. Bruce wore a Dolce and Gabanna velvet Tuxedo and just looked so handsome! He wore Paul Smith patent leather boots and a silk bow tie.

*Images are courtesy of (and copyright of) Christian Keenan at CKP Weddings.

Choosing the Perfect Photographer

We chose Christian Keenan and Andy le Gresley from CKP weddings and are just beyond delighted with their work. We had seen some of their pictures from other weddings that they had shot and knew that they would be perfect for capturing our day.



*Images are courtesy of (and copyright of) Christian Keenan at CKP Weddings.

Bride turned Baker…

I am proud to say, I made my own cake from scratch! I love baking, but had never attempted anything quite so ambitious.

The bottom tier was chocolate fudge, next one was Lemon, then Carrot cake and the top tier was a light fruit cake.

*Images are courtesy of (and copyright of) Christian Keenan at CKP Weddings.

I had a couple of trial runs (much to the delight of my neighbours who were called upon for taste-testing!) so managed to identify a few pitfalls (like gravity, for example!) before making the final version. I loved the idea of flowers between the tiers as I have seen on a few wedding cakes; as we had kind of substituted pinecones for flowers in the table centerpieces, I decided to carry on the theme with the cake. I threaded more swarovski crystals onto the coloured wire (as I did for the centerpieces) and used that to add a bit of sparkle to the cake.

Bringing the Chic to the reception…

We chose the Grove String Quartet from The Royal Academy of Music, as my Dad is a musician and studied there when he was younger and it was important to us to support the next generation of musicians. They exceeded all our expectations – anyone who can make ‘Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer’ sound classy automatically gets my vote!

*Images are courtesy of (and copyright of) Christian Keenan at CKP Weddings.

The tables were decorated with crackers from Cox and Cox. They were ivory and green and I removed the gold ribbon from them and swapped it for Chocolate organza to keep with our colour scheme.

*Images are courtesy of (and copyright of) Christian Keenan at CKP Weddings.

I also made the table plan myself…I dismantled two box frames and spraypainted them in a glittery green colour. I then ran a battery operated string of LEDs across a mirrored back board. I attached the individual tables to the LED wire using the green wire and a green Swarovski crystal. The table cards were backed with metallic green paper which reflected in the mirror. I used steel DIY brackets to hold the whole thing together and glued a chocolate brown frame onto the front.

*Images are courtesy of (and copyright of) Christian Keenan at CKP Weddings.

I made a lot of the details for the wedding myself, and am so pleased that I did…a lot of people thought I has lost my senses, but I persevered! It was a lot of fun, and I love the way that everything ties together, I don’t think we would have been able to achieve that if we had outsourced production.

Thank you so much to Pippa and Bruce for allowing us to share what was clearly such an intimate day with so many heartfelt deatils. And thank you to the amazingly talented Christian Keenan for allowing us to finally showcase his work – it really was a pleasure!

Yours Truly,

Rebecca
xoxo

I am very excited to be posting this fabulous winter wedding for 2 reasons. Firstly, I *met* the Bride what must have been over a year ago in the same online forum that I met Charlotte in and saw her planning what I was sure would be a truly beautiful wedding.

Secondly, Christian Keenan, the incredibly talented photographer behind the stunning images, is a photographer I have long admired for the outstanding images he produces. We had been working on getting something from Christian when I realised that he had photographed Pippa’s wedding and it was fate.

Pippa really exercised her own style and made so many of the wedding details herself that I’m dying to share with you so I will hand you right over to hear from the beautiful Bride herself.

All images courtesy (and copyright) of Christian Keenan Photography.

A Perfect Winters Morning

Bruce and Pippa were married at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, on 23rd December 2009, in an intimate gathering of the couples closest friends and family.

*Images are courtesy of (and copyright of) Christian Keenan at CKP Weddings.

Accessory Love

My engagement ring has emerald cut diamonds in it, so I wanted to use that as a theme for my accessories. The collar of the coat presented a few challenges in relation to my earring choice (anything dangly was out as I feared they would catch on the collar). My Husband gave me some beautiful emerald cut diamond studs for Christmas last year, so I decided that they were ‘the ones’. I saw an emerald cut crystal haircomb in Caroline Castigliano, and my lovely friends gave it to me for my 30th birthday present.

*Images are courtesy of (and copyright of) Christian Keenan at CKP Weddings.

The Broach I wore with the coat came from an antiques auction – it is an original art deco style with (again) emerald cut crystals and was exactly in keeping with the elegant and low key bling look that I was aiming for. I would have loved to wear a veil, but it was never going to work with the coat – more’s the pity!

Well heeled…

*Images are courtesy of (and copyright of) Christian Keenan at CKP Weddings.

Again, it was love at first sight with my Choos – they were the first pair that I tried on and just knew immediately that they were the ones! My Husband is very tall, so I needed a bit of height which the 4in heels certainly gave me. The ground was very icy, so I wore white Hunter Wellies to get from our suite to the ceremony room – no winter bride is properly dressed without her wellies!

*Images are courtesy of (and copyright of) Christian Keenan at CKP Weddings.

My clutch came from Gina, and was just so useful on the day, I can’t believe I even considered not having one! The ostrich leather lining was just the softest thing in the world!

*Images are courtesy of (and copyright of) Christian Keenan at CKP Weddings.

Putting on the Ritz

I love make up and decided to do my own – I like having a bit of ‘me’ time while I do my make up and I really valued this time to myself on the morning of the wedding.

*Images are courtesy of (and copyright of) Christian Keenan at CKP Weddings.

My hairdressers came from Brother’s Hair Salon in Oxford and were recommended by the venue. When I had my trial in the salon, they made me feel completely at ease and I loved their work. I really recommend doing this, as when I mentioned which suite we would be getting ready in they already were familiar with its layout, where the plug sockets/mirrors were etc. It saved a lot of hassle on the day.

*Images are courtesy of (and copyright of) Christian Keenan at CKP Weddings.

Dressing for Winter

*Images are courtesy of (and copyright of) Christian Keenan at CKP Weddings.

The Coat is by Amanda Wakeley, I saw it in a magazine and knew immediately that it was the one. I went to the boutique in London and as soon as I put it on, I was in love! Just to make sure, I did the usual round of designers, but nothing even came close for me. I didn’t really fell the love from Amanda’s selection of dresses, so she very kindly supplied me with some of the silk from the coat (at a remarkably good price) and I commissioned a local dressmaker to make the dress to my own specifications. I went into a local bridal shop and asked them for the details of who does their alterations for them. They put me in touch with Emma Smith of Exclusive Designs who was an absolute pleasure to work with.

*Images are courtesy of (and copyright of) Christian Keenan at CKP Weddings.

Pop back tomorrow morning ladies to see the rest of this beautifully styled chic and unique affair, including all of Pippa’s DIY details.

I can’t wait to share!

Yours Truly,

Rebecca
xoxo

You are in for a floral and detail treat with the second part of this delicious wedding photographed by the very talented Simon and Jo from Shoot.

Lucinda and Ollie had a wintery, unique and darn gorgeous wedding.

Enjoy.

Floral Fancy

The florist was Poppy Delavan from Lincolnshire. She was brilliant as she worked perfectly with our big ideas. The main flower was gypsophillia and then I had sprayed 200 fake orchids of different sizes gold; there was also cream roses and white amaryllis. Also as my husband is a farmer we wanted to include this into the wedding in different areas so he grew white ornamental cabbages which were included in the larger arrangements as well as whole flower beds at the entrance filled with them.

Ollie and I also cut down two trucks full of twigs, dried them and sprayed them white and put glitter all over them. The florist then made these into archways for us around door sized baroque mirrors around the edge of the marquee, to give the illusion of tunnels and to reflect the light. The table centres alternanated between martini glasses with flowers in the top and candelabra with the flowers around the bottom.
The button holes were cream roses on their own and the bridesmaids had balls of gypsophyllia. I had this as well but larger and with orchids and hidden at the back was a little piece of ivy which had come from an ivy plant at home which my mother had grown from a piece from her wedding bouquet).

The Grand Piano

I’d always liked the idea of a grand piano and also I wanted to make it different to my sister’s weddings as some of the guests would be the same. We hired the Piano from Alan Clarke in Chesterfield. Then through research we found Danny Mills who is a fantastic piano player and singer (he played any requests you wanted without music). He played on his own during the reception and then when it was the dancing he had a drummer and bass join him.

It Feels Like Home

For our first dance we had ‘It feels like home’ by Chantal Kerviazuk (from the Dawson’s Creek album.) On holidays with the family we would play this album in the car, with all of my four sisters signing along, so it has great memories. But the most special thing is that my sister Natalie sang it for us on the day. She used to be a professional signer and it was the most touching thing.

Feather Places

We didn’t have favours but we found that people took home their name places which were held in empty (shooting) cartridges and also the menus that were in each persons place which had been decorated with hand drawn feathers byJocelyn Lawman. She also drew the table names for us – all different types of birds and our personalised thank you cards, she has a huge talent.

Unique Cheese Chic

I mentioned this before with the mirrors around the edge of the marquee but also the marquee was attached to the house, so it looked as if the house was included in the marquee. We also had a giant glitter ball which threw magical light onto the dance floor. We even had a pear tree included in the marquee by the piano as we didn’t want to chop the whole thing down so we decorated it with lights. We also had a separate cheese room inside the house.

Advice For Brides

A bit of advice I would say is don’t forget to have candles high and low, make sure the table decorations aren’t in peoples eye line and don’t forget the little details – they do get noticed! We even had heart loo paper and provided tights and toiletries in the loos. Do as much as you can in advance as the last weeks always fly by and if any thing does not go to plan take a deep breath and just smile – no one will know any different!

And we have quite a few more of these snow season Big Day lovelies up our Rock My Wedding Sleeves….

A Big Thanks to Lucinda, Ollie and the Shoot team for sharing all the gorgeousness with us.

Big White Hot and Cool Love

Charlotte xxx

For me there is nothing quite as pretty or as spectacular as a crisp white and glowing gold colour palette for a Winter wedding.

And this wintery wonderland of a Big Day shot by the ever-so-fabulous Jo and Simon at Shoot exudes style, glamour and white hot cool.

Not to mention the bride is drop dead freakin’ gorgeous.

I have serious W-day envy folks.

Ollie and Lucinda were married on the 5th December 2009 at St Johns Church Ranmoor in Sheffield followed by a stunning reception at the family home, Fullwood Hall.

I Always Knew

My dress was from Phillipa Lepley, I used to live just around the corner from her shop and the bus stop was right outside where I would stand every day to go to work. Whilst waiting, I would always dreamily look in the window and hope that one day I would find the right man and have one of her dresses to wear.

D.I.Y Diamante

I had a diamante tiara/slide which I made myself (since getting engaged I had to move from my home and job in London to be with my fiancé and so have started a new millinery business Hostie Hats

Sparkly and Silver Please

I found it very hard to find my shoes. I wanted sparkly and sliver, I searched the internet and found a woman in Scotland who encrusted my shoes with crystals.

Picture Perfect

I asked my sister if she would help me with my make up so we went to Space NK and had a lesson there which I really recommend and then bought all the products they suggested. I felt I looked like myself on the day rather than a make up artist’s idea of how I should look. I had my hair put in rollers at a local hairdressers for the day (but a week before had had at my usual hairdressers a wonderful cut and colour by Damien and Louise at John Frieda in London). My mother then took the rollers out and styled it for me.

Groomsmen and Maids

The main colour scheme was cream and gold. The Groomsmen all had their own attire of top hat and tails and they had matching navy ties and gold spot. The bridesmaid’s dresses were made by my sister’s mother in law, and I made their head wear. I also made my mothers and mother in laws fascinators/hats and most of the guests.

Photography Magic

Shoot are fantastic photographers. They work so well as a couple, photographed two of my sister’s weddings and every picture has been wonderful. They catch every detail and are very thoughtful. Jo even delayed a big operation to do our wedding; We couldn’t have anyone else but them.

Hot Hot Hot and so very very cool….

And just you wait ’till we bring you all of the to-die-for reception details tomorrow….

Big Winter Wonderland Love

Charlotte xxx

So here we have the second part of this gorgeous Autumn wedding with a whole host of unique and chic ideas for you to be inspired by.

I am particularly loving Monica’s D.I.Y touches and continual sense of fun, it really looks like everyone who attended had a truly amazing time.

As before all images courtesy of Laura Stevens at www.laurastevens.co.uk

A Halloween Dream

First of all I think I need to state that we got married on Halloween, this will account for the colour scheme, the odd pictures of kids in costumes, pumpkins and Dave’s spinning bow tie. The spooky date was not planned it just happened to be the last weekend of Half term (I teach) and I wanted the week before to sort out final preparations which I really needed. The theme gave us so much to play with when planning and the guests thoroughly enjoyed themselves. At least we have no chance of forgetting our anniversary.

Cakes and Great Balls Of Fire

Dave’s mum made the cakes! as can’t beat a bit of Yorkshire home cooking!

Our first dance was to ‘Great balls of fire’ and we hire the help of a local choreographer to teach us a routine. Dave has two left feet and no sense of rhythm so I had to lead. I am not saying that I am in any way good but we had a great time doing it and made a lot of people laugh (at us!) The photos make us look much better than we were thanks to Laura, I am dreading viewing the video, I have asked them to edit as much as they can!

Potted Plants

I wouldn’t call myself a keen gardener, most of my house plants do not survive, I think I just don’t give them enough of my time, therefore they die. For my birthday a friend of mine sent me three little terracotta pots from muji with seeds to sow, sure enough a week later little green shoots were emerging. ‘PING’ What a lovely idea for wedding favours! All I needed to do was find 140 baby plant pots. Unfortunately one month before the wedding I was away at ‘Hen Cottage’ and left my lovely fiancé in charge of the budding favours. Upon my return, while unpacking the car of hen paraphernalia I took a closer look at my little babies and noticed there was considerably less than before……

Dave informed me that the poor little plants had been taken by the wind and whisked around the garden a number of times then scattered into a muddy mess. (I thought back to Saturday and remembered we needed to tape down the letter box at hen cottage as the wind was whistling at us all weekend) Dave had done his best to rescue what he could from the driveway but they all did look a bit like we’d found them in a reject bin. To the rescue, was a lady at Studley Royal Garden Centre who potted 70 orange violas at a bargain price of £30. What a saint. The men were happy with their mini bottles of wine.

Unique Place Settings

The place settings were prepared in the summer holidays when I had a good idea of the guest list. Roof slates were purchased at 60p each and hosed down in the garden. We threaded ribbon through the existing holes and wrote guests names with chalk pen (we provided chalk on the tables at the wedding so the guests could write their own messages) Most people took these home with them to use as notice boards or placemats. I designed a table plan and had a blackboard screen-printed to fit in with the slates. The names were hand written on the night before with chalk to cater for any last minute changes.

A Little piece of Advice

We loved having so much control over all of the details of our wedding, it was very much DIY but it was extremely tiring! If we were to do it all again we would have definitely hired a wedding coordinator. We would have loved more time to greet our guests on the Friday before the wedding.
If you are contemplating a videographer just get one, we love ours and my husband has eaten his pessimistic words (I began married life dishonestly, I didn’t tell him the price until he had seen it and he agrees it was worth every penny)

A big Thank You to Monica and David for sharing their beautiful day, if you have any questions then please drop us a comment – I’m sure Monica will be around to answer any Big day queries.

Big Potted Fancy Dress Love

Charlotte xxx