Vikki and Harry’s Raspberry and Black DIY Wedding by Steve Bridgewood Photography

Happy Friday everyone, yay we made it to the end of the week, I hope it has been a good one for you and that you are enjoying the lovely weather? lets hope it stays with us for the weekend! To end the week I have this cool raspberry and back wedding that is full of DIY projects put together by the bride and groom in order to keep the budget down. They chose a venue that needed little decoration, yet they were still able to put their own stamp on the day. Big thanks to Steve and Ellie from Steve Bridgewood Photography for the photos.

‘The most amazing celebration with everyone we love, and one of the most overwhelming and coolest days of our lives so far’

Vikki and Harry were married on 14th March 2015 at Belle Époque Brasserie, Knutsford. ‘Harry didn’t want to feel like we were having what felt like the same wedding as everyone else, as we’re not exactly the most conventional couple. We found out about Belle Époque at a wedding fair when we spoke to the registrars from our county, and they recommended it to us. After looking through the information they gave us, we decided we had to at least go and have a look. As we walked through the door, Harry looked around and his reaction said it all. I could tell he loved the look and feel of the Belle Époque, and it was the kind of place he could imagine us getting married in. I loved it too, and it just so happened to match and compliment the colour scheme we’d chosen perfectly, but just seeing how much he loved it sealed the deal for me. We had about 87 guests in the day and 160 in the evening. It took 11 months in total to plan the wedding. We actually got engaged in October 2013 but booked the wedding in April 2014 for March 2015.’

How they met
At first, we briefly met through friends, but then didn’t see each other for about a year. One night in late October 2007, I was out with one of my best friends in our local town, and Harry was out with one of his friends. We ended up bumping into each other in the local club, and I ended up giving him my number by the end of the night. We met up few times the following week before becoming official, then just under 6 years later, Harry proposed! We’ve been together now for 7 and a half years

The Proposal
I was on a long late shift at an old job, that hadn’t been having the best day, and I knew Harry was going out that night while I was at work, as he’d sold his car (which was a car that meant a hell of a lot to him, being a mechanic) and he needed to take it to the buyer. I rang him as usual as I left work, and found that he was still out with his best friend Gary, but thought nothing of it. I got home in a rather bad mood, thankful that I had a day off the next day, and found Harry was back home waiting for me. I made tea, ate, and then told Harry I was going to go to bed to get some sleep. About 10mintues later, Harry came upstairs, and started to pull stuff from underneath the bed, searching for something. As I was in a bad mood, I hid myself under the duvet, and buried my head in my pillow, trying to go to sleep when I felt him dive under the covers towards me. After about a minute, I lifted my head from my pillow and came out from under the cover, to find Harry lying there, with the ring box open, and that’s when he proposed! I then found out that he’d asked my parents permission months before, and he’d sold his beloved car so he could buy my engagement ring, and he’d hid it under the bed and thats why he was pulling out everything he’d used to hide the ring from under the bed. It was the perfect way for him to propose, as I would have gotten suspicious if he’d try to plan anything elaborate, as he’s a very spontaneous bloke. I had no idea he was even thinking of proposing!! It definitely turned my day around though

How did you allocate your budget
We agreed on what was most important to spend money on, but didn’t actually allocate a budget as such, as we knew a lot of people that could help with certain things to help keep costs down, and we wanted to do as much as we could ourselves, rather than paying other people to do it for us. For anything we did need to spend money on, we looked around to find the best deal we could, to try and save as much as we could

How did you choose your photographer
The month after we got engaged, we went to a little wedding fair that we’d seen advertised, that my mum and sisters wanted to go to. We met Steve there, and instantly loved the look of his work, as it was more quirky than anything else we had seen, and his package prices were good for what he was offering. We ended up talking to him for almost an hour, and felt at ease with him straight away, and left the fair knowing that he was the photographer we wanted to capture our wedding day

The Dress
My Dress was Tracey by Sottero and Midgley/Maggie Sottero, which I purchased from the lovely Rebecca from Mix and Match Bridal Boutique in Rugely. I also had my stunning belt from there too. My headband and veil were a streak from a local bridal shop sample sale, and most of my jewellery was from high street stores, but the watch I wore is my grandmothers, which I used as my something borrowed. Apart from my dress, my shoes were my favourite part of my outfit. I bought the plain white shoes from New Look, then had them hand painted and personalised to match the colours and style of the wedding by Beautiful Moment Wedding and Occasion Art. They are stunning, and feature ‘Mr and Mrs Edwards’ with the wedding date on one shoe, with the saying ‘Alone I’m nothing, With you I’m something, Together we’re everything’ on the other shoe. My mums shoes that she wore were also hand painted by the same person, but I’d won them for her in an EBay Charity auction before Harry and I got engaged, and she’d been saving them for our wedding. I love shoes, so just couldn’t be outdone by my mum on my wedding day

The Suit and Bridesmaids
All the suits for Harry, his Best Man and Ushers, and our fathers were all bought from Moss Bros, with Harry and his Best man having the three piece version of the suit they chose, and the rest of the wedding party having the two piece version. The Bridesmaids dresses are hand made by a very good friend of the family. I chose the style of skirt and the lace belt, but let the girls choose what style top they wanted, so they felt as comfortable as they could in the dresses. My flower girl dresses were a bargain from Asda’s children’s party range

Theme or Colour Scheme
The colour scheme was the first thing we chose, even before we booked the venue! And decided on quite a rich, deep raspberry colour as the main colour, as Harrys favourite colour is purple, and mine is pink, so we felt it was a fair compromise, but agreed we’d also use lighter and darker shades to compliment the main colour. We actually decided on the colour using paint colour cards, as you can see all the different shades, and it let’s you see what compliments each other! We then decided to go with silver and black to go with the main colour. We didn’t have a theme in mind when we first starting planning, but the more we did and planned, and the more we visited the venue, the more a vintage feel to the whole thing felt right, so we went with it, and it worked amazingly

Flowers
We used mainly roses for our flowers, in different shades of pinks and reds, with some purple decoration and silver foliage. My bouquet and some of the button holes also had brooches and buttons added to them, to make them a little bit more unique, and Harry’s button hole also featured some purple buttons in it, and my mum’s buttonhole featured a smaller version of one of the buttons used in my bouquet. Our florist, Rachel, actually made each of the button holes slightly different and unique, with different ribbons and materials that matched what was being worn. I also had Rachel add two charms to my bouquet, each with a picture on of one my grandfathers that had both passed away, in honour of them both being so significant in my life. My bridesmaids posies however, were completely button and brooch, and were handmade by my mum! She also made a petal pouch for my niece who was flower girl. We also bought biodegradable confetti from Shropshire Petals, which we used for confetti shots, and scattered on the tables

Decoration
We didn’t really have any decorations at the venue, as we loved the look and character it already had! We also had the use of their centre pieces for the tables, so didn’t have to worry too much about that! We made the table names a bit of a decoration by using framed pictures to display the names, which were the code names for some of the cars in the film ‘Gone in Sixty Seconds’, and used some of the confetti to scatter over the tables too

Food
Harry’s favourite soup is Leek and Potato, so we had that as our starter. For main we had Chicken supreme, with seasonal veg and gravy, and for desert we had a gorgeous chocolate brownie! It was an incredible meal, and all the guests commented on how delicious it was! For evening food, we had mini portions of fish and chips, bacon sandwiches, and Welsh rarebit on toast, which were also equally delicious.

Wedding Cake
Our wedding cake was a 3 tier cake, made as our wedding present by my Aunt, who has her own celebration cake company. The bottom tier was chocolate cake, the middle tier was plain sponge, and the top tier was fruit. We also had an array of plain sponge cupcakes to go with our cake, half of which were decorated with mini spanners and nuts, to go with Harry’s profession as a mechanic!! The main cake was mainly black and white (with the middle tier being marbled icing), with decoration of roses and lace in pink, and our cake topper was personalised with our name and wedding date

Entertainment
We had a DJ in the evening, who took song suggestions throughout the evening

Buy or DIY your Stationery
We DIY’d all of our stationery. We made 100 invitations, all of the table place settings, the table names, and our favours, which were a part of our quest book.

Personal or Handmade Touches
-Handmade invitations (made by ourselves)
-Handmade place settings (made by ourselves)
-Handmade Guest Book (drop frame – guests signed a wooden heart, and dropped them into a frame) (made by ourselves)
-Framed pictures for table names (made by ourselves, and named after cars from Harry’s favourite film)
-Personalised cake topper and cupcake decoration (cake topper from Ebay, and cake made by my Aunt)
-Handmade bridesmaid’s posies (made by my mum)
-Personalised and hand painted wedding shoes (for Bride) (done by Beautiful Moments)
-Personalised champagne glasses for Bride and Groom to use for toast (bought as a present by my sister and her family)
-Ushers were bought cufflinks to wear that reflected their personal interests
-Bridesmaids were given personalised flat shoes to wear in the evening (personalised by me)
-Handmade bridesmaids dresses
-Flowers and buttonholes, and bouquet all made unique, with my bouquet including charms with pictures of my grandfathers on them.

Special Moments
Walking into the ceremony to Ella Henderson’s ‘I’m Yours’ – that song exactly describes how Harry makes me feel, so I felt it was important for that to be playing as walked to meet him. Also, walking out of the ceremony to ‘Rock and Roll Queen’ by the Subways, as it was Harry’s choice. One of Harry’s highlights was seeing everyone that attended the wedding gathered around for our first dance. He said he found it really touching, knowing everyone that was there, had made the effort to come and celebrate with us.

Advice to other couples
If you are doing a lot of the wedding yourself, and doing a lot of DIY stuff, my advice is to delegate, and make sure you get your wedding party to help as much as possible!! Shop around for deals, to try and get the best price if you’re on a budget, or keeping eye on the costs. For the day itself, make sure you both get some time together, just the two of you, even if it’s just to talk about menial things, or see how the others feeling. You can soon get caught up in making sure everything is running smoothly and making sure all your guests are happy. I’d say my main bit of advice though, and this goes for the planning and the day itself, would be to accept that something will go wrong! Whether it is big or small, you need to remember that in the grand scheme of things, there will be some kind of solution, and realise that really all that matters is that you’re marrying the one person you couldn’t imagine being without, and really, all the rest is an added bonus!

Biggest surprise
The speeches were a bit of a surprise, as we didn’t know what my dad, or Harry’s best man, were going to say! Harry didn’t really know what he was going to say until he was saying the speech himself! They were all really heartfelt though, with just the right amount of humour in, and nothing too crude!! As we planned the wedding ourselves, we don’t really think we had any big surprises, even though the venue writing ‘Congratulations’ along the rim of our desert plates did put a smile on our faces.

Supplier Shout Outs

• Venue/Catering – www.thebelleepoque.com Big shout out – Katy and Kelly bent over backwards for us, even when we had weird requests and understood we wanted a unique wedding, and all the staff on the day were amazing and couldn’t have been more helpful!
• Registrars – www.cheshireeast.gov.uk Prue, our registrar, was brilliant and helped us with any nerves we had just before the ceremony!
• Wedding dress – www.mixnmatchbridalwear.co.uk Made me feel stunning every time I walked into her shop!
• Brides Wedding Shoes – www.beautifulmoment.co.uk I still can’t get over how gorgeous my shoes are!! And my mums are amazing too!
• Veil and Headband – www.7thheavenbridal.co.uk
• Hair – www.salonshades.co.uk Nikki created a masterpiece! And for making all my bridesmaids look so stunning
• Photography – www.stevebridgwoodphotography.co.uk Steve and Ellie, they were so cool and made us feel completely at ease. They also took some awesome shots, and made it a very difficult job to narrow it down to our favourites.
• Wedding Cake – www.cakesbymillrise.co.uk My Aunt and her team (who are also family members) – made our cake as a wedding gift, beautiful cake and am
• Flowers – www.facebook.com/rubydoodles?fref=ts Went to all kinds of lengths to create the perfect bouquet and button holes – I don’t think she said no onceBridesmaids Dresses & Posies – Angela, a friend of the family made the dresses and my mum made the posies, so a massive shout out to them for taking time out of their very hectic lives to make such beautiful things! We’re very appreciative!! Flower girl dresses and boleros were from Asda.
• Confetti – www.shropshirepetals.co.uk
• DJ – www.musicmixentertainments.co.uk Came to our rescue when we’d been let down, and I don’t think we ever saw the dance floor empty!

For more information on Steve Bridgewood’s work please go to:

www.stevebridgwoodphotography.co.uk
www.stevebridgwoodphotography.co.uk/blog
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