Two brides, two gorgeous dresses and two sides of bridesmaids! Ria and Nicky wanted a wedding that screamed ‘them’! That meant they threw caution to the wind, and tradition out of the window. “I’m friends with Nicky’s sister so we met on a few social occasions, such as parties, concerts and completing a London to Brighton race”, began Ria. “However we finally developed a fancy to each other when a group of us went to Proms in the Park in 2011. I was technically ‘straight’ at the point I met Nicky, so she had no idea I liked her! Since that night we have been inseparable and the rest as they say is history.”
“We wanted our wedding to be relaxed, fun, entertaining and as non-wedding(ey) as possible”, she continued. “It sounds silly saying that, but just because we wanted to get married, didn’t mean we had to sign up to all the traditional and the usual expected activities at a wedding. We basically wanted a massive party with our family and friends where we could all have fun, relax and just enjoy the day.”
Both brides wore dresses; Ria in a long, white number and Nicky rocking a shorter, red one. “Nicky wanted to wear a non-traditional red wedding dress and I went more traditional”, Ria continued. “We also had 10 bridesmaids between us! Being two feminine ladies challenged how it would all work together, so we steered away from dressing everyone in just one colour. We felt it wouldn’t work and wasn’t really us. Instead, our bridesmaids all wore a vintage style swing dress in different colours. We didn’t want bouquets and so we all had fresh gerberas in our hair instead. Nicky carried a parasol that was her mum’s. She had it at her own wedding over 40 years ago!”
The wedding was held at Central London Golf Centre and to make the space their own, they decorated it themselves. “We sourced most of our decorations from eBay and Amazon, and asked our friends to save all their jars to use on the tables. We dressed them in vintage lace and ribbon and put flowers and sweets inside. We found and bought lots of novelty teapots from eBay which we had as centrepieces. We ordered vintage pin up girl postcards and wrote table numbers on the back, and used florist wire to stand them up from collected glass bottles.”
“Our lovely friend Katy Morgan baked and designed our wedding cake. We don’t like fruit cake so Katy made us a scrumptious choc sponge with salted caramel cream, lemon sponge, classic Victoria sponge and carrot cake for us which everyone raved about, plus it looked absolute spot on with our wedding theme.”
“I wouldn’t change anything about our day”, Ria concluded, “however I wish there was more hours in it as the time flew by so quickly! Make sure you make time for great pictures and also make time to see your wifey or groom, as you’re so busy with your schedule and talking to your party you hardly see each other. Do your wedding your way and make sure you both are on the same page with ideas. Finally, remember you don’t always have to stick to the rules, apart from the I dos!”
