Our Wedding: The Details

We finally have our wedding pictures which means I can get round to putting this dissertation-length post together that’s got all the nitty gritty details of our wedding day. I thought it might be helpful for any of you out there who are newly engaged, anyone who’s nosy; plus, it’s just a great excuse to share some more pictures from the day with you. I’m not going to lie, when we got these through I got about 10 minutes in before I started crying. It’s not really even the pictures of us that choke me up, it’s more looking at the faces of our friends and family. I love them so much! Anyway enough gushing, on with the deets. Holler in the comments if I’ve missed anything…

WEDDING STATIONERY

We decided not to go all out with wedding stationery, instead opting for good ol’ Papier for the actual invites. We went for the Kun design for the invitations and the table settings too. In my eyes they’re a bit of a bargain, arrived really quickly and looked all fancy because you can customise your names and details on there. We didn’t bother with any fancy planners either, instead Mark did some crazy spreadsheets in Excel that I still don’t understand and I jotted down things like notes, to-dos and table plans in my BulletJournal.

OUR OUTFITS

Mark bought his suit the day after we booked our wedding – so efficient. He wore a REISS Suit (similar to the one linked, but in the sale), with Loakes Shoes and a General Knot & Co Tie. I feel like the main reason we booked the wedding back in December, was because I knew that in February Whistles were launching Whistles Bridal and that my dream wedding dress would magically materialise. Thankfully, it did in the form of the Eve Dress which didn’t even come close to anything else that I saw online. I wore it with Gianvito Rossi Portofino Leopard Print Heels and I couldn’t have been happier with my get-up.

In terms of hair and makeup, I did my own on the day; mainly because I just wanted to look like myself and I always end up rubbing half my face off when someone else does my makeup. I’ve done a little wedding makeup tutorial if you fancy watching that and also a post on my pre-wedding skincare and body prep too.

FOOD & DRINK

Although we dilly-dallied for ages about our wedding plans we knew that we wanted food, and lots of it. After getting married in Brighton Town Hall, we wandered through The Lanes to one of our favourite restaurants in Brighton, The Coal Shed. Here you’re able to have the whole space for lunchtime and the afternoon in exchange for a guaranteed minimum spend and your guests all get to pick between four choices as their starter, main and dessert. We bloody love it there and the whole thing ran so smoothly. We ate steak, drank a lot and after speeches we came back to the flat were my Mum had made us a wedding cake and a million and one other homemade-baked goods.

As the evening wore on everyone everyone tucked into the booze that we’d got from a supermarket dash that seriously weighed our car down on the way home and… Domino’s (you know that that was my suggestion, right?). Within 5 minutes, 10 large pizzas had disappeared and we had to run out to buy more Aperol.

DECORATIONS

The weekend before the wedding we realised that we had nothing to decorate our flat with, which was where we were holding our reception. So I made a dash to Hobbycraft with my Mum and left with a bin bag-full of bits and bobs. Fake Ivy was awesome and some Gold Dot Garlands turned out to look so much better than they did in the pack. Also this ‘Just Married’ Sign looked great taken off the string and blu-tacked over our fireplace.

In terms of flowers, I could have done some groundwork and got in a tonne of quotes, but instead I went for a local supplier that I use for all my flowers and plants around our home. They’re just lovely ladies in Florian and I knew they’d be great to work with (and they were!). We just had a bridal bouquet, mini bouquets for my three ladies who walked in before me (we didn’t have traditional bridesmaids – they all wore their own clothes), buttonholes for Mark and his best man and some mini table settings that we got all our guests to take home with them afterwards.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Photography is a tough one and we were given some quotes that would have taken up practically all of our wedding budget. In the end I found our photographer, Amy, on Coco’s Wedding Venues list of approved suppliers. We spoke over email where we agreed pricings, timings and all that other boring stuff before we met and we all just clicked. Mark loved that she shot a lot of the wedding day on film and I loved that she had the same keyring as me. On the day she couldn’t have been better. She was a seasoned pro who put everyone at ease and it never felt like we were having a camera shoved down in our faces. Amy also completely didn’t mind when we said we only wanted to shoot couple pictures for 15 minutes (I think it was even less!) and that we only needed her for half the day. She couldn’t have been more accommodating – thanks Amy! 

GIFTS & FAVOURS

Wedding favours certainly aren’t something that are necessary and weren’t really on our minds, till the guys from Space NK said they’d hook us up despite my protests that they really didn’t have to (side note: I wasn’t into the idea of getting PR favours for the wedding day but the Space NK team still insisted because they are ridiculously lovely people – thanks Jinny and Chris!). So our guy guests went home with the Aesop Post Poo Drops, much to the confusion of my Grandad who thought it was a miniature bottle of wine and the ladies each received a mini Diptyque Figuier candle – my favourite one. We packaged them up with bags and tags that I got from Hobbycraft.

In terms of a gift registry we decided to ask for donations to Alzheimer’s Society, which is a cause that’s very close to our hearts. Our friends and family were so ridiculously generous that I kept tearing up each time a new donation came through. BABES, all of ’em.

ENTERTAINMENT

After food and a ridiculous amount of Whiskey Sours had been consumed (our itemised bill made for some interesting reading!), we grabbed taxis back to our flat for the reception. We weren’t super secretive about our plans for the day, but there was one element that only Mark and I knew about. We thought to pass a bit of time we’d pull everyones names out of a hat, organise them into teams and do a pub quiz in our living room. We just googled questions online, made a music round from a Spotify playlist and printed out scoresheets for each team. Fitting almost 30 people into the living room was a bit of a squeeze, but it was one of my favourite parts of the day, watching everyone chat and loudly debate answers – who knew our mates were so competitive, eh?

Later on we cracked out a speaker and played songs again from Spotify to dance the night away. In hindsight it perhaps would have been a good idea to create a playlist (it was on my list of things to do, but we ran out of time printing out bloomin’ pub quiz scoresheets the night before!), but a bit of Despacito got everyone going. The night ended with my friends Nick and Sammy-Jo doing the Moulin Rouge duet together in the front room and I’m sure our neighbour downstairs rolling her eyes for the 134th time that night. Sorry neighbour!

Photos by Amy O’Boyle