Welcome back for Part 2 of this Vintage inspired latino affair just oozing with personality. Read on for loads of inspiration and advice from the beautiful Bride Claudia, and some stunning images taken by Gill Taylor.
And what a handsome Groom he was….
Jonathan kept it all quite traditional and like his groomsmen, he opted for a Windsor Morning suit. He wore an ivory silk waist coat and accessorised with a Cadbury purple cravat and handkerchief. I also peeked another couple of accessories which were the Citizen watch and swarovski cuff links I had given him as a wedding gift.
But the best of all was his face when he saw me come down the aisle. He was so happy and so excited that I couldn’t wait to say ‘I do’…
We had three groomsmen and they were all dressed in traditional morning dress, in particular a Windsor suit, which we hired from Pronuptia. The silk waistcoats were a pale purple and all accessories (self-tie cravats and handkerchiefs) were Cadbury purple satin.
Fate and Photography
This part of the tale makes me believe in things happening for a reason…Our wedding pics were a priority to us as they will be seen in many years to come and remind us of our wonderful day. Therefore we booked our photographer almost 18 months in advance. However, three weeks before the wedding I received a call to say our photographer had broken his arm and was not able to shoot our wedding…yes, really!
No time for sitting around, I called in all my resources; bridal party, Facebook, Yell.com and everything in between. By the end of the day I had a list of 8 potential replacements. But there was one who stood out…introducing the fabulous Gill Taylor. From the first instant, Gill had a warm, friendly and professional approach. Understanding how fraught I might be feeling she responded immediately with a phone call to check in and introduce herself…and what a saviour she was!
The Gill Taylor Photography style is breath taking. Her pics have a timeless vintage feel about them. Her keen eye and experience ensures that she gets the job done with little hassle. Our guests loved Gill and we still receive compliments about her. Gill travels around the country and sometimes abroad and I would recommend every couple take a look at her work and if you can, try to have a chat with her. Several of our guests will be contacting her regarding portrait sessions…she really is that brilliant!
Classic Chocolate Cake
Neither Jonathan nor I like traditional fruit cake and from the very beginning we always knew our cake would be a chocolate extravaganza. We were fortunate enough that we found a local wedding cake designer, Eventiss Ltd. They worked with us to design the cake of our dreams. We had three tiers to our cake. The bottom tier, the largest, was the chocolate fudge layer. The middle tier was a vanilla sponge with fresh raspberry cream, for those with a little less of a sweet tooth. The top tier was a delicious black forest gateaux and to top it all of, the layers were all covered with white Belgian chocolate.
The design of the cake was relatively simple and was coordinated with the rest of the wedding colours, ribbons and was accented with ivory shimmer.
Just Dance
For the evening, once again we were quite lucky to have a resourceful group of friends. Our best man is a DJ in his spare time and he worked with us to trawl through our iPods and create playlists of our music which kept us dancing till the wee hours of the morning.
Our guests also found our first dance entertaining…
I completely love and live for dancing and there was absolutely no way we were going to do a two-step shuffle as our first dance as husband in wife. However, never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine we would be doing an Argentine Tango to Aerosmith’s ‘I don’t want to miss a thing’.
Jonathan & I have extremely different taste with many things, especially when it comes to music and we’re not a couple who have ‘our song’. So when it came to picking our tune, this became quite the challenge.
In the end we chose this song not only because the lyrics are beautiful and undeniably timeless, but it is from the movie Armageddon, which is one of the first movies we watched as a couple and is still a firm favourite in our movie collection.
By no stretch of the imagination are we dancers, but we had a friend choreograph and teach us step-by-step. It was so much fun and provided a great stress buster through the wedding planning process. Our advice to any couple is, ‘Don’t be afraid to try something out of the ordinary. If you can’t on your special day, then when can you….’
Chic and Unique…
We surprised our guests by adding little wild hibiscus flowers into the champagne drinks. Not only did the champagne turn to a lovely pink colour, but the flowers are also edible and provided a great talking point. We got them online at Real Indulgence.
Save the Date! – As many of our guests are from abroad, we needed to get our Save the Date cards out very early. We decided to get really creative and made little business card fridge magnets so that no-one would lose them.
We couldn’t find the invitations we wanted at a reasonable price, so I ordered a sample, deconstructed it and learned how to make our own ones. We added personal touches such as ribbon from South Africa and unique silver beads from our holiday in Australia.
Our top table was really brought to life when we hired a light curtain to create a glamorous backdrop. It took months to source but finally we found the perfect one from Wedding Creative.
We kept favours as simple as possible and chose little Belgian chocolate hearts which were wrapped in colours which matched our theme. Have to admit that at the end of the evening, there weren’t any left or wasted…chocolate is always a safe and an inexpensive choice.
Putting some personality into Proceedings
Remember it’s your special day and not your families’. When you look back on your wedding, you should feel that it was what you and your husband wanted and not that you were accommodating others.
Many couples have a theme for their wedding which helps to tie everything together. But when we tried to think of a theme, nothing felt right. That was until we came across the idea that our theme could be all about us…This proved to be fantastic and guided our every decision. Our favourite colours (fuchsia and Cadbury purple) led the way and set the tone for our day. The menu was our favourite starter, a South African main (I’m South African) and a sumptuous choice of two British desserts (Jonathan is British). We continued with picking our favourites all the way through with cake flavours, wine choice, hymns, readings, flowers, stationery etc. In the end, many of our guests said that we had made unique choices and overall our personalities could be felt throughout the day…which is what it is all about.
We had many people attending from abroad with lots of information to be included in the invitations. But we decided to have our own dedicated wedding website. This proved very useful as it allowed us to keep our invitations simple and yet still provide our guests with all the information they would need. We used Weddingpath.
Plan, plan, plan and then RELAX on the day….that is why you have a bridal party! Make sure you choose carefully and surround yourself with helpful and loving people. It’s their job to help you ahead of the day and then to fix little problems which may crop up on the day while you enjoy yourself. You have both earned it!
Wow – how fabulous are those dancing shots? Super glamourous and beautifully shot, not to mention the couple shots. Loving Gill Taylors work 
Thank you so much to Claudia and Jonathan for letting us share your beautiful day and many congratulations from all of us here at RMW.
Yours Truly,
Rebecca
xoxo
