E​milie and Alan’s Craft Loving Hampstead and Camden Wedding By Craig and Kate

Today we heading off to London for this gorgeous wedding held at Burgh House in Hampstead with the reception at The Prince Albert in Camden. The wedding is full of cute crafty elements, along with some stylish touches. Emilie and Alan’s day was all about them and reflected their personalities perfectly. They decided on a craft theme, then got to work with lots of homemade projects, which really added to the overall styling of the day. Such a fun, laid back day which has been captured beautifully by Craig and Kate.

‘Crazy busy but beautiful day in which we got all our friends and family together for a party! It was our project baby, something which we worked so hard for to plan and create amazing hand­made things’

Emilie and Alan were married on 6th September 2015 at Burgh House in Hampstead and the reception was held at The Prince Albert in Camden. ‘We live locally to Burgh House and had dreamed of getting married in a period setting (which in this case is also a museum) so it was the perfect fit! We had seen that quite a few couples had combined this with The Prince Albert in Camden and when we went to visit the pub we just fell in love with it ­ the decor, food and atmosphere is just stunning! We had 70 guests during the day with an additional 45 in the evening. Technically it took 1 year and 3 months to plan the wedding! We got engaged in May 2014 and were tweaking little bits up to the night before. Most of the decorations were hand­made by us as well as Alan making all the cakes himself! We of course booked the venues first and so had all that sorted by November 2014 so Spring 2015 was when everything started to take shape. I didn’t actually have my dress ordered until 2 months before the wedding which most brides would be shocked to hear’

How they met
We met through a mutual friend at a gig in what was the Bar Room Bar in Hampstead. We’ve now been together for nearly 7 years and 5 months and our 7 year anniversary was just 3 days before the wedding

The Proposal
Very unromantic! Whilst cooking a bolognese, me saying to Alan, I think we should get married next year and him saying ok. He did ask me properly two months later though whilst walking home after a lovely dinner at Nuraghe in Tufnell Park the night before I was about to go away to France for a week.

How did you allocate your budget
We had a rough spreadsheet during the planning process but this did get forgotten a bit! Our budget actually split quite equally between the venues, food, drink, dress, suit, photography etc. Half went on the venues and catering and the other half on everything else.

Where did you splurge and where did you save
We definitely saved on decorations, invites and some of the entertainment as we either hand­made it or asked friends to help. Having your reception in a pub is not only awesome as the food and drink is so good but also not all of them charge a hire fee which helps a lot! We were quite sensible actually and didn’t really splurge on anything…although I always said I would get a cheap dress and then ended up with a beautiful one! It’s worth it though.

How did you choose your photographer
We found Kate and Craig whilst looking through wedding blogs and just loved their style! As they do editorial work too we felt that their photos were more documentary than posed which we really liked. There are of course some shots which are planned but they just feel a lot more natural, or stylised in a nice way. You see a lot of wedding photos where the colours are very saturated, the bride and groom are looking all soppy, none of that for us!

The Dress
My dress was by Minna, same for the accessories and my shoes were a pair of lace Toms.

The Suit and Bridesmaids
lan’s suit was by Walker Slater and we had no bridesmaids.

Theme or Colour Scheme
Very much a craft theme with key colours being a peachy orange and dark purple. This could be seen in bouquet and the dad’s ties as well as Alan’s pocket hanky

Flowers
My bouquet was by The Kitchen Table Florist, the lovely Tania McLaren and in it there were dahlias, roses, berries , grass, burgundy astrantia with autumnal leaves and herb foliage. We put together all the flower centre pieces on the tables in The Prince Albert ourselves by getting a selection of flowers based on the bouquet and button holes from New Covent Garden Market. We also used some of these in Burgh House.

Decoration
Lots of bunting, chalk board signs and flowers. It’s worth saying that the cake table in itself was a decoration!

Food
Beautiful canapés at Burgh House, the main meals at The Prince Albert were a choice of salmon, lamb rump or a lovely mushroom risotto and for pudding toffee cheesecake, a chocolate fondant or crumble! We also had a ridiculous amount of cake…

Wedding Cake
All made by Alan! Red velvet cake, chocolate Guinness cake, jam tarts, gluten free cupcakes. Loads!

Entertainment
We had our friends put together a pub quiz which was epic. Everyone was quite drunk by this point though so concentration was tricky! It was fun though. We also had Feeling Gloomy DJ who we had discovered at Green Man Festival the year before and Alan had sworn that they had to play at our wedding! There were also many board games which we had brought to the pub as well as children’s booked. We also made the kiddies a colourbook each.

The Stationery
We did it!

Special Moments
What were your special moments or highlights of the day? Going off to have some shots of just the two of us with Kate and Craig was lovely as it got us away from the bustle of family! It’s nice to have some quiet time to yourselves on the day too. The traditional London bus we hired to take guests from Burgh House to The Prince Albert actually was pretty epic ­ people wouldn’t stop going on about how awesome it was. The fact that they got a glass of bubbly on it helped.

Advice to other couples
Plan sooner! Yes, we had the venues sorted but we had to do so much of the making and last minute prep in the week before. It would have been good to do that sooner. Make a milestone planner or chart, this helps. OR if you don’t want to have to treat it like a project get a couple of friends to help you and your partner too. For us, we loved it being our day and doing everything from the planning, the booking to the making but we understand not everyone wants to do that. Try and relax on the day and enjoy the flow. Not everything will go according to plan but that’s ok! I’m a bit of a control freak so this was hard but you just have to. Most of all, enjoy it ­ it will be gone in a flash but it will be worth it :)

Biggest surprise
The amazing feeling you get when all your friends and family arrive. I actually did plan on hiding but got caught walking up to the venue by an auntie and uncle…and there most people arrived so I just gave up and greeted everyone with Al! so really, the surprise was experienced by everyone else not us! For a bride to do this still seems to be shocking ;) However, this made it much more relaxed and actually more exciting.

Supplier Shout Outs

• Venue – www.burghhouse.org.uk
• Reception Venue – www.princealbertcamden.com
• Photographer – www.craigwilliams.net
• Wedding Dress – www.minna.co.uk
• Grooms Suit – www.walkerslater.com
• Bouquet – www.thekitchentableflorist.co.uk
• DJ – www.feelinggloomy.com
• Makeup: www.natalie-bennett.co.uk

For more information on Craig and Kate’s work please go to:

Essex Wedding Photographers / www.craigwilliams.net / [email protected] / 07540778797 / @craigandkate / FACEBOOK / I:craigowilliams