Oh today’s real wedding has left me with only good feelings!
Mikhail & Arran are a creative, sweet, but not very romantic, (their words, not mine!) couple from London, whose wedding was one of those celebrations that’s a real group effort.
I just love when a wedding feels like a coming together of a couple and their extended circle, and their day was just that.
Everything from the stationery, to the food, to the flowers was made by the couple and their friends and family; the amazing ceiling hanging was actually a shop’s Christmas window display and the bright retro bridesmaids’ skirts were created by a friend. And just wait until you see the personalised wedding cake, made by Arran’s mum.
The grooms created the design and concept for their DIY wedding. Inspired by Pinterest, it was coated in green throughout, with an homage to the London Underground for their table names. And despite planning on a budget, as the couple say in their write up – even if they’d won the lottery, they wouldn’t have changed a thing.
Because the couple had a mix of deaf and hearing guests, BSL photographer Becky Bailey was the perfect fit to capture their day. I had the pleasure of meeting Becky recently, and not only is she a talented photographer (check out her site!), but she’s so warm and friendly too.
I just know this wedding is going to make you guys smile – it’s a pretty one!
Our Wedding
The majority of the things at the wedding were homemade, inspired by many different ideas.
We did not have a massive wedding budget and we wanted it to be our wedding, no contractors, no wedding planners, we wanted to do it all ourselves, we are blessed with a very supportive family who all threw in their ideas and helped us make it all happen.
We had so many ideas, all inspired by many hours online but the only way we could put all the ideas together was to do it ourselves. The result was that this wedding was extremely personal.
It does mean we were doing a lot of things during the final week leading up to the wedding but I wouldn’t change it for anything. We had the venue to ourselves for the whole week which was very helpful as we could come in everyday and set everything up.
The main inspiration for the theme was the colour green. It is Arran’s favourite colour. Almost everyone was very unsure of the colour, some even responded with ‘are you serious?’.
In the end, I’m positive that we managed to change everyone’s opinion.
The biggest expense was the venue and photographer, but there was nothing to be done about that. But in terms of everything else, we would say from experience, don’t be afraid to reduce the cost by cutting things out that are no doubt wonderful but not absolutely necessary.
Our table decorations were made from bolognese jars, jam jars, scrap bits of woods, scrap fabrics and in the end, it all looked very beautiful. Though the actual wedding was so far off from our original ideas, if I had won the lottery, I wouldn’t change a single thing.
Favourite Moments
There are so many favourite moments, it’s so hard to pick out one, but I think a significant moment was watching the guests entering the venue for the first time, their faces were a picture.
