A Mutual Love of Music: Wedding at The Swan, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre

They’re an amaz­ing cou­ple with the coolest taste in tunes and as I write this blog post I’m lis­ten­ing to every sin­gle song they’ve men­tioned — there’ll be links below if you’d like to have a lis­ten as well: as far as musi­cal wed­ding inspi­ra­tion goes, this is def­i­nitely the best I’ve blogged so far — bar none!

While the images of this fab­u­lous wed­ding are a treat — by long time sup­porter of Eng­lish Wed­ding Blog, Mark from Sheffield based Tier­ney Pho­tog­ra­phy — please do read Vic and Chris’s wed­ding report in full. Their focus, inspi­ra­tion and love is truly inspir­ing and I was cap­ti­vated read­ing their story.

Before we begin, here’s one of my favorite quotes from Vic:

“Chris and I were adamant that the wed­ding would reflect who we are today not who we want to be in the future or who we are expected to be. Our rela­tion­ship as it is, our loves and the peo­ple who we love.“
… and that’s what it’s all about. Enjoy! Claire xxx

A musi­cal wed­ding at The Swan: Vic and Chris

Wed­ding venue: The Swan @ Shakespeare’s Globe The­atre
Wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher: Mark Tier­ney, Tier­ney Photography

A lit­tle about the wed­ding ceremony:

There was an early promise to my husband-to-be, that I wouldn’t insist on a church (I’m Catholic) and in return, he wouldn’t insist on a beach wed­ding (he is Cal­i­forn­ian)- so I had some con­cerns over a civil ceremony.

With lots of dis­cus­sions, some inspi­ra­tion from blogs and a lot of time poured over the right read­ings and vow exchanges we pulled off the inti­mate, spe­cial cer­e­mony we wanted. We spent the time agree­ing on a struc­ture to our vows and what really mat­tered to us on the day – we also had two friends play the most won­der­ful music for us (rock and indie ver­sions of our cho­sen songs) which helped make it even more personal.

The cer­e­mony was 42 peo­ple which made it even more spe­cial – we had to make some tough deci­sions on the guest list but we more than made it up in the evening when our num­bers more than doubled.

Which read­ings did you choose?

1st – This one took some time to choose as we wanted song lyrics spo­ken and a lot of songs were too cheesy, but we finally decided upon ‘I love you because’ per­formed by Johnny cash (amongst oth­ers) – it was perfect!

2nd — Union by Robert Ful­gham – beau­ti­ful and real – talks about all those con­ver­sa­tions and promises you make each other on the lead up to exchang­ing vows.

Tell us a lit­tle about your wed­ding venue styling and details:

We 100% agreed that our friends (if they so wish) should be involved as much as pos­si­ble and if we were going to spend money, it was going to be on qual­ity. We had such gen­er­ous friends, cake maker, flow­ers, music, read­ings and we chose our pro­fes­sion­als care­fully.
The wed­ding pro­fes­sion­als we involved exceeded every expec­ta­tion, Emma the wed­ding co-ordinator at the Swan, Mark Tier­ney the pho­tog­ra­pher, Mariam the make-up artist.
If you looked around the room at any time it reflected us as a cou­ple and it was exactly what we were look­ing for!

Invi­ta­tions and recep­tion stationery:

We wanted to get the mix right of seri­ous­ness with the cer­e­mony and fun and design with the rest and this started with our Save the Date cards which were a play on our nation­al­i­ties – a mock up of me as the Queen and Chris as Uncle Sam.

The invites were mock record labels and the order of ser­vice was a CD album sleeve with the front being a take on the iconic ‘Appetite for destruc­tion’ artwork.

Chris did all the design work bril­liantly and car­ried through some per­sonal themes right into the wed­ding itself with self-designed gui­tar picks on the tables and posters of our favorite song lyrics for the venue.

Wed­ding music and entertainment:

Music was the heavy influ­ence for us;

Cer­e­mony – live music from two amaz­ing friends play­ing acoustic indie rock ver­sions of our cho­sen songs – I walked in to ‘Steal my heart’ by Augus­tana – as soon as it started play­ing both Chris and I knew to take a very deep breath !
Sign­ing of the reg­is­ter – acoustic ver­sion of ‘One day like this’ Elbow
Exit music – ‘Baby I love you’ The Ramones

We hired a full size juke box to add to the music drama of the day – Chris had pre-prepared a playlist for din­ner (the staff men­tioned that they have never served a wed­ding break­fast to a Neu­tral Milk Hotel track) and for the evening which reflected our tastes.

The finale was the live band ‘Cap­tain Cave­man’ – who rocked !! we expected them to be good as we had spent a long time online choos­ing but they were amaz­ing. They tore the place up and we were just the right crowd for them with my hus­band jump­ing on the stage to sing a cou­ple of songs with them and a friend of ours singing a punk ver­sion of a Take That song!

“The only wed­ding I have been to where I got to mosh with the groom” was one of my fav com­ments that evening.

What did you both wear?

As soon as we started talk­ing about attire it was clear that we both cared as much as each other about what we wore.

Chris had a suit made for him in a beau­ti­ful pop out blue (by A Suit That Fits)– and found the per­fect pair of Con­verse All Stars to go with – it wouldn’t have been right with him in any­thing else. He wanted a waist­coat as it was impor­tant to him that he wore his Grandfather’s pocket watch and a char­coal gray one leapt out at us a month or two before the wedding.

I was a lit­tle more tra­di­tional than I thought – always thought I would pick a 50’s influ­enced dress. A full dolce satin gown stole my heart, and the bou­tique (Angel­ica Bridal – Angel, Lon­don) ensured it fit perfectly!

My dress was so sophis­ti­cated that I did feel I needed some­thing mod­ern in there so I went all out on the shoes… they were far from sub­tle! I love them and have worn them many times since.

Acces­sories were built up over time which included an Etsy seller in Amer­ica for the cuff, vin­tage styler for the evening hair clip, and my Mother in law allowed me to bor­row her pen­dant that both her and her mother wore on their wed­ding days which was very special.

We were very lucky – we won our brides­maids’ dresses from a wed­ding blog 9 months before the wed­ding. Twobirds donated two dresses to the com­pe­ti­tion ‘ how did you ask your brides­maids to be part of your day’. My entry con­sisted of a let­ter I had writ­ten to my ten fav women in the world, intro­duc­ing them to each other as well as explain­ing that we are not hav­ing a huge wed­ding and there­fore had cho­sen only 2 peo­ple to deal with my tantrums.

The dresses were slate and were per­fect for both ladies – I was just sorry I didn’t win one for myself ?

Our accent color was scar­let red which worked per­fectly with the dresses and we car­ried it through by pur­chas­ing ties for all the men in the party.

We were never going to have a wed­ding that I planned all on my own, it was our wed­ding and we made all deci­sions together to ensure it was a reflec­tion of both of us. We made sure, if we love it – it’s in! Even down to the sugar skull but­ton holes.

We were how­ever sur­prised how much we did care about cer­tain things. We didn’t care what seat peo­ple sat in, so we only assigned tables… but we did care about the names of the tables and how they were pre­sented more than we would have imag­ined before­hand for example.

Mem­o­rable wed­ding day moments:

• The guests play­ing a Mr & Mrs game with Amer­i­can and British flags before din­ner – and most of them going out on the first ques­tion ”who said I love you 1st“ Chris or Vic ?
• The guests going tat­too crazy! I had a temp tat­too made of the Amer­i­can and British flag which went down very well after a few drinks.
• Stand­ing on the mil­len­nium bridge with St Paul’s behind us being pho­tographed and say­ing to my new hus­band… “This has been per­fect” and mean­ing it!

Wed­ding day advice:

• Sit down at the begin­ning and run through your ‘loves’ indi­vid­u­ally and as a cou­ple, this should deter­mine what you spend money on and what you reflect on your day.
• The rest can have a lesser pri­or­ity – if you don’t like tra­di­tions, don’t do them, we had an issue with the tra­di­tions of get­ting the sin­gles together… so we just missed it out.
• Don’t be afraid to make last minute changes – two days before the wed­ding we hired a video­g­ra­pher to cap­ture the cer­e­mony so we had a record of our vows (great decision!)
• A very good friend of mine gave me some advice which I used: Get a pho­tog­ra­pher for as much as you can afford -

Rec­om­mended wed­ding suppliers:

Mark Tier­ney
http://www.tierneyphotography.co.uk/
– Pho­tog­ra­pher extra­or­di­naire – Mark is fab­u­lous, extremely tal­ented, extremely per­son­able and the proof is on his site…check it out !

Mariam Jensen
http://www.mariamjensen.com/#/
– Make-up artist, no con­cerns what­so­ever over the make-up after meet­ing with Mariam and her team, she was so amaz­ing I even got her to come back pre-evening party to touch up all those happy tear marks on my face.

The Swan at the Globe
http://www.loveswan.co.uk/
– we knew this would never be a cheap wed­ding venue but it proved to be worth every penny and some, beau­ti­ful loca­tion, gor­geous food and cus­tomer ser­vice that should be repli­cated the coun­try over.

A suit that fits
http://www.asuitthatfits.com/
– Chris’ suit was to his spec­i­fi­ca­tions down to the but­tons and stitch­ing color.

Cap­tain Cave­man Band
http://www.warble-entertainment.com/hire/captain-caveman/1071/
– This was a late addi­tion as we orig­i­nally had planned for Chris and two friends to play together, but we ‘caved in’ and found Cap­tain Cave­man to not be at all cheesy, but an amaz­ing band that every­one loved sign­ing and danc­ing to!