Our Wedding
Anne The Bride: Planning our wedding has got to be THE highlight of our five-year relationship. It even tops a three month stint in LA where our adventures included Porn Star Karaoke (seriously, it’s a thing. Ron Jeremy was there playing harmonica. Chris sang A-Ha’s ‘Take On Me’). We sourced and made all of the props and décor ourselves and it’s proved to be far more exciting than simply a project for our wedding. In the months leading up the big day, friends and family started a spontaneous hashtag: #thebarnables (a combination of our surnames) and we’ve now launched our
own company under the same name for event planning, design and prop hire.
The result was beyond anything we dreamed of – total cliché but true! We created a 1940s bar, magical banquet with 400 metres of festoon lights and topped things off with a thirties style music hall.
Planning Our Big Day
After the excitement of getting engaged died down a little, I found myself home alone one Friday night. I knew exactly what was required: Bridal mag, HUGE bar of chocolate and a bottle of wine. Thirty minutes in I’d got through the first forty-seven pages of adverts, a feature on the importance of matching table glitter to the bridesmaid’s shoes and an article on ‘so amazing you won’t want to eat them’ cakes (from four to twelve pounds per slice. Per slice!! And we had reasonable grounds to assume no-one would want to eat them!) From what I could make out, apparently we could have a unique, personal wedding of our dreams – as long as we bought into the year’s current trends and spent around fifty thousand pounds. Needless to say the chocolate and wine came in handy, but for completely different reasons.
I hit the internet and ‘Rock My Wedding’ came to the rescue. I spent several, very happy hours searching though the blog archives and was firmly convinced that we could, and would, have our wedding, our way.
Firstly, we needed to generate ideas so we created a chart of everything that makes us happy, both as individuals and as a couple, and that became the starting point for all of our decisions. What stood out above everything else was our love of real vintage. No offence to anyone who can’t wait to ragroll an old hostess trolley, but shabby chic and bunting just ain’t our bag. Given that our first date was also at Goodwood Revival, it was only natural that we would use a vintage theme for our overall look, specifically 1920s to 1950s.
The Bride
Dress: ‘Journey’ by Enzoani and full length veil. Originally I was researching vintage bridal shops and had a short list which included shops in Eastbourne and Brighton. Our wise friend Heather then pointed out that if I needed alterations and more than one fitting, it would be better to choose somewhere closer to home. Linda at ‘
Bride and Groom Kent Ltd’ is fabulous – she was almost as excited as I was!
Kay’s been cutting my hair for just over a year and I knew there was no-one else I wanted. She and her partner, Nicola, not only made me and my two bridesmaids look like princesses but also styled my mum’s and mother-in-law’s hair so they felt ultra special, too.
The Groom
Chris wore a 1930s Benrus Art Deco watch (a present from his beautiful bride) and Goodwood Road Racing Club cufflinks (another present from his beautiful bride).
The Venue
We’d researched venues across the country because the type of building was important, rather than the actual location. It needed to be a blank canvas and have elements of the industrial; we also needed a dry hire to enable us to realise all of our ideas. Initially, we thought we couldn’t afford London and were also put off by the number of venues who put restrictions on caterers, wine lists and the time we could be there. One venue (who shall remain nameless) wanted to charge ten thousand pounds just to allow us in the door between 1pm and 11pm – including set up and strike – before even discussing food, drink, staffing, lighting and sound. Eventually, again largely thanks to Rock My Wedding, we discovered
Shoreditch Studios.
Crucially, Shoreditch Studios has two rooms. This meant that our guests would be in one for the ceremony, then the other for pre-meal drinks, back through for dinner and then back out again for the
evening festivities. We loved the idea of having the opportunity to surprise our guests not once, but several times! We ignored everyone’s advice and didn’t physically look anywhere else. We knew Shoreditch Studios fitted the bill perfectly. Dan, Andrew, Maree and the whole team were open to all of our ideas (even the crazy ones!) and were incredibly flexible and supportive.
The Decor
Where to start? There was no specific colour scheme, but we love our secret bars (the kind you need a code or password to get into) and that definitely influenced the day. Our Save-the-Dates were film canisters containing the key details and we followed them up with invitations designed to look like top secret files. We were the ‘targets’ and guests were ‘operatives’. Guests were asked to attend ‘undercover’ in 1920s-50s attire. Instead of recommending hotels we suggested several ‘safehouses’. Everyone was also invited to a ‘Mission Debrief’ breakfast the following day.
Pre ceremony: We kept this as plain as possible – no décor, just plain tables and chairs. This threw our guests off kilter a little because, after all the effort we’d put into the invitations, they were expecting a showstopper.
Ceremony: Again, this was quite plain with nothing but the festoon lighting. It was a deliberate decision because we wanted the focus to be on the most important part of the day: us actually getting married!
Post-ceremony: Once the doors reopened the room had been transformed to look like a 1940s pub – complete with upright piano and Cockney sing-a-along. ‘The Cablemakers Arms’ was inspired by my maiden name and was a full scale version of a doll’s house my mum had made. We made a traditional pub sign and there were original copies of The Times and Radio Times from our wedding date in 1944. Wartime leaflets and posters were also included, along with original vintage lamps and various other props. We had bespoke beermats printed with a line drawing of the doll’s house, which Chris designed.
We even had the bar staff in flat caps and braces!
The meal: Possibly one of my favourite moments was seeing the tables set up for everyone. Rather than table numbers we named them after our favourite television programmes, films, books and bands, everything from Poirot, Gone With The Wind, The Beach Boys and The Who. Our florist had done an amazing job and we supplied the props ourselves (partly to keep costs down, partly because it was super fun to do). The Poirot centrepieces, for example, was a stack of Agatha Christie novels decorated with art-deco flowers and his trademark moustache. For Father Ted we had a large teacup and saucer as the vase, and it was surrounded by mini whiskey bottles and catchphrases from the series. For the favours, we took inspiration from ration packs issued to soldiers during WW1 and had bespoke tins printed – each one contained an alcohol miniature, a collapsible mini cup, two aspirin and a mint (plus instructions on how to signal to other guests with a napkin).
Evening: Once dinner and the speeches were done we went through for the first dance and the room had changed again – this time into ‘Spokes Music Hall’. Sadly Chris’s mum passed away and Spokes was
her maiden name; it was important to us that she was acknowledged on our special day. Chris made a neon sign and ‘we’ (Maree and her team) had changed all the pictures and props. Lamps had new shades,
different images were on the wall and this time the bar staff were in black tie. The piano had disappeared and was replaced with a swing band. Again, we had cocktail mats specially printed with the Spokes logo which again Chris designed. We felt a bit sad that the pub props were only used for a short time, so they were transferred to a ‘chill out’ area, where we created a 1940s secret agent office.