All About the Atmosphere — an Inspiring and Perfectly Personal Wedding!

There’s some­thing about Lon­don wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher Mar­shal Gray which sets him way above the crowd: he cap­tures the beauty and atmos­phere of a wed­ding day in such a unique and con­tem­po­rary style. Star of all the top UK wed­ding blogs, his wed­dings are beau­ti­ful with­out excep­tion — and James and Laura give a glow­ing review. You’re about to see why!

I have to add that today’s bride and groom are a fan­tas­tic cou­ple — Laura describes their wed­ding style as “totally ours. Loosely based on an Eng­lish coun­try gar­den wed­ding but with a vin­tagey vibes and a shabby chic twist.” This is the per­fect exam­ple of a wed­ding cel­e­bra­tion which fol­lows its own rules, beau­ti­fully and with an unfor­get­table style.

Enjoy — and do leave a com­ment at the end of the blog post! Claire xxx

A very per­sonal wed­ding with tons of style: Laura & James

Wed­ding venue: Mag­dalen Col­lege, Oxford
Wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher: Mar­shal Gray Photography

How would you describe your wed­ding style?

It was totally ours. Loosely based on an Eng­lish coun­try gar­den wed­ding but with a vin­tagey vibes and a shabby chic twist.

A lit­tle about the wed­ding ceremony:

As nei­ther of us have been bap­tised, we knew that a reli­gious cer­e­mony wouldn’t really be in accord with our con­science, so we got mar­ried at the Oxford Reg­is­ter Office the day before with just our fam­i­lies around us, which actu­ally turned out to be strangely poignant and very intimate.

BUT, as we were get­ting mar­ried at Mag­dalen Col­lege, it seemed a real shame not to make use of their out-of-this-world amaz­ing chapel, so we had a lovely cer­e­mony in it with the college’s Dean of Divin­ity giv­ing us a blessing.

The cer­e­mony had lots of lovely touches from my brother play­ing the piano as guests entered and com­pos­ing a piece just for us that our string quar­tet played for me to enter the chapel to, my cousin sang Ave Maria, and my mother wrote a piece for organ that was played when we left the chapel.

The cer­e­mony was fol­lowed by the ring­ing of the bells and a cham­pagne recep­tion in the President’s gar­den, all the while accom­pa­nied by the most beau­ti­ful weather we’d had all sum­mer. We were so lucky!

Dur­ing the cham­pagne recep­tion, kids played games, grownups drank bub­bly, our string quar­tet played, and our cater­ers served fresh bite-sized scones with clot­ted cream and straw­berry jam. YUM!

Which read­ings did you choose?

My mother read ‘Love’ by Roy Croft and the groom’s mother read ‘You Were Born Together’ by Khalil Gibran.

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

We didn’t want every­thing to look too ‘put together’ or overly styled. It was impor­tant to us that the wed­ding felt per­sonal, inti­mate and relaxed, which could have been a bit of a chal­lenge in a grand set­ting like Mag­dalen Col­lege but we chose to add con­trast with a high top tra­di­tional mar­quee, bunting, fairy­lights and some fun touches etc.

Tables were dec­o­rated with hes­s­ian, lace doilies, cut glass vases, dec­o­rated jam jars, tea lights, logs of wood with slits that became table plans, mini turquoise med­i­cine bot­tles, antique books, and lots and lots of gor­geous flowers.

At the bar, we had a rus­tic cop­per bath full of ice and beers and a mas­sive keg of real ale, not to men­tion a Jager­meis­ter machine which we’d bought off ebay.

I ordered our flow­ers from an auc­tion which saved loads of money and all my friends pitched in to arrange them into vases and jam jars, make but­ton holes and bou­quets on the morn­ing of the wed­ding. We had hydrangeas in jam jars lin­ing the aisles of the chapel, which later dou­bled up to line the entrance into the marquee.

We had lanterns in trees, tealights in jam jars around the col­lege walls, and a ton of fairy­lights around the mar­quee, in the gar­den arches, and all around the gar­dens. It looked mag­i­cal when the sun went down.

It was really impor­tant to us that our per­son­al­i­ties shone through and we wanted to have fun, and make sure our friends and fam­ily had fun too. Aside from the music that didn’t stop from begin­ning to end, our favours were mini bot­tles of Jager­meis­ter; our tables were named after music fes­ti­vals we’d been to together; the seat­ing plan was made up of the most ridicu­lous pic­tures we could find of our friends; we hung wed­ding pho­tos of our par­ents, grand­par­ents and great grand­par­ents around a tree which became our ‘fam­ily tree’; we had glow sticks, sparklers, sweets, polaroid cam­eras, empty frames and props for peo­ple to pose with…

Invi­ta­tions and recep­tion stationery:

We did our invi­ta­tions slightly dif­fer­ently to avoid the overly for­mal invi­ta­tion for­mat, so we made our own invi­ta­tions from pho­tographs which we had the stu­pen­dously tal­ented Gary Lash­mar aka Mar­shal Gray take for us as part of our pre-wedding shoot.

The front of our Order of Ser­vice book­let was designed by Jenny Callan, a very tal­ented illus­tra­tor who I’ve worked with pro­fes­sion­ally. The wed­ding break­fast menu was printed out by our cater­ers in tra­di­tional Mag­dalen fash­ion. Our tables were all named after fes­ti­vals, and Jenny had illus­trated the logos. As place­hold­ers, we made lit­tle per­son­alised wine-charms to mark who was sit­ting where, and also helped peo­ple remem­ber which one was their glass!

Wed­ding music and entertainment:

I’m lucky that I come from a very musi­cal fam­ily, so it was a fore­gone con­clu­sion that my fam­ily would be con­tribut­ing to the musi­cal offer­ings of the day. James and I play in a band together, and music is a huge pas­sion of ours, so it was prob­a­bly the one aspect of the wed­ding we really didn’t want to scrimp on.

My brother played the piano as guests entered the chapel and wrote a stun­ning piece for the string quar­tet to play as I entered the chapel. My mother wrote a piece for organ, which was the pro­ces­sional as guests left the chapel. Our hymns were ‘Morn­ing Has Bro­ken’ and ‘Jerusalem’.

My cousin is a singer, so she sang Bach’s ‘Ave Maria’ in between read­ings, accom­pa­nied by my brother on the piano.

Dur­ing the cham­pagne recep­tion, our string quar­tet (The L’Inviti String Quar­tet) played well-known clas­si­cal pieces inter­spersed with mod­ern rock and pop songs arranged for strings. We love the Vit­a­min String Quar­tet but couldn’t afford to fly them over from LA so this was the next best thing.

I work for a radio sta­tion, so took full advan­tage of using one of our DJs to help with the enter­tain­ment. Dur­ing the meal, we went for a sound­track of oldies and clas­sics from the 50s, 60s and 70s in the back­ground (think Sina­tra, Sam Cooke, Otis Reading…)

After the speeches, all guests danced to rock­a­billy rhythm and blues. Songs like ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ and ‘Johnny B Goode’ are enough to make even your grumpy old uncle get up and dance (hypo­thet­i­cally speak­ing of course – we don’t have any grumpy uncles, obviously).

A lot of my fam­ily come from the deep south in Louisiana, so it made sense to cap­ture some of New Orleans’ party atmos­phere with Brass­roots, a 10-man brass band, who play amaz­ing, high-octane cov­ers of songs like Crazy in Love and Seven Nation Army and cap­ture the party spirit per­fectly. The dance floor was PACKED.

Then, once they’d raised the roof, our DJ took over with Indie, 80s, 90s, rock anthems and a real plethora of tunes into the night. I know I might be biased, but I’ve never seen a wed­ding crowd dance quite like they did at our wed­ding and that was exactly what we wanted. We wanted to have a party.

Mar­shal Gray sup­plied a photo booth with props and fancy dress, which was a lot of funn and we also had a polaroid cam­era and loads of film for guests to take their own pics.
We had a sweet table to get every­one high on sugar. Sparklers and glow­sticks for all the kids and big kids.…

What did you wear?

I tried on lots of gor­geous dresses, and had been told I’d even­tu­ally try one where I’d just KNOW that it was ‘the one’. Unfor­tu­nately that ‘eureka’ moment never really hap­pened. I tried on some beau­ti­ful Jenny Pack­ham, Claire Pet­ti­bone and Alice Tem­per­ley dresses, which I adored, but there was always some­thing or other that I wanted to change.

Look­ing through blogs, I also wasn’t so keen on hav­ing a dress that hun­dreds of women would have also worn on their wed­ding days so I designed my own, with the help of the hugely tal­ented Clin­ton Lot­ter who worked with me on it and did the amaz­ing job of mak­ing it. My shoes were Jimmy Choo, and my jew­ellery was all vin­tage. My veil was made by Katie Carter of Faulkner and Carter.

James’ suit was from Mr. Start in Old Street, and we had the ties and pocket squares made by Magties as we wanted to pick the right color and mate­r­ial for it, which came from Broad­wick Silks in Soho. I bought him some spe­cial cuf­flinks from Etsy as a wed­ding gift.

Wed­ding day advice:

HAVE FUN and don’t sweat the small things! It’s easy to get car­ried away with finer details of the day but it’s worth remind­ing your­self that your guests aren’t going to remem­ber whether the table­cloth matched your favours. It’s all about the atmos­phere and it’s a much bet­ter atmos­phere for every­one if you’re hav­ing fun.

Rec­om­mended wed­ding suppliers:

• Mar­shal Gray Photography
• Clau­dia Carter Photography
• Clin­ton Lotter
• Mag­dalen Col­lege caterers
• The Wed­ding Music Com­pany Ltd.
• Flow­ers from the Tri­an­gle Nursery
• Brass­roots
• Mango Vibe
• Magties
• Faulkner and Carter.