Anne & Rob

These two gorgeous love birds both have a Old Hollywood glamour vibe that lends itself perfectly to a Gatsby inspired wedding - Anne looks like she was born to wear her Ritva Westenius gown (a sample sale bargain BTW, although you'd never, ever know!) and Rob cuts a fine figure in his tailored suit too. Anne took a gamble in allowing her (seven) Bridesmaids to chose their own dresses, in shades of pale peach. Well, it totally worked as the ladies, plus the two little flower girls, look absolutely gorgeous. Images come from Matt Willis Photography, who also happens to be a friend of the couple - the lucky things!

Our Wedding

Anne The Bride: Rob and I live in our tiny flat in Putney London, which soon got even smaller during the planning of our wedding, with favours, gifts, DIY signage and extra bits and bobs. We got married in Somerset because it was where my family are from (South Bristol). All of Rob’s family came from North Norfolk, so it was a bit of a track for them!

The Bride

I hated every minute of dress shopping. Definitely not your average bride! And not because I couldn’t find anything I liked, I loved them all! I was waiting for ‘The One’ to jump out on me but that never happened. After weeks of trying lots of different dresses, I decided to go (along with Mum and Auntie) to a Bridal Sample Sale in Knightsbridge. I left with 2!
 The first dress I bought was completely not typically me. I bought it because a) it was a beautiful dress b) I loved the idea of shocking people. Then just as my mum is handing over her credit card to the Sassi Holford, my Auntie pointed out a silky and sparkly number from Ritva Westenius. I had to have that one too! It wasn’t until I took them home that I soon realised that shocking people wasn’t the reaction that I wanted. I really really loved the Ritva silky dress. So I chose the 2nd dress as my main dress and just wore the Sassi dress for dinner (I had 2 dresses, so I thought I might as well wear both!) 



The Groom

Rob bought himself and his two best men a tailored suit from Savile Row. It was their thank you present and an excuse to meet up for fittings and have a few sneaky beers. We also bought our Dads and ushers ties to match the scheme. I had 2 little pageboys/ring bearers. They looked so adorable in matching over sized blue suits. They are going to kill me when they are older. 

The Decor

My main dress (the silky one) is called Gatsby. So we loosely based the decor for the evening around that. Obviously my hubby didn't know about the dress but loved the theme too. The day had a different feel. Colour scheme was a massive gamble. I wanted my bridesmaids to wear different styles as they all had very different figures. I wanted to be comfortable and look great, which they did. The rules were pale peach, but having 7 bridesmaids and 2 flower girls it was hard to keep the colour on track. I never actually saw the bridesmaids all together in their dresses until the day but thankfully it was well worth the gamble and they all looked just as I imagined, beautiful. 

The Flowers

The amazingly talented florist Emily Jewsbury listened to our brief and knocked it out of the park. We were so happy with the outcome on this. We wanted big and wild feel to the centrepieces and entrance pieces and just simple for the bouquets. She also made a couple of wrist corsages for my 2 friends dressed in blue because they were my something blue. 

The Entertainment

One of our important factors of our day was that both our guests (and us) had lots of fun! So we had lots of entertainment. For the ceremony we had a string trio. Drinks reception a carticurists and a 2-man band. During the dinner, we just had an ipod playing. We had gifts for the small children, favours of love doves salt and peppershakers for the grown ups and also a selfie stick on every table. After dinner my 15-year-old nephew wowed us with his fantastic piano skills.  The evening we had 2 large yummy paella dishes and toasted marshmallows on fire pits whilst sat on haybales. We had a cool SKA/ jazz style full band followed by a dj. We wanted to bring a bit of our London life to Somerset, so we had a black cab photo booth which we so fun and doubled up as our guest book. 

The Ceremony

The ceremony was beautiful. Our vows were interrupted with wasps flying around us, but that made us laugh and more at ease. I spent months leading up to the day worried that I would cry walking down the aisle or during the vows (I'm a very emotional person). I didn't cry!! I even gave a 'whoop whoop', when they pronounced us husband and wife! I had 2 of my baby nephews (1 & 2 years old) as the ring bearers, which definitely was a awwww moment, especially when they so proudly handed us the rings like they have practiced for months leading up to the day but as soon as they got attention from the guests they ran off screaming!  We decided we didn't want a cake, mainly because we both don't eat cake. So we went for a champagne tower instead. Rob and I poured the tower. It didn't work to plan but it was fun trying!

The Images & Video

I am very lucky to have an incredibly talented cinematographer cousin! Daniel and his gorgeous assistant / fiancée Siobhan were fantastic. They captured our day with a 5-minute video perfectly. What a fab wedding present that was! Finding a photographer was another tricky task. My MOH's hubby/our good friend Matt Willis is a professional wedding photographer. I asked his advice and he so kindly wrote me a list of photographers that he highly recommended. I liked them all but none even compared to Matt's work. So I asked Matt and he said he would love to shoot our wedding! Hurray! Definitely the best decision we made was to have our friend work on our wedding. Matt was so professional and made everyone, (especially Rob and I) so relaxed which helped us enjoy every second. I am not photogenic in the slightest and always look like a rabbit caught in headlights but some how Matt magically made us look amazing! How does he do that?! We are so pleased with the photos; he really captured the whole emotion of the day. 

Special Touches & Advice

We had welcome letters for guests staying at the venue with hangover potions; we knew it would be a boozy one! We had flip-flops for the evening to give no excuses not to dance. And some silly props and sunglasses, just because! B-) Rob surprised me by buying me a 1983 (year I was born) Rolex for a wedding present and I did buy him a sexy boudoir shoot from 'For Your Eyes Only'. Whatever the weather or any hiccups that happen on the day let your best men deal with it. We had no idea about the problems on the day because we had a rule for no one to tell us.