A foodie rave in an Islington pub: Amy describes her city wedding London love story to Bouquet Catch
Officially, this is a love story that began in true London style: on the DLR on the way to work. Unofficially, we met five years earlier through mutual friends, lost contact and never thought we’d see each other again. When we reunited that morning in July on the tube, unbeknownst to us, we were living two stations apart. Gavin stepped onto the train, recognised me, and we got back in touch. A few weeks later, Gavin came to a Mexican party I was throwing, the tequila was flowing and a week after that we were enjoying our first date: dinner on the river with a view of Tower Bridge.
It would be fair to say our love story has been built on food and raving! Trips to Ibiza were sandwiched between dinners and cooking, so it seemed fitting that Gavin proposed after a huge tasting menu lunch in Stuttgart to a soundtrack of our favourite DJs. Getting engaged just before Christmas and still wanting a winter wedding, we spent the January searching for venues. We both wanted a simple London wedding that would be convenient for as many guests as possible, and so set our hearts on Islington Town Hall, followed by a pub reception.
After scouting out various pubs that catered for weddings in the area i.e. going on a massive pub crawl of them all, we decided on St Bart’s Brewery in Farringdon. We loved the mezzanine floor, which allowed all the guests to be in the same room for the wedding breakfast yet still felt intimate, while the industrial setting and decor with all the brass and chrome looked great.
I wanted a dress that I could potentially wear again and wouldn’t be a traditional wedding dress. I also wanted a dress that wouldn’t drag on the ground, especially if it was raining on the day.
However, I didn’t want to miss out on the experience of trying on wedding dresse,s so I spent a morning with my mum and a friend trying on traditional dresses and loving every minute of it, despite already purchasing a white knee-length heavy lace dress from Valentino at Liberty. Simple nude shoes, a birdcage veil from BridalEnchantment at Etsy and my great grandmother’s fox fur shawl finished my look.
Gavin chose a grey flannel suit from Timothy Everest, complemented by a tie and pocket square made from a blue Tana Lawn Liberty fabric – a fabric that we chose to use throughout the wedding for our colour scheme.
The groomsmen also had ties and pocket squares made from the fabric, while my bouquet and the girls’ corsages were tied with the same ribbon, and my brother even made a rucksack for one of the bridesmaid’s out of the same material to hold all of the girlie essentials in for the day! The girl’s dresses were simple knee-length, navy blue shift dresses with lace insets from Warehouse, a dress that they could wear again, with a nude shawl to keep the chill off. We decided on corsages for them so that they could go hands-free during the day.
Flowers were supplied by Flowers of Islington who created amazing circular centre pieces using white calla lilies and white cymbidium orchids intertwined with lots of green. My bouquet, the girls’ corsages and the buttonholes all featured white calla lilies with delicate touches of blue to tie in with the Liberty print.
I’m not particularly crafty and am not keen on glitter so I didn’t really make anything specifically for the wedding. However, I do work in a design studio and so created all the stationery with one of my colleagues based on old Penguin book covers. I wanted the stationery to really stand out as a feature, with the table plan designed to look like bookshelves with guests’ names on the spine of a book.
Music was provided by Disco-Wed who we discovered on a night out at the Book Club in Shoreditch. We wanted to ensure that people would be up dancing for the whole evening rather than having a band who would only do a certain number of songs per set.
We also wanted a super funky evening full of lots of soul and disco but wanted to include a few house tunes and a cheeky garage set too! Our first dance was Don’t You Worry Child by Swedish House Mafia which we attempted to foxtrot to; how well we pulled that off I’m not too sure…
Our main objective was for all our guests to have fun, be well fed, be on the dance floor for the whole evening and all without having to hang around too much.
We also wanted to keep formal photos to a minimum and much preferred a more natural reportage style. After scouring wedding blogs for photographers, we found Chris Giles. Chris was fantastic and on that first meeting, after talking through his style of photos, looking through an album with him and both receiving a massive bear hug, we knew that Chris would be perfect for our wedding.
Objectives met, everyone’s feet tingling the next day from all the dancing and guests stuffed full of food, we were pretty pleased with the party we threw and the relaxed, fun atmosphere that was there throughout the day. I’m not sure if I’d change anything now in hindsight, although a few extra degrees of warmth would have been appreciated!
