Bibi and Adam's Bournemouth Art Gallery Wedding with a Vintage Wedding Dress by Paul Underhill

Happy Friday everyone! I do hope you are ready for the weekend and have something wonderful planned for the next couple of days. Have you survived the heat wave, it was pretty short lived but lovely all the same! It was great to be outside enjoying some time with the family! What about you? We are finishing off the week with this wonderful Bournemouth Art Gallery wedding from Dorset based wedding photographer Paul Underhill. Bibi and Adam chose a magnificent venue that need little decoration, they injected their own personality with geometric touches, personal table names as well as beautiful blooms. A gorgeous wedding, captured perfectly by Paul.

From wedding morning parkrun, through to teary ceremony, to pop up supper club and banging disco – everything was spot-on and so us. It was a joyous celebration of our lives, with our wonderful friends and family.

Bibi and Adam's Bournemouth Art Gallery Wedding with a Vintage Wedding Dress by Paul Underhill

Bibi and Adam were married on the 9th April 2016 in Russell Cotes Art Gallery & Museum, Bournemouth, Dorset. The ceremony was in the old house, while the reception was in the modern wing. ‘It was the first venue we looked at, and we never wanted to look any further – it’s a spectacular 19^th century mansion that was converted into an art gallery. We knew the second we walked in that it would be the perfect backdrop to a simple wedding – the antiquities would offset everything perfectly. Adam is from Dorset, and so the location meant that older members of his family were able to share the special day too, which was really important to us. We had 80 guests and took just under a year to plan. We really were 50/50 in the wedding prep, and we loved the process, from our incredible Google spreadsheets to our ‘crafternoons’ where we did wedding crafts… and drank craft beer. I accidentally referred to the wedding as a ‘project’ in my wedding speech and our guests wouldn’t let me live it down – “This is the most beautiful project I’ve ever been to.” etc.!’

How they met
We met at university in Newcastle, where we used to go and watch anime movies with the same group of friends. We’ve been together seven years

The proposal
We went for the day to Newcastle, where we fell in love. Adam took me to the roof of the Baltic Art Gallery and proposed – he had actually intended to ask me on the Millennium Bridge on the way over to the gallery, but I talked all the way over about the engineering of the bridge, so he never got a chance and had to quickly recut his plan.

How did you allocate your budget?
30% Food and Drink, 20% venue, 15% clothes for us and our bridal party, 10% Photographer, 5% flowers. And the rest on everything else, from stationary, to bridal party hotels, to little paintings of our cats to give for wedding favours.

Where did you splurge and where did you save?
We got given great advice not to scrimp on our photographer, as they really make your memories of the day. We wanted excellent food and free-flowing wine, as we definitely viewed those as worthwhile expenses. We saved on loads of other things – Adam designed our save the dates and ordered them on moo.com, my dress was vintage, I walked to the venue with my parents and bridesmaids, and we didn’t have to pay for a DJ.

How did you choose your photographer?
We loved that Paul has more of a documentary style than too posed and formal. When we had pretty much decided, we were looking through his portfolio and Adam spotted that he’d photographed an old school friend’s wedding. We got in touch to ask their experience, and it was so glowing, we booked him within the hour.

The dress
My dress was an incredibly lucky find. I was in Canada for my best friend’s wedding, and on my last day we popped into a vintage store. They only had one wedding-style dress in, and when I tried it on, we had ‘The Moment’ in the changing room – tears, the whole lot. I had to shove it in my luggage to return home the following day, and had some little alterations done by Claire at the fantastic Bridal Emporium in Leeds. She specialises in vintage dresses, so really knew how to work the fabric, and even made a veil in the same very specific champagne colour of the tulle.
The dress is 1940’s, and is possibly a prom dress or even a bridesmaid’s dress. I love the idea that it had a whole history before it played such a massive part in my day.
I got shoes dyed to match by Rainbow Club, and wore earrings from my Canadian friend on the day as my something borrowed.

The suit
Adam wore a DKNY suit, and he and his groomsmen all wore pink ties from Reiss (that we got in the sale, thankfully). With my bridesmaids coming from all over the country and the world, I knew getting them fit for dresses wasn’t going to be feasible. Instead, we gave them a budget and asked them to buy themselves a great Little Black Dress. They all chose dresses that went together but were so perfect for each of them.

Theme or colour scheme
We’ve been really into geometric interiors, and so carried that over into our stationary and decoration. Our colours were blue, brown and gold, but we didn’t go overboard on the theme, as the venue is so magnificent there wasn’t much need.

Flowers
The buttonholes and my bridesmaid’s hair clips had ranunculus and anenomes, with little wisps of ferns, while my bouquet carried them over, along with big bold peonies.

Decoration
We kept it fairly minimal, letting the venue do the talking. Little bits of geometric bunting hanging up, flowers to the theme on the table and table names with pictures of our favourite animated movies, from My Neighbour Totoro, to Wall-e

Food
We started with sharing mezze plates, with flatbreads, hummus, roasted peppers and olives. Then we had smoked tofu and roasted aubergine salad for vegetarians and smoked salmon salad for non-veggies. I’m vegetarian and have a veggie blog, so knew I needed to do better than another vegetable tart or mushroom risotto!

The wedding cake
We didn’t have one, instead we had macarons and little tartes aux citrons. They were gorgeous, and great for keeping on coming back to pick at through the evening.

Entertainment
We were lucky – my aunt is actually a DJ who plays in Ibiza. So she played an absolutely incredible set with another friend, back-to-back – they could read the crowd so perfectly, and always had the best tracks ready. Literally everybody at the wedding was on the dancefloor, having an amazing time – we still keep hearing about how much fun everyone had.

Stationery
Adam designed our Save the Dates and got them through moo.com, and we designed our invitations through minted.com.

Personal Touch
We’re crazy about our cats, Smudge and Django, and wanted them to be a little part of the day somehow. So, we commissioned a picture of the two of them from an artist, and made a limited edition print run of 80 for all of our guests as favours.
We decorated the envelopes for them on one of those ‘crafternoons’ with craft beer – the quality probably slipped through the course of the day… Adam painted bunting in geometrical shapes. He worked so hard on it – I was away with work and each evening I’d call and he’d still be slaving over it.

Special Moments or Highlights
My grandma did a reading during the ceremony, and told a little story about when I was a kid. She totally stole the show – she’s wonderful and has such a magnetic personality all of my friends kept chatting to her all evening. I loved seeing all different groups of people who you would never have otherwise met each other – my aunts and Adam’s mum’s friends were absolute BFFs by the end of the night.
Adam’s three best men, including my step-dad, totally pulled it out of the bag for their best men’s speech – a whole speech in rhyming couplets, equal parts mortifying and touching.
My Mum and Dad did a speech together, which was really wonderful, too. They’ve not been together for nearly two decades, and it was lovely to see them working together on it in the run up to the wedding.

Advice for other couples
One, the planning is as much fun as the day itself, so share as much as you can of it. I didn’t really have a big picture of my perfect wedding, so it was wonderful creating a shared vision together.
On the day itself, I would really recommend trying to stay with each other as much as you can. People will try to pull you in every direction during the reception, but take some time together and try and have as many conversations with people together as a couple. Otherwise, you end up with completely different experiences of the same day!

Biggest Surprise
As we gathered ourselves to leave the reception, my maid of honour organised all the guests to join hand in hand to form a corridor for us to leave. The atmosphere in the room was absolutely electric, and we felt so special, surrounded by our favourite people, having each just married our very best person.