Anthony & Nicholas

Oh I do love a man in tweed, so all the better than when there's not one but two gorgeous grooms dressed head to toe in the classic look. Anthony and Nicholas said their 'I Dos' in the wonderfully atmospheric venue Asylum before transporting their nearest and dearest in a Gold Regal single-decker to a One Friendly Place to party! There's so much to love about this winter wedding, be it the cake toppers (so cute!), the delicious cocktails, the bespoke portraits and the super cool table centres, that I'm off to pin everything. All the action was captured by the very lovely and talented Claire Penn, who comes highly recommended by us.

The Grooms' Fashion

Anthony & Nicholas The Grooms: As this was a winter wedding, we were keen to have clothes that were warm, comfortable yet smart and would reflect the décor of the venues. We also wanted to feel special and to wear bespoke clothes that we wouldn’t wear every day. We discovered Tweed Addict, based in Hackney, and fell in love with the beautiful range of tweeds Nathan used in his traditional but contemporary designs.

The Venue

Living just a few streets away in Peckham, southeast London, we regularly went past Caroline Gardens Chapel when walking our dog and as soon as we saw the interior we knew immediately that we had to get married there! The mixture of faded grandeur and dilapidation provided a stunning backdrop for our ceremony of this crumbling deconsecrated chapel. The venue was dressed only with some simple festoon lighting and candles in what would have been the alter area, as we did not feel we needed to add anything to this already beautiful space. We researched many venues across London and were keen to have a dry-hire, warehouse space that didn’t feel like a traditional ‘wedding’ venue. We were after somewhere that had heaps of personality but that wouldn’t need too much dressing. One Friendly Place had everything we needed – in spades! The layout, décor, rooftop and quirky (if not slightly random) props gave us everything we needed and perfectly complemented the ceremony venue and gave us the feel we wanted to achieve. We made sure we used all the space by holding different parts of the day on different floors, beginning with cocktails and canapés on the top floor and rooftop and ending in dancing on the ground floor.

Colour Scheme

We wanted to keep the tables very simple. We hired long, vintage trestle tables with mismatching chairs (a mixture of old school chairs, chapel chairs and folding chairs) to allow for communal dining. The tables did not need cloths, as they were stunning as they were. We decided against flowers for the venues; instead we had cacti in tin pots along the tables and simple white crockery. Our place-settings were homemade from blank white cassette tapes with dymo-embossed name labels. We hung festoon lighting from a beam above the tables, but otherwise used lighting already at the venue – a mixture of various vintage lamps. On the middle floor, we created a “powder room”. There was a large, fifties backlit make-up mirror behind a long bench. We provided an old-fashioned record player and some vinyl for guests to play whilst touching up their hair and make-up. Alongside this we had purchased various perfumes and aftershaves for our guests to use. The rest of the furniture was provided by the venue: there were enough sofas and soft furnishings to create a comfortable and relaxing area on the middle floor, away from the dance floor.

The Wedding Party Fashion

The best men wore bespoke tweed suits, as we wanted the wedding party to match the theme and feel of the grooms’ suits. David’s was made by Tweed Addict and Amaila was made by her father (who is a ladies fashion designer of Zed Collection). All suits were of similar styles and were made of tweeds which had similar tones and colours, but differing patterns. Our friends’ children, Luella and Alex, were our confetti-girls, who had handmade confetti baskets and handed out confetti to our friends and family at the chapel.

Ceremony

We asked three of our closest friends to do readings of their own choosing at the ceremony – we did not know what they would read until the day of the wedding. Vikki Hamilton chose to read I Need You by John Hegley, Caroline Glover read You by Carol-Ann Duffy and Lynn Sear read The Little Yellow Leaf by Carin Berger (a children’s picture book). We had a simple service led by a Southwark registrar. We walked down the aisle to Hey Lloyd, I’m Ready to Be Heartbroken by Camera Obscura and we danced back down the aisle to You’ve Got the Love by Florence + the Machine.

Entertainment

We kept the entertainment simple. We met Rosie Curran at End of the Road festival in September, where she drew our portrait in felt-tip pen in her photobooth, which guarantees a ‘30% likeness’. We were thrilled when she told us she did weddings and lived locally to us. It provided a twist on the traditional photobooth idea and meant our guests had a memento of the day to take away with them – Rosie even made special stationery that matched our invitations to draw her portraits on. For our DJ, we were keen to avoid the cheesy wedding disco. As keen amateur DJs ourselves, we owned quite a lot of (mainly 80s and 90s) 7” vinyl. We were lucky enough to have a friend who was willing to play some tunes for us on the night of the do, so we were able to make sure the music was a reflection of our personalities and the sort of music we regularly listen to without suffering Come on Eileen or Agadoo. Our first dance was to Such Great Heights by Iron and Wine.

Food

All the food was served ‘family style’, so that guests could tuck in and eat as much as they liked, whilst encouraging our long tables of guests to interact with one another. Our cake was a ‘Mars bar cake’ handmade by our friend Kat Andrews and a huge artisan cheese tower made by our friends Philip and Keith of Wildes Cheese, who were also guests on the day We supplied the alcohol for the day offering homemade cocktails including hot apple rum, negroni, dark and stormy and Moscow mules. The beer was supplied by Redemption Brewery.

Photographer

After finding One Friendly Place and researching various wedding blogs, we found the lovely Claire. She had already shot a wedding at the evening venue so we were confident knew the place! Luckily she was available to shoot our wedding. We wanted a photographer who would capture the narrative of the day rather than posed photographs and we adored Claire’s natural style (as well as Claire herself!).She was also excited about shooting Asylum and ours was her first same-sex wedding. The photos are PHENOMENAL and better than we could have ever hoped for!