Nina & Dave

YES to embracing colour for your big day like Nina & Dave! Their whole wedding is a confetti bomb explosion of joy. And it actually pours out of the images from Marianne Chua - in every single photo people are laughing and smiling. Especially those where the guests (and not just the little ones) are LOVING the garden games. And those where the boys look alarmingly good in the Bridesmaids accessories... Talking of which, I'd never think to put my Bridesmaids in teal and burnt orange, but my goodness, doesn't it look lovely? And as well as all of the colour, there are lots of fabulous details - trestle table dining, wild flowers, seed packet favours, an 'UP' style American mail box for cards complete with balloons...it's a veritable feast for the eyes.

The Ceremony

Nina The Bride: Keeping the traditional theme we got married in my families church, which thankfully Dave also loved the look of, they’ve kept it really special and have a stunning altar and stained glass windows and allowed us to decorate the pews to give it that personal touch. We’re both suckers for music and I had my heart set on walking into the church to ‘Waterways’ by Einaudi, which my friend Rob (violin) and Phil (piano) played just perfectly...My pal Fitchy sang and played an acoustic version of Rudimentals ‘Feel The love’ while we signed the register and then they all collaborated and played Florence’s ‘You’ve Got The Love’ as we left the church...Eeek still gives me goosebumps!!

The Venue

I’m not sure when I first saw a tipi and thought ‘oh wow - I want to get married in one of those!’ but the moment Dave and I started thinking of venues, it was the first thing I started to look up. When I came across tipis4hire.com, I found Brook Farm, Cuffley, through their locations link. I’d driven past it so many times and never knew there was such a beautiful hidden gem so close to where we lived and it was the one and only venue we looked at - green fields, tall trees and a lake. We had loads of games going on, on the grass, space hoppers, sack races, boules, badminton and Jenga. Everyone thought we’d done this for the kids...we let them think that ;-)

The Food

Dave and I are quite outdoorsy and love our festivals so we wanted the day to have a feel of that vibe whilst keeping the traditions. We hired Red Anywhere as our caterers as they had a great choice of food but where still flexible enough to do us mini sliders and fish and chip cones in the evening, which wasn’t on their menu originally, but is now! The team that worked with us felt like friends by the end of the day. We also had a little vintage Ice Cream van there which added to the gorgeous sunny day in the park feel tho our day. As well as classic flavours, Tasha offers a great range of more obscure ones. Yummy!

The Bride

Clifford Burr in Ware was recommended to me by a friend and previous CB bride...this shop is like a magical doll shop full of gorgeous gowns. After always thinking I would want a vintage looking lace dress with sleeves, I ended up falling in love with a Sottero and Midgley gown with no lace, no sleeves, gorgeous beaded shoulders and a low plunge back! The moment I tried it on and looked in the mirror I felt my eyes start to glaze over and I knew I’d found the one...(Bit like Harry Potter choosing a wand!)

The Accessories

As most brides will relate to, once we got engaged Pinterest became my best friend. I found a picture of a pair of beautiful peep toe shoes in duck egg blue with tiny little diamante’s around the toe area. I sent the picture to my sister and said ‘please help me find these shoes!!’ And in true big sister form she did! They were from a company in the U.S called Hey Lady. The ladies at Hey Lady were back and forth with me for several days (time difference issues) and to help me with the size difference from US to UK, they sent me 2 pairs to try on to save me with shipping costs and only charged me for one! What absolute diamonds. I have stupidly small wrists and everything I tried on threatened to fall straight off. I’d given up trying to find something but Dave bought me a stunning bracelet which matched my dress perfectly (!?) from Liberty in Love which tied up with a satin ribbon.

The Bridesmaids

I got my girls dresses at David’s Bridal. The UK store is in Westfield, Stratford and I definitely recommend this shop. They have pretty much any style dress you want in almost every colour. My super talented friend Carys made my girls feather capelets and I got my sequin capelet from Rosa Bloom who does the best sparkliest festival wear out there.

The Flowers

We found Charlie Quartley on a google search and besides being drawn to company name, The Flower Fairies, her website is so pretty with her work and knowledge of all flowers and her rustic and wild style suit the theme to a T. Everyone commented on how gorgeous her arrangements were. The top table especially, we had moss runners and little watering cans and jars. Charlie also left some flower heads for our cake lady to decorate our naked cake with which definitely added to magic of that cake.

The Groom

Dave The Groom: I had always had an electric blue theme in mind for his suit and hunted high and low across London to find a shade which fitted the bill. We then popped in to Moss Bros. on Oxford Street and found the perfect material from which they could make a bespoke suit-they also had a bright orange lining which I thought would add some pizazz!  The waistcoat was bought later once the suit had been made so I opted for a contrasting grey material to give a more relaxed feel to the outfit. Moss Bros. also made suits for our Dads and we used their hire service for all of the Groomsmen.

The Cake

I’m quite proud of finding our cake lady! I knew Nina wanted a ‘naked cake’- which I got excited about...turns out it didn’t mean what I thought it meant! ;-) I found Cynthia on line ‘Pretty Gorgeous Cakes’ in Hertford. Cake tasting was probably one of the wedding organising highlights for me. One of my favourite things about our cake was our toppers. I’ve has always had a bit of a thing for Wonder Woman and Nina has a slight obsession with Robert Downey Jnr so it seemed like a fun idea to create our Iron Man/Wonder Woman topper to signify that we are each other’s’ Super Hero! I found the shop Tiny Little Geeks who sell through Etsy who do so many cool items like the ones we chose.

The Music

As Nina said before music is a huge thing for us. We found our band ‘Fun and Funky’ (cheeeeese!) through Alive Network. We wanted a Mo town, soul type band and they we perfect. Their sound guy then DJed for us for the last 2 hours and played every song we requested, everyone said how great there were and the dance floor was never empty.

The DIY

Nina the Bride: It can’t be said that weddings are cheap and tipi weddings (although beautiful) are no exception! So, where possible we tried to do things ourselves to save some pennies. I’m lucky to have a very talented sister. She made our invitations, place names, decorations and guest book. We designed our own order of service, made our ‘UP’ mailbox and table number and along with my bridesmaids, we made our table numbers and signs. One of the nicest things about it was that people really did notice all the little touches we made. Attention to detail may have got a little carried away but it was definitely worth it and I wouldn’t change anything at all. BEST. DAY. EVER!!! <3