Stephanie and Tom are a couple after my own heart, they wanted a wedding day without the formality. They only had one bridesmaid, missed the speeches and kept their budget below £5000.

Stephanie dreamed of a rockabilly style wedding dress, which she got custom made with some gorgeous turquoise elements.  Doesn’t she look beautiful… i have a thing about brides with specs ;-) They admit to being nature geeks so their wedding decor revolved around nature, with birds and rustic styled flowers…. tres gorgeous.

Thanks so very much to the brilliant Scottish based wedding photographers, Struve Photography for sharing their images today, here is what they had to say about the day;

“I’ve known Steph and Tom for a number of years now; in recent years, Steph’s been a good friend for posing for me previously, while Tom was the genius who designed my logo. When they announced their engagement and that they wanted to hire me as their wedding photographer, I was thrilled.

It was a fantastic honour to photograph Steph and Tom’s wedding. I knew that it really wasn’t going to be a traditional ceremony. When we had our first chat, Steph and Tom explained that what they wanted to have, was a big party, without all the usual wedding traditions. The meal was a barbeque buffet, and being a brewery, most of the guests drank beer rather than wine or champagne. They also decided not to have a first dance which added more to the party atmosphere. I was thrilled when Steph told me she’d asked my friend Wendy to make her dress, as I couldn’t think of a bride and dressmaker more appropriately matched. The invite was very characteristic of Tom’s work, and really set the mood of exactly how the day was going to be: an extension of both their personalities as a celebration. I loved the small details and the handmade aspects, such as the fabric birds, the leaves on the tables, the bunting. Steph’s necklace matched the cake toppers, which in turn was based on their wedding invitation. Even her trainers which she wore later in the night matched the colour scheme for their wedding. I loved the quaich ceremony: both the fathers had brought a small whisky, which Tom and Steph poured into a quaich, and had to drink. It was a lovely Scottish symbol of their marriage uniting both families.

We talked a lot about the style of photography they wanted, and that suited their wedding and personalities. The engagement shoot we did together tied in with their wedding theme, and it gave me a good opportunity to photograph them both together as a couple. Steph and Tom have a quiet intimacy. It was really important to me to capture that rather than unnaturally posed and awkward displays of affection. The engagement shoot gave us the opportunity to create photographs capturing their intimate relationship, and we were able then to build on that during the wedding. As Glasgow Green was right next to their venue, we headed their for their wedding photographs, using the fountain and glass house winter gardens as backdrops, while the guests were able to relax and enjoy a drink or two in our absence.

I was fortunate to have another photographer with me on the day, Zoe Campbell, who was fantastic at assisting and second shooting, and I really enjoyed working with her.”

Names…. Stephanie and Tom

Wedding Date….  17th September 2011

The Proposal…. Tom proposed at the dining table after cooking a roast dinner. He’d previously aborted a plan to propose in Edinburgh, deciding that it would be better to do it in private when the moment felt right, rather than making it into a big staged event.

The Vision for the day…. From the start we wanted the day to be fairly informal. Other weddings we’d been to had seemed really strict, formal and orchestrated – we just wanted ourselves and our guests to feel relaxed and enjoy themselves. We also wanted to be able to inject some of our own taste into the atmosphere and look of the day.

We missed out speeches as they tend to be boring and make the speakers nervous. We didn’t have a top table or set places for the meal. After the service it was just a case of eating, drinking and having fun, without all the formalities.

The Planning process…. We planned everything fairly quickly as we didn’t want to be worrying about things for too long – the wedding took place about 5 months after the proposal. We sorted out the venue and date first, then just made a list of everything else we needed. We both seemed to agree on the same things, so the organisation ran quite smoothly.

Budget…. We didn’t have an exact figure in mind, just an aim to keep things simple, and not to spend extravagant amounts of money on things that weren’t important. For example, we didn’t bother hiring cars to the venue, since the layout of the place meant that nobody would see us arrive anyway. The whole thing came to under £5000.

The Venue…  West Bar and Brewery, Glasgow Green. We like food and drink, so a restaurant and brewery seemed perfect. We liked that it was next to a big park, so we could walk out to grass and trees, rather than a city road.

Finding the dress…. Steph: I’ve never been a particularly ‘girly’ girl, so the prospect of hauling my scruffy little self around lots of fancy bridal boutiques was a bit daunting. Besides, all of the traditional gowns I looked at online were either too froofy/sparkly/meringue-like, way above my budget, or simply not ‘me’. It took a while to figure out what I did want, but after coming across a few shorter, rockabilly-style dresses on various blogs, I eventually decided that this was the way to go. Luckily, my photographer knew a local, independent dressmaker who specialises in exactly that kind of thing, and after a few emails, Wendy and I met up to come up with a final design. She was brilliant to work with, and a few weeks and a couple of fittings later, I had an amazing, one-of-a-kind wedding dress that fitted me perfectly. Result!

Groom’s attire… Tom: I loathe the usual groom’s outfits – cravats, horrible waistcoats, etc – so I was keen to just wear a simple black suit. We’d picked a turquoise colour scheme quite early on, so I just found turquoise shirt and white tie to go with the suit, and bought some new shoes from Camper which had wooden soles and a smart but informal look.

The Readings + Music…. We thought picking music would be easy as we’re both passionate about what we do and don’t like. However, we found it hard picking music as the type of songs we usually like aren’t really appropriate for a wedding. We ended up picking Mogwai’s ‘Helicon 1′ for the bride’s entrance (an epic guitar instrumental) and The Beach Boys ‘Wouldn’t it be Nice’ for the exit, to end on an uplifting feel.

We chose poems for the readings, read out by each of our Dads, a serious one by Mark Twain and another more lighthearted poem comparing marriage to looking after a dog.

Beautiful bridesmaids….. Steph: My half-sister, Gemma, was enlisted for this part. Unlike me, she’s a natural showwoman, so loved having her own bit of limelight on the day. Only having one bridesmaid made the planning a lot easier  – we could let her go off and choose her own dress, shoes, etc., without worrying about her outfit matching anyone else’s.

The Flowers…  Steph: Neither of us really know anything about flowers, so we first approached the florist with only a vague idea for something that would fit with the woodland theme from the invitations. We went to Lisa at Sparrow and Rose, and she came up with an amazing rustic, natural look involving lots of ferns, anemones, berries and birch twigs that looked as though they’d been collected from a forest floor that morning. I was so chuffed with my leafy, twiggy bouquet on the day! It was something a wee bit different to the traditional bunch of roses, and suited my inner nature geek down to the ground!

The Cake…  The cake was custom designed by Top Tier Cakes. We gave them a print out of our invitation design and got them to base it on that, so that there was a running theme of birds, branches and leaves.

Your Photographer…. Our friend, Kristin, had set up business as a wedding photographer the year before we got engaged, so we immediately had someone who we knew, trusted, and enjoyed working with. I usually feel pretty awkward in front of a camera, but Kristin has a knack for putting people at their ease. She also has an eye for great little spontaneous shots and details, which appealed to us and fitted nicely with the whole vision we had for the day.

The Details + Decor….   We really didn’t need much in the way of decoration – just as few little details to make the place look wedding-y. The venue let us use their candlesticks as table centrepieces, and the florist wrapped a piece of ivy around each one. Tom cut out leaf shapes in our colour scheme to scatter on the tables, while I made bunting from some old shirts, and a few little fabric birds to sit in amongst the flower arrangements (these proved popular with the kids, and turned out be a nice little thing to give away to them instead of favours).

The Honeymoon…. New York had always been on our list of fantasy holidays for the future. The wedding seemed like a perfect excuse to spend a bit more than we usually would and go somewhere special.

Memorable moments… The whole day flew by in a bit of a whirlwind. We really enjoyed the barbecue, much more fun than a formal meal. It was just great to have so many friends and family all together and having fun.

Advice for other couples… It’s your wedding! Don’t worry about the rules, protocol and what everyone else expects you to do. Just do the bits you want to and miss out the bits you don’t.

Credit where credit’s due… 

Dress: Flossy and Dossy (http://www.etsy.com/shop/flossyanddossy)

Flowers: Sparrow & Rose www.sparrowandrose.com

Invitation Design: Tom Holmes (the groom) www.tom-holmes.co.uk

Invitation Printing: Glasgow Press www.glasgowpress.co.uk

Venue/Catering: West Brewery http://westbeer.com/

Cake: Top Tier www.toptiercakes.co.uk

Humanist Celebrant: George Caldow www.georgecaldow.co.uk

Thanks so much to Stephanie and Tom for sharing their awesome wedding day with us today xoxo Lou

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