Lindsay and Paul’s Vintage Inspired Winter Wedding with Snow Globes and a Jenny Packham Dress by Laura Babb

I have a gorgeous winter wedding for you today courtesy of the wonderful Laura Babb. The wedding sees the couple pull in vintage influences and mix them up with a modern twist, along with a whole load of DIY details! The wedding is full of personal touches which makes it even more special  As for the dress, well in my eyes you can’t go wrong with Jenny Packham, the bride looks absolutely stunning!

‘An intimate, informal and eclectic day influenced by vintage, scouse and a love of snow globes!’

Lindsay and Paul who were married on 23rd November at Guildford Register Office with the reception at The Forbury Hotel, Reading. ‘We decided to get married at Guildford register office because Lindsay’s parents got married there in 1975, so it holds special significance. We wanted to hold our reception in Reading because it is where we live now and we wanted the wedding to have a connection to us as a couple. We loved the decor and ambience of the Forbury Hotel and it is the only 5 star hotel in Reading, so nothing else compared! We had 46 guests, we were engaged for about a year before we started planning properly, we changed our minds a few times about exactly what sort of wedding we wanted before booking our day. Most of the planning was done in 6 months.’

How they met
Paul and I met in a dingy pub in Cardiff, known for its £5 bottles of wine, not where you would expect to meet your future husband! Neither of us is from Cardiff, I’m from Guildford in Surrey and was living in Cardiff after finishing university there and Paul had moved down from his hometown of Liverpool for work. He claims there were no other seats in the pub so he had to come and sit with me, but I still don’t believe him. I didn’t like him much at first but a couple of hours and a few bottles of £5 wine later I was convinced. We went on a date the next day and moved in together 6 months later. We have been together for 6 years and got married exactly 17 months after getting engaged.

The proposal
It was on Easter Saturday in 2011 that Paul suggested a day out as it was predicted to be a really hot day. We decided to stop at Battle Abbey on the way to the seaside as I had always wanted to go there to see the site of the Battle of Hastings (I’m a history nerd). When we got there Paul disappeared off leaving me in a teashop, little did I know he’d been down the week before as he had found me a beautiful 1930s yellow diamond ring in a jewellery shop in Battle and disappeared off to collect it. We were walking around the battlefield when Paul suggested we walk through the fields to a lake he’d seen a picture of online. He didn’t really know the way and it was really hot, I was getting a bit annoyed by this point, but he was insistent on finding this lake. We eventually found it in the grounds of a beautiful Georgian hotel, whilst walking around the lake in the sunshine Paul got down on one knee and proposed. I didn’t hesitate in saying yes! He had arranged a wonderful dinner and beautiful suite in the hotel for that night.

Why did you choose your photographer?
We saw Laura’s work on several blogs and loved her relaxed and non traditional style. When we met Laura we knew she would capture the style of our wedding, she is so lovely and fitted right in with our friends and family on the day.

The Dress
My dress was eve by Jenny Packham which I bought from Miss Bush Bridal in Surrey. They are brilliant in there, so different to other shops which tried to force me into the typical a line strapless gown, so not my style! Emma picked out eve for me to try on, told me I looked like Florence and the machine and I was sold! Shoes were the grey bridesmaids style from Rachel Simpson. Paul gave me some beautiful white gold and blue topaz earrings on the day, which I wore. I also wore a bracelet from accessorize and my leaf shaped hair comb was from notonthehighstreet.com. I had a vintage faux fur wrap from etsy but I didn’t wear it much on the day as it wasn’t very cold!

The suit and bridesmaids
Paul’s suit, tie and shoes were from Ted Baker. The Best Man, Carl, chose his own suit and we gave him a Ted Baker tie to wear on the day. I had two bridesmaids, my best friend Hollie who was my maid of honour and my niece Aimee (who is only 8 years old). Hollie’s dress was from forherandforhim.com, it was a bit risky buying from the internet without having seen it in real life but it fitted perfectly and Hollie looked beautiful. I bought Hollie garnet earrings (her birth stone) from etsy as a present to wear on the day. She wore black shoes from office. Aimee wore a dress and fur shrug from monsoon with shoes from Debenhams. I gave her a necklace with her initial and birth stone from notonthehighstreet.com which she wore on the day.

Food
Starter was scallops with pancetta and pea puree. Main Course was lavender roasted duck with dauphinoise potatoes and vegetables. The pudding was a hot chocolate tart with espresso ice cream. Delicious.

Entertainment
In the evening we hired DJ equipment and Paul DJ’ed our choice of music assisted by my 11 year old nephew, not a piece of cheese in sight!

Flowers
I had anemones (which didn’t quite open on the day!) with gyspohila and other white flowers. The bridesmaids had the same but with added thistles. My mum’s family are Scottish so had to have a little nod to my scot’s heritage!

Decoration
The Forbury has fabulous decor anyway which is very colourful so we didn’t want anything which clashed. We kept the decorations to a minimum, just white flowers with thistles on the tables, with a few added snow globes and candles.

Personal/DIY touches
• The day before the wedding I picked up the cut flowers for the tables which I ordered from the same florist who did the bouquets. I had bought lots of small vases and tumblers from ikea which made up the flower arrangements for the tables and I arranged them myself and then paul delivered them to the venue.
• Each table was named after one of our pets so each table had a picture of the pet and a snow globe with a figurine of the animal in. I made the snow globes from jam jars and collected the animal figurines and bride and groom figure from ebay and charity shops.
• The tables and windows had tealights scattered around, I made the tealight holders by decoupaging jam jars with paper doilies and others I made by glueing lengths of lace to jam jars.
• We used two old suitcases for cards and guest book entries. I made these from suitcases I had in the house which I had been given at my old job when they were going to be thrown away. I lined them with some vintage world map wrapping paper using a lot of PVA glue!
• The cards sign was made out of little wooden letters I found on amazon which I painted silver.
• Instead of a traditional guest book we asked guests to write us a message on a great old typewriter I bought on ebay. We used parchment paper I bought from amazon which I stamped with a personalised stamp I had made.
• I made our table plan sign using a poster of pictures of us and our pets over the years which I made by photo shopping the pictures together with a scanned copy of our personalised stamp. I had this printed on to a poster then stamped luggage tags with the guests names and attached them to the poster.
• I made the place names using handmade name cards from cox and cox which I stamped with a pink elephant and the guest’s names. These were put into bauble style name card holders, a little nod to the festive season!
• We hired a 1960s double decker bus to take our guests to and from the ceremony and reception. The bus had a personalised blind on the front with our names on. On the bus we provided plenty of champagne and had personalised m&ms with our names and wedding date on them for the guests to munch on during the journey.
• During our reception we asked guests to have a little play at dressing up. As Paul is a scouser and I am from Surrey the theme was posh vs. scouse. We provided a big curly wig, shellsuit jacket, and moustache for the scousers and a tiara and pearls for the posh. Our guests had great fun dressing up as our alter egos and our photographer got lots of great pictures of them.
• We had our cake toppers made to look like us and our dogs and cat. I ordered them from etsy. My wonderful mother made all five cakes including two red velvet cakes, a gluten free irish coffee cake, a lemon cake and a chocolate fruit cake. She makes the chocolate fruit cake for Paul every Christmas as it is his favourite and she had an everton pennant (he’s a massive everton fan) made with our wedding date on to go on the fruit cake. My aunt constructed the cake stand from polystyrene and fabric. It was definitely a family effort!

Special moments
Paul and I travelled in a red 1960s jaguar from the ceremony to the reception whilst our guests travelled on the bus. It was lovely to have some alone time together and have a sip of champagne to toast our marriage.
The last song we played was ‘All you need is love’ by the Beatles, all our inebriated friends picked us up and we all sang along in a big circle. I can’t help but smile every time I think about it!

Biggest surprise
We were both surprised by just how much we enjoyed the day everything went as planned so we could really have fun. We went on our honeymoon the next day and spent the whole 8 hour flight to Delhi talking about just how much we loved our wedding!

Advice
It’s a cliché but definitely make sure you have some time together to reflect on the day and take it all in, it goes so quickly!
During the planning stages I found pinterest really helpful for collecting images which I liked. It helped to define what I really wanted and not get too confused by the plethora of wedding influences you can find on the web! I also collected a pinterest board of wedding photography I liked so when we met with our photographer Laura all I had to do was print it off to show her what we wanted.
I would also advise brides and grooms to discuss and really think carefully about what they want and how they want their wedding to look. There is so much wedding stuff out there you can really express your creativity, or not as the case maybe. But I’d really advise people to think outside of the box a little and not get bogged down in a theme or colour scheme. It’s your day, pick what you like and don’t worry about it too much!

Supplier Shot Outs

• Ceremony: www.surreycc.gov.uk
• Reception venue: www.theforburyhotel.co.uk  – Stephanie, the events planner was really helpful and relaxed. On the day our meal was about an hour late but the food still came out perfectly cooked!
• Photographer:  http://babbphoto.photoshelter.com/portfolio – Laura Babb, honestly can’t praise her enough, we are so thrilled with our photos!
• Florist: www.longacres.co.uk  – They arranged our bouquets and buttonholes and I bought the cut flowers from there. They were really helpful and ridiculously good value!
• Wedding dress: www.missbushbridalwear.co.uk  – see above for praise!
• Bride and bridesmaid hair and make up – www.amybrandon.com – I was thrilled with my hair and make up and so was my bridesmaid. Amy even came to the reception venue to give us a touch up before our portrait photographs. She is so lovely and relaxed, she was a calming influence in the morning when we were getting ready! She is a very talented girl and was recently featured in OK magazine for her work on a celebrity wedding.
• DJ equipment www.totalsounds.co.uk – gave a great service and were excellent value
• Cars and bus: www.londonlegend.co.uk
• www.etsy.com – cake topper, wrap and bridesmaid gift
• www.notonthehighstreet.com – hair comb and bridesmaid gift
• www.monsoon.com – child bridesmaid outfit
• www.forherandforhim.com – adult bridesmaid dress
• www.tedbaker.co.uk – grooms outfit and best mans tie

For more information on Laura’s work go to

www.laurababb.co.uk
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@BabbPhoto