Marie and Nigel’s Oxford wedding had a retro, tropical theme. The bride, a costume designer, even made her incredible wedding dress herself. They were married in June 2016. “I’m a massive vintage fan so always knew that would be part of my day”, said Marie. “We decided to go to Hawaii for our honeymoon and the two themes just worked perfectly together.”
The day was held at Springfield Lake, Oxford. “Most of the weddings we’d been to up until that point had been at a regular ‘wedding venue’, and although we considered these options it just wasn’t for us. We wanted total control and flexibility over what we were doing, and wanted to pick and choose what traditions to follow. Our venue wasn’t registered to do legal ceremonies, but I’ve always wanted to get married in Vegas so we decided to legally marry there as part of our honeymoon (which is totally epic by the way!) but to do a full unofficial ceremony at our wedding venue.”
“So much of our wedding was homemade or created by our incredible friends and family, we are so lucky to be surrounded by so many talented people. We had a curry buffet for our wedding breakfast as Nigel is known as the curry king amongst our friends and a Bratwurst stand in the evening.”
“We really wanted to offer camping for the wedding, as the whole day was in the same venue it meant no restrictions on finish time and everyone could crawl into their tents after one too many shots! We hired our tents from LuLu Bells and to our surprise ended up with over 50
campers, my auntie and uncle even brought their caravan.”
Pretty much everything was DIY too. “From the bar to the flowers and the decorations”, she explained. “I used to be a Production Manager and had created lots of events in the past so I have a lot of experience of pulling together theming on a budget! The original plan was to spend two days setting up, but the rain put us behind when it flooded half the marquee! Luckily on the Friday so many of our amazingly talented friends all got stuck in and helped us pull everything together. It looked amazing!”
Let’s talk about Marie’s incredible dress shall we?! “Aside from the marquee, the biggest single expense was my dress”, she said. “As a bespoke costume and bridal wear designer I knew i’d never find anything I loved for a reasonable price tag and exactly what I wanted. So I decided to make my own. In theory this should have saved me money but I fell in love with fabric that was £250 per metre and wanted a big tulle detachable skirt so the fabric alone came to over £1,200, then add the hours spent sewing to that and you have pretty pricey dress! I’m really glad I made it though, it was super comfortable, and totally unique.”
