Steve and Ellie wanted their wedding to be fun and relaxed yet filled with vintage, antique and handmade treasures to represent their personality in a mismatched way.

Ellie wore the most stunning pastel yellow vintage dress, with a big bow on the back and i am head over heels for her daisy bouquet… so so pretty. Lets not forget Steve who looks very dapper in a slim fit mod style suit, grooms take note.

They borrowed, crafted, rummaged and roped in family and friends to create a pretty and fun wedding full of details. With vintage penguin books for each guest, mismatched china, whimsical cakes and cake toppers. Ellie and Steve sure did create a unique and personal day to them.

Thanks so much to the fabulous Caro Hutchings Photography for sharing her stunning images with us today:

Names… Steve and Ellie

The Proposal…. Steve proposed to me when we were on holiday in Cuba.  We were staying in Viñales which is the beautiful rural tobacco growing region of Cuba.  We watched the sun set over the valley together and just as the sun was going down he asked me to marry him!  We’ve been together 10 years, but I still wasn’t really expecting him to ask me while we were away.. it was a lovely surprise!

The Vision for the day…. We really wanted our wedding to be fun and relaxed and not at all formal or too traditional.  I got a lot of inspiration from ‘vintage style’ weddings that were featured on wedding blogs, but I knew that I didn’t want to focus on any particular era.  I love old things in general, and really love the uniqueness of finding vintage and antique items, knowing that no one else with have the same thing.  Being a huge fan of charity shops and antique/vintage fairs, our house is a bit of treasure trove of different things that we’ve collected over the years and we wanted our wedding to mirror this.  We didn’t go for a particular colour scheme and everything we had at the wedding was either vintage, handmade or borrowed and slightly mismatched to create variety.

The Planning process…. We had a little over a year to plan the wedding which was perfect as it allowed plenty of time for finding and collecting all the little bits and pieces which we’d need for decorations.  We trawled charity shops and vintage fairs for the vases, the penguin books which we had as favours and also the embroidered table cloths.  I must admit, I did most of the planning and was completely in my element as I had the perfect excuse to do more charity shop shopping!

The Venue… We chose Victoria Hall in Saltaire for our venue.  Saltaire is a beautiful place and has so much history.  It’s a designated world heritage site and all of the buildings in Saltaire village are listed.  Its not somewhere either of our families have a particular connection to, but is somewhere we go regularly as its such a lovely place.  Our whole wedding was at the Hall and we used three different rooms for the ceremony, afternoon reception and evening do.  Victoria Hall is famous for having one of the few remaining Wurlitzer organs, and we hired this for the start of our evening reception which went down really well!

The dress + Accessories…. I found my dress on etsy which was a bit of a risk as I had no idea if it would fit me or look right.  I knew I wanted a vintage dress and in particular something from the 1950s with a full tea length skirt.  It was one of the first dresses I saw and I instantly loved it.  The pastel yellow colour was perfect and I loved the huge bow on the back.  Luckily I found an amazing local company called Stitched Up who specialise in altering vintage clothes.  It was such a relief to know that the alterations I needed were possible and that I’d be able to wear the dress!  I think the dress was probably either a prom dress or a bridesmaid dress from the 1950s.  It was in perfect condition and had obviously been handmade and only worn once.  I also wore a feather bolero from Biba as it was a little chilly on the day.

Groom’s attre… Steve’s suit was from Ben Sherman.  He wanted a slim fitting, mod style suit and we both really loved the colour.

The Readings + Music…. Our readings were done by my sister Becky and also one of my oldest friends Dawn.  We asked them to choose the readings themselves, and they both chose so well.  Becky read ‘The Little Yellow Leaf’ which was perfect for the blustery autumn day, and Dawn chose ‘Your Personal Penguin’ which was a really sweet reading about companionship.

I walked down the aisle to Grounded by Pavement.  We are both complete indie kids and Pavement are one both of our all time favourite bands, so it seemed like an obvious choice.  Our first dance was to Head Over Heels by Tears for Fears.

Beautiful bridesmaids….. I didn’t have any bridesmaids.  It was really too hard to choose between my amazing friends!

The Flowers… I was a little worried that the florist would think I was a bit bonkers when I turned up with all my mis-matched vintage vases, but Amanda at The Greenhouse was so lovely and seemed to instantly understand exactly what I wanted.  I went along with my friends Karolyn and Louise for support.  I really wanted a mixture of colours and styles of flowers for the table vases, all with a ‘wild flower’ look to them.  Each table at the reception had a slightly different selection and arrangement of flowers. My bouquet had daisies in it which complemented the yellow of my dress.

The Cake… We had three cakes, all made for us by one of our best friends Karolyn.  She is an amazing baker, and the cakes not only looked perfect but tasted delicious!  We went for a traditional fruit cake with marzipan, a carrot cake and also a chocolate one.  Having three cakes meant that we had to find three sets of cake toppers!  The mice were from a vintage wedding fair and are from the 1960s, the sylvanian bunnies I ordered from Japan.  My favourite of the three was the little models of us and our cats which were made for us by Magic Bean Buyer on etsy.

The Details + Decor…. The details were my obsession and my favourite part of the wedding planning!  We are so lucky to have really talented and creative friends and family and we involved them in the planning and with making and preparing our decorations.  Each table at the reception had a different embroidered tablecloth, some of which had been made by my great grandma many years ago.  There was also a different vintage vase on each table as well as tea cup candles which had been made for us as a wedding gift by our friends Penny and Sam.

The menu cards were designed by our friend Tom and used an image from the 1920s from an old notebook which I found on etsy.  Tom also designed the seating plan and table name cards using a painting of wrens and leaves which our friend Sarah painted for us.  The invitations used the same painting by Sarah and were designed to look like an old fashioned postcard.  These were made for us by our friend Andrew.  I found a job lot of vintage stamps from the year of the Queen’s coronation which we used to add to the postcard look.  We also had a stamp made with our names and the wedding date on, to look like a postage mark.

For favours we gave all of our guests a vintage penguin book which went down really well!  This was the biggest challenge during the planning as we had to find nearly 100 of them at car boots, charity shops and on ebay.  Each book had a personalised parcel tag with the guest’s name, and a bookmark with our names and wedding date on it.  We had my mum’s 1960s typewriter at the reception for guests to use to leave us a message.

My sister made us some ‘Just Married’ bunting which she hand stitched from different fabrics.

We hired all of the crockery from a vintage crockery hire company called Eccentric and English.  I loved the fact that everything was mismatched and from different eras and styles.

One of the things I loved most about the tables was that each one looked really different, very colourful and not at all uniform.

The Honeymoon…. We went to New York for 10 days for our honeymoon and rented an apartment on the upper east side.  It was such a great time of year to be there as everything was gearing up for Christmas.  The weather was perfect for walking round the city.. crisp and cold but beautiful bright sunshine.  We had a honeymoon gift list as our wedding list, so we were really lucky to be able to do everything we wanted to while we were there, thanks to our incredibly generous guests.   Highlights were ice skating in central park, bowling at a 70s bowling alley in Brooklyn and going to an ice hockey match at Madison Square Garden!

Ups and Down’s on the day… We had the amazing organisational skills of Angela from 2 Dine 4 to help with coordination on the day.  Without her everything would have been in disarray! We weren’t very lucky with the weather as it was really windy and a bit showery, but I guess it could have been worse!  I wish now that I’d gone for a different hair style as my hair is so straight and the curls fell out almost instantly in the wind.  But other than that, I’m glad we did everything the way we wanted.  The most awesome part of the day was obviously marrying my best friend, but other than that a highlight would have to be having everyone who’s important to us there having a really great time.

Advice for other couples… Involve your friends and family in the planning and preparation.. they will be more than happy to help out and if they’re anything like ours, they’ll have a wealth of different talents that they’re able to put to use!

Invest in your photography.  My memory of the day is already a little bit of a blur, but having our incredible photographs to look out now is just amazing.  They really sum up the day perfectly and have captured all the little details that we worked so hard over.

Credit where credit’s due…

Dress – vintage 1950s prom dress  www.etsy.com/shop/PoorJean

Dress alteration – Stitched Up www.stitchedup-knaresborough.co.uk

Flowers – The Greenhouse, Idle, Bradford

Venue – Victoria Hall, Saltaire   www.victoria-hall-saltaire.co.uk

Bride, Groom & cats cake toppers -   Magic Bean Buyer on Etsy  www.etsy.com/shop/magicbeanbuyer

Suit – Ben Sherman, Camden suit  www.bensherman.com/tailoring/suits/camden-fit

Hair and make up – XS Hair and Beauty, Leeds   www.xshair.co.uk

Wurlitzer at Victoria Hall –  www.cosnorth.co.uk

Shoes – Office   www.office.co.uk/womens/office/giggle_strap/33/8241/21925/1

Mouse cake toppers – from a stall at the Vintage Wedding Fair in Harrogate www.vintageweddingfair.co.uk

Food – The Terrace Café Bar, Saltaire  www.terracecafebar.co.uk

Vintage crockery – Eccentric and English Vintage Crockery Hire  www.eccentric-and-english.co.uk/home

Photographer – Caro Hutchings    www.carohutchingsphotography.com

Wedding coordination on the day – Angela Wood   www.twodinefour.co.uk

Thanks so much to Ellie and Steve for sharing their gorgeous wedding with us. I love Ellie’s advice… to invest in your photography. She she is a girl after my own heart :-) XOXO Lou

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