Kate and Jamal’s Contemporary and Vibrant English and Asian Wedding Blog!

As with all Asian wed­dings there’s more excit­ing color than the aver­age vin­tage wed­ding, so it leaves me grin­ning hap­pily at the prospect of show­ing you pho­tos! The venues are sub­lime and add time­less atmos­phere and con­tem­po­rary chic to the story of Kate and Jamal’s day. Their wed­ding report is amaz­ing — I love the bit about Jamal’s niece’s infec­tious belly laughs dur­ing the speeches… watch out for it!

It’s the images which leave a fab­u­lous after­taste for me though — the ele­gance of the wed­ding styling, the vibrance of the colours and the breath­tak­ing venues. I just know you’re going to love this wed­ding blog. Huge thanks to lovely Peter and Sara from Pix­ies in the Cel­lar for sub­mit­ting their images, and mas­sive hugs and con­grat­u­la­tions to beau­ti­ful bride Kate and gor­geous groom Jamal for the wed­ding report. Just bril­liant, all of it… enjoy! Claire x

Kate and Jamal — a con­tem­po­rary, vibrant Eng­lish and Asian wed­ding blog

The bride and groom:

Kate Burslem and Jamal Benzafar

Wed­ding venue:

Man­ches­ter Town Hall for wed­ding cer­e­mony / Room Restau­rant for Eng­lish recep­tion / Nawaab Man­ches­ter for Asian celebrations.

Wed­ding photographer:

Peter and Sara at Pix­ies in the Cellar

How would you describe your wed­ding style?

Con­tem­po­rary Eng­lish city cen­tre and vibrant Asian

Invi­ta­tions and recep­tion stationery:

Due to hav­ing a num­ber of cel­e­bra­tions with guests invited to var­i­ous dif­fer­ent events we bought our invi­ta­tions from ‘Light in the box’ and then printed and stuck down our own inserts so that we could cus­tomise each card for each guest. We also made our own table plan and table names via Pow­er­point! Place cards were ordered from Jump Fox who pro­vided fan­tas­tic service.

What did you both wear?

For the Mehndi the bride and groom wore tra­di­tional out­fits – yel­low dress and trousers for the bride and a white kurta for the groom. The bride acces­sorised with gold and green ban­gles and a yel­low, green and hot pink dupatta (scarf).

On the wed­ding day the bride wore a Justin Alexan­der strap­less sweet­heart all over alen­con lace A-line dress, with but­tons the full length of the gown and chapel train. The shoes were flat lace pumps from Bhs, at £15 a bar­gain and excel­lent for danc­ing in! 3 fresh­wa­ter pearl ban­gles, a beau­ti­ful dia­mond and pearl drop neck­lace bought the day before the wed­ding by her hus­band to be and a lovely pearl head­piece lent by a close friend proved to be the per­fect acces­sories. The mother of the bride had found some lovely lace from which the veil was made by a dressmaker.

The groom wore a cus­tom made suit by King and Allen which had the date of the wed­ding and ini­tials of the bride and groom stitched into it, tie and shirt from Thomas Pink and shoes from Kurt Geiger.

On the Wal­ima the groom wore another cus­tom made suit from King and Allen and brogues from John Lewis, whilst the bride wore a cus­tom made dress in the tra­di­tional Wal­ima color of red which had been designed by her mother in law and made in Pak­istan. This was acces­sorised with gold ban­gles and rings, lent by the groom’s mother and sis­ter, a red dupatta pinned into her hair and match­ing jew­ellery set com­pris­ing neck­lace, ear­rings and tikka head­piece (like a bindi but larger and pinned into the hair).

A lit­tle about the wed­ding ceremony:

Due to nei­ther of us being reli­gious we had a civil cer­e­mony at Man­ches­ter Town Hall for approx­i­mately 90 peo­ple. We wanted quite a tra­di­tional cer­e­mony, that wasn’t too short (they can be over in 5 min­utes if you don’t have any read­ings!) or too slushy! The key thing was that we could make a com­mit­ment to each other in front of the peo­ple that mean the most to us, and then have a glass of bub­bly to cel­e­brate afterwards!

We chose 2 read­ings. The first was a fun read­ing, ‘The Lovely Dinosaur’ by Edward Monk­ton, which we cus­tomised to make it per­sonal to us, high­light­ing the groom’s love of cricket and the bride’s poor time keep­ing. This was read by the Kate’s friends, who got the guests (and bride and groom) laugh­ing along. The sec­ond read­ing was read by a fam­ily friend of the bride, who had been brides­maid at Kate’s par­ents’ wed­ding. This was ‘The Art Of A Good Mar­riage’ by Wil­fred Arlan Peter­son and more prag­matic in tone, but high­light­ing the com­mit­ment that mar­riage rep­re­sents and respon­si­bil­ity that it brings.

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

In respect of the Asian days the key ele­ment in mak­ing our choice was the food, and Nawaab has an excel­lent rep­u­ta­tion for fan­tas­tic food, as well as being a great venue to hold larger gath­er­ings. For the Mehndi the venue was styled with yel­low and green chair ties and match­ing nap­kins, which are the tra­di­tional colours, and a fam­ily friend had made low flower arrange­ments for the tables. On the Mehndi the bride and groom sit at a table in front of all the guests and the female guests come up and dab a bit of henna on the couple’s hands, feed them some Asian sweets and cir­cle them with money which is then given to the cou­ple for a char­ity of their choice. We chose to donate to SALVE Inter­na­tional, a char­ity set up by one of Kate’s close friends, which looks after street chil­dren in Uganda. On the Wal­ima the color theme was red and white, with there being a red car­pet for the bride and groom to make their entrance to, sur­rounded by pil­lars of white flowers.

Man­ches­ter Town Hall and Room require very lit­tle styling, as they are both such stun­ning venues. Room has 3 amaz­ing over­sized red lamp­shades, but we wanted to inject some color into the venue so bought 50 vases from Ikea and put sin­gle stems of hot pink ger­beras and pur­ple lisianthus in the vases which were scat­tered on the guests’ tables and around the room. The favours were lit­tle glass jars that we had bought from Wares of Cheshire which we filled with smar­ties, again, a colour­ful addi­tion to the table. (The man at Tesco said they had never seen some­one order 160 tubes of smar­ties before!)

Room pro­vided the per­fect loca­tion for some amaz­ing pho­tos, from being able to throw the bou­quet off the bal­cony with the female guests wait­ing to catch it in the street below, to hav­ing a photo of the bride laid across an uplit bar!

Wed­ding music and entertainment:

On our wed­ding day we had a cello duo play at the Town Hall, as the bride and one of the brides­maids played the cello grow­ing up. They played a mix­ture of clas­si­cal and con­tem­po­rary music and matched the feel­ing of the venue and occa­sion per­fectly. The bride walked down the aisle to Elgar’s Nimrod.

For the music dur­ing the day at Room we had made our own playlist on an iPod with tracks rang­ing from Nina Simone to Paulo Nutini. In the evening we used a DJ which was rec­om­mended by Room who were bril­liant. We had given them a list of about 50 tracks we liked, some of which they played, and they added their own stuff too. They got every­one up and danc­ing, play­ing every­thing from The Lum­i­neers, Ho Hey, which was our first dance, to Tena­cious D!

Mem­o­rable wed­ding day moments:

• On the Mehndi hav­ing to Asian bhangra dance as our first dance, and only being able to remem­ber one piece of advice – just pre­tend you’re screw­ing in a lightbulb.
• My dad stitch­ing a lucky Churchill crown into my wed­ding dress as my some­thing old.
• Enter­ing the cer­e­mony room to see all our friends and fam­ily – it was very emo­tional, in a fan­tas­tic way.
• Feel­ing over­whelmed by how amaz­ing our brides­maids and grooms­men were and that we were so lucky to have such won­der­ful friends.
• When we left the Town Hall to walk across town to our recep­tion venue there was a big Sikh fes­ti­val going on, with prob­a­bly 1,000 peo­ple or so dressed in bright orange. Loads of peo­ple stopped to say con­grat­u­la­tions, includ­ing a fair few police­men and a crew of builders. We later found out that one of the groom’s uncles had snuck off to get some free food from the fes­ti­val before head­ing over to the reception.
• The best man’s speech, where he told a story about the groom per­se­ver­ing with jump­ing into a freez­ing whirlpool while coas­t­eer­ing on the stag do and the loud­est laugh com­ing from the groom’s 5 year old niece, who wouldn’t stop belly laugh­ing. It set every­one else off.
• Not recog­nis­ing myself when I’d had my make-up done for the Walima.
• Kate’s 88 year old Nana Asian danc­ing in her heels at the Wal­ima with the groom’s sis­ter and aunt, and show­ing every­one how it was done. It put my attempt at danc­ing to shame!
• Our final dance to Coldplay’s Straw­berry Swing. It rounded off a per­fect day.

Wed­ding day advice:

• Don’t stress before­hand, it achieves nothing.
• Go with the flow on the day, no-one else knows if some­thing doesn’t hap­pen which ought to have!
• Get some­one to take some plas­ters with them for you, just in case.
• Get the pho­tog­ra­pher to stay into the evening to get pho­tos of the evening guests. Look­ing back on the pho­tos has been amaz­ing, and it was only a few weeks ago!
• Just try to take it all in!

Rec­om­mended wed­ding suppliers:

• Our pho­tog­ra­phers from Pix­ies in the Cel­lar were really per­son­able and took won­der­ful pho­tos which we will trea­sure for­ever www.pixiesinthecellar.co.uk
• Our place name cards were ordered from Jump Fox who pro­vided fan­tas­tic ser­vice and per­son­alised all the cards for no extra cost. You can find them on Ebay under jumpfox-invites.
• Room Restau­rant couldn’t have done more to help us; they were excel­lent and all our guests loved the slightly dif­fer­ent venue. www.roomrestaurants.com
• We made activ­ity bags for the young chil­dren, includ­ing dis­pos­able cam­eras and activ­ity books from www.2littleboys.co.uk
• My flow­ers were gor­geous and exactly what I was look­ing for. Sophie Bar­ratt was really help­ful and under­stood just what I wanted www.flowerbomb.me
• My hair, make up and henna for the Asian days was done by Marina Par­vaiz and was fan­tas­tic. I would def­i­nitely rec­om­mend using her skills! Search Marina Par­vaiz Make Up Artiste on face­book for con­tact details.
• The wed­ding cake was from Marks and Spencer, who pro­vided great ser­vice, and it looked fan­tas­tic and tasted even better!