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Photo of the Week

Helen — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 10:00:01 +0000

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Wedding Planning Top Tip

Helen — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:30:35 +0000

Make the most of your budget by re-using flower arrangements from the ceremony at the reception. Pew ends can be used to decorate staircases or tied onto the back of chairs for the wedding breakfast, whilst altar or ceremony table arrangements can be used to decorate a long top table or mantelpiece.

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Real Wedding Sneak Peek – Julie and Andrew

Helen — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:30:55 +0000

The start of August signalled the arrival of Julie and Andrew’s wedding in London, and having worked with them since last November we’d been looking foward to this one for some time. The day started with a lovely church ceremony in Norbury and was followed by a reception at Dartmouth House, a beautiful Grade II listed mansion house in the heart of Mayfair. Here are a few photos from the day, taken by the highly talented Yvonne Blume.

Julie looked absolutely stunning in a lace Suzanne Neville gown…

The drawing room at Dartmouth House was elegantly decorated in keeping with the style of the day, and the soft blue walls perfectly complemented the silver and white colour scheme…

Julie opted for individual miniature wedding cakes, which guests took home as favours at the end of the day. The iced detailing was exquisite and perfectly matched the lace overlay of Julie’s wedding dress…

We designed a retro candy buffet for the evening, with sweets including jelly babies, foam shrimps, jazzie chocolate drops and fizzy cola bottles – the guests absolutely loved it!

Julie and Andrew were great fun and I will miss working with them. Check out Yvonne’s blog here for some images of the day, and be sure to stop by again in a few weeks when we’ll have a full report and more photos to share with you.

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Mood Board Monday #30 – True Blood

Helen — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:30:16 +0000

If, like me, you’re a bit of a True Blood fan you’ll have probably heard the news last week that Anna Saquin and Stephen Moyer (aka Sookie Stackhouse and Bill Compton) tied the knot in a private ceremony on a beach in Malibu. So today’s board is a sexy and sultry offering inspired by the hit vampire TV series – I’ll be honest, you do need to be a bit daring for this one!

Any of you that watch True Blood will know that it isn’t for the squeamish or prudish (I wouldn’t advise watching it during dinner!), but for this wedding I wanted to create something modern and stylish, rather than gory and shocking. Black and red are obvious choices for the colour scheme, but I’ve also blended in a deep purple to soften the contrast between these colours and add another dimension to the design.

I envisage this wedding taking place in the city, in an underground vault with bare brick walls – maybe somewhere like London’s Vinopolis. After all, everyone knows vampires can’t come out in daylight! Lighting, therefore, is a key component of the design, and I imagine the room to be washed in red light, with hundreds of tea lights and candles used throughout the space to create a soft and romantic ambience.

The decor is also really important for this design, and I would use large symmetrical flower arrangements for eye-catching focal points, whilst all of the table linen would be black, with red wine goblets providing a striking contrast without being overpowering. Guests would be treated to ‘themed’ cocktails, such as Bloody Marys, and I just love the idea of serving red velvet wedding cake for dessert and leaving miniature bottles of “Tru-Blood” red wine as favours.

Photo Credits:
Table number and place setting: Pure:Photography via The Wedding Chicks
Wedding gown: Jenny Packham
Bouquet: Silvana di Franco via Project Wedding
Bill and Sookie: Photo Bucket
Red lit room: Beautiful Blooms via Brides
Candles: Courtenay Lambert via Style Me Pretty
Cocktails: The Knot
Bridesmaid dress: Jim Hjelm Occasions
Shoe: Christian Louboutin
Cake: Meg Perotti via Style Me Pretty

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Photo of the Week

Helen — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:30:23 +0000

One of the best parts of my job is getting to browse through the work of some extremely talented wedding photographers – it never ceases to amaze me how they capture split-second emotions and minute details. So starting from today I’m running a new Friday feature on the blog where I showcase my favourite photo of the week, starting with this gorgeous offering from Marianne Taylor.

If you’re a talented wedding photographer and have a favourite photo that you would like to submit for Photo of the Week, please e-mail it to me and I’ll be sure to take a look.

Photo Credit: Marianne Taylor Photography

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Press Feature – Entertainment Options

Helen — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 13:30:09 +0000

I was recently asked to contribute to an article on wedding entertainment options for Your Herts and Beds Wedding magazine – you can read the full piece here. If you’re planning a wedding in Hertfordshire or Bedfordshire, make sure you check out the magazine for plenty of venue and supplier ideas.

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Mad About…Velvet Weddings

Helen — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 13:30:26 +0000

Velvet Weddings launched their online wedding store earlier this year, which is jam-packed with gorgeous decorations and accessories. I recently received their wooden love heart and metal love birds heart, which would be perfect for a rustic or country garden theme wedding…

Velvet is a family business that has been running since 2000 in Brighton, but the popularity of their wedding decorations has led them to launch an online store to cater for brides nationally. They have some beautiful items, including place setting decorations, lanterns, bunting, vintage birdcages and tea light holders. Their most popular decorations include these rustic “LOVE” blocks…

…Union Jack bunting…

… antique photo frames…

…a country-style wicker heart…

… and these pretty Victorian tea lights…

In addition to being able to search for specific items you can also shop by specific themes. Not only does this make it easy to browse and compare decorations and accessories, but it’s also a great source of inspiration if you’re still deciding on what will work for your particular wedding style. I would definitely recommend having a nose around their store, but take a cup of tea with you because you’ll be there a while! These are my particular favourites…

Cupcake and canapé flags…

Retro ‘bathroom’ sign…

Printed metal pears…

Vintage-style glass bottle…

Mini wooden birdhouse (so cute!)…

…and this teapot-shaped chalkboard, just because I love tea!

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Real Wedding Sneak Peek – Bita and Seun

Helen — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 14:30:25 +0000

With wedding season in full swing the last few weeks have been particularly busy at HCW headquarters, and at the end of July we were at Nonsuch Mansion in Surrey for the wedding of Bita and Seun. Having worked with them so closely for the last 5 months it was great to see everything come together so perfectly on the day. The full report will be on the blog soon, but for now here are a few snippets of the day as captured by the brilliant Lloyd Dobbie.

Bita adores flowers, so we filled the house with stunning arrangements created by Hybrid the Florist. These are the chair ties that we used to line the aisle for the ceremony, which we then re-used as chair backs for the top table…

The cake was a 3-tier combination of chocolate, marble and vanilla sponge provided by the super-talented Zoe of Zoe Clark Cakes – there wasn’t a single crumb left by the end of the evening!

Bita looked breathtaking in her Ian Stuart wedding gown – this is one of my absolute favourite photos of the day…

And the shoes were from Gina – need I say more?!

Check out Lloyd’s blog post here for more photos from the day, and be sure to stop by the blog again soon for our full report.

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Press Feature – Small Celebrations and White Weddings

Helen — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 09:00:51 +0000

The latest issue of Brides magazine dropped through our letterbox the other day, and we were delighted to see some of our comments featured in two articles. You can read our tips for styling a white wedding here, and our take on why brides and grooms are opting for smaller wedding celebrations here.

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Reading: “The Key To Love”

Helen — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 14:20:32 +0000

The key to love is understanding…
The ability to comprehend not only the spoken word
But those unspoken gestures,
The little things that say so much by themselves.

The key to love is forgiveness…
To accept each others faults and pardon mistakes
Without forgetting, but with remembering
What you learn from them.

The key to love is sharing…
Facing your good fortune as well as the bad, together.
Both conquering problems, forever searching for ways
To intensify your happiness

The key to love is giving…
Without thought of return,
But with the hope of just a simple smile
And by giving in but never giving up.

The key to love is respect…
Realising that you are two separate people, with different ideas.
That you don’t belong to each other,
You belong with each other, and share a mutual bond.

The key to love is inside us all…
It takes time and patience to unlock all the ingredients.
It is the continual learning process that demands a lot of work…
But the rewards are more than worth the effort…

And that is the key to love!

Anon

Photo Credit: Lloyd Dobbie