Matthew and Emma’s Doctor Who Wedding in Hertfordshire

Matthew and Emma’s wed­ding in Hert­ford­shire had a sub­tle Doc­tor Who theme run­ning through­out the day. They used blue as a key color and had lit­tle touches like neon light­ing in the flower cen­tre­pieces to hint at their theme… which was realised well and truly with a Doc­tor Who cake top­per: bride + groom + tardis!

Their day begins with a clas­sic church wed­ding and ends with both mums rock­ing out on the dance­floor to Teenage Dirt­bag. Shall we dive in? Con­grat­u­la­tions and huge thanks to gor­geous cou­ple Matthew and Emma, and thanks as ever to lovely Leices­ter­shire wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher Alix Marina-Chouhan of Lumiere Pho­tog­ra­phy. Every­one, enjoy! Claire x

Wed­ding venue:

St. Leonard’s Church, Flam­stead and then Beech­wood Park School, Markyate

Wed­ding photographer:

Alix Marina-Chouhan, Lumiere Pho­tog­ra­phy (www.lumiere-photography.co.uk)

Invi­ta­tions and recep­tion stationery:

Hand made, clas­sic white and blue with ribbons.

What did you wear?

Emma wore a beau­ti­ful white dress from the wed­ding dress out­let in Hinck­ley designed by Anna Sor­rano. Her shoes were blue Rocket Dog heels, which matched our bespoke brides­maids dresses.

Matthew wore a New­bury morn­ing suit jacket with Hawk­stone waist coat and cus­tom made blue cra­vat. Suit hire from Moss Bros.

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

We got mar­ried in the vil­lage where I grew up. The church is the cen­tre of the com­mu­nity, and is impor­tant to my fam­ily. The vicar has known me for most of my life. My mom did the flow­ers, and the church looked amaz­ing. We chose a dif­fi­cult color (blue) and had asked for sub­tle touches of our likes and dis­likes to be included. My mom and her team chose to include some herbs into all the arrange­ments and bou­quets to reflect our love of cook­ing. Our read­ings were 1 Corinthi­ans 13:4–13 and a poem writ­ten (and read) by our best friend. We wanted an alter­na­tive to the clas­sic church exit music, so chose to have “Mr. Blue Sky” instead of an organ­ist piece as we left the church!

Our recep­tion was held at my old pri­mary school. The school have been hold­ing pri­vate events dur­ing school hol­i­days for some time, and this was a per­fect loca­tion close to the church. We con­tin­ued the blue theme with blue chair sashes and nap­kin ties. We also had blue LEDs in the cen­tre pieces. There was a very sub­tle “Doc­tor Who” theme run­ning through the day, so we also included Dr. Who toys inside all the children’s nap­kins. We also had “wed­ding speech packs” for all the kids with games, colouring-in and crayons, so that they didn’t get bored.

The final touch was our wed­ding cake. This was not a sub­tle Doc­tor Who ref­er­ence at all! The TARDIS light was a LED actu­ally hid­den INSIDE the icing, that illu­mi­nated at night, and the cake mak­ers had taken pho­tos of us in our out­fits before the date and made lit­tle man­nequin cake toppers.

Our pho­tog­ra­pher (Alix from Lumiere Pho­tog­ra­phy, lumiere-photography.co.uk) spent all day with us, from the early morn­ing whilst we were get­ting ready (at two loca­tions) and then late into the evening. She man­aged to cap­ture so many details from our day, and con­tin­ues to keep in touch with us both.

Wed­ding music and entertainment:

After some con­sid­er­a­tion we chose to have a band instead of a DJ. This was one of the best deci­sions we made. Emma spent days col­lat­ing a list of bands located around the venue, and one evening we sat down with one of her brides­maids to look through the list. The first band we looked at was a St. Albans based band called “The A-Strings”. The lead gui­tarist (Tom) was a spit­ting image of me! After the girls calmed down we decided that we MUST have them, and called them. I spoke to Tom on the phone, he was great and we booked straight away. The band learnt our first dance song (Teenage Dirt­bag) and then later when we suc­cumbed to peer pres­sure our sec­ond choice of first dance songs (Char­lene Soraira’s cover of “Where ever you will go”). The band played most of the evening and my wife never left the dance floor!

Mem­o­rable wed­ding day moments:

• We had asked our cater­ers to set up a sur­prise “ice cream” par­lour. Both of our favorite moments were watch­ing peo­ple with their ice-cream!
• Both mine and Emma’s mums came onto the dance floor dur­ing Teenage Dirt­bag and were jump­ing around with us, it was amaz­ing to watch two grown women jump­ing around like teenagers!

Wed­ding day advice:

Decide what you want, then set up a bud­get and stick to it. Towards the date it will be really easy to let this slip, but if you plan from the start you can have exactly the day that you want. Do not com­pro­mise on anything.

Rec­om­mended wed­ding suppliers:

• Church of Eng­land web­site (The most help­ful resource for a Chris­t­ian wed­ding) http://www.yourchurchwedding.org/
• St. Leonards Church, Flam­stead http://www.flamstead-herts.co.uk/stleos.html
• Lumiere-Photography http://www.lumiere-photography.co.uk/
• Beech­wood Park School Event Hire http://beechwoodpark.net/facilities-and-site/event-hire
• The A Strings Band http://www.theastrings.co.uk/
• Vic­to­ria Sponges (Bespoke Cake Makers)