Robyn & Shane

We're off to London again this afternoon for another incredibly stylish city wedding. This time the reception took place at 06 St Chads Place and this time the bride opted for a vintage look which I have to say I absolutely adore. Her Catherine Deane Zaden gown screams Hollywood starlet, as does her loosely pinned bridal up do of dreams and red lipstick. Paul Joseph Photography has captured some truly gorgeous moments between the two and you can't help but feel the love, not to mention the laughter during the speeches, I wonder what was being said? I am also swooning over Robyn's bridal bouquet, not only does it pop against her sumptuous satin gown but it contains the sweetest mini pineapple. *All the heart eyes* Ready to take a look?

The Dress

Robyn the Bride: I had initially thought that I wouldn't wear a traditional wedding gown and had my eye out for a sparkly, sequinned evening dress. My friend then sent me a link to the bhldn website and I fell in love with a Catherine Deane dress which I wanted to try. It didn't suit me, but as soon as I put on the Zaden gown I knew it was the dress I would be getting married in. I loved the old Hollywood feel of the design and I was very fortunate that bhldn had my dress on sale and in my size. I shipped it from the US and it was a steal!

Beauty

Once I had my dress I realised my relaxed approach to doing my own hair and make up wasn't going to be glamorous enough and I would need some help in achieving the look I was hoping for.  Lipstick and Curls were the perfect fit for me as they are experts in creating beautiful vintage style bridal looks. Kelly was able to create a grown up, 30s style up do and striking, but simple make up that was really special. I trusted her completely and I was thrilled with the result.

Grooms Attire

Shane's suit was from Banana Republic. It was the first suit he tried on and he loved it… Easy! 

Decor

We had no firm ideas of what we wanted for a theme, design or colour scheme. We wanted lots of lights, so we bought some letter lights and used the festoon lights and the fairy lights that the venue already had. 06 St Chads Place has a lot of natural light too, so it always felt bright and open during the day. My friend Jessie is a graphic designer and very kindly offered to design our table plan, menus and table names. We spent a lovely evening in front of her computer with a glass of wine or two getting those done!  We had seen tea-cakes used for name tags online and loved the simplicity of the idea and despite some of them melting in the August heat, they looked great!

Florist

My friend Alice and I went to a flower arranging class one weekend in late Spring and prior to that I had thought that I would do most of the flowers for the wedding myself. In the end I only arranged the flowers for the tables, purchased from a local florist, a couple of days before the wedding with the help of Shane and his sister Selina. Ultimately, I felt my meagre artistic talents wouldn’t stretch to my own bouquet and so I met with Phil at Rebel Rebel who was very helpful and extremely talented. We had a chat about the sort of thing I was looking for and I really wanted to give him as much free reign as possible to create something interesting and unique for the button holes and my bridal bouquet. I was so happy with my bouquet on the day, it even had a tiny pink pineapple peeking out between the blooms, a completely brilliant and inspired touch! 

Ceremony

We only looked at one venue for the ceremony as we knew we wanted to get married at Stoke Newington Town Hall after seeing photos of it online. We wanted to keep our ceremony short, sweet and fun for everyone. So we were keen to have readings that were personal and light-hearted as well as heartfelt. My friend Annabel did a gorgeous reading of a short love poem called ‘Before There Was You’ by Lang Leav and then our friend Mark read the lyrics to ‘Rabbit’ by Chas & Dave as a piece of spoken word, which had everyone in hysterics. We had the idea when we were laughing about the song one night over dinner with one of Shane’s best men Ben and we knew that Mark was the perfect man for the job!

Venue & Food

We then hopped on a route master bus to get to 06 St Chad’s Place for our reception. Here we had a glass of Pimms and our nephew Finn helped hand out personalised bags of crisps to keep everyone happy whilst we went and had a few photos taken. I do love a bag of crisps and it felt only right to have them on our wedding day! We then had a delicious three-course dinner, with speeches in between each course so we could get to the dancing as swiftly as possible.  The management and bar staff at the venue were absolutely brilliant, I’m not sure how many Lynchburg lemonades they made by the end of the night, but they seemed to be the drink of choice for fueling some particularly impressive dance moves. Our friend Mary’s Tea Parties made us some tasty, sparkly red velvet mini-cupcakes and a small top cake with our initials on for people to grab and eat later in the evening.  At 10pm we collected a selection of pizzas from Pizza Union across the road. There were no excuses to not stay partying until the bar closed at 2am!

Entertainment

We spent a lot of time in the run up to the wedding listening to favourite songs and building playlists for each part of the day. We had a rule that if a song didn’t get one of the two of us dancing within 30 seconds it couldn’t be on the list for the evening reception… My brother, Stuart, loves DJing and he has a great selection of soul and funk vinyl which he and his friend Luke brought along. They played a mixture of our choice of ‘Big Tunes’ and their dance floor fillers and it was a packed dance floor from 8pm onwards. They did a brilliant job!

Photographer

We were recommended Paul and Kelly, Paul Joseph Photography, by Samuel Docker who I used to work with in a bar in Derby over ten years ago. He said that we would get on and he was right, they were exactly the style of photographer we were looking for. We met them over Skype and talked through our ideas and what we hoped to capture and they didn't disappoint, we are delighted with the photographs of our wedding day! They are such warm, friendly and fun people to have around and felt just like guests who were joining in our day rather an intrusive presence. We were lucky to have booked them as they are at the top of their game… They are absolutely wonderful!