Sophie & Gonzalo

I know it's only Monday, but trust me after viewing this stylish warehouse wedding at the Village Underground venue in London you are going to want to P.A.R.T.Y! A gorgeous industrial space full of delicious greenery decor and fabulous mood lighting, making the perfect spot to celebrate. Throw in a band, confetti bombs and a Krispy Kreme doughnut tower and you have one amazing celebration. This and the traditional Greek wedding ceremony were all captured by the amazing Laura Babb Photo, who's style couldn't be more perfect to showcase this immense wedding.

Our Story

Sophie The Bride: We met for the first time working in the same department on the London 2012 Olympic Games, while we didn’t spend much time together, we knew each other and had many mutual friends.  From there we went on to work for different projects (Me on the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games and Gonzalo to the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games) but we were reunited in Canada working on the Toronto 2015 Pan Am/Para Pan Am Games.  What started as a friendship turned in to more over a few months. We often disagree about the date that we made things official but what we both agree is that from a discussion we had in the Red Rooster bar in New York we were serious about being together.  We made plans to move back to London after the Games in Toronto were over and were committed to following the other wherever our jobs might take us.  We got engaged a little more that a year later. Gonzalo proposed at his family’s New Year party in Madrid (in private), where my friends were visiting and joined in the celebrations.

The Venues

We both have a lot of family and friends that live abroad. We wanted as many people as possible to be able to join us to celebrate our wedding and while we would have loved to get married in Cyprus or Spain, it wasn’t very easy for either our Cypriot family, or Spanish family to make it to either location.  We decided on the UK but wanted everyone to be able to enjoy their weekend without too much travelling, so we decided on a London wedding (easier said than done when you have a guest list of 270!), We’ve both always loved East London and enjoyed going out for drinks, brunch or dinner there. It’s also special to us as Gonzalo lived there during London 2012 and my family are from that area.  We didn’t want a super formal or traditional wedding and liked the idea of an industrial/urban themed wedding. When we found Village Underground we just knew it was going to be an amazing blank canvas to be able to showcase our personality and use our organising skills to make something really special.  Choosing the church was easy, my parents got married at the same church in Hackey on the same weekend but 30 years earlier and it was just pure luck that it was in such close proximity to the reception venue!

Dress

I tried on so many dresses and when I eventually found it my Jesús Peiró dress just shouted at me as soon as I saw it. It was traditional but had a modern twist to it. I wanted to look and feel like a bride but I wanted the dress to also suit the venue.

Grooms Attire

Gonzalo's Knack Menswear tailed suit is pretty traditional for Spanish weddings. He had free reign to wear whatever he wanted and he kept it a secret until the wedding day!

The Styling

Village Underground speaks for itself. It’s such a cool venue and we wanted to accentuate it's features not mask them or overshadow them.  We chose every item that was placed in the venue – which is the amazing thing about dry hire venues… but also very stressful.  

Flowers

We were so lucky with our flower supplier (Early Hours Ltd). Liz was amazing and had such creative ideas…. I felt so comfortable that I gave her a short brief and just let her work her magic… and wow, it exceeded anything we could have dreamed of! The same for the bouquet - I got overwhelmed and gave Liz free reign and it was simply wonderful and exactly what I would have chosen!

The Ceremony

We had our ceremony in St John the Thelogian Greek Orthodox Church in Hackney. My parents got married there, My aunt got married there and me and my siblings were baptised in the same church so it had a lot of sentimental meaning.  We kept everything very traditional and kept the ceremony as it should be.

The First Dance

I put a spell on you – Nina Simone because I would often tell Gonzalo that he had ‘put a spell on me’.

Words of Advice

If you go for a dry hire venue make sure that you get a wedding planner for at least part of your planning journey but definitely on the day!  We spent almost a year putting our everything in to planning the wedding we really wanted and because we had so many suppliers, our biggest stress was who would be managing them in the lead up and on the day, We knew we couldn’t do it and we didn’t want to give such a huge responsibility to friends or family because we wanted them to enjoy the day with us. We hired a planner to help us with supplier management about 6 weeks before the big day and then manage all the operations on the day. We both work in events so we had most of our plans already in place; our budget, running orders, table plans and Pinterest boards done and ready just to hand over and boy…. it was such a relief!!!! Charlotte Dodd was a huge help to us in the lead up, working with suppliers and also filtering questions from them so that we could enjoy Christmas and plan other areas of the wedding. Nothing was too big or small to ask. There were some days when I would just brain dump things that needed to be done, worries/concerns we had, questions and Charlotte was amazing at taking those things on board, getting jobs done and in Bridezilla moments just being reassuring!!!!

Film

I was really against filming the day, I felt it was really old fashioned, however, after my mum offered to gift the videographer package from Rapid Image I decided to go with it and it was one of the best decisions we made.

Final Thoughts

We wouldn’t change one second of the day BUT we wish we had taken on some advice of one of our friends…. take a moment to enjoy each other on your wedding day. We were so busy making sure we spoke to and thanked every one and danced like crazy that we didn’t spend much time together… but hey, we have a whole life together, right?!