A City Chic Wedding in Belgium…

Good morning lovely people. I simply cannot believe it's Thursday 15th December already! I had such a fabulous day yesterday spent with these people – I am so excited now for the 2012 UK Wedding Awards Ceremony in January 2012! I'm also super excited that tomorrow, I'm back in London, only this time on a personal trip – we are surprising our eldest Daughter Eska with a trip to the ballet to see Mattew Bourne's The Nutcracker. Cannot. Wait!!

Anyway, right now it's time to share some wedding day love with you all.  Frederik & Shari married on 14 October at Lueven in their home country of Belgium.  I'm featuring this wedding day not least because it is an incredibly stylish city chic style wedding, but because the lovely Bride Shari was a regular reader of Love My Dress in the run up to her wedding – infact she won a competition I hosted to win voucher from Queens and Bowl! 😉

"My biggest inspiration in blog land was definitely Love My Dress, but I also frequently visited Ruffled and Style Me Pretty. My bracelet was the Audrey bracelet which I purchased from Queens and Bowl with a gift certificate that I had won on Love My Dress – I was so excited about winning! Kate from Queens and Bowl provided excellent service and even customized the bracelet to my size…"

Love My Dress Wedding Blog – Photography Copyright (c) 2011, Myra Photography

Kopie  van selectie405

On my wedding day I combined the bracelet with a watch that had belonged to my great-grandmother – my something new and something old.  I also wore a faux fur wrap from the Throw Company. I ordered samples from different vendors and found theirs to be of excellent quality. The wrap kept me warm on the day and offered a lovely glamorous touch.

My grandmother lent me a brooch to keep the wrap together. In case you were wondering, my something blue was a handkerchief. I suppose I should also include my glasses in the accessory section. I have worn glasses since I was seven and cannot imagine myself without them. So I treated myself to a new pair and was a happy bespectacled bride."

Kopie  van selectie405

Selectie482 Selectie482

Kopie  van selectie405

"My dress was by Pronovias. I bought it at Le Chapeau in Antwerp .  I knew early on that I did not want a big ‘princessy’ dress and definitely not strapless (I was getting married in October, after all). I love the sleek lines and style of Jenny Packham and Jesus Peiro but was sadly not able to afford them. The shop assistant at Le Chapeau understood perfectly what I wanted and after five or six dresses, my dress was brought out.

My mom cried when I first put it on, so we all knew it was ‘the one’. I especially loved the fact that my dress was not a typical wedding dress. Its style and cut were understated yet elegant and had a vintage feel without being too themed. I felt it would age well. Last but not least, I loved the neck-line of the dress. I am a turtle-neck person and I liked that I could stay true to my style on my wedding day and did not have to venture too far outside my comfort-zone fashion-wise."

Kopie  van selectie405 Kopie  van selectie405

"Our Florists Verde decorated both the church and the reception hall. We kept the flowers simple and classic, combining roses in cream and an old shade of pink with hydrangeas, which are my favourite flowers. We wanted the colours to be soft yet warm – no pastels! – to fit the season. My husband presented me with the most beautiful bouquet, which matched the other flower arrangements perfectly. My bouquet is still one of my favourite things about the wedding…"

Kopie  van selectie405

Selectie376

Kopie  van selectie405


"We kept our ‘first’ wedding day very simple. I didn’t wear a wedding dress. We had just our parents, grandparents and siblings there and afterwards we simply went to our apartment for a family dinner. We wanted it to be just about us getting married and sharing the moment with our closest relatives. I can definitely recommend this arrangement – we had the best of both worlds, an intimate elopement and a traditional wedding day…"

Kopie  van selectie405

"We got married in Leuven, Belgium. Our civil ceremony took place in the town hall of Leuven. This was not our choice as Belgians have to get married in the city where they have their residence, but we were very fortunate, as Leuven’s town hall is a gorgeous building…"

Kopie  van selectie405

Kopie  van selectie405

Kopie  van selectie405

Kopie  van selectie405

Kopie  van selectie405

Kopie  van selectie405

Kopie  van selectie405

Kopie  van selectie405

Kopie  van selectie405 Kopie  van selectie405

"Our church service took place in the St.-Jan-de-Doperkerk (St. John the Baptist church) in the Grand Béguinage of Leuven. This church is owned by the Catholic University of Leuven and only employees or relatives of employees of the University can get married there.

We are both PhD students at the University and so we got to get married in this beautiful church in surroundings that are part of UNESCO World Heritage! Most of our family is from a different part of the country, so we were very pleased to be able to show them this wonderful corner of the city. For our reception we chose De Venkel, a venue just outside Leuven, located in a beautiful turn-of-the-century mansion, which perfectly fitted the style we envisioned for our wedding…"

Kopie  van selectie405

"I wore silver cubic zirconium earrings that I bought in a little shop in Antwerp…"

Kopie  van selectie405 Kopie  van selectie405

"Our church service took place at noon, and my grandmother, mother, sister and I baked 200 bags worth of cookies and cakes on the days prior to the wedding to offer to our hungry guests after the ceremony (I got the idea from a wedding featured on Love My Dress). It was a lovely homey thing to do right before the big day and a personal gesture very much appreciated by our guests, though it also added significantly to our stress level. Some of the baking paper caught fire and two batches had to be thrown out!

I walked down the aisle by myself to ‘Dawn’ from the movie ‘Pride and prejudice’. It is a very romantic and intimate piece which we felt set the perfect tone for the ceremony…"

Kopie  van selectie405

"During the church service we had a pianist. My husband plays the piano, so we were very happy to be able to include his favourite instrument in the service. We chose several pieces he himself has played, Debussy’s ‘La fille aux cheveux the lin’ and Gershwin’s ‘The man I love’ for example. For the reception we compiled CD’s with our favourite forties, fifties and jazz music: The Andrews Sisters, Al Jolson, Charles Mingus, Sinatra and many more. We also had the photo corner at the reception, which allowed our guests to pose as Marie Antoinette, Sherlock Holmes, a Hollywood starlet or anything in between. It was a big hit and resulted in some great images…"

Selectie351

Selectie351

Selectie351

"I wore the Nostalgic Bouquet headpiece from Glitzy Secrets, a gift from my mother…"

Selectie376

Selectie376

"We both liked the idea of a fall wedding. Weather in Belgium is very much like the UK’s and we felt rain would be less terrible in the fall where we would at least have beautiful foliage to compensate it with. The summer of 2011 turned out to be one of the rainiest ever, while we had blue skies and wonderfully soft fall sunlight on both days, which we still consider to be something of a miracle…"

Kopie  van selectie405 Kopie  van selectie405

Kopie  van selectie405

Kopie  van selectie405

Kopie  van selectie405

Kopie  van selectie405 Kopie  van selectie405

Kopie  van selectie405

Kopie  van selectie405

Kopie  van selectie405

"Ah, the Shoes. I am a bit of an aficionado when it comes to shoes and the perfect wedding shoes were therefore very important to me and eagerly anticipated by everyone who knows me. I searched high and low, dragged my mom to shoe stores all over Flanders and finally found the perfect pair in…New York City! I accompanied my husband who was speaking at a conference there and on his day off we weathered a veritable rain storm and went to My Glass Slipper. There they were: the right colour, the right style, the right size and on sale – Freya Rose Avalanche Bloom. Afterwards we joked that it took me one day and one shop to find my wedding dress and six months and a trip to a different continent to find my shoes. They were well worth the effort. Everyone loved my shoes and though I am a bit sad that I won’t ever get to wear them again, I look forward to the day, many years from now, when I will open that pink box again to show my vintage wedding shoes to my daughter or granddaughter…"

Kopie  van selectie405 Kopie  van selectie405

Kopie  van selectie405

Selectie376 Selectie376

"We had some beautiful centre pieces, again cream and pink roses and hydrangeas, elevated on glass standards. I did make some things myself. I made three banners, using a letter template from Martha Stewart Weddings (http://www.marthastewartweddings.com/226239/banner-template). I made them a little more ‘ornate’ with a silver marker and pink paper. I also made several collages to place throughout the hall, with the favours, the guest book, and the photo corner. I sourced most of the images from ‘The Graphics Fairy’ (http://www.graphicsfairy.blogspot.com/), a brilliant find of my husband’s…"

Selectie376

Selectie376

"For favours, we filled little glass jars with different types of pink candy and displayed them on cake stands, which we had borrowed from family members. I made and handwrote all the ‘thank you’ cards attached to the jars and also made a banner which read ‘a sweet memory of our wedding day’. We bought the glass jars at a local home and garden store and got the candy from the market…"

Selectie376

Selectie376

"Our reception venue also provided the catering. In Belgium it is traditional to have a dinner in the evening and then dancing afterwards. We didn’t want the dancing part so we opted for a walking lunch. The little dishes were excellent and the formula allowed us to mingle. Luckily, my nightmare of spilling wine on my dress while juggling a plate and glass did not come true! The reception ended at 6 pm, giving the two of us a cosy evening together to relive the day…"

Selectie376

Selectie376 Selectie482

Selectie376

Selectie376

Selectie376 Selectie482

Selectie482 Selectie482

Words of Wedded Wisdom…

"Make the experience enjoyable for yourself. We discarded everything that wasn’t important to us and I then spent an inordinate amount of time (yes, I admit to having been a little obsessed) pondering and researching all the things that were important to us. We had a simple, personalized wedding day that never felt overwhelming and did not bankrupt us. Just do things your own way, don’t settle for less and look beyond the borders of your country. The wedding industry in Belgium is not nearly as big as in the UK or the USA, but the Internet is an unlimited source of wedding supplies and inspiration. I have also found people in the wedding industry to be so friendly and obliging. Perhaps I was just lucky, but in my experience, they truly want to make brides happy and take pride in going out of their way to help them achieve their dream wedding. I truly enjoyed immersing myself in this atmosphere of friendliness and benevolence and can only wish every bride-to-be a similar good time!

I took bits and pieces from different eras as my inspiration, fifties music, thirties-style dress and accessories, Victorian props and décor, but if I had to name one principle source, it would be the movie ‘Easy Virtue’. I love the costumes and styling, the witty dialogue, the music (modern songs in old-fashioned disguise). I can imagine a lot of Love My Dress readers would like this movie!"

Selectie482

What a gorgeous stylish city wedding, I absolutely love it.  Shari – thank you so much for coming back to share your beautiful day with me and my readers, I am so pleased you won the Queens and Bowl competition :)

"Our photographer was Myra from Myra Photography. We immediately loved her style and she did not disappoint. We never considered ourselves to be very photogenic – our glasses have always been a problem – but she made us feel very comfortable about the entire experience and the pictures turned out absolutely beautifully.

Myra was also a tremendous help in setting up the photo corner at the reception. We wanted something that really fit the style of our wedding, something different from the usual joke props. We mentioned the words ‘Victorian’ and ‘Cluedo’ and she created the entire setting and found most of the props. We cannot recommend her enough."

I love Shari's straight/column wedding dress – is anyone wearing anthing similar on their wedding day?

You can see more city chic style weddings here.

Much love all,

Annabel xXx

Photographer – Myra Photography
Venue – Town hall of Leuven + church service at St.-Jan-de-Doperkerk (St. John the Baptist church) in the Grand Béguinage of Leuven
Brides dress – Pronovias via Le Chapeau in Antwerp
Brides accessories – Queens and Bowl bracelet + the Throw Company faur fur wrap + Glitzy Secrets headpiece
Shoes – Freya Rose Avalanche Bloom via My Glass Slipper
Groom – Hugo Boss suit
Florist – Verde
Hair &  Makeup – Vitala

Annabel

Annabel View all Annabel's articles

Founder of Love My Dress. Passionate Podcaster and Editor. Annabel lives in rural North Yorkshire with her husband and business partner Philip, their two daughters and menagerie of furry hounds. She loves photography, meditation, walking, being outdoors and star gazing. She is fierce when it comes to championing talent within the wedding industry and when she's not working on Love My Dress, she supports her husband Philip in the running of the family's sustainable flower farm and floral design business, Moonwind Flowers. In 2013, she became a published author.

Close
Top