I love Christmas! Who doesn’t! Just because you get married near Christmas doesn’t mean you it to be the main theme of the day. Helen and Michael did a brilliant job with their a hint of Christmas wedding without it looking over the top. The other bonus with getting married at Christmas is that most venues put all of their own decorations up and that can save you having to buy your own. I think you will agree with me that Sacha Miller did an amazing job as usual photographing this beautiful wedding! sit back with some Christmas tunes on a glass of mulled wine and enjoy. ~Kate
What was your budget?
We started out with a spreadsheet and a budget of £15k but we weren’t brilliant at sticking to it or keeping proper track of what we spent, the total cost was around £20k in the end.
How would you describe your wedding theme?
We didn’t really have a theme, if I had to describe it I’d say it was something like “sparkly, winter, purple, things we like, music”, we chose things that we liked and suited the venue and time of year. We had mulled wine and cider for the post-ceremony drinks and our stationery featured snowflakes and reindeer so it was a bit Christmassy but we didn’t want to go all out Christmas, it was a wedding after all. For our music we went for a 90s theme, I walked down the aisle to “Something Changed” by Pulp sung by our lovely friend Elliott who also sang a medley songs during the drinks reception including “Nothing Else Matters” by Metallica and “Into My Arms” by Nick Cave. My cousin’s husband, Ricardo, is an unbelievable flamenco guitarist and he played during the signing of the register.In another nod to the time of year, we walked out of the ceremony to “Fairy-tale of New York”. In the evening friends and family DJed a range of 90s indie, pop and dance which kept people dancing until 3am. We struggled to find readings as we really didn’t feel that any of the traditional ones suited us. We tried to find something from our favourite books or music but nothing seemed to quite work as a reading. After some extensive googling we found “Scientific Romance Redux” by Tim Pratt and “I like you” by Sandol Stoddard Warburg, the former being a poem that the author wrote for his Wife on Valentine’s Day and the latter a children’s book, we felt these suited us much better! The poem contains references to space travel, a zombie apocalypse and travelling through time to have threesome and it certainly raised a few eyebrows amongst our guests! We also had a “wedding warm-up disco” on the Friday night with a very simple theme of “weddings”, it was fancy dress and we had brides, grooms, bridesmaids, vicars two bouquets and a cake. Awesome cheese DJ, Ian Sawyer of Ruby Tunes , provided the perfect cheesy wedding disco sound track to the night. Having a Friday night event was a great way for our guests to meet each other and gave us more time to talk to everybody and relax the night before the wedding.
What was your favourite part of your wedding?
The whole weekend was amazing; I am not sure I could pick a favourite bit but some moments that stood out for me include: • Seeing everyone in their fancy dress on the Friday night and having time to chat, hang out and dance.
- Getting ready on the morning of the wedding, it was such a lovely time with our Mums, bridesmaids and my Sister-in-law, we had loads of fun and barely stopped laughing
- Walking down the stairs with my Dad to one of my favourite songs, seeing Michael waiting for me and feeling the love for us of all our friends and family
- Dancing and singing/yelling along to Rage Against the Machine with a bunch of our awesome guests at around midnight (and my hair living to tell the tale!)
- Hanging out with the last guests standing at around 4am and discovering the cheese trolley
Tell us about your Wedding Dress
I went into the process of buying a wedding dress with some trepidation, I’m not a girly girl and and I’m not a fan of pale colours, generally finding myself in black and purple, however, I enjoyed the process much more than I though I would. I had some amazing times trying on dresses all over the UK and, thanks to a friend’s birthday trip, in New York. I had no idea what I wanted in a wedding dress and this made things difficult initially, a lot of shops expect you to go in with an idea of what you want. I really didn’t know. I must have tried hundreds of dresses and none of them were quite right, I learned more and more what I didn’t like but still wasn’t sure what I did! I ended up getting a dress made at La Novia in Edinburgh, a shop I had first visited when I was still living in the city, very early on in the wedding planning process. My initial visit was for an Ian Stuart designer day, I was obsessed with his dresses for a while but when I tried them on I found them a bit too much and didn’t feel comfortable. I had also tried on some of the dresses designed by the shop owner, Liliana Dabic, and found one made in the most beautiful vintage style metallic lace but I wasn’t sure about the shape, it was very full and I was realising that I preferred a more fitted style. Some months (and many more dresses) later I was going to Edinburgh for Hogmanay and I decided to go back to La Novia to try the dress again and discuss the possibility of getting a more fitted version made, it was perfect timing as my Mum and Chief Bridesmaid were also coming for New Year.
Who did you pick as your bridesmaids &/or best man and why?
I had three bridesmaids; my oldest friend Jennie who I have known since we were babies, my friend Sarah who I lived (and drank) with at university, and my friend Natalie who I met through work and has since become the sister I never had. I picked them because I knew I could rely on them to support me, they are great fun and I wanted them to be part of the weekend. I also new that they would be honest with me and keep me grounded if I started to get wedding crazy. Michael has known his best man, Jamie, for over fifteen years and he had all the appropriate information for an excellent speech.
We looked at a number of venues, when we started planning the wedding I was living in Edinburgh and Michael was in Bath, we have friends and family all over the UK so the main stipulation was that it was easy for people to get to. As a lot of people would be travelling we wanted to make the wedding more of a weekend event rather than one day only so we tried to look for places we could hire for a couple of nights. Buckland Hall was perfect, not only is it a lovely venue surrounded by beautiful countryside it is also easily accessible by car and it is exclusively yours for the whole weekend. The staff are fantastic and they really made us feel like we could do whatever we wanted, nothing was too much trouble. An added bonus for us was that the food at Buckland Hall is all vegetarian (and delicious), as we are vegetarians ourselves a lot of our friends thought we chose the venue for this reason but it was really just the icing on the cake.
Tell us about your photographer
As I am sure is the case for many couples, the choice of photographer was one of the most important things to us. We wanted documentary style photos that showed everyone enjoying the day and being themselves, neither of us likes being photographed and we wanted to spend the day having fun with our guests not posing for photos. When we came across Sacha Miller’s website we knew we had found the perfect photographer, his photos are so natural and really catch the essence of a moment. On the day he was amazing, most of the time we hardly noticed he was there and he made the few group and couple shots we had a relaxed and enjoyable experience. When we got our pictures after the wedding we were over the moon, they captured the day perfectly and the personalities of our friends and family really shone through, it’s a year later and we still can’t stop looking at them!
Our engagement story is not really romantic but it makes for a good story. We had been together about seven years when we got engaged, we had been talking for sometime about getting married and always knew it was going to happen but we had never made any proper plans. We were out one night in early 2012 at a dodgy Goth festival and had had a fair few drinks, Michael told me that he’d saved up the money for an engagement ring, I asked, “Is that a proposal?” and he said, “if it was would you say yes?” I said, “yes” and that was that! We didn’t want to make it official until we bought a ring which, for various reasons, took another year so it kind of came out in dribs and drabs when we couldn’t resist telling people.
Any DIY stories/tutorials you’d like to share?
DIY was never high on on the list things we wanted to do, neither of us is very artistic and we are both very busy with work. My lovely sister in-law put together some beautiful origami kits to put on the tables and we gave wind-up toys as favours so our guests had plenty to keep them amused. We also asked our guests to bring us Christmas tree decorations as gifts and had a tree at the venue with just lights on that they added them too, it provided a lovely talking point and we will have a tree full of memories every Christmas.
In hindsight, was there anything you would have done differently?
The only thing that springs to mind is the first dance, we spent absolutely ages considering songs and I think we really over thought it. We worried too much about the lyrics and didn’t really consider the fact that we’d have to dance to it in front of everybody! We ended up with “A Question of Lust” by Depeche Mode which is far too slow and long resulting in me getting rather angry and moaning at Michael the whole time that I wanted it to stop! It made for some amusing pictures though and our second dance choice, “I Touch Myself” by The Divinyls was much more fun to dance to and got our guests dancing with us.
Do you have any advice for future couples?
Remember it’s your wedding, do the things you want to do and leave out the things that you don’t, there are very few things that you HAVE to include to make the wedding legal and the rest is up to you. We chose not to have a cake because we couldn’t decide on something we both really wanted, it seemed like lot of money for one photo and a compromise! Ask people for help if you need it, people love to be involved and it makes things much more enjoyable if you involve your friends and family.
What was your favourite thing about planning a wedding?
I think my favourite thing was the fact that it brought me closer to my friends and family, I had many fun trips to wedding dress shops with various friends and the inevitable cocktails afterwards. My bridesmaids and I are all busy and we don’t normally see each other as much as we’d like but the bridesmaid dress shopping trips, hen do and last minute planning meant that we made the time. Buying my dress in Edinburgh meant that I was “forced” to make a few trips up there in the run up to the wedding giving me more opportunities to catch up with my friends and family in my favourite city.
The Suppliers
Photographer: Sacha Miller
Ceremony and Reception Venue: Buckland Hall
Bride’s Dress: La Novia
Bride’s Shoes: Irregular Choice
Bride’s Headpiece: Ivory and Co
Bride’s Jewellery: Wedding Ring- Gavin Mack Jewellery , Engagement Ring- James Ness
Groom’s Outfit: Moss Bros
Bridesmaid’s Dresses: Dessy
Flowers: Hilarys Flowers
Hair: Jess Mac
Make Up: Naomi Emmanuelle
Simply stunning. This wedding is a perfect example of doing the day your way. If you are wanting some inspiration to your own wedding why not come along to Cwtchfest. This year it is going to be awesome. Tickets are limited so click here to get some before they all go. I hope you have an amazing Christmas and I will see you in the new year.
The Wedding Album
