A Quirky, Bright, Handmade Wedding Blog — Made with Love and Sunshine!

Emily and Alan are a great cou­ple — full of fun and cre­ativ­ity. And while Emily is stun­ning in her Jas­mine Cou­ture wed­ding dress, Alan steals the show in a bright. yel­low. suit. (There’s a photo to watch out for with a hand­writ­ten note from Emily: “I love you even though you look like a bowl of cus­tard”! which is won­der­ful! Seri­ously though — he looks great, and every­thing about today’s wed­ding blog is bril­liant. Literally!

The pho­tos are by Dorset wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher Paul Under­hill, who con­tacted me a few weeks ago and told me that Alan had changed into the canary yel­low suit part­way through the wed­ding to sur­prise all the guests. What a fab idea! The yel­low and blue theme con­tin­ues through­out the day and I love all the details and styling of the mar­quee as well. The pho­tos look amazing!

I hope you love this fea­ture — do read Emily and Alan’s wed­ding report which starts about a third of the way down the page. Enjoy! Claire xxx

Emily and Alan’s quirky, bright yel­low wed­ding blog

Wed­ding venue:

St James Church, Kingston fol­lowed by a mar­quee recep­tion in a farmer’s field at the Burn­gate Stone Cen­tre, Lang­ton Matravers

Wed­ding photographer:

Dorset wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher Paul Under­hill www.paulunderhill.com

How would you describe your wed­ding style?

Quirky, bright, hand made with love!

A lit­tle about the wed­ding ceremony:

We fell in love with the view of Corfe Cas­tle and always knew we would want to get mar­ried at the church over­look­ing it. It was a beau­ti­ful church packed with 140 of our lov­ing friends and fam­ily. Although we opted for a tra­di­tional cer­e­mony we made it our own by choos­ing patri­otic hymns (I vow to thee my coun­try, Jerusalem etc) and hand­ing all of our guests minia­ture union jacks to wave in cel­e­bra­tion of a fab year (the Queen’s Jubilee, Olympics…)

We also man­aged to con­vince the organ­ist to play “Lucky Man” by the Verve for us as we exited the church (One of Alan’s favorite songs that we thought was quite fitting!)

Which read­ings did you choose?

One of Emily’s old­est friends Christo­pher Mat­tingly read an adapted ver­sion of “He Never Leaves the Seat Up” by Pam Ayres
Our good friend Jamie Kelly read Colos­sians 3 v 12–17

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

We were always cer­tain that we didn’t want an off the shelf pack­age wed­ding for our spe­cial day. We didn’t want to be con­strained by hotel sched­ules or expen­sive prices so made the deci­sion to do every­thing our­selves. Liv­ing in Hamp­shire with most of our friends and fam­ily liv­ing East we knew that it would be a bit of a trek to Dorset so made sure it was a week­end of celebrations.

We knew exactly where we wanted to get mar­ried (Again the views in Corfe, Lang­ton, Swan­age are to die for) and spent a week­end dri­ving around look­ing for the per­fect spot, knock­ing on farm­ers’ doors to request per­mis­sion to put up a mar­quee. We even­tu­ally set­tled on a field next to the Burn­gate Stone Cen­tre that over­looked the Isle of Wight to the south and if you looked in the oppo­site direc­tion you could still see the castle!

Our color scheme was bright yel­low and navy blue (due to the groom’s unusual wardrobe request) and we made all of the dec­o­ra­tions our­selves… reams of bunting, wooden table cen­tres filled with rus­tic look­ing flow­ers and bright paper lanterns.

Our main aim for our wed­ding was to have fun so we filled the field with lawn games, space hop­pers and bouncy cas­tles, we even had a camp­ing vil­lage for our guests to stay in (includ­ing the bride and groom).

We have been to so many wed­dings where you get chicken wrapped in parma ham… that just wasn’t us! So we opted to have our favorite food– Chi­nese!! Guests tucked in to starters of sea­weed, prawn toast, won tons etc fol­lowed by a feast of sweet and sour chicken, beef in black bean sauce, rice, noo­dles and plenty of prawn crackers.

We even sup­plied per­son­alised prawn crack­ers for our guests thank­ing them for mak­ing our day so special.

Night was fin­ished with Chi­nese lanterns being let off and sparklers.

Invi­ta­tions and recep­tion stationery:

We opted for uncon­ven­tional invi­ta­tions and sent all of our guests a DVD that we filmed our­selves, let­ting them know the details.

The table num­bers were all num­bers that were sig­nif­i­cant to us with a cor­re­spond­ing picture.

Emily made place names out of small rounds of wood that were tied around our favours and cre­ated the table plan out of an old vin­tage frame.

Emily’s dad made lots of rus­tic look­ing signs to guide peo­ple to the bar, toi­lets, hon­ey­moon suite etc!

Wed­ding music and entertainment:

Music for dur­ing canapes and din­ner was a playlist of our favorite songs.
Evening enter­tain­ment was a band called the Butcher Blues Foun­da­tion– who absolutely blew us away with a mix of rock and pop.
First dance was to Elbow ‘One day like this’

The mil­lion dol­lar ques­tion: What did you wear?

Emily wore a jas­mine cou­ture gown with a lace V-neck detail top with a floaty full tulle skirt (com­pletely oppo­site to the slim-line dress she was orig­i­nally look­ing for!!) Emily cus­tomised a pair of Bhs wed­ding shoes by dying them yel­low and adding yel­low rib­bons to match the groom! She also wore a beau­ti­ful flo­ral hair piece from Glitzy secrets.

The first wed­ding we’d been to where every­one was look­ing at the groom more than what the bride was wear­ing!! Alan had always claimed that the only way he would get mar­ried was if he got to wear a canary yel­low suit… After lots of con­ver­sa­tions we decided that he could get two out­fits for our spe­cial day as we didn’t want to detract from the seri­ous­ness of the church service.

Alan and the ush­ers all wore smart navy suits from Marks and Spencer’s with bright yel­low ties, han­ker­chiefs, cuf­flinks and socks… then as we drove off to the recep­tion we secretly took a detour to get Alan changed into a yel­low suit he’d had made in Hong Kong espe­cially for the day. Our guests had no idea!!!

Mem­o­rable wed­ding day moments:

• Emily walk­ing to the church from the accom­mo­da­tion with her dad and bridal party. This mir­rored what her Mum did on her own big day. Emily also had corn flow­ers in her bou­quet as her mum did.
• Arriv­ing at the venue in Alan’s yel­low suit
• Giv­ing out our desserts of Purbeck ice­cream to our guests with cus­tom made ush­erette trays that Emily’s Dad made.
• The sun shin­ing down on us and all of our friends and fam­ily relax­ing and enjoy­ing the day with us with no pres­sures of any­one telling us what to do!!

Wed­ding day advice:

• If you have a vision on how your day should be don’t let any­one tell you oth­er­wise or con­vince you that you should do things dif­fer­ently. It’s your day. So many peo­ple expected our wed­ding to be like a mini Glas­ton­bury (And indeed we did get mes­sages ask­ing whether we would be pro­vid­ing toi­lets!!!!) and they were all blown away by the day and how much effort we put into get­ting it the way we wanted it…
• USE YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY…if they have skills, ask for help. Peo­ple want to help you so let them. Our flow­ers, hair, make-up, cake, wed­ding car, sword(!) to cut the cake were all done as favours for us by friends and fam­ily at reduced rates or donated as wed­ding gifts. It saved us a for­tune and made the day that lit­tle bit more special.
• We saved a for­tune on our bar by sourc­ing all of the alco­hol our­selves, super­mar­ket deals on spir­its and a booze cruise to France.

Rec­om­mended wed­ding suppliers:

Anya Bridal: www.anyabridal.co.uk
Purbeck ice­cream: www.purbeckicecream.co.uk
Hon­ey­bells (Wed­ding night accom­mo­da­tion for bride and groom) www.honeybells.co.uk
Pho­tog­ra­pher: Paul Under­hill www.paulunderhill.com
Band: Butcher Blues Foun­da­tion: http://www.myspace.com/butcherbluesfoundation
Car: sup­plied by fam­ily friend
Cake: Fam­ily friend
Hair: Fam­ily friend
Make-up: Friend of bride from www.baytreebeauty.co.uk
Mar­quee: Global mar­quees www.globalmarqueehire.com