Wedding Video Madness - Daisy Jenks.

I think Wedding Videos are a bit like Marmite... you either love them, or you hate them!  Before I got married I wasn't too fussed and the thought of boring countless friends with your Wedding video for years to come, or sitting in and watching it on your anniversary every year just made me cringe. However, it is the only thing I regrets not doing for our Wedding.  The whole event flew past so quickly that I really think having a video would remedy the feeling of... where did that day go?   It was the Wedding video of Chloe and James (featured on yesterday's Real Wedding post) that made me think to write this post.  Even though I didn't know any of the faces it made me chuckle throughout the entire video and made me think what a great momento of the day to have.  Looking further into the company that produced Chloe's Wedding video I watched more of Daisy Jenk's work and love her style.

Although Daisy, from what I saw on her website and Vimeo channel works to a very set routine for every video she produces I think she achieves some amazing results.  It also seems to be a very simple, pain free (for the Bride and Groom as well as their Wedding guests) process.  Together with her client she chooses a soundtrack (or a couple) to work with, she then goes through the lyrics and considers how they might work on film. Daisy then chooses the backdrops when she arrives,  approaches the guests telling them what she is doing and asks them to feature on a 10 second clip. Telling them the words to sing they do a couple of practice takes, get it right and then go back to the party.  Working through the entire Wedding party makes it really special to get everyone featured. The cost of filming and editing for Weddings varies from £1,000 to £2,000 (depending on the event, location, and how long it takes). Post approval you are then supplied with three DVDs and a link to Vimeo to share with your guests.

A Very Natural, Stunning Real Wedding

Welcome to the Wedding of Chloe and James, who got married in an absolutely perfect country setting in the village where Chloe grew up. They chose a true country theme, mixing lots of greens, creams, whites and dusky pink tones in order to create an absolute masterpiece.  I will leave Chloe to tell you the tale of her amazing Wedding Day...

The most memorable part of the day was having all of our most favourite people in one place. It was very overwhelming, especially as some had come from so far away. Lots of James’ family are based in Hong Kong.

I absolutely hated Wedding dress shopping! I went to so many places and because I had no idea what kind of dress I wanted I found it totally impossible to decide.  I fell for a dress in every place I went to! It was my mum who finally gave me the best advice which made me make a decision, she told me I had to decide how I wanted to feel on the day and what would feel most ‘me’.  I decided on a designer called Emma Hunt, based in Wimbledon, she works from home and has a very small collection.  I loved the fact that she starts making the dress only 6 weeks before the wedding so you’re closer to having your wedding body!  A lot of designers that we saw would have started making the dress in January and that scared the life out of me. Emma was so calming and helpful and I ended up totally re-modelling the original dress I’d chosen and incorporated three of her dresses into one – she wasn’t the least bit miffed about this (as I know some designers would be). She just kept saying we would 100% end up with my perfect dress, whatever it took – which we did!  My husband to be wore a very traditional morning suit but incorporated a special Thomas Pink tie with rabbits on as we have house bunnies at home.  Very weirdly my brother chose the same tie (luckily in a different colour) to wear in tribute to us.

My bridesmaids wore Dessy. We were so lucky as both my bridesmaids moved abroad pretty soon after we were engaged so we only had one weekend in December to find their dresses. I was envisaging a nightmare but we found them in the first shop we went to.  We really wanted them to be comfortable so were totally ready for them to choose different styles as there’s nothing worse than seeing an uncomfortable bridesmaids pulling her dress up/down but they both loved the same dress and both looked gorgeous in them.

We decided to opt for a cheese Wedding cake! We all love cheese and I had been told by so many couples that their cake had gone to waste after their Wedding.  I had also fallen in love with a pudding that I wanted our caterer to serve so there wasn’t the option of having cake for dessert.  I sadly didn’t have any but I heard it was amazing, there were a lot of compliments in the thank you letters!

We decided to have 'country style flowers' to go with our typical country wedding, all cream, white, green and dusky pinks.  I wanted everything to be very relaxed and understated so we had flowers in Bon Maman jam jars (covered in lace) on the tables.

James’ brother is a professional photographer (John Alexander Photography) so who we should use was a very easy choice. We were more than thrilled with the photographs. John's style is very relaxed and for someone who absolutely hates having their photo taken I barely knew he was there which was heaven!

I was very lucky and my parents did a lot towards the planning of the Wedding which was great.  We luckily all had the same vision for how we wanted the day to be, a relaxed, happy and most of all fun day... which thankfully it was!   I loved the food tastings, HATED doing the guest list as it was so hard whittling down our numbers. Our initial list (including parents friends) was around 220 people so it was really hard getting it down to around 180.  I’d always wanted a smaller Wedding of around 120 people but quickly realised this wasn’t going to happen.  The whole Wedding planning process took around 9 months and we had all the major things like church, band, caterers etc booked early so could relax for a while before the final countdown.

We had the BEST band called Mode Showband, we’d highly highly recommend them. They were literally incredible and the dance floor was always full which i think is always a great sign. We also had a really fun videographer called Daisy Jenks who was brilliant and did quite a different style of wedding vid, have a look.... http://vimeo.com/44750038.  We knew we’d have John’s amazing pics so we wanted something a little more fun and it was great that the guests had something to do during the 'Champagne bit' which can sometimes drag on! We have had so many compliments about the video and I’m still watching it a lot as a reminder, it makes me want to do the whole day again! A very close friend of ours also sang our first dance (Mr Jones) which was amazing and really special, especially for me.

Chloe's Three Top Tips:

1.  Force yourself to eat on the day, I was so nervous/excited so didn’t remember to eat but wish I had later on as champagne went slightly to my head!
2. Take some time out with your new hubby to ‘take it all in’ – it all whizzes by so quickly and before you know it however many months of planning are all over!
3. Ask as many friends as possible to take extra photographs, although you’ll probably have a professional photographer some of our funniest photographs are ones that friends took.  I’m really appreciative that people made the effort to take and send us extra photos.

Suppliers:
Dress -  Emma Hunt in Wimbledon / Veil -  Emma Hunt / Shoes -  Jimmy Choo / Flowers -  Rachel Jones / Make-up – Gemma Aldou / Bridesmaid Dresses - Dessy / Cake -  Carte Blanche (our caterers) / Photographer – John Alexander

A Romantic and Relaxed Real Wedding

Welcome to the beautiful Wedding of Abbie and Joe who tied the knot this Summer in the most relaxed and romantic fashion possible. Their Wedding featured so many personal details close to their hearts... from Abbie's Dad and friends entertaining the guests to their Labrador arriving to celebrate with them all.  I hope you enjoy this absolutely stunning Wedding.

I really enjoyed planning my Wedding, we got engaged at the end of September and married in June so it was about 9 months from start to finish. The very beginning the most exciting, coming up with ideas and researching. Once we’d decided on all the different elements and booked things I lost interest a bit as it wasn’t so exciting, then I got excited again about a month before the wedding.

I bought my dress from a shop in Stony Stratford. It was by a designer called Anna Suly and I found it quite quickly – I think I only tried about 4 dresses on in total. I didn’t think the experience was as great as you’re led to believe though. The dress was perfect and just what I had dreamed of but I had to go back lots of times for adjustments which sometimes hadn’t been done with lots of waiting. I wasn’t made to feel very special, in fact the lady that owned the shop (and I’d met many times) didn’t even know who I was when I came to pick my dress up the day before the wedding!

Our Photographer (Neil Palmer) photographed a friend’s wedding and took some incredible photos, we thought he was great so we booked him straightaway.

My favourite memory from our Wedding was when, at about 11pm, I walked over to my Mum's house (opposite the venue) to get something, as I looked back all of the tipis were lit up from the fires and lights and I could hear one of our friends playing his guitar and all of the guests clapping and cheering, it was a lovely moment I won’t forget I don’t think.

The bridesmaids wore peach coloured dresses from Topshop, they were backless and covered in sequins – they looked gorgeous!

We arranged for a friend to bring our Labrador over for a couple of hours during the reception so that we could see her on our big day – everything was so manic I’d actually forgotten she was coming and burst into tears when I saw her running towards us over the field! It wouldn’t have been the same without her there.

My dad’s band played a set early in the evening with one of our bridesmaids singing, then we had a friend DJ and then another friend played his guitar later on. My fire spinning teacher also came and gave us a performance.

Many thanks goes to the photographer Neil Palmer.

Abbie's Three Top Tips:

1.  Don't obsess about the weather in the run up to the wedding day, you can ruin the excitement of the run up to the day by worrying what the weather will be like and checking hundreds of different weather forecasts. There's no point, there's absolutely nothing you can do to change it and the weirdest thing is - on the day you really don't care! 

2.  Take your time doing supplier research and negotiate! I am very impatient and couldn't bear the thought of spending hours getting three quotes for everything and negotiating with suppliers, I wanted to pick the first one I found and pay the price they quoted. Luckily my boyfriend (sorry, husband!) is the complete opposite and must have saved us thousands by putting the time in and not accepting the first price we were offered.

3.  The things that you think are really important, really aren't on the day. I spent ages meticulously planning out timings for everything to happen so the day ran like clockwork and I really worried that people wouldn't do things when they were supposed to and it would be a disaster. In reality, a  lot of things didn't happen when they were supposed to, some didn't happen at  all, but it didn't matter - no one noticed and I was having so much fun I didn't care that the wrong music was played, the tea lights weren't lit when darkness fell and the evening caterer set up in completely the wrong place!

Suppliers:

Dress -  Anna Suly / Veil - Martin Charles / Bridesmaid Dresses - Top Shop / Photographer - Neil Palmer / Tent - www.elitetents.co.uk