Patrick and Hazel love the 1950s and rockabilly style so they wanted to bring this into their day. When watching Grease one day, the bride also decided she needed a carousel at the wedding! Luckily they found Blists Hill Victorian Town at the Ironbridge Gorge Museum in Shropshire which came complete with a fun fair!
“Our day was mainly about everyone having fun, so we made entertainment a priority for all ages to join in with”, began the bride. “We love our family and friends and wanted our day to be as memorable for them as it was to us. The other factor we took into account was that it had to be based on who we were. We started planning to the usual traditional path and quickly realised it was to normal to resemble our everyday life, so we scraped the planned and started from scratch.”
“We’ve always loved 1950s rockabilly style and that became our new basis for the wedding, Then one day I sat and watched Grease and did a bit of a bridezilla by demanding that I had a carousel! We started researching and found that it would be far too expensive until we found out that the museum down the road that had a Victorian fun fair with a carousel held weddings! It was perfect. Having the fair there was actually great for our guests too. We’ve been to lots of weddings and have noticed that there is always a quiet lull for the guests while the couple go to have their pictures taken. We wanted to fill the gaps by keeping the guests entertained and having the fair was perfect!”
“We didn’t feel the need to decorate Blists Hill as it was a very vintage Victorian setting that really went with the theme”, she continued. “At our reception venue, The Valley, we also decided to keep the decorations minimal. We had pink polka dot centrepieces set onto pearl mirror plates and a candy table that we set up ourselves.”
The bride wore a dress which she found on eBay and altered, with Iron Fist shoes and a homemade headpiece. Her bouquet and all the flower were foam. “I bought a wedding dress from a wedding dress shop as soon as we were engaged, but after a few months I realised it was too traditional and not really me”, said Hazel. “So I bought another one second-hand on eBay that was nearly perfect for me. I then altered it. I sewed in at the waist and used fabric paint to colour in the buttons in pink at the back, then to top it off I added a pink petticoat. My shoes were my favourite part of my outfit (I’m obsessed with shoes). They were a candy clad pair of Iron Fist shoes with a pink sparkly heel, as soon as I saw them I knew they were to become my wedding shoes. I bought the flowers from eBay. I chose them because they were foam and it meant that we could all keep them after the wedding as a reminder of the day.”
“The best thing about planning the wedding was simply the fact that we would make time to sit together discussing and getting excited about ideas”, Hazel concluded. “We both work and have time with our friends so it became quite special to spend time together working on a big project for ourselves. My advice to other couples would be to make your wedding whatever you want it to be. Don’t let anyone tell you that you must have something or do something you really don’t want as part of YOUR big day!”
