"Your wedding is about you, your relationship and your future together. It is not about a tick list of things that someone somewhere decided you MUST have
If you don’t want something then don’t have it…"
A couple of weeks ago, I featured a wedding film created by the ineffably talented Roland Mihalszky.
It turns out that Roland also created this movie during the nuptials of wedding photographer Nick Tucker to his Argentinian born wife Sara – I featured their film too – you have to watch it, there's something about that scene at the start where Sarah is quietly cursing to herself – the atmosphere silently heaving with anticipation, excitement and nerves.
Nick and Sara's wedding film really captured my imagination. I love the no airs and graces aspect – don't you just love a bride who randomly pulls over a London taxi cab to get to her ceremony? A newlywed dancing with wild abandon, and a bride and groom who match their shoe colour? Love it! 😉 It seemed like everyone there on that day was having an absolute riot, a bag of dance on the ceiling style fun. And I just loved reading through Sara's questionnaire. I knew I had to feature this wedding with you.
The couple tied the knot on 21.4.12 this year {I gather that's a palindrome!} with a ceremony at Clapton Round Chapel, E5, followed by a reception at The Old Finsbury Town Hall…
Love My Dress Wedding Blog – Photography Copyright (c) 2012, Steven Carter Hewson
"Nick & I live in East London, when we got engaged he lived in London Fields and I lived in Clapton. We were determined to have an East London wedding, after all that’s our home. We didn’t want people to have to shell out loads of money for hotels etc.
We were originally going to have both ceremony and reception at the Old Finsbury Town Hall but after going to a Halloween event at the Round Chapel we decided to move the ceremony there. Giving the day more structure, making the photos more interesting and also we just loved the ambiance.
I am half Argentinean and my father, his girlfriend, aunt, brother two cousins and several friends came over for the occasion. We never had to worry about divorced parents not talking or anything like that. I was an incredibly integrated, joyful and loving event…"
"I designed my own shoes. I was never going to wear white or cream shoes. It’s just so boring. I also wanted to be able to wear them again and for my shoes to be totally incredible in their own right and something that no one else had. I did a lot of research and decided that Milk & Honey in the US was the best. You can choose everything from the heel height, to straps, materials and embellishments.
My shoes were court shoes with a 4 inch heel with a half inch hidden platform. The shoe was in peacock blue glitter with pink satin heels and piping and large pink satin bows on the toe – They were fabulous!"
There is something abou this image that I love – the way her hair cascades down her face, the posture, it was just that perfect moment in time captured…
"Stephanie Allin made my dress from two different dresses that I put together. I bought it from her Chiltern Street boutique.
I searched for my wedding dress for seven months. I wanted something elegant but not your typical wedding dress. It had to be unique and I wanted to put it on and know that this was MY wedding dress. My only stipulation was that it HAD to have a bow…"
"…other than that I was open minded. I am not one of those girls who has always known what her wedding dress would look like. I wanted the structure of a corset as I often wear them anyway. I loved the statement that it made. The skirt is full without being flouncy and the one shouldered bodice was in beaded lace.
And the huge bow on the side made me smile…."
"My mum really wanted me to wear a Spanish mantilla style veil. I wanted to have a blush, again because nobody really wears the veil ever that face anymore and I love how feminine it is. Also when else am I ever going to be able to?! It was cathedral length and lace trimmed – the veil itself is so soft it is stunning.
Actually, our parents got on board very quickly with the slightly unconventional wedding that we wanted. Everyone says that the day really reflected us. It was our day and we just wanted everyone to let loose, be themselves and have the best time."
"My Father flew all the way from Argentina to walk me down the aisle and for me is one of the most beautiful moments of our relationship. For balance I had my mum do the Father of the Bride Speech! There wasn’t a dry eye in the house…"
"My bridesmaids wore circlets of gypsophelia in their hair – a simple, feminine, elegant touch. I gave them both silver lockets with their names engraved on one side and the date on the other. They wore those. At the end of the day I took out the brooches from my hair and gave them one each…"
"Wanting to save money for an open bar for our guests, we shunned the expensive cars and on the morning my mum, my dad & I hopped into a London black cab that I hailed outside my hotel in Smithfield market. Terry was the perfect London cabby chatty and funny and clearly a bit gobsmacked to have a bride jump in this taxi…"
"Nick & I met on mysinglefriend.com. In the spirit of all things precious and hard earned it hasn't been an easy passage towards our marriage. To paraphrase an old Irish saying, 'the road didn't always rise with us'.
In between the beautiful balmy first night at the Troubadour in South West London and our absolutely astonishingly perfect wedding in East London there were a few twists and turns along the way. Nick went from writing for Banksy to being an award winning photographer and halfway through I took myself off around the world for a year and returned with a new-found sense of self, meeting some other brilliant and brilliantly independent women, as well as having taken some great photos of my own I also wrote a blog of my journey – but we both feel that everything that has happened together and apart has absolutely lead us to the people we are now and the amazing variegated life we now have in front of us, together."
Is that not the most inspiring paragraph you read today???
"Nick looked absolutely gorgeous in a fabulous bespoke charcoal pinstripe, three piece suit made by the Cad & The Dandy. The lining of the jacket and the back of the waistcoat was red and white stripped silk. DAPPER!…"
"He wore blue braces from New & Lingwood, blue suede shoes from Paul Smith and yellow and blue spotty socks. I gave him silver cuff links to open on the morning. They were engraved with the date and our initials…"
"My husband is a fantastic wedding photographer. He set the bench mark incredibly high. To find someone to fill his shoes and satisfy me was always going to be a tall order. Nick was always a lot more relaxed about the photography than I was but for both of us the photography was/is the most important thing. The photographs are the memory that your wedding becomes. They can capture the feeling and mood and replay that to you, your children and grandchildren down the years.
We were lucky to find the incredibly talented Mr Steven Carter Hewson. He is pure reportage and surpassed our expectations. To say he delivered is an understatement…"
"My hair was done by Kim Roy again another gem supplied my Nick, they have worked on other wedding together. She managed to create my garbled idea of hair from about seventy different photos! I had a trial but then two days before the wedding changed my mind. She created my perfect wedding hair just like that on the morning of the wedding. Firstly she curled my hair and then pinned it up in a sort of messy bun. It was so well done I didn’t have to think about my hair all day and it stayed in despite some very vigorous dancing!
I am a make up artist so I did my own make up. I have done hundreds of wedding over the years and knew what I wanted but I had no idea how hard it would be on the day to do it myself. But then I got into it and really value that small window that I had alone on the morning. What I tell all brides is that wedding make up should really just make you look like you but the best you you can be. I focused on glowey, dewy skin and accentuated my hazel eyes with golds and aubergines. I wore a sheer ruby on my lips…"
"Originally I had thought about having a brooch bouquet and had started collecting brooches from junk shops and markets etc. That idea changed quite early on and the brooches were put away and forgotten about. I had wanted to have some sparkle in my hair but never got round to actually buying anything. The day before the wedding I found the bag of brooches. I had a diamante star and flower in my hair…"
"We had two beautiful bridesmaids. The eldest was Daisy, Nick’s niece. She says her favourite part of the day was seeing me in my dress for the first time. The other was Erica, my half Argentinean/half Norwegian cousin. It was incredibly special because she lives in Norway and none of us had ever met her before. It wasn’t just a wedding it was an international family reunion!
Both bridesmaids dresses, and their little gold shoes, were from Monsoon. They were pale gold lace with a sparkly net skirt overlay. They looked like little angels and I know they both loved wearing them. I wanted them to be relaxed. In dresses they could dance in and run amok in if they so choose. They had pale gold shrugs in case they got cold…"
"The venue we chose to have or ceremony, Clapton Round Chapel, is fine example of non-conformist architecture. A atunning historic building, de consecrated church and just 5 mins down the road from where I was living at the time.
Old Finsbury Town Hall is elegant, breathtaking and unusual. It also houses a dance academy. Part of our venue fees go towards a scholarship – we loved that because weddings are so expensive for what is essentially one day. This gave added purpose to our nuptials, giving back to a community that we both love so much. Plus we will be invited to a show that they put on some point in the future!"
"I walked down the aisle to Nina Simone: I put a spell on you. That my friend Jason cleverly cut down to be the correct length of time and took out some of the words…"
"We had a humanist wedding, which meant that we had to write our own vows and could have anything else we wanted. It’s a family tradition to have Jerusalem at our weddings and then for the next song we had everyone sing a rousing rendition of Islands in the Stream…"
"We were never really interested in the flowers. We certainly were not going to spend a fortune on them when that money could be spent so much better on booze. In the end we found the most amazing Edna at Petals in Bloom, just round the corner from our house in Walthamstow Village.
She totally got it. She made me and my bridesmaids beautifully romantic gypsophelia bouquets and circlets. Nick had a chunky yellow button hole and the groomsmen had small gypsophelia buttonholes…"
"We planned the whole wedding our selves. Old Finsbury Town Hall was a dry hire venue so we had to bring in catering and booze etc. Luckily with Nick in the industry he was able to provide so many fantastically talented suppliers and creatives to help us achieve the vision of our wedding…"
"Old Finsbury Town Hall is the most stunning venue and we decided that we would let the décor do the talking. I finished this off with white scatter orchids on the tables and white and blue table diamonds. Each party favour came in a large gold lidded box tied with either blue or yellow ribbons (The wedding colours were the pale blue of the Argentinean flags and Gold with just a hint of yellow). We named the tables using words we like the sound of. i.e lollapalooza, collywobbles and hullaballoo.
I spray painted some ornate frames, that I found in a sale, gold and wrote the table names in blue glitter. There were also big butterflies on the tables. We were lucky because the caterers include the table flowers that stand atop the karahi stand that the food was served in…"
"My oldest friend Jenny made our cake. Her mum made my mums wedding cake. We wanted something a bit different and jenny makes great old fashioned tattoo cupcakes. I thought it would be fun to just have a big tattoo heart with our names on a ribbon…"
"Jenny came up with the idea of making it two tiers. The bottom was lemon (my favourite) and the top was chocolate (nick’s favourite). There is a great photo taken just after we cut the cake where my eyes are literally popping out of my head because the cake was so delicious.
Jenny even had designed and painted the cake stand with tattoo images of me & Nick. And because she knows how much I love animals she included a little cat poking his head out from under the ribbon…"
"It was really important to us that our wedding did not finish at midnight. We had to have a venue with a late licence and that’s another area that OFTH came up trumps – they had a 2am licence. We also wanted the alcohol to flow and therefore decided to provide a free bar.
We had a delicious prosecco for the reception and toasts and then red and white wine and beer. We decided not to have spirits…."
Caught you Mr Tucker….
"We didn’t have a first dance. Nick didn’t want to and that was totally fine by me. We just danced the night away instead…"
"Top Shelf Jazz 'fine purveyors of filthy swing' have been our friends for quite a few years now and we wanted to secure them very early on in the planning stages. Husband and wife team Fred & Nada added a really special flavour to our nuptials. Their quirky, tongue in cheek, off the wall, risqué act set the scene for an evening of revelry and joyous raucous fun. Nada’s tap dancing was one of the highlights of my whole day. The room where we had our dancing has a sprung dance floor and we danced til 2am…"
Isn't that lovely? I lost myself in an hour of imagination preparing this feature – really felt like I was there.
Huge congrats Nick and Sara!
….and just incase you missed it the first time round, here is their wedding film again.
Enjoy!
Love My Dress Wedding Blog, Cinematography Copyright (c) 2012, Roland Mihalszky
I'd be delighted for you to show some love to Nick and Sara – do I have any more East London of Stephanie Allin brides reading this?
Much love all,
Annabel
Photographer – Steven Carter Hewson
Venue – Clapton Round Chapel + The Old Finsbury Town Hall
Brides dress – Stephanie Allin
Brides shoes – Milk & Honey
Groom – bespoke charcoal pinstripe via Cad & The Dandy New & Lingwood braces + Paul Smith shoes
Bridesmaids – Monsoon
Florist – Petals in Bloom
Cake – made by a friend
Entertainment – Top Shelf Jazz
Film Producer – Roland Mihalszky
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.
