Monday, December 3, 2012

Real Vintage Music-Themed Wedding: Katherine & Yianni - Part 2

With a fabulous rock music wedding theme, a gorgeous burgundy colour theme, and a self-confessed perfectionist bride, Katherine and Yianni's wedding was always going to be a pretty impressive affair. It's packed full of stealworthy ideas, and if you're looking to be a DIY bride, you'll find tonnes of wedding inspiration. My favourite wedding details include the album themed table plan and decorations, the beautifully packaged CD wedding favours, and the stunning burgundy colour palette. Gorgeous pictures published with thanks to Dominic Whiten Photography - don't miss Katherine's helpful answers to the Before the Big Day Bride's Questionnaire, and Part 1 of this fabulous wedding.

We got married on Saturday October 13th 2012 in a small village in Kent where my parents live. We had a church ceremony at St Johns Church followed by a reception at Mountains Country House in Hildenborough.

Our wedding photography was Dominic from Dominic Whiten Photography. I found him via our wedding venue - we met up at my parents house I really liked his easygoing manner. I researched quite a few other photographers and I was tempted by some of the more artistic styles. However after looking through Dominic's online portfolio again, we really loved his portraits and the way he captured real moments from the day in an artistic but honest way.

Yianni’s Dad is Greek Cypriot, and as everyone knows the Greeks don’t do small weddings so finding the perfect venue that would also accommodate 200 guests proved quite difficult. We thought a lot about how to combine both of our family traditions, and whether to have the wedding in Kent or London.

In the end we decided that because I wanted to stay true to English tradition and get married at my parents' church, so it made sense to choose a venue that was close by. However we still wanted to have a proper Greek party for the reception, and Mountains Country House turned out to be the perfect choice. With its beautiful stately home and huge marquee we knew we'd have room to make it a party to remember!

The wedding theme was obvious – the reason we got together – our love of rock music. Our starting point was when one of our favourite bands Deftones released a limited edition CD with a beautiful image of roses on the cover. We used this imagery as inspiration for the invitations – which, in keeping with the music theme, we had printed as a CD album case.

I chose a burgundy rose from the centre of the design as the colour for my bridesmaids' dresses and as our a wedding colour theme, for Yianni's ushers' ties, the cake ribbon, and all the other wedding details.

My florist was Suzanne at the Flowersmiths. I visited a few other florists to get ideas but Suzanne gave us the best price for what I wanted for my wedding flowers. I knew I wanted roses in the colours from our wedding invitations, and I knew I wanted neat rounded bouquets and elegant candelabras in the venue. I really trusted Suzanne would do a good job and her dedication and planning to achieve my vision could not have been bettered.

We chose to name each table at our wedding reception after some of our favourite albums. We bought some old records and then printed labels with the album art to stick in the centre, which at 50p a record was much cheaper than buying the actual vinyl.

We designed our own invitations, table names and table plan. I am a print textile designer and Yianni works on websites, so we are both quite used to using Photoshop on a daily basis, and didn’t think it was necessary to outsource the design. We did loads of research online, and pulled all our ideas together, and then spent a lot of time perfecting the final results.

As we had nearly 150 people to the sit down meal, it was difficult to come up with something thoughtful but relatively inexpensive for our wedding favours. Originally I thought I would go with traditional sugared almonds - cheap but unoriginal. But after sending out what was essentially an empty CD case as the invitation, a lot of guests asked me for a music CD! So we decided to make our own compilation as a favour for each guest - with his or her name tacked on the cover using old school dymo labeller.

My mum helped me find our wedding cake on Classic Cakes. I had just chosen my dress, and knew the pearl decorations would work well with it. I knew I wanted a proper traditional tiered cake that you cut, instead of the current trendy cupcake towers, and I didn’t want anything too fussy visually and this cake ticked all the boxes. Plus they sent us some delicious samples including a gluten and dairy free option for pernickety eaters like me.

Yianni and I set aside 1 evening a week to do wedding stuff. When it got nearer to the day quite a few weekends got booked up with meetings too, but my advice is not to let your wedding take over your life. Also don’t stress about the little details – I asked for my mum and sister to help with decorating jam jars lanterns. I had planned a fun craft morning, but almost had a meltdown because they weren't all perfect - then on the day I didn't even see them lit up, as I was too busy enjoying myself in the marquee! So in hindsight - take the time to savour your months of labours as it is a cliché but so true - the day really does fly by!

I did enjoy planning my wedding, but at times it was really stressful and so time consuming. There is a reason why you're meant to get married before the kids arrive! I think it doesn't help that I am a perfectionist and frequently got bogged down in details. I have to say there is such an immense choice out there for everything, that it really does help if you have a good sense of your own style and a theme to stick to.