London brides are going to love this inspirational wedding, with its fun pub venue, shabby-chic wedding decorations, and pink and gold colour palette. Caroline and Matt stamped their personality on their big day with unique DIY'd wedding details - Matt designed their wedding stationery, Caroline's mum made the wedding cake and Caroline created the tankard table plan. Stunning table flowers as well - I love David Austin roses! Huge thanks to Erica from Photo Madly for capturing the wedding so perfectly, and to Caroline, for filling the Before the Big Day Brides' Questionnaire. Don't miss her fab hints and tips, and take a look at Part 1 of this wedding here.
Matt and I met at work but we didn't get together until one Christmas party when Matt was dressed as a Lego man and I was dressed as Madonna in the Material girl video.
We were together for 3 and a half years when Matt surprised me with a weekend away to Norfolk which is where we went for our first weekend away together. He'd booked us into a romantic yurt and took me out for an amazing eight course meal, when we got back we sat next to the camp fire with our glasses of champagne and Matt got down on one knee and asked me to marry him.
We got married on 21st September in London, our ceremony was in The Old Marylebone Town Hall and held our reception in The Londesborough pub in Stoke Newington.
We looked at lots of different types of buildings for our reception but decided a pub would work well for us as we really wanted the day to be really laid back and relaxed. I was also determined that our venue should have just one room to create a really intimate atmosphere.
The Londesborough is one of my favourite London pubs and they really ticked all the boxes for us, we had the whole pub to ourselves and they have outside space and the food was amazing! We felt bunting would work best in the pub and other than flowers we didn't need to do much else as its such a lovely space already. We really couldn't have been happier with our venues.
I didn't want a particular wedding colour theme, but instead worked to a colour palette of soft pinks, greens, white, pale gold and navy.
My florist was Elinor Walsh from Marlow, Buckinghamshire. She did such a good job, the flowers were exactly what I wanted. I really wanted pink and white peonies but in September that's not really an option so we chose pink David Austin roses mixed in with white hydrangea. I chose to have them tied with twine.
I was very keen that the table decorations should be in low vases as I wanted people to be able to chat over them easily without wanting to move them out of the way. The flowers were one of my favourite things about the day as it was so exiting seeing them in the pub, I was so happy with how they turned out.
Matt is a graphic designer so he designed our wedding invitations. I came up with the idea of using beer mats, and he created the look. We used the same design for our wedding menus, which also doubled as the table place names.
My DIY projects included our table plan. I wrote the names of our guest on glass tankards, using chalk pen, then stacked them on a set of shelves. We also made the table names by buying clipboards and sticking struts on them. We then printed out each table name to look like a pub sign, and clipped them on.
We wanted wedding favours that were fun, and we spotted the chocolate lips and moustaches in a wedding magazine. We bought them from Creightons Chocolatiers in Leighton Buzzard, and were so pleased with them. They looked great and tasted amazing, and everyone commented in how fun they were!
I saw a cake online that I fell in love with, and my mum said she would try and replicate it. I bought the cake stand online and my mum did the rest. I don't like fruit cake so we had a lemon drizzle cake. It was delicious and looked amazing, I'm so pleased my mum made it, as it meant so much more.
I loved planning my big day! There are so many different ways you can do a wedding and they're all amazing, I could do it all over again - although only if it was with Matt obviously!!
Our photographer was Erika Szostak from Photo Madly. We picked her because we loved her work, and we felt really comfortable with her straight away. Your photographer is such a big part of your day it's so important you choose someone who you like having around! We're thrilled with how our photos turned out.
My advice for future brides is to remember that on the day you can't change anything so just enjoy it! Things will go wrong but it's not important, the main thing is that you enjoy the day you've spent so long planning. Also don't stress about your decisions once they're made, I can't tell you how much I stressed about things that looking back on it just weren't important!
Matt and I met at work but we didn't get together until one Christmas party when Matt was dressed as a Lego man and I was dressed as Madonna in the Material girl video.
We looked at lots of different types of buildings for our reception but decided a pub would work well for us as we really wanted the day to be really laid back and relaxed. I was also determined that our venue should have just one room to create a really intimate atmosphere.
I didn't want a particular wedding colour theme, but instead worked to a colour palette of soft pinks, greens, white, pale gold and navy.
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