Natalie & Paul chose to marry on the same day as the groom’s parents. Having lost his mother a few years previous, having the wedding on such a significant date meant a lot to the family. Having this nod to their family was important to them both, as was putting their own stamp on their day. The wedding had a retro B-movie theme and they really had fun with it!
“I decided from the beginning that I wanted to source as much of our wedding stuff from small businesses and crafts people”, Natalie began. “My short, 50s style polkadot wedding dress was made by one of my fabulous bridesmaids who is a skilled costumer and bespoke dressmaker. We had so much fun coming up with the design together and I knew that she would do me proud, I absolutely loved it! Our wedding rings were made by Rockcakes, a wonderfully quirky jewellery company based in Brighton. Again, we came up with the design together by emailing ideas back and forth until we decided on a simple band with a ruby heart and two little skulls engraved either side with tiny black diamond eyes – it’s so cute!”
“We commissioned a local design company Shorties Designs to create some bespoke tattoo inspired artwork for us. They produced the awesome name cards for the tables and a table plan with horror movie illustrations to indicate the table names. The knock out was our order of service poster, designed like a traditional B-movie poster with Paul as Frankenstein and me as the damsel in distress. One of my favourite elements was our custom zombie cake topper by sculptor Philip Hynes, who we found on Facebook. This was a big talking point among our guests, they couldn’t believe the likeness to us. Paul is even holding a tiny bottle of Jack Daniels!”
“Our wedding did not follow a consistent theme as we’ve never been very decisive but in the end we managed to fit all the different styles we loved into different parts of the day”, Natalie continued. “We kept our outfits and styling very much 1950s Rockabilly as we love retro glamour. I chose very a bright, colourful flamingo print fabric for the made to measure bridesmaids dresses as I love anything kitsch. The room where we held our wedding breakfast was decorated in a classic gothic style, with the black candelabras and red rose petals on the tables. We used small postcard sized Horror B-movie posters displayed in black frames as the table names. The whole day was a contrast of black and white against bursts of clashing colours! It is easy to get hung up on trying to match every little detail but as the day grew closer I let our personalities dictate what we wanted for our day.”
“I will never forget how emotional the ceremony was for both of us”, Natalie concluded when I asked her about her favourite memory of the day. “I’m not good at the mushy stuff so this was a challenge, but writing our own vows gave us a chance to share our deepest feelings of love for each other and I’m so glad we personalised our wedding in this way. I asked my brother to read Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘Annabel Lee’ during the ceremony – the gothic, romantic style of writing fitted perfectly with our day and the message. We also had ‘We loved with a love… that was more than love’ split in half and engraved inside each of our rings.”
