It’s Friday people :-) woohoo and i have a gorgeous wedding to start that Friday feeling.

Robert and Cassie were married at Curradine Barns and wanted a homely and vintage feel to their wedding. They choose red as their wedding colour, with red roses, signs, signs, straws, stripey bags, stationery and pinwheels. They sure did create a fun and quirky feel with their wedding decor and i love it.

Cassie looks gorgeous in her BHS dress, with a classic updo and Robert chose a dark grey tailored suit and red tie. This wedding is just brilliant, table football, jumping shots and love lighting. Brilliant.

Thanks so much to the fantastic David J Perkins for sharing his images with us today.

Names…. Robert and Cassie

Wedding Date…. 21st July 2012

The Proposal…. The proposal was on a very cold January morning at the top of ‘Monument’ in London. Rob picked the location because I adore history, and this was the start point of the Great Fire of London on Pudding Lane. We had the most amazing views of London from the viewing platform. I had asked Rob to hold my gloves while I took photos, when I was done I asked  for them back – however he said no as I might want to put this (the engagement ring) on. I just remember squealing a lot!!

The Vision for the day…. Rob and I have a very unique style, it’s very vintage – so this is how we saw our day. We wanted a lovely homely location that would suit our style, but somewhere that allowed us to make it individual to us.

The Planning process…. We started planning right from the moment we booked our venue. We had decided that we would make as many of the things that we needed ourselves allowing us to make it as personal as possible. With so much to make we started early and completed things early which meant that it wasn’t a mad rush and chore running up to the wedding. In total we spent 15 months planning and making our wedding.

Budget…. We set our budget of £15,000 early on and worked around the figure through out to ensure that we didn’t go beyond our means. To help reduce costs we made many as much as possible ourselves.

The Venue… Our venue was the Curradine Barns and we fell in love with it from the moment we saw it! It was the first venue we saw and everything just kept being compared back to the barns – so we knew it was the one for us.  It’s the most fantastic place to get married!! It feels like the place only exists for you and it’s very personal. The staff were always there to talk to you and help, they have many weddings here so they know their stuff and are very organised but are willing to help as much as possible to make your day special and unique to you.

The Dress + Accessories….. I cheated on the dress a little. From the beginning I didn’t want to spend a lot on a dress for one day only…but I know what I wanted style wise so it was going to be hard. In the end my dress had gorgeous straps leading to some beading detail – it fitted around by upper body and then went away to the floor and into my train. It had a fantastic lacing detail on the back also. I wore antique 1920s silver jewellery, I already owned the broach and matched up the rest at Portobello Rd market – its sounds expensive but totalled less that £50. My headband had crystal and silver detailing on to match up to the dress and jewellery. I loved my shoes; they were Red from Kurt Geiger. The colour of the wedding was red, and I would have a pair of shoes I could use after the big day!

Finding the dress…. I found the perfect one for me, which looked exactly as I wanted, from BHS for £295!! Bargain! I just searched online, but came across BHS from a wedding magazine – highly recommend looking!

Groom’s attire… On Rob’s Dad’s wedding day he had a tailored suit made for himself, and he wanted this tradition to continue to his son – so both Rob and his Dad had suits made for them at Callaghan Tailors in Birmingham. It was a dark grey three piece suit (so easy to match up to hire suits for the wedding party), and had a red lining. They all wore thin red ties, and scrabble cufflinks.

The Readings + Music…. Once again we wanted readings and music that suited our style, so something not quite traditional. We walked down the aisle together (entering marriage together – we thought a nice touch) to ‘God Only Knows’ by the Beach Boys. Our reading were read by our closest friend and were entitles; ‘The Art of marriage’ and ‘Friendship’ – both found off the internet. We walked back up the aisle and out to ‘do you want it all’ by Two Door Cinema Club – a newish band we both love!

Beautiful bridesmaids….. I only had one bridesmaid, Liz was absolutely fantastic and could not have wanted it any other way. She kept me stress free and made sure I had everything I needed. Liz wore a stunning dress from Wedding Belles in Four Oaks, Sutton Coldfield. It was red to match the colour scheme, and had a white sash to match up to me.

The Flowers… To continue the vintage theme the table centres were arrangements of red and white cottage flowers within 50-60 vintage bottles from antique centres costing anything from 50p to £8 a bottle. I had a stunning red rose bouquet with the bridesmaid having a bouquet of white gypsophila. The male members of the wedding party all wore two red rose buds as their button holes with the mothers of the bride and groom wearing a white flower corsage on their hand bags.

The Cake… We had the same philosophy on our cake as I had on my dress; we tried cakes at various wedding shows and were unhappy with what we found with one exception. So we got our cake from M&S. It was a stunning white chocolate cake, with roses cascading down the front. It looked perfect and served up to 150 people. To make it a little more us the cake was topped with a Lego Bride and Groom.

Your Photographer…. We had a fantastic photographer called David Perkins. We first saw his work when we went to our venue and asked for a meet up because of how good his pictures were. He was so down to earth and such a lovely guy that we decided straight away he was for us. He got to know us and tailored our photos to what we wanted and nothing else. We have the formal shots we wanted, some amazing photos taken of the two of us in the corn fields by the venue, and my favourites are all the informal photos which really do capture the day perfectly. We have some stunning photographs of our special day we can happily show off to all who will see them.

The Details + Decor…. To make our day personal to us and to our guests Rob and I made most of our decorations. We continued our vintage theme, for example; bunting made from pages from old books, confetti cones made from old music sheets, our table plan was made out of an old vintage suitcase, and instead of a message book we had on old crate with strings and pegs across and vintage style message tags to clip on. Our favours consisted of handmade knitting little red hearts and a personalised wedding badges within a box.

As a surprise on the day Rob organised a table foot ball to be hidden at the venue. We initial met one another playing and it was a wonderful surprise when it was brought out by the wedding venue during the speeches. The table was a big success at the back of the dance floor throughout the night and there was always someone playing.

The Honeymoon…. We decided quite early on that we didn’t want to skimp on the honeymoon, for its where we could escape and look back at everything that had happened. We decided to go all out and booked 6 nights in Sri Lanka followed by 7 nights in the Maldives with Kuoni. We wanted a holiday where we could see the sights (for example a safari and city tours in Sri Lanka), followed by a week in paradise relaxing (the Maldives). We would recommend any couple to book something special – we will probably never do a holiday quite that fantastic again and will never forget any moment of it.

Memorable moments… There are so many memorable moments from our wedding day. Our photos were fun, especially one where we had the wedding party do a ‘jump’ shot which was such a laugh to do. Another funny moment was when the stag party, encouraged by Rob, went up on the balcony in the main bar and did a mini strip! Thankfully not all their clothes came off!!!

Advice for other couples… Don’t leave it until the last minute. We started saving and buying things right from the beginning. It meant we didn’t have to sort the little details at the end, as we already owned these items. Plan your time well so its not a chore running up to the wedding giving you time to organise the things that you have forgotten about. We made our own invites and enjoyed it. You can have what you want and at half the cost. Shop around. We picked up many things by not using the conventional wedding websites, for example I brought my head piece from a prom/wedding  website and saved for that reason alone. When budgeting remember to take into account that suppliers require payment one or two months before the wedding which gives less time to save

Credit where credit is due…

Wedding dress: http://www.bhs.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CatalogNavigationSearchResultCmd?catalogId=34096&storeId=13077&langId=-1&viewAllFlag=false&sort_field=Relevance&categoryId=471149&parent_categoryId=471109&beginIndex=1&pageSize=40

Hair accessories: http://www.glitzysecrets.com/vintage-wedding-hair-accessories.html

Flowers: http://www.fionaflorist.co.uk/

Flower decoration and confetti: http://www.shropshirepetals.com/

Wedding cake: http://www.marksandspencer.com/Wedding-Cakes-Food-to-Order-Food-Wine/b/72561031

Decoration ideas we used and brought: http://vintagetwee.com/ , http://www.thelastdetail.co.uk/categories/5-wedding.html

Honeymoon http://www.kuoni.co.uk/en/holiday/indian-ocean/sri-lanka/sri-lanka-multi-centre-holidays/tours/pages/multi-centres-sri-lanka-and-maldives-2011.aspx

Photographer http://davidjperkins.org.uk/

So much fun!! Thanks so much to Robert and Cassie for sharing their wedding with us today XOXO Lou

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