Dress
Andrea the Bride: I visited several wedding dress shops but knew that none of the dresses were quite right. I really wanted to go with a floral design because I love flowers and Max gave me an engagement ring that looks like a daisy. I loved Claire Pettibone designs but then decided that I didn’t want a wedding dress that was completely white but had some pink in it too. I thought the best thing to do was to create one with a dress designer.
Charlotte Wilden was amazing. She created a beautiful flowery pink/white wedding dress for me, a veil, gorgeous pepper berries head piece and even a light up glow in the dark dancing dress! I really enjoyed going to Charlotte’s studio and discussing designs, it was a really fun process and I loved having a dress that was unique to me.
Bridal Accessories
I bought beautiful glittery
Charlotte Olympia shoes but came to the realisation that walking around on the grass all day and then dancing would kill my feet with stiletto heels. I picked some
ASOS block heels which were so comfy and saved my feet!
I wore earrings from
Monica Vinader as Max’s sister is a jewellery designer there. And wore an ‘M’ necklace from
Carrie Elizabeth jewellery.
Grooms Attire
Max bought his whole wedding outfit from the tailor David Saxby in Fulham. I persuaded him to buy a pink tie from
Ferragamo.
The Venue
I’ve always wanted to get married on the Isle of Wight, where my parent’s house is. There’s an old ruined building called
Appuldurcombe which I thought looked really romantic. It was a challenge because you have to bring everything to it – it’s a shell of a building. So electricity, heating, fridges etc. But it was so atmospheric and we were so lucky that it didn’t rain. We had a marquee for the meal.
Colour scheme/Décor
We had so much fun thinking of cheap ways to decorate the house. We covered the marquee in ivy that we’d picked ourselves the days before. We hired long trestle tables for the dinner and covered them in ivy, hessian cloth and green table runners. We hired lots of vintage furniture, had lots of candles and fairy lights. Because it was May there were bluebells still out so we had put bluebells put on all of the place cards. We hung lots of ribbons off the trees around Appuldurcombe and hung ribbons off the
VW van that Max and I went to the venue from the church in. Jenn did a fantastic job of hanging flowers everywhere.
Flowers
My lovely friend Jenn at
Jennifer Pinder Flowers did the most wonderful job of creating a floral fairyland. She went above and beyond anything that I could have imagined. Her and her mother Jane designed floating flowers for the fountain, a beautiful flower arch abundant with roses, filled the old fire places with flowers, created flower crowns for the little bridesmaids and stunning bouquets for us all. She also put flowers all over the church for us. She worked so hard I was amazed by how skilled she is. The flowers were mainly pinks and white which went well with my dress. We didn’t do centre pieces to keep costs down but we covered the marquee and tables in ivy.
Wedding Party Fashion
I had eight bridesmaids! They all wore long dresses from
ASOS in pastel colours. I also had two teeny bridesmaids who wore pink dresses which my mum sewed iridescent fairy wings onto the back of. They all had bouquets with ribbons around them and the teeny bridesmaids had flower crowns – it was very girly! Jenn created lovely flower button holes for all of Max’s ushers.
Ceremony
The ceremony was surprisingly my favourite part of the day. I loved arriving in the VW with my Dad and friend Hen, we had a bit of a disaster with the VW carrying all the many bridesmaids and it got stuck up the hill – we were a good half hour delayed. I was nervous but it was so much fun in the end. The bridesmaids really put me at ease. We also booked an owl that was supposed to fly down the aisle and deliver the rings. At the last minute the owl changed its mind and flew into the rafters, to the vicar’s distress. It really lightened the mood and Mary-Anne took some hilarious photos. The vicar also trod on my long veil and Max got his words wrong, there was a lot of laughter. I loved the confetti throw too.
Entertainment
As well as the photo booth
Shuffle Events were great and gave us a candy floss machine which was lovely for the children.
Wedding Smashers were fantastic at DJing and everyone was up on the dancefloor. We lit up my light up dress in the middle of our first dance and then I provided lots of light up flower crowns and sunglasses for guests to wear on the dance floor, ordered from Claire’s and
Etsy.
Food
We used
Oasis Catering who are based on the Isle of Wight. They were excellent at creating simple dishes. We had canapes to start off and combined as a starter. We then had a lovely creamy chicken dish as a main and dauphinoise potatoes – we wanted to fill people up! We had brownies and raspberries and a beautiful victoria raspberry sponge cake made for us by
Frostbite Bakery. We had empenadas at 11pm which worked really well to soak up the alcohol and candy floss!
Photographer
Maryanne was absolutely amazing. She’s such a lovely person that you’d want her as a guest at your wedding anyway. And she’s so helpful – I kept asking her to arrange my dress for me! She was wonderfully organised and managed to get the whole wedding party together for a group picture. And she captured some amazing moments which brought the whole wedding back to me. I couldn’t recommend her more.
Videography
Wight Weddings created a beautiful short wedding video for us. They did so well in capturing moments that I had forgotten about.