Nat and Drew’s Brixton wedding was pretty, sparkly, but most of all a celebration for them and their friends and family. “Our inspiration was us”, the bride said. “We planned the kind of party we wanted to go to. We chose London because it’s where we have made our home together, but we wanted to put our hearts into it and it just sort of evolved that way. The day was for us, and if we were happy then everyone else would be too.”
“The theme, if we had to have one, was city warehouse chic with vintage and sparkle. One of the most important things to me personally was to customise our wedding myself, to feel like it was all a part of us. I took a lot of inspiration from the articles I read in Rock n Roll Bride magazine actually. The mags helped provide about 80% of the images on my mood board! I decided quite early on to use the tutorial for making paper pinwheels from an old issue and from there it just grew.”
“I hand-decorated over 50 vases and jars for the flowers with various combinations of glitter, lace, ribbon and string”, she continued. “It took about six months of work! I made 30 of the paper pinwheels and some mini paper bunting. I made three large blackboard signs and painted them using paint markers for things like the table plan. I hand-painted and glitterised all the wooden table numbers and wrote 75 place settings.”
“Elsewhere, we sourced handmade bunting from second-hand sites online and I spent many a joyful hour browsing Hobbycraft for anything else I could craft myself (glitter dipped feathers for the centrepieces for example). I made hanging heart decorations from vintage sheet music.
I wish I could take all the credit for our beautiful ceremony backdrop, but some friends did that for us, as on set up day I was becoming increasingly frazzled and worried that this, the most important part of all the décor just wouldn’t be done – and they stepped in and created it for me.”
One of the couples’ favourite moments was their second ceremony. “Our legal ceremony was at Southwark Register Office and we had another one, so all our guests could be there, at the reception venue. The Register office was too small for even half our guests, and we find civil ceremonies to be so short and impersonal. People asked us if it was going to be a humanist ceremony or a hand-fasting or something like that but we just wanted someone close to us to oversee it (Drew’s brother James was the perfect choice). We knew we wanted friends to play music and to write our own vows. The centrepiece of the ceremony however was the blessing of the rings. Our rings were passed from guest to guest to hold in their hands and to infuse them with their love and best wishes.”
“It was really overwhelming at times to look around and see every single person you love (apart from a few absent friends and my darling Dad who passed away last year) in one room together”, the bride concluded. “They were all there for us, and when everyone starts blubbing during the soppy bits, or everyone raises their glasses in a toast to your happiness, it is literally the most amazing feeling in the world. I was worried about being overly emotional all day but I was so so happy and literally couldn’t stop smiling even when everyone else was sniffling away. This is significant because it is the most powerful thing that has ever happened to me and I think that feeling of love and pride will last a really long time.”
