Josie & Tomro

Every.Thing. About this urban city wedding is immense. From Bride Josie's sleek, backless Charlotte Simpson gown, to Groom Tom's Liberty Print tie and not forgetting the contemporary venues, Museum of St John and St John Bar & Restaurant, which are all decked out in the prettiest cherry blossom and foliage by Palais Flowers. There are SO many romantic and emotional filled images captured by Wonderful & Strange that this gorgeous wedding is sure to swell the heart as well as inspire you. Enjoy lovelies, it's a goodie.

Planning

Josie the Bride: Our vision for the wedding was for it to feel relaxed, effortless and fairly pared back. With traditional food served communally from sharing platters alongside a soundtrack of soul music, gin cocktails, French wine and informal speeches.

Photographer

Wonderful & Strange our photographers helped to reinforce the laid back feeling of the day, with no staged group shots, just capturing beautiful candid moments.

Flowers

The flowers were a huge extravagance however absolutely transformed the pared back canvas of St John. We focussed on spring flowers, in addition to forced pink blossom clouds hanging down over the bar and enclosing the steps up to the dining room. We didn’t really focus on a ‘theme’, we just wanted to incorporate our favourite flowers and greens and Emma at Palais worked her magic.

Food

Table settings were kept simple to allow for the enormous sharing platters of food to be laid on each of the tables, alongside simple calligraphy name settings. Food was traditional in the true style of St John, canapes included bite sized quail, crab on toast and welsh rarebit. For our main meal we enjoyed spring lamb with greens, cabbage and pig cheek salad and puy lentils with goat’s curd. Our cake was an enormous 3 tiered rhubarb pavlova which we cut with an antique sword and served with dessert wine. Other desserts included St. John classic; Eccles Cakes and Lancashire cheese which went down vey well with the Northern contingent present at the wedding!

Entertainment

Our DJ’s played a series of soul records interspersed with well known classics. We hired a vintage community sound-system which had a traditional soul tone and really bought the records and dance floor to life! At midnight we ate St. John doughnuts to soak up the alcohol, ending the party at 1am. Wonderful & Strange the Photographer: Every time we venture out of our ‘comfort zone’ to photograph a wedding story, we can’t help but be filled with adrenaline and a nervous excitement throughout the day. It’s a feeling that totally fuels our creativity. When we travelled down to London to capture Josie & Tom’s story in March, this was no different. In an area of the city so rich in history and surrounded by awesome, industrial architecture; we couldn’t help but be inspired. We knew that this was going to be something special. Martyna met Josie and family in her room at the quirky Zetter Townhouse at the ‘finishing touches’ stage of her preparations. She looked incredible in her stunning, minimalistic Charlotte Simpson dress. Meanwhile, across the road, assorted friends and family were beginning to arrive for the ceremony at the Museum of the Order of St John. The look of total joy on Tom’s face as Josie walked down the aisle was contagious. Neither of them could hide their excitement. After the ceremony, we stole the newlyweds for a wander round some hidden courtyards and quiet streets while the guests made their way to the amazing St John Restaurant. As the rain came on, we dived into a lane as Tom kept his new bride sheltered. Capturing some intimate moments between these two was probably the easiest job we’ve ever had. St John Restaurant – an incredible whitewashed ex-smokehouse, decked out amazingly by Palais Flowers – served as the location for one of the best evening receptions we’ve ever been part of. After the pretty excellent and inspiring speeches, it was time for the DJs from Soho’s Reckless Records to take over. It was hard to take our eyes off Josie & Tom’s first dance: a perfectly choreographed routine set to ‘This Must Be The Place’ by Talking Heads (the happiest, most optimistic song ever.) As the dance floor filled up and the music got more and more brilliant, we realised we could’ve stayed all night… Being able to tell the story of two people who are so caring, chilled out and so totally in love is one of the reasons we sometimes have to pinch ourselves and ask “is this really our job?!” Spending that day with Josie, Tom and their amazing friends and family has been one of our highlights of 2016 so far, and every time we hear 'This Must Be The Place' we’ll think of these guys with massive smiles on our faces.