A Norwegian Affair in London…

Morning all my loves, I hope you're feeling good this Tuesday morning.  Inspired by this feature, I'm listening to some Lana Del Ray right now, I just adore her voice and have been intrigued for a while now but it's the first time I've visited her website this morning – it's amazing! Anyway I digress… we're here for the business of weddings, and I've a lovely London celebration to share this morning.

Jo and Øyvind tied the knot on 5 November 2011 and whilst the couple live in Norway, they chose to have their wedding day in London to bring together their family and friends…

"We decided early on that if we were to include something it should be meaningful to us and (ideally) homemade, although the latter turned out to be a little too ambitious for what was essentially a destination wedding!   We were also keen not to waste money and spent a lot of time looking into alternative suppliers who maybe didn’t normally sell to the wedding crowd. Car boot sales aren’t big in Norway so also we did a lot of virtual-car boot shopping via ebay which turned out to be an amazing source of all things old and quirky!"

Jo's pretty backless dress with that gorgeous bow detail was a purchase from Angelica Brides in Islington

"It was actually my second dress and the girls there were lovely, reassuring me that I was not the first bride to change their mind, rushing the order through and accommodating my last minute fittings when I flew into London just a few days before the wedding!"

 Love My Dress Wedding Blog – Photography Copyright (c) 2012, Lily & Frank

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"We cannot recommend the lovely Anna and Ellie from The Flower Appreciation Society enough. Our flower-ideas had not progressed beyond the slightly dubious plan to pack 15 antique norgesglass (Norwegian jam jars) in our suitcase and have them filled with something lovely!  After a coffee meeting at Exmouth market they managed to interpret our rather vague brief into something spectacular.

Seeing the bouquets when they arrived at the hotel and the flowers filling the Drapers arms were two highlights of the day. They are amazing. Fact…."

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I love Jo's style, that pretty pearl back necklace compliments her dress beautifully, and a cute cut of ribbon for her something blue too, how sweet 🙂 

"My necklace and hair slide were both from Untamed Petals, who make so many lovely things it was difficult to pick. The necklace is designed to be worn long but a little bit of blue ribbon and some nifty fingered bridesmaids made it into a short necklace for the day. Whilst I can’t quite wear my necklace to work I will definitely be wearing it at Christmas parties…"

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"We decided to have an English and a Norwegian wedding cake. My mum spent months practicing baking and perfecting her icing techniques and flower making skills (fortunately my dad still fitted into his suit on the day!) The Norwegian cake was more difficult – Kransekake is traditionally made of concentric rings of almond cake, layered on top of each other to form tall a cone shape – not the easiest thing to bring on the plane!

In the end we flew into London a couple of days before the wedding and took over our friend’s kitchen to make the cake ourselves – a bus and a taxi journey later the tower was only leaning a little bit by the time it reached the venue!"

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"My lovely girls all live in different countries and we wanted them to wear something they loved, so we decided to leave it all to them. On the day it was quite amazing how coordinated they looked!  Their dresses were from Coast, Monsoon and an American prom dress shop…"

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"I am a scientist and we love cooking. So, we bought little conical flasks from a laboratory supplier and filled them with one of our favourite spice mixes made with wholesale spices from The Spiceworks. We plugged them with champagne corks kindly donated by the carrier bag load from a bar in Leicester and finished it off by writing out a selection of recipes for our guests to try on little luggage tags.

It wasn’t really practical to assemble them in Norway and so we watched on Skype as my mum and dad put everything together surrounded by clouds of spice on the dining room table in England!"

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"My first dress was quite daring and as a jeans and t-shirt kind of a girl I suddenly panicked that I would spend the day worrying about the dress. I flew to London to meet my mum for what promised to be a frantic day of wedding dress shopping.  Several of the shops I had spoken to on the phone had already warned me with dark voices that I was too late to order many of their dresses. Fortunately Angelica Brides in Islington was our first stop and when I tried on the dress I suddenly relaxed, it was perfect and the girls promised they would work their miracles and ensure that it arrived in their store just in time for the wedding. Phew!

Øyvind wore an Armani suit and shoes by Paul Smith as well as a waist coat from Moods of Norway which was embroidered with the message 'made with love by really really pretty blonde girls in Norway' inside…"    

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"For our readings we picked 'Mirrorball' by Elbow. My mum read this and it sounded like the most beautiful poem (we had banned her from listening to the original in case she learnt the tune and it sounded like a scene from Gavin and Stacey!) 

For our second reading Paul read “I don’t ‘arf love you” by Norman Wisdom as a tribute to Øvin’s dad who had a great love of old British comedians. It was a lovely moment and everyone in the hall was smiling. Sometimes I youtube it to make me smile at work."

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"My Father gave me away.  We were worried about how to make the ceremony personal to us as we didn’t have much connection to more traditional music and readings.  I walked down the aisle to a piano version of Mumford and sons who we have seen several times together. We walked out to “it had to be you” by Harry Connick jr as we are suckers for “When Harry Met Sally”. When the big brass band section kicked in at the beginning I smiled so much I ended up crying!"

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"Despite London not being our home we wanted to find places that were special to us and we loved the idea of being able to visit again in the years to come. We love The Drapers Arms and have had some amazing Sunday roasts there (always a must-do for an English girl living in Norway!)

We had originally booked another London venue but a lunch and a chance-conversation with a member of staff at The Drapers Arms revealed that they had a cancellation and could fit in a wedding in 2011, so,  just over four weeks before our wedding we changed the venue! Natalie at the Drapers Arms made everything so easy and effortless for us that we are glad we went with our instincts and took the jump to change venue!"

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"The Drapers Arms is already very beautiful and so we didn’t feel like we needed to add anything to create the right atmosphere. We made beer mats made with Norwegian phrases on the back, like 'can I buy you a beer' and put old phrase books that we had collected on the tables.  It was very funny hearing people ask their neighbours where the closest post office was! It was bonfire night so we also added little sparklers.

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"Øyvind is a graphic designer and so much care and attention was given to the fonts! We made all of our stationary and Øyvind designed some logos that we used throughout the day. One of them was made into a stamp which was surprisingly cheap and I have been stamping everything since.  We even had beer mats made to match our colour scheme!"

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"One of our favourite jobs together was finding a photograph of each guest from some past adventure. We used the free Poladroid software to convert them to Polaroid-like pictures and placed them on each napkin. The guests loved them too and they were a great conversation starter for those who hadn’t met before…"

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"We danced to Lana Del Ray, video games. We loved the feel to the song and although I have read that it is a sad song if you are in a happy place the lyrics are beautiful!"

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Words of Wedded Wisdom…

"Plan the day that will make you both the happiest. In the beginning we tried to plan a text book wedding but found it hard to get excited about the venues we looked at. 

When we relaxed and started planning the day for us, the whole process was great fun and occupied many evenings in front of old soppy rom-com movies. We built up the day from things that we liked, and that were special to us and our family, and in the end the whole made a wedding that was perfect for us – that is not to say that it was all plain sailing (there were two dress, two venues and goodness knows what other moments of indecision could be totted up!) but we did it together and never let any little details overwhelm us – on the day we were too busy being happy to have noticed anything going wrong anyway!"

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Jo and Øyvind, congratulations to you both of you – you definitely made the best decision with your London destination wedding, the photographs are beautiful.  Talking of which, thanks to Catherine of Lily & Frank for sharing her lovely work with my readers…

"One of the easiest, and best decisions that we made, was to book the lovely Catherine of Lily & Frank. We instantly fell in love with her blog and we were so happy when she was free for our day. On our wedding day Catherine was perfect. Many of our guests assumed that she was a friend as she was so relaxing to have around!

We knew when we arranged for Catherine to shoot our wedding that it would be dusk (OK dark) by the time we left the town hall. Two things about this are therefore remarkable: firstly Catherine’s pictures make it look like we emerged to a spring afternoon! Secondly, Catherine offered us the chance to don our wedding attire after breakfast on the Sunday and go back to the park near our venue to take more couple shots and capture the lovely autumn season!  It really was above and beyond and we can’t thank her enough!"

I love Jo's back necklace by Untamed Petals. Is anyone else having something similar? It's such a striking look!

More later on my lovelies, or browse through more from the lovely Lily & Frank on Love My Dress here.

Annabel

Photographer – Lily & Frank
Venue – The Drapers Arms
Brides dress – Angelica Brides in Islington
Brides necklace & hair accessories – Untamed Petals
Brides shoes – L.K. Bennett
Groom – Armani suit + shoes by Paul Smith + waist coat from Moods of Norway
Bridesmaids – Coast, Monsoon + an American prom dress shop
Flowers – The Flower Appreciation Society
Cake – The Brides Mum
Favours – spice mix via The Spiceworks
 

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.

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