Emerald Art Deco Wedding

Written by: louise

So, you might know by now I have a little crush on film photography. There's just something about the softness & light that seems to perfectly fit the romance of a wedding day. And I think it's rather lovely this twenties-inspired celebration was captured on film by talented Charlie of CKB Photography - a medium which gives the images a timeless elegance and a endless sense of style. Add to the mix a Jenny Packham dress, emerald & gold peacock-inspired details from PaperKnots and the simply stunning Maunsel House as a backdrop and you've got yourself one simply beautiful wedding!

We chose Maunsel House because it had so much character. It's full of history and has such an incredible blend of opulence and elegance mixed with the natural and wild feeling of being on a working estate with animals and beautiful secret gardens - plus the added extra of peacocks roaming everywhere! We wanted everyone to make the most of the weekend, so many of our guests came down the day before and we had a clay pigeon shooting party on the grounds. Later we sat outside and Paul and I hosted a pub quiz (something that we're known for) which was a great way to get everyone together and have a bit of fun.

We were incredibly lucky to get a heatwave on our wedding weekend, so it was 33 degrees on the day, and we were able to get married outside in a civil ceremony. We also had a blessing just with immediate family in a small chapel on the grounds which was a lovely intimate moment.

I actually didn't want a 20's style dress, and hadn't intended to purposefully match it to the overall style of the wedding. In fact I came very close to buying a beautiful Suzanne Neville dress, but as is often the case, I decided to try my Jenny Packham dress as I was leaving the shop. It's so true that you need to try lots of different designs - I never would have imagined choosing a dress like that, but once I put it on that was it! I spent so long looking for the bridesmaids dresses, as I had a very clear idea of colour and style, but wanted something just a little different to the norm. So, I was so lucky and happy to find them in Coast! My bridesmaids have very different hair colour and skin tones but the emerald green looked beautiful on both of them. Bridesmaid dress shopping was also made harder by the fact that one bridesmaid lives in Thailand and the other gave birth just a few months before the wedding! My favourite little touch was the flag that George, the page boy carried down the aisle in front of me, saying 'Here comes the Bride'. George and Milly, the flower girl, were only 2 and 3, so it could have gone horribly wrong! Thankfully they were just gorgeously well behaved on the day and giving George a flag to wave meant he had something fun to do, which helped! As with many brides this year, I loved the idea of an Art Deco feel, but didn't want it to become too themed, and then we loved the peacocks so much that they become a huge influence on the design and colours. Lisa at PaperKnots came up with the art-deco style Peacock design that we used throughout our stationery, and then I matched the bridesmaid dresses and the decoration to the emerald green and blue colourings from the peacock. We wanted our tables named after London tube stops, so gave Lisa the difficult brief of creating a tube map in the same design as everything else - she did an incredible job and every guest commented on it. In fact, it's now framed on the wall of our study at home! We wanted the meal to be as fun as possible, so we raided the guests' Facebook photos and used the funniest ones for their namecards, we wrote our own trivia on the back of the menus, and our favours were personalised bottles of Jaegermeister (because we got together on a ski trip!)...with personalised M&Ms for the non-drinkers. Once we'd cut the cake, we all downed the shots to kick off the party!

***

We were over the moon with our photographs from Charlie at CKB Photography, they were all shot on film and so beautiful we didn't stop looking at them for days!

Suppliers:

Categories: *** · Tags: art deco, ckb photography, emerald, film photography, jenny packham, maunsel house, paperknots, vintage