Every so often you come across a wedding that makes you smile, I mean a real, earsplitting, cheshire cat of a grin and you just can’t help but clap your hands together and hug anyone and everyone that’s in the vicinity.
Jon and Eppie’s colour pop affair is one of those weddings and I’m lucky enough to be able to share it with you lovelies this morning.
I love Eppie’s approach to her and Jon’s big day – choosing their venue by sampling the quality of its fish and chips one sunny afternoon, dressing her maids in glitzy party frocks and walking out to Star Girl by McFly (immense song choice!). This is a girl that knows how to have fun and not sweat the small stuff.
And by jove it shows.
Just wait until you see the group shots on the beach…you’ll be smiling all day once you’ve clapped eyes on them.
Take it away Eppie…
Summer Seems Too Far Away
Eppie The Bride:We got married on the 26th January 2013. Mainly, we chose this date as we didn’t want to wait for the summer, also “nothing really happens in January”. We got married in St Peter’s church in Brighton, as this is our church, which we attend regularly, it’s also where we met.
The reception venue took slightly longer to find as we were on a tight budget and we didn’t want a “traditional venue”. We finally found Brighton Music Hall and it was perfect. We went down to visit it on a sunny afternoon, tried out their fish and chips and knew it was the one. It was a double bonus when we found out their wedding menu consisted of winter pimm’s, fish & chips, knickerbocker glories and mojitos!
The Perfect Dress
My dress was from Coast, however I found my top on ASOS marketplace! When I started trying on dresses I soon discovered that my main priority was that I wanted to be able to dance in it! To be honest most of the longer gowns just didn’t really allow for this. I found a beautiful shorter dress in a boutique in London however the price was slightly out of our price range.
Fortunately later the same day I was trying on bridesmaid’s dresses (for my sister’s wedding) in Coast and that’s when I spotted their bridal range! I tried on one of their shorter dresses and although slightly plainer than what I wanted, I saw the potential and for a bargain price of £300 too! I knew then exactly what kind of top I wanted so I just searched until I found the one and then with some adaptation and tweaking I had the perfect dress!
As my hair was already bright red I wanted to try to keep my hair simple so I found a diamante hair band with a tie at the back from Etsy and then wore a shorter length veil which I borrowed from my sister.
The shoes were very important to me! As I had a shorter dress, I knew I needed some shoes that were going to stand out. I probably took longer finding these than anything else! To be honest they probably took priority over the dress. I found my shoes while I was just walking through Brighton; I always have a nosy at the Irregular Choice shoe display and saw that they had a sale on, so I went in just in case. I saw the shoes and knew they were the perfect pair, not too crazy but definitely unmissable!
Perfect For All Weathers
I wanted to keep my hair and make-up fairly natural, and fortunately I had a friend who is very good at both! I knew I could trust her to do what I wanted without really having to tell her; we had a practice two days before the wedding and got it right first time. She put a plait through my hair leading down into a side ponytail, perfect for the windy seafront!
A Riot Of Colour
Jon and I know very little about flowers or arrangements but it didn’t matter at all because Susie Cooke did! She was highly recommended by a friend of ours (her sister, in fact). All I knew was that I wanted a mixture of flowers and colours. We were going to put little bouquets in bottles and jars around the venues. She sorted everything out and sent me pictures of mock bouquets, we loved them and they looked beautiful on the day.
A Bit Of Sparkle
Bridesmaid dresses were a bit tricky as all of my bridesmaids are blessed with very different figures! In the end I decided to have different bridesmaids dresses but all in a similar shade of neutral colours. We ended up buying two from Topshop and two from Miss Selfridge.
Because we were shopping in the Christmas season we were able to find dresses with a bit of beading and sparkle, which tied them all together nicely as well as with mine! Fortunately my bridesmaids were good enough not to complain despite me making them wear very short dresses in January!
Colour Pop
Jon and his ushers all wore basically the same thing. I had banned Jon right from the beginning from wearing tails. He just looks so hot in a suit but the rest he chose, even his red tie (he didn’t know my shoes were going to be red). The jackets were flecked navy blue with a darker navy trim around the lapels and pockets and they wore bluey-grey chinos to match; we bought both the jackets and trousers from H&M.
Each usher wore their own white shirt, brown belt and brown shoes. Jon wore a Jack Wills shirt, Topman belt and Ask The Missus brogue style shoes.
To match the colourful flowers we wanted each usher to have a different coloured tie and matching socks. We ended up finding these brightly coloured, knitted ties from The Tie Bar website, about £15 each including postage. The hard part was finding the same coloured socks to match the tie colours! Finally, about a week before the wedding we found a set from Debenhams, with all the colours in for about £5 in the sale! Jon wore the red tie and red socks wchich matched me perfectly.
No Tongues Please
I knew photos would be difficult for me as I am not very good at having my photo taken unless it involves me sticking my tongue out! It didn’t help that Jon was so picky about the look and feel of them. When we found navyblur, we knew we had to have them. Their photos were by far the best we saw! They looked fun, unintrusive and really captured the feel of the wedding! They made our photos a lot of fun and delivered exactly what we wanted. It became a real highlight of the day, we even ended up on the beach volley ball court, having a quick game!
Red Velvet
We weren’t too picky about what our cake looked like we just wanted it to be yummy! Kathie Price (a family friend of Jon’s) had made cakes for some other occassions and so we asked her if she would bake ours. We decided on red velvet cupcakes with a main slightly larger red velvet cake on top of the stand. She didn’t let us down…the cakes were SO good and they looked amazing too. Kathie had started a floristry course too, so she liased with Susie and sourced similar flowers for the decorations.
The Birds
We are lucky enough to have two very talented friends Sarah & Jonny Bird. Jonny arranged and performed accoustic versions of Katy Perry’s ‘Teenage dream’, and John Mayers verion of ‘Free Fallin’ while we signed the register. Then Jonny and Sarah performed an acoustic set as our guests were arriving to the evening reception. Later on, Jonny did a DJ set for us full of total floor fillers which was perfect as it allowed us to bust out some moves.
Choosing our first dance was difficult as me and Jon don’t have a lot of music in common… except maybe McFly! And we already used Star Girl as our exit song at the ceremony. So after LOTS of discussion we finally both decided on having Death Cab for Cutie, ‘I will follow you into the dark’. We went and saw them play in Paris together for Jon’s birthday the year before, a really intimate gig in a beautiful small theatre. So it was kind of special for us! Although some people would say the song is depressing (seeing as it’s actually about death) we think it’s probably the most beautiful song about death you can find, and it’s actually quite romantic!
The Best Kind Of Favours
I find the best kind of favours are edible ones, so this it was a no brainer for us… we had sweets! We bought some striped bags which kind of matched our invites, then we filled them with a mixture of sweets and tied it up with string and a name tag (doubling up nicely as a place name!).
We wanted to try and keep the decor generally simple and stress free. We already liked the look of our venue so once the flowers, table numbers and place names were in we didn’t feel it needed much more! So we just added some fairy lights (let’s face it, they make anywhere feel more cosy) and tea lights. After that, it looked perfect!
The church hall was pretty bare, and we were using it for drinks and cakes straight after the service! So the day before, after the rehearsal, we hung up some bunting, threw on some tablecloths and borrowed the big polystyrene ‘LOVE’ from our friends who got married a few years ago! It worked a charm.
Keeping Your Priorities Straight
The main priority when organising our wedding was for it to be relaxed and feel like “us”, rather than it feeling like a traditional wedding… So there was plenty of food, drink and a whole heap of fun & dancing 
I don’t think I’ve ever laughed as much as on our wedding day, thanks to some very entertaining speeches and general merriment!
One thing that we think worked well, were our little message cards. It’s so hard to get people to sign a message book. Either no one goes to the table to sign it, or you get the same five people leaving more than one message! We decided to give little business card sized message cards out while we signed the register, that way everyone got to write something at a time when they would usually be doing nothing! Now we have hundreds of lovely little messages that we can just slot into a business card binder!
Click here & view all images from this wedding
Venue – Brighton Music Hall
Dress – Coast
Groom H&M
Entertainment – Sarah and Jonny Bird
Photography – navyblur
If there’s one thing I love about this wedding then it’s that everyone is having a ruddy good time. I mean take a look at Jon & Eppie doing their thang on the dancefloor; you can literally feel the energy pulsing from them can’t you.
Right that’s it, I’m off dancing tonight. Congratulations you two – you clearly had a whale of a time.
All my love Lolly xxx