A Gold Wedding Dress for an Elegant, Candlelit Winter Wedding

wpid273717 Gold dress elegant winter wedding 301

Having a wedding in the Winter time is always going to present a challenge for your wedding photographer. Reduced day light makes it difficult to capture fresh, natural light images, but photographers Cara and Nye of Lillian & Leonard have done a stellar job at documenting the mood and atmosphere of this intimate December wedding despite seasonal lack of sunlight.

This wedding took place on 30 December last year at All Saints Church  in Kings Langley, followed by a reception at Abbots Hill School.  Here, beautiful bride Julia shares the story of her wedding to Edward…

“I had been to a late afternoon December wedding as a child and loved the candlelit church and lanterns lining the church path. We didn’t want a concrete colour scheme or theme as such, so really focussed on a cosy feel with the odd splash of gold and sparkle as a nod to my dress and New Year’s Eve being the next day. It was difficult to find ideas for winter weddings in wedding magazines, so I did rely on wedding blogs and Pinterest for ideas.”

Photography Copyright (c) 2014, Lillian & Leonard

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

“Edward and I were friends for years and years but had always had a not-so-little crush on each other. We ended up getting together just over five years ago after months of being goaded on by all our friends. Last year on my birthday weekend we went to Hastings to scour antiques for the house we were in the process of buying and Ed proposed during a blustery coastal walk. 

We knew we didn’t want a long engagement and were pretty certain how we wanted our wedding day to go, so were able to plan our #JuAndEdGetWed in just under eight months.”

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

“Our wedding took place at All Saints’ Church in Kings Langley where I grew up – a place that holds really special memories for me. Our reception was held at Abbots Hill School, which is such a beautiful building and where my mother has taught for many years. I have early memories of sitting in the school office munching biscuits and disturbing all the admin staff! 

As the school was closed over the Christmas holidays we were able to press gang our families to get in and put decorations up gradually a few days in advance. The building is lovely as it is, so we didn’t need to do much – we just added festoon lights, paper lanterns and some paper snowflakes around the dining room and more lights and gold bunting in the library where we danced the night away.”

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

“I tried on loads of beautiful white dresses, but none of them felt right on me. I had a feeling that I didn’t want a white dress and knew that I wanted sequins – I was lucky to find a vintage dress on EBay and then had it tailored to fit.  As a bit of a scruffy magpie and was a bit paranoid about wearing white on my wedding day, despite trying on some really beautiful gowns.”

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

“I knew that sequins would be playing a key role though! In the end I went with my gut instinct and found a gold lace sequinned vintage dress more or less straight away and then finished it off with a vintage fur cape to ward off the December chill and then some more bling for my hair as I didn’t want a veil either. Not traditionally bridal, but not completely ‘anti-bride’ – I wanted to feel like me at my best and not like I was playing dress-up in a wedding dress.

I didn’t wear a veil – I thought it would be too much with the dress and fur cape, but I did have a side tiara and a vintage fur cape.”

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

“I had to have some special shoes and went for some blingy blue Manolo Blahnik heels which really stood out.

I didn’t want to wear  too much jewellery as I was aware that with a sequinned dress and a big jewelled hairpiece it could start getting a bit OTT! I wore sapphire stud earrings; a borrowed Baume & Mercier watch from my mother that used to belong to my late grandmother; Zoe & Morgan ‘love’ ring on my right hand.”

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

“My best friend and bridesmaid Jen wore a vintage 1920s style sequinned dress – as the most immaculately dressed lady I know, putting her in a conventional bridesmaids dress just wouldn’t have worked, so we trawled vintage shops and the internet for a sequinned beauty that would do her justice and really lucked out on eBay.

She also wore a vintage velvet kimono jacket and rhinestone head piece. I gifted her a Zoe & Morgan ‘love’ ring and a hamsa hand necklace as a thank you gift.”

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

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“Mine and my bridesmaid’s bouquets were done by our family friend, who has known me for years and knew exactly what I wanted – it was important for me to have a splash of colour to stand out in what could’ve been quite gloomy light. Ed’s mum then made the button holes with the remaining pink roses. The church was already decorated for Christmas, so no further decoration was necessary! While we didn’t have any more flowers, other family friends helped us decorate the window sills with some greenery and pretend candles from the school drama department.”

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

“We’re greedy things who love our food, so getting that right was really important to us. The catering team at the school were amazing – Emily the chef at Abbots Hill School even created a special version of the chocolate pudding for our vegan pals. When everyone arrived we served mulled wine and toasted nuts to keep everyone nice and toasty before heading in for supper. We had seafood sharing platters to start, a beautiful beef in red wine stew with dauphinoise potatoes and a chocolate pudding to feast on.”

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

“I remember seeing a wedding featured in a blog where they gave blankets in place of favours and really loved this idea so shamelessly pinched it!  I knew I didn’t want chair covers and wanted to make sure everyone was going to be warm enough with something that could be kept for a long time. We found a supplier based on eBay who sold recycled wool rugs and we went for it.

My mum was amazing and painstakingly sewed the labels on in the months leading up to the wedding – we ordered little labels with our names and our wedding date on them – no forgetting our anniversary, guys!”

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

“We hadn’t planned on having a band, as I was haunted by dodgy bands and DJs from various 90s wedding films and we’re both quite particular when it comes to music! We came to our senses though, as we realised that the pressure of making an epic Spotify playlist would be just another thing to worry about. Fortunately I chanced upon The Rebel Party Band who we were so so impressed by.

Their set list was already amazing, but they also learnt The Cure’s Lovecats and The Postal Service’s Such Great Heights for us, which was incredible as we danced the night away. We really didn’t want the night to end!”

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

“Choosing the right photographers were really important to us and was something that we had decided on more or less straight away! The photos will be with us for the rest of our lives, so it was so important that they captured us as us. We really didn’t want anything too staged and Cara and Nye from Lillian and Leonard totally got that.

I had geekily been reading Cara’s blog Peonies & Polaroids and loving her photography for years, so I knew that we were in very safe hands.”

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

“Edward wore a navy Jaegar suit and tie with Hugo Boss shoes. The ushers and Edward’s best man Simon also stuck to navy suits with various shades of blue ties too, as we didn’t want them to match too closely.”

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

“Dominique and Victoria, our sisters-in-law read at the church; Dom read three verses from Song of Soloman, the love poem between two lovers (before it gets raunchy) and Vicky read E.E.Cummings’ ‘I carry your heart with me’.”

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

“My father’s friend loves his cars and collected me in a beautiful vintage Bentley.”

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

wpid273768 Gold dress elegant winter wedding 1

“We had a cake of cheese as our wedding cake and my sister in law also made us beautiful chocolate truffles and a chocolate vegan and gluten free cake for our guests with dietary differences!“

wpid273772 Gold dress elegant winter wedding 3

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

“We initially didn’t want a traditional first dance ‘slow dance’ as we mostly felt that it could be quite awkward, but ended up going for The Cure’s Lovecats as we quite drunkenly danced away to it on the night we first got together.”

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

“Having all our friends and family in the same room was our favourite part of the whole day – the atmosphere was just so amazingly special.”

 

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

“I also really love a good photobooth and we spotted the LOOKLOOK guys at the Etsy wedding fair as we knew that our guests would love getting their pose on. Looking through the pics afterwards has really made us smile.”

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

Words of Wedded Wisdom…

“My tips for anyone planning their wedding would be to really focus on what you and your partner want instead of what bridal magazines or some random person who’s heard that you’re engaged tells you that you absolutely must have. I was amazed at how many little prejudices came out of the woodwork when I discussed wedding planning! We were really lucky to know so many people who could help us out but we were also able to openly discuss what our priorities are with each other. For us, photography and music were really important as we really wanted a massive fun party for our friends and family with beautifully recorded memories, so we didn’t want to scrimp there. But when friends and family offered to help us, we fully took them up on it! My mother teaches at the school where we had our wedding venue and is the musical director at the church where we were married, which had obvious benefits.

Mine and my bridesmaid’s bouquets were done by a family friend (who I was a bridesmaid for as a child) and the vintage Bentley belongs to and was driven by another friend of ours – so we really lucked out! My sister in law made chocolate truffles and cake and was on hand to help and AWFUL lot. We were also able to borrow things like lanterns from the school to line the church path and Ed designed our wedding invitations.

Also, don’t worry about making everything yourself – I wanted to make umpteen paper lanterns and snow shaker table numbers initially but got a bit behind and panicky and ended up eBaying the lanterns and just handwriting our table numbers.

We were also quite strict with our guest list – my litmus test rule was ‘would I sit down with this person and buy them dinner?’ – if the answer was no (and they weren’t important family members… joke!) then they were off the list. harsh but necessary!”

gold wedding dress, winter wedding, Lillian and Leonard photography

 

One of the most classy and elegant winter weddings I’ve seen in a while.

Happy almost-six month anniversary to you Julia and Edward and many thanks as always to the wonderful Lillian & Leonard.

Are you planning a winter wedding and if so, have you got your photographers booked up yet?

Love Annabel

 

Photographer – Lillian & Leonard
Venue – Abbots Hill School
Wedding Dress – Ebay
Veil/Headpiece – Ebay
Brides’ shoes – Manolo Blahnik
Groom’s Attire – Jaegar suit + Hugo Boss
Bridesmaid – EBay dress + Topshop silver platforms
Cheese Cake – Fine Cheese
Entertainment – The Rebel Party
Hair Stylist – BM was by Karen Berry (no website)
Makeup Artist – Virginia Boyd (no website
Photobooth Hire – LOOKLOOK

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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.

5 thoughts on “A Gold Wedding Dress for an Elegant, Candlelit Winter Wedding

  1. When you say that you munched the biscuits and disturbed the admin staff, I remembered my day when I was in school. I did the same thing, but I did it when I was in college. 🙂
    Coming to the point now, I love the dress and its golden touch. And yes, in winters its really hard to wear and most specifically to choose a wedding gown that makes you comfortable in the chilling weather. I hope you haven’t get caught by the cold that day.

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