Pretty Pearly Wedding by the River Thames

This is the perfect dreamy wedding day to ease you into the week.

Pearly tones, soft textures and adorable details; perusing this wedding, shot by Marianne Taylor, with Ed Peers second shooting, feels like falling into a cloud; blissful, beautiful and relaxed. Beidi and Tanzib brought their wonderful friends together for an intimate, (and fun!) gathering on the banks of the River Thames in South West London.

With a plethora of gorgeous features, from thoughtful table settings and fabulous blooms, to creative DIY paper goods and lanterns glowing overhead, with a charming garden ceremony set against a riverside backdrop to boot, there's just a feast of gorgeous wedding inspiration in here. Notebooks and Pin It buttons at the ready…

About Our Day

It was a small, but lovely English summer wedding held in Winchester House Club next to river Thames in South West London. My husband and I planned entire wedding ourselves and celebrated with our closest friends and family. We DIYed as many thing as possible, from the invitations to the guest book, not only to save on the budget but we also liked our wedding to be very personal. Our friends and family's help played a big part in the wedding as well, it was really nice to have friends fly from all over the world, almost like a reunion party too.

It was raining quite badly during the morning, a typical British summer day, but just before the ceremony started, the sun broke out of the clouds and started to shine, it was almost magical. We decided to have no strict wedding routine but instead gave more freedom for everyone, and ourselves, to enjoy the day, by swapping a massive wedding cake cutting with a cupcake toasting, by skipping a formal ceremony, for one held by one of our best friends, and by throwing a funny quiz and giving a comic strip based on our life story as wedding gift. We had fun and enjoyed every moment.

The Theme

We decided the theme colours to be lovely, soft tones, a combination of pink, yellow, cream and white to give a warm welcome and to light up the venue with a pearly glow.

The Dresses

As it was a very simple wedding , I ask the bridesmaid to wear whatever they liked, anything beautiful and comfortable for them to walk around in. I bought the wedding dress on a wedding dress tailoring site, it's simple but elegant, it had no brand but I loved it. It cost only 100 pound, can you believe it?!

The Flowers

Our flowers were a mix of dahlias, peonies, baby's breath, and white roses ( my favourite) as well as seasonal flowers chosen by our florist.

The Photography

I happened to find Marianne Taylor's website nearly three years before the actually wedding and I instantly fell in love with her fantastic style and skill, her way of naturally capturing every moment of your wedding like she's telling a story, was exactly the type of wedding photo I wanted. Two years later, once we had everything good to go, I immediately contacted her, we were very lucky she was available as she's usually booked years in advance.

Our Favourite Moments

After the ceremony we went to have some photos taken. While we were walking along the river bank we were surprisingly greeted by many random passers-by, it was so sweet and also a bit emotional.

We designed a special quiz to test how well our guests knew us, the questionnaire was sent along with the wedding invitation. Before the party, we reviewed the correct answers and the winner won a big prize, a fabulous vintage gramophone, it surprised everyone!

With our favourite swing music band performing live, the wedding dinner and party turned out to be really romantic and cheerful. None of us were good at dancing but we happily “moved around” to our favourite song “ Fly Me to the Moon”. It felt comfortable that we didn't have a massive guest list so we could really speak to everyone and have nice conversations.