An Eclectic Wedding at Andaz, London

Nicola opted for a bespoke wed­ding dress, based on her own design and cre­ated by Miss Bush Bridal Wear in Rip­ley. It’s stun­ning — and Nicola’s glow­ing review of her wed­ding dress­mak­ing expe­ri­ence is great to read.

Nicola and Antony’s flow­ers were white tulips. Antony made a fan­tas­tic table plan with vin­tage frames which I love! Other detail ideas include lit­tle choco­late mous­tache lol­lipops and post cards as a wed­ding guest book alter­na­tive. Ready to dive into this one? The gor­geous images are by wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher Mark Both­well. Enjoy!

Nicola & Antony’s eclec­tic wed­ding in London

Who pro­posed, and how?

Antony pro­posed to me. It was the 3rd of Decem­ber. He went to a huge amount of very roman­tic effort: he foxed me, by pre­tend­ing we were going to a cock­tail party for a net­work­ing event for his work.

I was at work for the first time in a week as the snow was so bad, none of the trains were run­ning prop­erly. He called me to say due to the snow his boss had arranged a hotel room for us that night. I was none the wiser. He then called again later to say we had been upgraded to a suite! Great, I thought!

I arrived in Bond street, to be met by Antony. I was starv­ing hun­gry so went to Pret, very sen­si­ble I thought espe­cially as thought it would be a liq­uid din­ner. I got sushi, Ant’s not a sushi lover but ate some, he doesn’t nor­mally do sushi (as he had dif­fer­ent plans to what he had told me)…. I thought it was weird!

We had a few drinks at the hotel in the club room, went to our fan­tas­tic room and got ready (I was tak­ing my time.) Antony told me the work event was in the Grand Ball­room. Even­tu­ally I was ready and we made our way down­stairs. Antony went one way and I went the other, I went towards the ball­room! I’m quite stub­born so was adamant that it was my way, he said trust me… it’s this way. We then walked into the Maze restau­rant…. my heart started racing.

I ques­tioned why we ended up hav­ing a fancy meal on our own and he said it was a sur­prise for Christ­mas. The pro­posal didn’t hap­pen at the restau­rant?! Per­haps it was a Christ­mas present?

When we got back to the room he went down on one knee! I was given a gor­geous princess cut dia­mond ring, a whole new make-up bag full of MAC make up ( he had sneak­ily looked at all my make-up and repli­cated it… plus new eye shadow cols), per­fume, a new dress, tights, and shoes! I had no overnight bag and he had thought of everything.

He had made so much effort it was amaz­ing! We had a lovely evening and drank cham­pagne on the snow sprin­kled ter­race!

Wed­ding venue: Andaz Liv­er­pool Street, London.

Andaz Liv­er­pool Street was the per­fect venue for us. Every­thing is under one very beau­ti­ful and cool roof. We were attracted to the venue for the loca­tion, décor (mix of Vic­to­rian and mod­ern fea­tures.) The staff were great and it’s a slick set up. We are both very busy and Andaz could help with all details.

Wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher: Mark Bothwell.

Mark Both­well — A rec­om­men­da­tion. We had a great ini­tial chat and he ‘got it’! The proof is in the pud­ding.

Antony wore a navy 3 piece Hugo Boss suit, white shirt and tie and a white Tulip but­ton hole.

Nicola’s bespoke wed­ding dress by Miss Bush Bridal

I was slightly more com­pli­cated… I tried on about 60 dresses and I couldn’t find any that I liked enough. I knew I didn’t want a strap­less meringue. I had quite a clear idea of what I wanted. I’m a hand­bag and acces­sories designer (and stud­ied as a fash­ion designer), I have a very clear vision of what out­fits and acces­sories I want to wear.

I met Emma from Miss Bush and we had a shared taste when it came to dresses. I tried on some gor­geous dresses in her bou­tique but noth­ing was as I had imag­ined. We got chat­ting about cus­tomis­ing a dress, to look more like I wanted. Emma was very help­ful and gave some great sug­ges­tions (she knows her dresses) how­ever I asked that if she could cus­tomise, did that mean she could make me a dress?

The answer was Yes! Emma was very keen and so was I. I designed my ideal dress and showed Emma the design. After the for­mal­i­ties, Emma and her amaz­ing dress maker Janet got to work on the toile. Nat­u­rally as you have your toile fit­tings the design evolves. I wanted a structured/crisp look­ing dress with a detach­able train, an angu­lar shaped open back, and lit­tle capped sleeves, a dress that was sim­plis­tic and sleek. I sourced the fab­ric, and went for a beau­ti­ful white silk taffeta which had a lovely stiff mould­able quality.

Janet, Emma and Gen at Miss Bush were excel­lent, they made me a beau­ti­ful dress that was exactly as I had wanted, it was fan­tas­ti­cally well made and their atten­tion to detail was sec­ond to none. They were an absolute plea­sure to work with. I would thor­oughly rec­om­mend The Miss Bush bou­tique. I would also rec­om­mend going down the bespoke dress route, it’s very enjoy­able and not stress­ful if you know exactly what you want and you have found great makers.

I had Giuseppe Zan­otti sky high gun­metal sling backs, Vin­tage brooch, Jenny Pack­ham Aca­cia II cuff and head­piece. I car­ried lots of white tulips (no foliage).

The Brides­maids’ dresses were off white cock­tail dress from Ted Baker, they wore cobalt blue shoes and car­ried white sweet peas.

We wanted a relaxed and per­sonal feel to the day so the ush­ers wore their own gray lounge suits with skinny navy ties, I wasn’t that wor­ried about them being too matchy matchy. The Dads wore navy suits with cobalt ties.

The wed­ding ceremony

We were mar­ried in the Bish­ops­gate room in the Hotel. We had can­dles and white rose petals down the aisle, and per­spex pedestals with sleek glass tubes and white blos­som. The flow­ers and decor were sim­plis­tic but very effec­tive. The room is dec­o­rated in soft blues and greys and I love those colours set with whites.

Our reg­is­trars made it very per­sonal for us and made us feel at ease. We were both sur­prised how emo­tional we felt. We totally under­es­ti­mated it!

When say­ing the vows I lost track of what the reg­is­trar was say­ing and got con­fused with what I was meant to say… Every­one had a lit­tle chuckle at me! After­wards every­body was say­ing ‘I can’t believe you for­got your name!’

Our wed­ding read­ings were i carry your heart by EE Cum­mings, The One and The Day (both unknown authors).

The wed­ding reception:

Our recep­tion was in the 1901 room, a gor­geous stained glass atrium with white mar­ble pil­lars. There’s a bar in the cen­tre of the room: hav­ing a bar/dancing/tables all in one room was a must, so that every­one was together in one place. Boys tend to have the habit of stand­ing near the bar!

My Mum and I col­lected about 100 vin­tage coloured glass vases from char­ity shops, car boots etc. (a chal­lenge and we became obsessed!) I wanted the color to be in the vases and not the flowers.

I wanted the cen­tre pieces on the tables all to be dif­fer­ent. We used vin­tage look­ing vases to mir­ror the stained glass ceil­ing, with sim­ple tulips. My florist was Gill Pike Florist, she has great ideas and we worked really well together. The flow­ers I wanted were not tra­di­tion­ally ‘put together’ flow­ers. I wanted them to look ‘easy’and mod­ern. Tulips are my favorite and we were really lucky to get them. June is very late for tulips but due to the awful weather ear­lier in the year they were still around.

Antony made a fan­tas­tic table plan. We col­lected small vin­tage frames and one large ornate frame. They were all painted gray and placed inside the large frame. It looked bril­liant. The wooden table num­bers were expertly painted white too, which added to the eclec­tic wed­ding look.

I ordered bow and mous­tache choco­late lol­lipops from Creighton’s, a bespoke and very cool chocolatier.

For a bit of what every­one fan­cies for evening food, but never admits, we served crispy Crème donuts, mini burg­ers, fish and chips along with our amaz­ing cake.

We bought a mix of quirky post­cards for our guests to sign instead of the nor­mal guestbook.

We both chose fun pho­tos of us when we were young to go in frames around the card box.

For our favours we didn’t have any spare cash. We found these fun Knock Knock pads: ‘why I really like you’. We com­plied a why I really like you tick box page for each of our guests and hand printed their names on mini envelopes to dou­ble up as the place settings.

Our Cake was made by Lois Par­sons a fam­ily friend. It was huge (3 stone in fact!) It looked fab, white stripes and large bow! Tasted great too.

What were your highlights?

Antony firstly said see­ing me walk in the room! ahhh!

We both made speeches, (Ant’s best man’s speech was a mix of funny, cringe, funny…I’m say­ing no more!), min­gling after the meal and dancing!

I would also say spend­ing the evening before and the morn­ing of the wed­ding with my par­ents and brides­maids. It was fun and very relaxed at the same time.

Music and entertainment:

We had a singer/pianist to play dur­ing the cer­e­mony and drinks reception.

My Dad came across Jody Ellen Robin­son busk­ing for char­ity, so we con­tacted her. She was fan­tas­tic. She just played the piano before I arrived. I walked in to Jody singing/playing Eva Cas­sidy — Song Bird. The other songs she sang were Elton John — Your song, Take That — Rule the world. We walked out to Frankie Valli — Can’t take my eyes off you (which is a cheesy song that we have taken as our own for years!) We also had this as our first dance.

We had a live band for the evening recep­tion who are fan­tas­tic. They are called Back in the Day. They do a mix of retro and mod­ern songs and get every­one on the dance floor. This was one of my main aims of the day. I wanted every­one to have fun! They also have a DJ to play tracks whilst the band had their breaks.

Wed­ding day advice:

Take in as much as pos­si­ble — it goes so quickly.

Rec­om­mended wed­ding suppliers:

• Miss Bush– Rip­ley www.missbushbridalwear.co.uk
• Mark Both­well Pho­tog­ra­phy www.markbothwell.com
• Back in the Day Band. www.bitd.co.uk
• Gill Pike Florist. www.gillpikeflorist.co.uk
•  Creightons www.wearecreightons.com
• Jody Ellen Robin­son Musician