WWW readers Eli and Steven tied the knot on the 30th November 2013. They wanted a local South London wedding and so married at Wandsworth Town Hall followed by a pub reception at Balham Bowls Club. Eli and Steven didn’t want a theme or colour scheme and chose the things they loved to celebrate with their family and friends.
Eli wore her Granny’s beautiful wedding dress with Vivienne Westwood Lady Dragon heart shoes and Tatty Devine jewellery. Steven found his burgundy tuxedo jacket in Ben Sherman which he teamed with a silver tie and converse.
There were romantic gypsophila bouquets, comic book corsages and a route master bus. LOVE.
Thanks so much to Charlotte Hu for sharing her gorgeous images with us today.
The Proposal… A joint decision, sat on our sofa watching Don’t Tell The Bride! We always meant to get married at some point but ended up having our daughter and buying a house and suddenly 6 years had passed and we still hadn’t got round to it. Roll on August 2013 and we didn’t have much planned for the rest of the year so it seemed the perfect time to finally get married.
The Vision for the Day… We wanted a relaxed, fun day with all our family and friends, not too much waiting around for everyone and staying local to our home in South London. There was no theme or colour scheme, it was all just a hodge-podge of stuff we like.
The Planning Process… Was mercifully short! We are real ditherers, if we’d had two years to plan we would have driven ourselves mad. Only having around four months meant we had to really focus on the essentials – we got the ceremony and reception venues and the photographer sorted straight away and then any time left was spent on details.
The Venue… Our ceremony was in the beautiful Grand Chamber at Wandsworth Town Hall. Our reception was at the Balham Bowls Club, one of our favourite pubs and the place Steven and I first met. Everyone at the Balham Bowls Club was great, in the run-up Emily, Iwona and Elliott managed to decipher our vague ideas and organised an amazing day. They had never catered for as many people before but you wouldn’t have guessed that. The food was absolutely delicious, everyone working on the night was friendly and helpful and they even put all our decorations up for us!
The Dress + Accessories… I wore my Granny’s wedding dress. My shoes were Melissa & Vivienne Westwood Lady Dragon heart shoes which I spent ages searching for online as they don’t make them anymore. I love Tatty Devine jewellery and bought a pair of their love heart tattoo earrings in the sale before I’d even sorted my dress. Steven bought me a gold Casio watch (to replace my silver one he’s forever stealing) and a Tatty Devine charm bracelet as wedding presents and I wore both. I finished the whole outfit off with a fake fur jacket, bought in a mad panic the week before the wedding when I suddenly realised it would probably be quite cold in the last weekend of November!
Finding the Dress… I had been dreading the dress search, I couldn’t imagine myself in a proper wedding dress and was worried that our short time scale would limit my options. I was all set for a day trawling the high street with my Mum and Aunty with some online options as a backup when my Aunty suggested we had a look at my Granny’s wedding dress to see if it could be altered. The dress was an absolutely beautiful strapless lace and net dress which had originally been an evening gown. I have photos of me trying the dress on when I was 12 and my grandparents’ wedding photos had been up in our house all my life, it was lovely to have a dress which had so many memories for me and my family and I was so pleased my Granny could be there on the day to see me wear it, 60 years and a few months after she did.
Groom’s Attire… Steven wore a burgundy tuxedo jacket from Ben Sherman with a TM Lewin shirt, black tuxedo trousers and a silver tie. He’s obsessed with trainers so had a pair of converse customised with our wedding date. I also gave him some Tatty Devine (again) cufflinks.
The Readings + Music… We had three readings: Touched By An Angel by Maya Angelou, a quote about love by John Keats and the lyrics to In My Life by the Beatles. I very nearly cried hysterically during In My Life and was only saved by our five year old nephew who insisted on doing an impromptu interpretative dance in front of us while Steven’s sister did the reading!
The music was really important to us and we spent ages deciding what to have. In the end I walked in to Be My Baby by the Ronettes, we had You’re So Great by Blur and All I Want Is You by Barry Louis Polisar while we signed the register and Tonight The Streets Are Ours by Richard Hawley as we left.
Beautiful Bridesmaids… My bridesmaids were our daughter Ramona and my best friend Helen. Helen wore her own dress (I did offer to buy her a new one if she wanted, honestly!). Ramona wore a silver grey sequinned dress from Boden which we got in the sale. We wanted to get her something she could wear again and that preferably wasn’t white or cream as she’s not known for sitting nicely and staying clean! She also had some burgundy converse to match Steven’s.
The Flowers… We DIY’d the flowers, I wanted something really plain and simple for the bouquets and anything too complicated or structured for the table arrangements would have looked odd in our venue so we figured we could cobble them together ourselves. I ordered the flowers online from Triangle Nurseries, they were really helpful and gave me loads of advice and tips. We had Gypsophila for the bouquets and Gypsophila and Craspedia in beer bottles on the tables. My Mum and I put them all together the day before the wedding. Originally I was planning on making all the buttonholes myself too but I got worried that I was pushing my very limited flower arranging skills. I met Michele from Muscari Whites at the Miss Vintage Wedding Fair at Battersea Arts Centre, she is a florist but also makes amazing paper and felt flowers. She made us some gorgeous buttonholes out of old Marvel comics for the groom, best men and ushers and corsages for our mums made from sheet music.
The Cake… My brother is a chef and he very kindly made our cake for us. We had seen an episode of Don’t Tell The Bride (another one!) where they had a giant battenburg for their wedding cake and joked that we’d like a tower of cherry bakewells for ours. So my brother, always up for a ridiculous idea, made us a three tier almond and cherry cake decked in meringues and macaroons and topped with our Lego bride and groom. It looked and tasted amazing although wasn’t particularly structurally sound and was on the point of total collapse by the time we cut it.
Your Photographer… We had no idea where to start looking for a photographer when we decided to get married. We searched for days online and trawled through recommendations on wedding blogs. Charlotte stood out with her description as a ninja photographer – we’d been to too many weddings where the photographer was constantly in everyone’s faces. Our photos were just what we’d hoped for – natural and unstaged to the point that we’d not noticed most of them being taken, but still capturing all the important moments. Charlotte was so lovely and friendly too, I’d recommend her to anyone.
The Details + Decor… Our attempt to DIY our invites using an online photo printing company ended in disaster. Luckily we were rescued by the art directors from a marketing agency Steven works with (www.soul-london.co.uk) who designed some amazing invites based on our original idea. Having vowed not to get ourselves bogged down in loads of details that weren’t really needed, we ended up buying a kid’s badge making machine and making name badges for all our guests as placecards! We tried to keep everything fairly simple as the Balham Bowls Club has such great decor already we didn’t need to add much else. We found some very kitsch bride and groom cocktail sticks online at pipii.co.uk which we added to the flowers, table names were photos of some of our favourite South London pubs and we made the table plan from a chalkboard we bought on ebay years ago and some metal Mexican hearts from Viva La Frida.
For the evening reception room, my Mum made metres and metres of white bunting, thanks Mum! We also bought some papel picado from Viva La Frida and hired some giant light up letters from Doris Loves. The team at Balham Bowls Club put all the decorations up the morning of the wedding, they did a far better job than we ever could have and everything looked amazing!
The Honeymoon… Four nights in Copenhagen and Hamburg. Unfortunately our two nights in Copenhagen coincided with gale force winds and the worst storms they’ve had for ages (and we were staying on a houseboat). We had a great time despite the weather!
Memorable Moments… For me it was finally getting in to the ceremony (following a few taxi issues which meant I was about half an hour late) and seeing Steven. I got told off by the Registrar for giving him a massive kiss as soon as I got in rather than waiting for the proper moment! Also, the journey on the Routemaster bus we’d hired to the Balham Bowls Club as the sun set, swigging from a bottle of champagne Steven’s cousin had given us, and seeing how amazing the Balham Bowls Club looked when we arrived.
Advice for Other Couples… There are bound to be things that go wrong on the day but everyone around you wants the day to go well and will help out however they can so try not to freak out too much about it!
Credit Where Credit is Due…
Our reception venue | Balham Bowls Club
Our photographer | Charlotte Hu
Comic book buttonholes | Muscari Whites
Wholesale flowers | Triangle Nursery
Lovely jewellery | Tatty Devine
Decorations | Doris Loves, Viva La Frida & Pipii
What a fantastic day, it looked like everyone had a brilliant time.
Thanks so much to Eli and Steven for sharing their wedding with us here at WWW :-) XOXO Lou