Katie & Tommy

Katie & Tommy love London city, so the search was on to have a day full of everything they love, including a boat ride of the Thames. They stumbled across Trinity Buoy Wharf which is a great dry hire venue and meant they could have a wedding that truly reflected them. There's hanging lanterns, trestle tables and paper origami boat name place tags as well as a sweet treat Kinder Surprise favour. Plus the most spectacular paper flower altar backdrop made by Katie's super talented Mum which you are going to absolutely LOVE. But onto our gorgeous Bride, she is the picture of elegance in her Jesús Peiró gown, and her laser cut Rupert Sanderson shoes....let's just say you have to see them....oh my I'm green with envy!

The Dress

Katie The Bride: I went to nearly every dress shop in London and had a nightmare trying to decide. I felt ridiculous in most dresses! I had an idea that I wanted something vintage and lacy but in reality those sort of dresses would have looked out of place in such an urban venue. I found my dress in the end in Morgan Davies where a lovely lady called Rebecca picked it out for me, on the hanger I wasn't sure but as soon as I got it on I loved it!!!! I also loved my veil, literally more than anything in the world. I was still wearing underneath a sailor’s hat at the hotel bar at 4:30am! As I work for the jewellery brand Astley Clarke I was fortunate enough to have my pick of amazing jewels on the day! The Bridemaids and I wore bracelet stacks in matching colours and I had the most beautiful rose gold diamond earrings. I also bought all of the Bridesmaids rose gold lockets with their names engraved on the outside as thank you gifts. I had a beautiful pair of Rupert Sanderson shoes for the day and changed in to some silver Superga pumps for the nights dancing.

Grooms Attire

Tommy had his suit made for him by Moss Bros Bespoke and he looked gorgeous! The red ties were chosen to contrast against the blue and they looked great and really stood out in the pictures. We didn't really have a colour theme and I didn't want everything to be too matchy matchy so the ties didn't match the Bridesmaids dresses or flowers. His shoes were some classic brown brogues from Grenson.

The Venues

We both love London and really wanted to hold our Wedding in our hometown. I particularly love being on the river and searched everywhere for a riverside venue. So many of the venues were so stuffy and had to close at 11pm, one even had a no dancing rule! Boring! I found Trinity Buoy Wharf on a blog and when we visited it was perfect. The area was so usual and stuffed full of art and interesting architecture we just fell in love with it. The big bonus was that we could decorate it how we liked and it was open until 2am for a big party. Our ceremony venue was St Bride Foundation; it’s a beautiful Victorian building next door to St Brides Church off Fleet Street. The hall was a beautiful light space and its close proximity to the river was one of the reasons why we chose it as we could walk down to the boat to travel to our reception venue. On the day this was great fun with people stopping to congratulate us and even builders shouting down from their scaffolding, it was hilarious! Also, luckily it didn’t rain!

Colour scheme/décor

Well, this was definitely the largest job of the whole wedding and the one that caused the most sleepless nights, but it was totally worth it in the end! I love organising events, planning and styling and have set up a side business doing this, so I was definitely in my element when it came to arranging my own Wedding! Choosing a dry hire venue is not the easy option and Trinity Buoy Wharf being so vast meant that a lot of decoration was needed to bring the space together and having three venues (ceremony, boat and reception) added to this pressure. We also shared furniture between the ceremony and reception sending everything in van across London whilst we were on the boat, there was a slight panic when we arrived at our reception before the chairs but they arrived shortly after, so it all worked out well in the end! I wanted to try and inject some fun in to the decoration and we had a loose nautical theme running throughout the day which could be seen in everything from the stripe in my dress through to the hundreds of paper origami boats that we had hanging up at the reception venue. My friends and family helped out massively with different parts of the decoration, my Bridesmaid Jan carefully made all the table runners from reems of chevron fabric as well as hand drawing our table plans and blackboards we had dotted about, they looked incredible! My Mum helped with a million things but her master piece had to be the paper flower wall that she made for the ceremony. As we were not having a church wedding we wanted a focal point at the front of the room for us to say our vows in front of and this was perfect. All the other decorations were either sourced through car boot sales, Ebay and junk shops or hired.

The Flowers

Hattie at 'That Flower Shop' did all of the flowers apart from the table decorations and they were beautiful. We received so many complements on them. I am not really a fan of traditional wedding flowers and find them all rather dull and Hattie really got me and understood what I wanted so I was very happy.
The tables were all decorated with my 80’s vintage milk bottles (eBay bargain) and flowers from Covent Garden flower market. My Mum and I went down there at 6am the day before the Wedding and bought a whole car full of amazing flowers, way much more than we actually needed, this was a great way to decorate the venue as it was so large we needed quite a few.

The Wedding party fashion

All Bridesmaid dresses were from Coast and in an oyster colour and accessorised Astley Clarke jewellery. The Groomsmen suits were all hired from Ted Baker at Moss Bros and ties from Zara. My nephews Ben and Jack were the pageboys and looked cute in suits from Marks and Spencer, Converse and little red bow ties

Ceremony

I really enjoyed the ceremony which surprised me as I thought it would be scary standing up there in front of all those people. Tommy and I just giggled our way through it, particularly when the rings wouldn't go on and I forgot what I was meant to be saying!
 We had two readings, one called a lovely love story by Edward Monkton and the other one was called instructions for life in a new millennium by the Dalia Lama. Both were perfect.

Entertainment

Our DJ was Paddy from Disco Shed and he was incredible; the dancefloor was packed all night. He just seemed to know exactly what people wanted to hear and played a real mix from cheesy to techno. Tommy is a big techno fan so he loved it!

Food

Our caterers were Hubbub a London based café and catering company who could not have been more amazing. We decided to go for an informal sharing style of dinner as it suited the long canteen style table set up that we had. We had an antipasti sort of starter with hams, bruschetta, tomato and basil salad and bread and oil. Main course was a tasty slow cooked lamb with Jersey royals, a nod to Tommy’s Jersey heritage! We decided on a big old dessert table which had various yummy cakes made by my Bridesmaid Jan as well as gorgeous colourful meringues by the Meringue Girls as well as the fabulous Wedding cake.

Photographer

The lovely Alice from Babb Photo. Alice was wonderful on the day and her unobtrusive style suited us perfectly. She also managed to get shots of everything, she was like a photo ninja popping up when something was happening here and there which was amazing. Her warm and friendly approach was a hit as well with us and our guests as you felt that you were hanging out with a friend. I could not recommend her enough.