Beach Side Wedding By Photography 34: Boho Weddings

Happy Friday everyone and how are you all? I hope you have that Friday feeling and have something fun planned for the weekend. I am finishing off the week with this beach side wedding from Tony at Photography 34. The wedding takes place in Robin Hoods bay in Whitby and is filled with some fabulous shots of the seaside. With a teal and orange colour scheme the wedding is bright, fun and full of colour, the perfect way to end the week.

‘Our wedding was relaxed and informal, focused on being just a fun day for us to celebrate with the people dearest to us. It was also simple; we felt that anything too flash or showy would distract from the meaning’

Jen and Chris were married on 25th April 2015 at Swell, Robin Hood’s Bay and The Victoria Hotel, Robin Hood’s Bay, Whitby, North Yorkshire. ‘I originally had my heart set on getting married in a barn but was open to ideas. We knew that we didn’t want to get married in a church as neither of us is religious and we wanted something that felt unique but didn’t constrain us with wedding packages. One day I googled unusual places to get married in Yorkshire and Swell came up. We both quite liked the idea of getting married at the seaside and we both love Robin Hood’s Bay. The location was also good as it is in between Darlington where we’re both from and Leeds where we live now, so all our guests would have to travel to get there not just some. The Victoria is quite small, is quirky, feels a bit like a pub and has such amazing views. Victoria also didn’t make us have a “wedding package” like other venues we contacted. We wanted quite a small wedding. We had 45 guests for the day and just a further 8 guests for the evening reception. We got engaged in February last year and married in April this year so the wedding planning took around 14 months.’

How they met
Chris and I met at sixth form college in Darlington, but it wasn’t meant to be at that time, we dated for just 2 weeks and afterwards became really good friends. We drifted apart whilst we were both at University but eventually reconnected and finally got together properly in October 2006 so we’ve been together nearly 9 years.

The Proposal
Chris and I went to New York for a week in February 2014 to celebrate my 30th birthday. I had an inkling that he was going to propose but I didn’t want to get my hopes up in case he didn’t.
On my actual birthday Chris went and got me Dunkin Donuts breakfast which we had in bed. We planned to get the ferry to Statten Island so we could see the Statue of Liberty, that morning Chris told me that we also had to go to Central Park at some point as my present was there. We went to Central Park after we had been on the ferry and I had actually forgotten all about the present and the suspected proposal as I was just having a really good day. When we were walking Chris suggested that we sit down on a bench next to the lake near one of the bridges, when we sat down it suddenly hit me that “this was it,” but then Chris handed me a can of Coke so I was confused. When I looked up again he was sort of crouching with a ring in a box in his hand and said “so will you marry me then?” I laughed and said “of course.”
Chris later told me that he had actually intended to propose a day earlier at the New York Botanical Gardens but scrapped this plan when it rained heavily that day.

How did you choose your photographer
I found Tony at Photography 34 through Boho suppliers list. I kind of had a short list of photographers that I liked the look of, but Tony was within our budget but more importantly it was exactly the style of photography that I wanted; natural, beautiful scenery shots and not faked cheesy poses. I also thought it was good that Tony is from Scarborough which is very close to Robin Hood’s Bay, therefore I suspected he would have local knowledge.
Tony didn’t disappoint on the day either, he kind of melted into the background and didn’t boss anyone around like some wedding photographers do. He put in the hours too, he didn’t leave until after the band’s first set. It was great to have some party shots.

The Dress
My dress was by Annasul Y and I bought it from Abbey Wedding Warehouse in Leeds for a bargain price. My shoes were from Debenhams and were just £25, I kept thinking that I may get a more expensive pair but I never saw anything else that I liked and that was also within budget. My bridesmaid Laura made my necklace that was made out of glass, she also made her own jewellery. My floral hair accessory was from Fabulous Brides on Etsy, I took ages deciding on which one I wanted and didn’t make a decision until the last minute, fortunately it arrived in plenty of time.

The Suit and Bridesmaids
Chris’ suit was Jeff Banks from Debenhams. Neither of us was keen on the formal look and he wanted something that he could wear again. The bridesmaid dress was from Monsoon and her shoes from Next.

Theme or Colour Scheme
I always knew that I wanted bright colours because I think they reflect a celebration, I chose teal/ turquoise and orange as they are bright, unusual for a wedding and I thought they fitted in with us getting married at the seaside.

Flowers
We had paper flowers which came from Paper Bouquets on Etsy. I liked pictures I had seen of paper flowers, thought they were quite unique and also liked the idea of being able to keep them after the wedding. Also, with them being paper it meant I could have the exact colours I wanted.

Decoration
Swell decorated the ceremony venue for us with simple white fabric and wooden hearts, we could have added our own touches but in the end decided we just liked it the way it was. The Victoria Hotel didn’t require much decoration as it already has beautiful accessories. We did add paper pompoms to the main room in The Victoria, and for the tables we had milk bottles and jars which we bought from Ikea which we filled with sand, shells, pin wheels and wrapped in ribbon and coloured string.

Food
We wanted the wedding to be really relaxed and informal so we had just two courses for the day; fish and chips or veggie sausage and mash for the main, and ice cream from a traditional ice cream cart for dessert. In the evening we had sausage butties or veggie burgers.

Wedding Cake
My Mum had a friend from her work make our wedding cake

Entertainment
We had an awesome band called Banzai that we hired via Function Central. We always knew that we wanted live music as we just think that a DJ is too easy to ignore. We chose Banzai as they did something for everyone, from the Beastie Boys to Meghan Trainor. They were great too and let me make some substitutions in the set list. The band was interactive and everyone was dancing so much that the floor boards were jumping.

Personal or Handmade Touches
Chris is a Graphic Designer and he made our wedding invitations. In the same style of the invitations, he also made the cards for our table planner and for the tables themselves. The tables were all named after sponsor dogs from Tia Rescue as that it where we adopted our greyhound Ripley from. The cards included some information about the dogs and how to sponsor them. We made a donation to Tia instead of having wedding favours. Marion, a volunteer from Tia emailed us all the information about the dogs for Chris to use.
We also made most of the other decorations, although it turned out Chris was much better at crafts than me. We made the pin wheels for the table decorations and the cake; we collected the sand and the shells for the jars; we collected stones to use for place names; we used a template off the internet to print out drink tokens for guests; we made the card box by adding some embellishments to a box we bought from Ikea; we made the table planner by decorating some canvas; we made a back drop to use for our photo guestbook and also used old picture frames, string and pegs for the polaroids that the guests took and for us to later display at home.

Special Moments
We set out for everyone to have a good time, so most of my highlights were when I noticed that people were having fun. So I remember seeing people licking their ice creams cones during the best man speech; my friend Claire heckling the band for playing the censored version of Cee- Lo Green’s “Forget you;” people throwing a stuffed greyhound around the dance floor and everyone being on the dance floor for the band’s encore and seeing a friend standing on a chair trying to take a photo of it all.

Advice to other couples
You are likely to feel some stress in the couple of weeks before the wedding and you may question if it is worth it, but trust that it is and that you will have an absolutely amazing day. Also, don’t put too much pressure on everything being “perfect,” something will most likely not go to plan but so long as you and your partner get married then that’s the most important thing. Your guests also won’t care, they’re just there to support you. It rained on our wedding day which changed some of the day, like we had to have our drinks reception inside but it didn’t matter, and it would have ruined the day more if we had let it bother us.

Biggest surprise
How nervous and emotional I felt before the ceremony. I’ve never felt teary eyed at weddings and to be honest I never really understood it why people cried. But I felt so overwhelmed with emotion and love for Chris that I knew I was going to cry, I had managed to compose myself but as soon as I heard my walk in music start to play, I felt the emotion sweep over me again. Fortunately it quickly became laughter which proved to be entertaining.