Jo and Andrew’s wacky wedding was in three parts. It started with the legal ceremony at Brighton registry office. Two days later they had a outdoor blessing at their venue, Fair Oaks Farm in Steyning, where the night ended with a huge party where everyone wore outrageous fancy dress, hula hooped and had their faces painted!
“We met at the festival called Playgroup just outside of Brighton in August 2011”. the bride explained. “I was hulahooping to the music, and Andy said he just couldn’t take his eyes off me! We got chatting, I ended up teaching him how to hoop, and the rest is history. Then in 2013, Andy proposed with an amazing choreographed hula hoop flash mob!”
“The inspiration for our wedding was things that make us happy: friends, fun activities, dancing, festivals, glitter, crazy outfits, delicious food and general silliness”, she continued. “Neither of us are very traditional, so we wanted the day to reflect our personalities, not be bogged down by any tradition. Our wedding was officially called the Glitter Wedding! We are known for using excessive amounts of glitter in every day life so when we came to planning our wedding, we knew that it would be a big feature.”
“We really enjoyed picking and choosing from traditions and only keeping the ones that meant something to us”, she said “I also had three awesome outfits and none of them were the traditional white wedding dress! I mean, why not have multiple outfits on your wedding day, especially when they don’t cost as much as the classic white dress!? We didn’t have a sit down dinner, instead we invited our guests to bring a picnic lunch and had pizza and organic yoghurt vans which saved a ton of money!”
“One of our favourite parts of the day was our ‘first dance’, which again, wasn’t traditional. Instead of doing a normal first dance as a couple, we had our wonderful friends at Charleston Brighton run a Charleston dance workshop with everyone, so we got to share our first dance with all of our friends!”
“Also, for evening entertainment our talented friends put together and performed in a cabaret show for the evening, which included hula hoop, belly dance, tight rope walking, poetry and fire spinning. Oh and we had an 80s retro tombola (proceeds going to our honeymoon ) with prizes of My Little Ponies, Hungry Hungry Hippos and a tin of spam!”
“My advice to other brides would be to do what YOU want to do at your wedding and don’t ever feel constricted by what a traditional wedding should be!”, she concluded. “Definitely join the Rock n Roll Bride Facebook group too. The members there was so amazingly helpful, answering questions happily and quickly, and providing support and reassurance when you have any of those niggling worries that come up when planning your wedding.”
