This weekend (Sat 19th to be precise) was our first wedding anniversary. What an amazing year, still happily married, have my lovely husband and just had our first baby Coco – I couldn’t really ask for much more. Time has flown by and seems like it was just yesterday that I was waiting for my bridesmaids to arrive outside the church (their cab never turned up and they ended up having to run all the way to the church – luckily it wasn’t snowing!).

So I thought given that its such a special time for me I would post a couple of piccies from our wedding and give you a little insight into my special day. In fact my wedding was the inspiration for LMW – I work in online media and at the time of my wedding I was amazed at the lack of good websites out there that focused on UK brides. I wanted to create a site that would showcase really fantastic suppliers, one off boutique designers, unique wedding ideas and basically anything that is ‘not on the high street’ (and probably a few things that are!) Also to encourage couples to do it ‘their way’ to involve friends and family and to save money along the way. Anyway enough of my waffle here are some photos from my big day.

Part 1 – this bit – is the preparation for the wedding – me and the bridesmaids getting ready.

I was lucky enough to have my great friend, who was also a bridesmaid, Ems Dennis do my make up – she is a fully trained make up artist and did a fantastic job on me and all the other bridesmaids. It was so nice to have someone that I knew and that really cared about me doing my make up as its a special and intimate time.

Talking of friends, my lovely friend from school Mel Bles (who is now a talented fashion photographer) took all the photos – poor thing rocked up with a bit of a hangover on the morning of the wedding. But we didn’t mind -she is such good fun that we had a real laugh getting ready. Mel knew a lot of the guests too so they all loved seeing a familiar face behind the lens. Mel’s style is reportage and we were fine with that – the church were also quite strict and didn’t want her using flash photography because they thought it would distract the service.

In order to keep costs down my lovely friend Nix Harding (do check her out she is a FAB interior/garden designer) offered to do all the flowers. She kept her promise despite being 8 months pregnant – which was so sweet of her as that really helped us saved quite a lot of money. She did enlist the help of her florist friend Britt, from Flourish and Green.. who was responsible for the button holes (which I have to say were fantastic) and helped out with flowers for the evening venue.

We decided that we (mum, me and bridesmaids) would do our bouquets in the morning – give us something to keep us occupied and also keep costs down. That is mum and dad above – keeping busy with arranging my bouquet!

I went to New Convent Garden flower market a couple of days before the wedding and with the help of Britt and Nix choose these lovely cream roses, red berries and ivy – very simple but made a lovely winter bouquet . Di, my maid of honour bought some white antique lace which we tied around the flowers.

I had 4 friends as bridesmaids – they all wore the same style of dress but chose different colours depending on what they wanted, and then they all wore silver shoes. I also had a little flower girl Minnie, who was absolutely gorgeous, dressed in Monsoon dress, cardigan and tights. She was SO cute. Just look at her here with Di, my maid of honour, who also looks stunning.

The older bridesmaids all wore shrugs from Coast, and they needed them. It was a lovely crisp and sunny day but as you can imagine given it was the 19th Dec it was also very chilly!

All ready to go, hair up and make up done and still doing ‘jobs’ on my computer!! I think that I should have had a wedding planner – I was calling the caterers and letting them know about a couple that couldn’t make it!

Anyway thats enough for today – I have part II in the church coming shortly and then part III will be after the church and the evening venue.