Bride
Freya The Bride: We wanted to do a small wedding that really encapsulated us as a couple. As we were due another huge Hindu ceremony we decided to do something super chilled with only our close friends. I always dreamed of a backyard American style wedding... But alas, here in London we have only three square metres of concrete behind our apartment building! We do however live super close to Regents Park and as we spend every day there walking our dog, we decided it would be a meaningful (and beautiful) location.
My knee length dress from
J.Crew was chosen purely because I worried a full length one would act as a wick to the mud if it rained (yikes!) and also because so few brides wear a short dress for their big day, I wanted to be different! Contrary to the advice of my friends, I even had it taken up a couple of inches! My good friend Lara got my boots from
Jigsaw with her staff discount which was a fantastic wedding surprise.
Groom
Prath's outfit took WAY longer to find than mine. We spent an entire afternoon in
John Lewis wandering the menswear section until even I was exhausted. But he was so happy with the outcome! Everything we bought (except my veil!) we will wear again. We're really against spending huge amounts for one day and buying clothes that we would only wear once seemed ridiculous!
Flowers
Our entire wedding had an eco friendly vibe. The confetti was (obscenely expensive) dried petals so we could throw them in the park, all the decorations were paper so they could be recycled. Our flowers were rather embarrassingly (or brilliantly?!) sourced from the dumpster of the florist near our apartment and we dried them over a couple of months in our basement before I arranged them the day before our wedding. I even made the boutonnieres for Prath and our celebrant friend and I actually really enjoyed it!
Decor
A big shout out to the
Sir John Balcombe who put up with all my bridezilla demands and managed to transform the pub basement into the most beautiful setting! Our guests said it literally took their breath away when they walked in and it made all the many MANY hours I spent unfolding paper pom-poms worth while!
We saved glass yoghurt/dessert jars for weeks to use as tea lights and I bought a tonne of candles and vases from Tiger which my lovely friend Morgane used to create our centrepieces. I used the
Paperless Post app to make our invitations, which I have to say turned out brilliantly! They have so many great options, it was completely free and we saved on paper as we emailed them out.
Ceremony
We exchanged our vows under a beautiful tree in a quiet part of the park, standing on a bed of golden leaves... Little did our guests know, a week before the wedding on the ONE day it wasn't raining, we collected four full bin bags of leaves from the opposite side of the park, with our mad little dog running around barking at us, while nervous tourists and curious joggers looked on... Then carried them all the way home and kept them in our basement until the day before!
We wrote the vows ourselves as mine were religious and Prath's were not. Our celebrant was Prath's friend Sebastian, who did a great job. My childhood friend Hanna was in charge of making sure everyone was in place and running (almost) on time and my university friend Mercedes walked me down the "aisle" which was a lovely touch as she's like a Mexican mother to me! The tiny heart decorations hanging from the tree were stunning in the sun and exactly how I'd pictured them. I bought them from Etsy and spent half a day painstakingly unfolding each individual heart while watching reruns of Dinner Date.
We really wanted our dog to be a part of the ceremony so she brought us the rings. She's awful at staying still for photos but our photographers - Juliet and Laimonas of href="https://www.lovestruckphoto.co.uk" target="_blank">Lovestruck Photography - did an incredible job and managed to make our day look beautiful, despite us both being seriously awkward in front if the camera! Their style of photography was PERFECT for us!
Food
Our food was from Priya, a Sri Lankan restaurant in East London and it was amazing, but my did our guests find it spiiiiicy! Everyone loved the food though and I'm really glad we decided to go with something traditional and a little shout out to Prath's heritage. The cake was from
Mei's Kitchen, who we already knew was perfect for our day as she has a stall in Camden Lock and we frequent it all too often!
Entertainment
For the ceremony we had a lovely cellist who played beautifully. The music in the evening was verrry different and we partied hard into the night! Prath's school friend is Nikhil Shah (aka DJ Sketchy and founder of
Mixcloud) and we also have the pleasure of knowing
Anish Shonpal (aka Matches) so between the two of them, we had some AMAZING tunes! Music is an important part of any party and I have to say those guys got it bang on the mark. Once we finished eating, we pushed back the tables and danced the night away. We didn't have a first dance as I am a terrible dancer (!) and it was so great just being there with all our nearest and dearest partying away on the dance floor. We honestly couldn't have wished for a more perfect day.
Advice
If I could offer any advice I would say if you're an anxious bride... Probably don't decide on an outdoor wedding! I was checking the weather hourly, three weeks before the day! Also where possible, don't be shy in asking your friends to help out. Our wedding would not have happened if it wasn't for our friends all coming together and lending a hand. We got a big box from Paperchase that we used for cards and later as a memories box, which turned out to be such a nice idea, I bought an identical one for our Hindu ceremony. We also got a messages book from there and it was so nice reading through it the next day. We got some single use cameras for later in the night and I have to say we captured some great moments on those! All in all I don't think there's anything we would have done differently