Kate and Rhys didn’t tell anyone we were eloping and the only guests at the wedding were their 11-year-old daughter, the bride’s brother and his partner. None of them knew they were getting married until five minutes beforehand! They met in the pub and told them before rushing over to St Georges Hall on foot.
“We decided that this way the day could be a complete celebration for us and we could have the freedom of doing exactly what we wanted”, Kate told us. “I’ll never forget the faces of everyone when I arrived to meet them in my dress! Our photographer and wedding video captured that emotion beautifully and the whole pub we were in cheered us on our way out! With all the well wishes and cheers from strangers for five minutes we felt like rock stars!”
Stylistically they were influenced by the music and fashion of the 1960s, “We love anything retro. As music is a passion for us choosing, our music took the longest time out of everything! We decided not to share our music choices with each other for the ceremony and had one song each. We also both choose song lyrics for readings (unknown to each other). It was fun anticipating our choices and each song was special for us as a couple. Our vows including promises to my daughter which we barely kept it together through! Afterwards we walked through Liverpool and had so many strangers shouting to well wishes to us which was really unexpected and made us really emotional with their kindness.”
Doing things so spontaneously took out a lot of the stress, but the only thing Kate and Rhys really struggled with was finding suppliers who were available on a tight timeframe. “We planned everything within a few months and so many people were booked up years in advance. I was very lucky that all my wonderful suppliers squeezed us in. I couldn’t imagine waiting years to get married I didn’t want us to lose the excitement we had and get caught up planning and re-planning just because there was time to do so.”
“I can honestly say we had a total blast”, Kate concluded. “I did have some wobbles getting drawn into and comparing us with other people’s weddings though. When researching it was very hard not to be sucked into lavishness and shifting away from your ideas or making comparisons to our budget wedding. There also seemed a real lack of diversity on wedding blogs and in magazines. At 43 I also felt so old compared to what I was presented with made me lose my confidence at times. Luckily, if you look outside the mainstream you find some awesome resources (such as Rock n Roll Bride!) and suppliers. Rock n Roll Bride made me so relieved to get out of that generic wedding bubble and realise weddings can be so much fun. There are actually no rules except those you define!!”
