The Silent Disco Wedding in London

This gor­geous cou­ple were mar­ried at The Inner Tem­ple, and Lon­don wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher Mark Carey sub­mit­ted their pho­tos for my blog. I loved every one: their day was fun, lov­ing, sophis­ti­cated and family-oriented. And they really had thought of everything!

Ellie wrote the loveli­est wed­ding report for me. My favorite quote from Ellie is this (when I asked about her most mem­o­rable wed­ding day moments): “See­ing all of the groom’s friends danc­ing to drum and bass whilst his par­ents were doing the tango on the other side of the dance floor.”

I love it. You will too…

The silent disco wed­ding in London

When we started plan­ning our wed­ding we knew that we did not want it to be con­ven­tional, we wanted to make sure that all our friends and fam­ily would be there, that the food and drink would be high qual­ity, and a mem­o­rable event for all. We were not fans of sit down din­ners on a large scale as the qual­ity always seems to suf­fer, and our aim was to make a large wed­ding seem small and personal.

It took a lot of ideas and help plan­ning from our fam­i­lies to come up with our dream day.

 The Gar­den Picnic…

The day started at 12.45 with all of our guests join­ing us for a Gar­den Pic­nic. All guests were given a pic­nic blan­ket as their ‘favour’ to take home. There were a num­ber of giant games spread over the grass such as Giant Jenga, giant chess and giant con­nect four amongst oth­ers. The guests had a wide range of Juices to choose from to drink, and the food was served on real china. Dishes were served from a buf­fet that included salmon, pasta dishes, quiches and sal­ads. We really wanted to do things this way round because we hate being hun­gry dur­ing wed­ding cer­e­monies, this def­i­nitely avoided that problem.

The other ben­e­fit was that it gave us a relaxed set­ting to great our guests, and a real chance to sit down with those that had come from far away and have good catch up. It was also quite effec­tive at keep­ing the nerves at bay.

 The wed­ding ceremony…

We had the Cer­e­mony in the venue’s main hall. Whilst the guests were wait­ing they were given a pro­gramme explain­ing the days events, and all of the chil­dren were given a bag made for them with toys, books and games inside. We had arranged with the Reg­is­trar to have a more mod­ern cer­e­mony. We had three read­ings, and had our own vows that we had found on the inter­net, but really said every­thing that we wanted to express to each other. On the day the Reg­is­trar arrived 45 min­utes late, but all our guests were so enter­tained they didn’t even notice.

The wed­ding fete!

After the cer­e­mony our guests left the hall they entered what we named the ‘fete’ part of our day. We find that dur­ing a ‘con­ven­tional wed­ding’ after the cer­e­mony there is a lot of hang­ing around. You end up drink­ing a lot for want of some­thing else to do, and end up tipsy before you even get to the wed­ding break­fast. To avoid this we made sure our guests had plenty to do: whisky tast­ing, cock­tail mak­ing, cheese tast­ing, choco­late sam­pling, cup cake dec­o­rat­ing (which was put on a stand to become our wed­ding cake), table foot­ball, air hockey, a quiz about the bride and groom, a wish­ing tree (our guests wrote their mes­sage book wishes on lug­gage labels, and tied them onto a small tree of ours) and a com­mu­nal art work (all our guests left a hand print on a length of can­vas that we are going to put on our wall).

Whilst our guests were busy we quickly did the 6 for­mal pho­tographs that we wanted, it took only 10 minutes!

Once the 2 hours of activ­i­ties had flown by it was time for the for­mal speeches. This hap­pened at the same time as our evening meal – an after­noon tea (with sand­wiches, cakes, scones and pros­ecco). As the father of the bride passed away a num­ber of years back, a fam­ily of the bride speech was made (with my brother, sis­ter and mom doing the hon­ours). Then we had father of the groom, best man, groom and then the bride. There was not much food left after all that talking.

I wore two wed­ding dresses for the day: my first dress was bought from Lilly J in Cam­den Mar­ket (now closed down) — for just £20! My main dress is from Mir­ror Mir­ror in Angel Isling­ton. I wore Ulrika by Char­lotte Bal­bier – ivory, lace cov­ered v-neck, empire line with crys­tal jew­els, mer­maid skirt with small train.

For the pic­nic my shoes were Carvela from Kurt Geiger, ankle strap wedges in ivory with a suede flower dec­o­ra­tion. My main shoes were bal­le­rina pumps in ivory with lace pat­tern­ing from Perdita online. My jew­ellery (bracelet, ear­rings, neck­lace and tiara) was by Cath Lof­tus, made bespoke using some of my mother’s pearls.

For the pic­nic I bought a pash­mina for £3 from Sains­burys (on the morn­ing of the wed­ding when I realised that it was going to be cold!) My bolero for the evening was from Mir­ror Mirror.

Lee wore a suit from TM Lewin, shirt from iTai­lor online, white with green lin­ing and but­tons. His shoes are from Leonard Jay of London.

The silent disco!

What music to have was a bone of con­tention in our rela­tion­ship, as we both have very dif­fer­ent tastes. A per­fect solu­tion was found with a silent disco. Each of our guests were given a set of head­phones. We had three chan­nels, one with music from the groom, one with music from the bride and one with choices from the par­ents of the wed­ding pair. As the night went on our guests could choose what chan­nel of music they wanted to lis­ten to through chang­ing the switch on their head sets. There was an offi­cial dance floor – but peo­ple choose to dance wher­ever the mood took them.

Ellie’s most mem­o­rable wed­ding day moments

Par­tic­i­pat­ing in all of the activ­i­ties and see­ing our friends hav­ing such fun.

See­ing every­one danc­ing together and shout­ing out what chan­nel they were lis­ten­ing to.

See­ing all of the groom’s friends danc­ing to drum and bass whilst his par­ents were doing the tango on the other side of the dance floor.

The feed­back we have got from our guests was bril­liant, they all said that they talked to lots of peo­ple that they didn’t know, as there was always some­thing that they could talk about. It really did suc­ceed in mak­ing a large wed­ding party into some­thing more per­sonal and intimate.

 Emma’s wed­ding day advice

You don’t need to fol­low a spe­cific or tra­di­tional plan for your wed­ding day. Do the things that you want to do to make sure that it is spe­cial to you. That way it can’t go wrong.

Rec­om­mended wed­ding suppliers

Pho­tog­ra­phy – Lon­don wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher Mark Carey www.markcareyphotography.com

Wed­ding venue – The hon­ourable soci­ety of the Inner Tem­ple (I could not rec­om­mend them more highly, their events team was spec­tac­u­larly organ­ised and the food sublime)

Band – Tom­maso Starace offi­cial web­site www.tommasostarace.com

Silent Disco – Silent­noize

Trans­port – Addi­son Cabs

Cake – Cup­cakes dec­o­rated by guests, pro­vided by The Cocoabox in Lon­don. Their blog is worth a look for any chocolate-loving Christ­mas shop­pers out there! http://thecocoaboxblog.blogspot.com

Choco­late tast­ing – Choco­late and love

Cheese tast­ing – Tom Bad­cock cheesecellar.co.uk

Whisky tast­ing – Stu­art Hudson

Cock­tail mak­ing – Ben Reed

Sta­tionery and Pro­gramme – Designed by the groom