Rock n Roll Bride - The ultimate guide for alternative brides

Kat

A Super Cool Britanna Shoot

Kat

April 28, 2011

So the big day is tomorrow. As I've said previously, I'm not doing a huge homage to the royal wedding on the blog (there's enough royal wedding fever elsewhere thank you very much!) however this shoot, inspired by the event, really caught my eye this week. I love it for it's slight sex pistols/1970's punk edge.Cool Britannia indeed! The shoot took place in Regent's Park, London last week. Bride Noelle hand made her vintage-inspired floaty dress. "We decided to do this cherish the dress shoot with a Great British theme, just in time to celebrate the royal wedding," photographer Rebecca told me. "We also tied in a fairytale them as the royal wedding is set to be a true British fairytale. Noelle also brought along her pet Pug percy for the shoot, who was just adorable and loved rolling around on the British flag."
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A Day in the Life…At The Wedding Magazine Cover Shoot

Kat

April 27, 2011

So last week I was invited by Catherine Westwood, editor at Wedding Magazine, if I'd like to go hang out at a cover shoot with them. Ermmm... let me think about this for like two seconds...YES PLEASE! Before you go getting all excited, no I wasn't asked to model! It will probably be a cold day in hell before any wedding mag can have a pink haired chick on the cover. These publications have to appeal to the mass market and I feel that a neon-headed, inked bride might alienate a rather large proportion of their readership! I was up early last Thursday and on the train to London, excited and honoured to have been invited...even though a little (no, a lot) tired. I arrived at the shoot at 9.30 to be greeted by a familiar face in hairdresser Sev of The Hepburn Collection who had been invited to do the hair, and Julia Ford, art editor of the magazine. I also got to hang out with the rest of the team, many of whom I'd met briefly before at various wedding shows and events. Alison from Pollen Nation (who I worked with on The Big Fat Wedding Bloggers Photo Shoot) was even there to supply some of the gorgeous flowers.
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Rock n Roll Bride TV – Rock n Roll Bride meets Ali Lovegrove ~ Part 4 of 4: Using Other Blogs to Sustain Your Business

Kat

April 27, 2011

So here we are, at the final instalment of the Rock n Roll Bride meets Ali Lovegrove series. I really hope you've enjoyed these videos and that some of you have found them useful. In the next few weeks I'll be working on my next vlog ideas so stay tuned (and as always, please comment below if you have any suggestions of topics you'd like me to cover or questions you'd like me to answer.) Again, much love to Richard of FX Films for filming this for us. Also sorry for the massive amount of wind in this video. We were pretty much against the clock when we filmed this last video and had no other choice but to brave the cold!
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Attention UK Wedding Photographers – Jasmine Star is Coming!

Kat

April 26, 2011

As anyone that follows me on twitter or facebook will know, I am a big Jasmine Star fan...huge in fact. I love this woman. I find her incredibly inspirational and I just adore her. Adoration in like a girl-crush/I want us to be best friends and plait each others hair kinda way... So... why am I writing this today? Well, again if you follow me on my various social media platforms, you will also know that I've been banging on about how excited I am about making some 'big announcement' for the last week or so. Well I hope you'll forgive my diversion this morning because I really do have some ridiculously exciting news. In fact 'ridiculous' isn't a strong enough word for just how exciting this news is... stupendous, incredible, mind-blowing, life-changing...now maybe we're on the right track. Jasmine Star is coming to the UK to do her first ever photography workshop in London...oh and I'm helping her organise it.
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A Quintessentially British (slightly) Royal Tea Party

Kat

April 26, 2011

The royal wedding is kind of a big deal...people worldwide are gearing up for the 'show' and even London has gone all patriotic for once. Union Jack flats hang above Regent St and pretty much every shop window is littered with red, white and blue tat. I however, am not so excited about the whole thing. I'm not adverse to two people falling in love and getting married...far from it in fact. I'm more than a little bit thrilled that William and Kate are getting married. I love marriage and I couldn't be happier for them! However it's the media charade that surrounds the whole thing that kills me...and the fact that, as someone that works in the wedding industry, this is supposed to be some 'once in a lifetime experience' for me...and seriously, if you'd been sent as many irrelevant royal wedding-related press released as I have, you'd be pretty over it too. Yaaaawn. Most un-Rock n Roll wedding ever. Fact.
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Jessica & Jason’s Halloween & Horror Wedding

Kat

April 25, 2011

Jessica & Jason were married at Grand Island Mansion in Sacramento. They both adore horror and so their Halloween themed wedding was held on the 30th October. Their home is decorated with Halloween decorations all year long including a life size pirate that talks when you walk by him (!) so they actually brought a lot of items from their home to decorate the venue. They played Phantom of the Opera as the bride walked down the aisle and the majority of their guests dressed up for the reception party!
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Stav & Danielle’s Engagement Session on Wheels

Kat

April 25, 2011

Stav & Danielle met she brought her car into her local garage to be fixed, where Sav happened to work. Needless to say the couple have their mutual love of cars to thank for their relationship! Being a mechanic, Stav has a passion for old cars and restoring them. Danielle adores all things retro and loves the aesthetic nature of vintage cars, so using them in their engagement shoot was a no-brainer really. For the shoot, the couple were lent a collection of vintage cars from some of Stav's clients including a classic Mercedes, a clasic Woody, a classic Corvette and a classic Ford truck.
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Thursday Treats – 21st April 2011

Kat

April 21, 2011

So, the long Easter weekend is nearly upon us. I don't know about you, but I'm certainly looking forward to turning my computer off (well trying to) and enjoying some April sun. Over the next 4 days, posts will be lighter but be rest assured, they'll still be some daily eye candy to pop by and check out if your relatives start to drive you mad! In other news, this week I was invited by WEDDING Magazine to attend their cover shoot. It was a really fabulous day and I was thrilled to be involved with such an exciting project. My behind the scenes report and photos will be on the blog next week! Mmm tasty...I trust these treats will get you right in the mood for scoffing lots of Easter eggs this weekend?
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Ilka & Mars’ Early 20th Century-Inspired Wedding

Kat

April 21, 2011

"Circa 1991, and like most 9 year old girls at the time, my dream wedding typically consisted of getting married in a castle, having a horse-drawn carriage at midnight and saying 'I Do' to Jason Priestly. So fast-forward 20 years...our castle was in busy Tooting Broadway, wedged in between a Mecca Bingo Hall and a McDonalds, with a KFC conveniently across the road. Our horse-drawn carriage was a local taxi, well beyond midnight. And Jason Priestly? He got bumped for my love and best friend, Mars. It was completely perfect for us. Sad to say, Brandon had been banished to the Peach Pit forever." I love Ilka & Mars already. How about you? Mar's proposed at the airport, just before Ilka was about to fly home to Australia, with her Grandmother's engagement ring. She explained, "So after a couple of years of living together and rarely talking 'seriously' about getting married, I was waiting in the busy security line at Heathrow, about to spend 3 weeks back home in Australia for a Christmas apart, when Mars popped the question. After unknowingly foiling an attempted romantic proposal during a holiday in New York a few months earlier, it was a perfect chance to catch me unawares while I was unsuccessfully trying to stuff the contents of my entire handbag into a tiny clear zip-lock bag, and rush off to board the plane. It was simple and just perfect. After a quick, teary goodbye and my grandmother's beautiful engagement ring now firmly on my finger, I was herded through security and onto the plane. Needless to say, the next 24hours consisted of me taking full advantage of the onboard trolley service, trying to come to terms with what had just happened!"
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Sandra & Colin’s Budget, DIY, Bicycle Ride Wedding

Kat

April 20, 2011

Sandra & Colin's were married on 10.10.10 at The Franklin House, a private mansion in Tucson, Az. Their wedding was a super budget affair and 99% DIY. The couple did it their way and Sandra even had her dog walk her down the aisle (after some family disagreements.) "Our wedding was 99% D.I.Y. and very low budget," the bride told me. "We did get our wedding cake as a gift made by Busy B's Bakery. Colin designed all the programs and invitations and printed them at Vistaprint. We used all biodegradable bamboo utensils (that were wrapped with recycled fabric napkins I made) and sugar cane plates we found online pretty inexpensive Green Party Goods. At the time I was teaching a recycled art class in a middle school. For one of the classes I had the students decorate the plates with edible markers."
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Teaser: A Sense of Culture – A Photography Exhibition for the Museum of Reading

Kat

April 20, 2011

Not that many people realise this but I'm from Reading, a town about 40 miles out of London. I've never really done that much 'stuff' in my home town as to be honest, pretty much everything happens in London and that's where about 90% of my contacts are. However when local photographer Neil Horne of Eye Imagine Photography called me and asked if I'd like to be included in an exhibition he was putting together for the Museum of Reading entitled 'A Sense of Culture', where he'd be photographing a selection of artists in the town...well I jumped at the chance. Hell, I went to this museum on primary school trips!
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Linsey & Wes’ Totally Rock n Roll Wedding

Kat

April 19, 2011

Linsey & Wes found their photographer Jessica Monnich through a feature on Rock n Roll Bride (yeeey!) so it's only right that it's come full circle and I now get to share their awesome wedding too. The wedding took place in February at Mercury Hall in Austin, Texas beginning with a beautiful ceremony in the gardens. "I was not a traditional bride in any sense (even down to the short dress), so I just kept looking for things that felt like us," bride Linsey told me. "We were always going after more of a feeling than a look, which made it hard, but in the end the feeling was achieved and everything just fell into place thanks to awesome friends and family. It was challenging with everyone else's opinions and being told things have to be done a certain way, but we threw that out the window a long time ago. Working on a budget that we put together from the beginning, we were also able to get more creative and decide what were the most important things for us on that day - friends/ family felt loved for and had fun and that we were able to enjoy ourselves."
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Laura & Ian’s Hollywood Glamour Wedding

Kat

April 19, 2011

Three week's ago photographer Annamarie Stepney was in Reading (where I live) so she popped by to say hello...to my cats. Yeah people never come to see me any more, it's all about the internet sensations that are Henry & Rachel! Anyway, as we walked Henry round the back garden on his lead (I kid you not) she was telling me all about the wedding she was shooting the next day....at my wedding venue...well in actual fact, what should have been my wedding venue. You see, as soon as Gareth & I got engaged, I knew I wanted to have our wedding at The Forbury Hotel. It's an amazing venue and I wanted it. Bad. But sad face for us, it was already booked on our day. However I am really excited to see how Laura & Ian's Rock n Roll wedding turned out at the venue that should have been mine!
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Rock n Roll Bride Party Report – Photo Booth Carnage

Kat

April 18, 2011

Deciding to have a photo booth at the Rock n Roll Bride Party was probably the most genius thing ever. I asked everyone to bring a prop and people really did go all out! From a customised uke to an inflatable pink wig... from gold hot pants to a laser cut 'It's my party and I'll Rock n Roll if I want to'... from a blow up pink flamingo to a parrot (!) I was so excited that people made such an effort. Lisa of Lisa Jane Photography was in charge of the booth-action, and I'm pretty sure she didn't stop taking photos all night! So without further ado, check out the hilarity that was the Rock n Roll Bride photo booth.
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Rock n Roll Bride Party Report – 14th April 2011, London

Kat

April 18, 2011

So now I've got a party report to write...Wow. Erm wow. Where do I begin with this baby huh?! SO much happened...and it's going to be hard to sum it all up in a few paragraphs but here goes... Last Thursday I hosted a party and invited anyone who reads this blog to come along. Over 500 of you applied for tickets and 200 lucky brides & grooms-to-be and wedding industry professionals were asked to come along. The idea being that everybody I know works so hard, whether that be with their businesses or planning their weddings, so I wanted to give everyone an excuse to take a night off, dress up, eat cupcakes and sweeties, drink cocktails and generally get a little bit silly. And we did. Oh we did. The day started with Gareth & I hopping on the train to London to meet the awesome Elbie Van Eeden (she got married in March - you saw her fabulous wedding on my blog right?) who did our hair and my make up. When we arrived, Elbie said she'd been up all night thinking of ideas for my tresses and did I was the rainbow back? Erm yes pleeease! This time she did a kind of 'dipped' effect, where she just added the extra colours to the bottom half of sections of my hair. We kept the styling relatively simple with a few curls to really show off the colours. I adore it.
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