Booking the Wedding Reporter for our wedding (or should I say weddings?!) was one of the best decisions we made. Emma attended both our small registry office wedding and our big festival, outdoor wedding two days later, and wrote the most beautiful report of our special days. She captured so much and many things I didn’t even know happened on the day. We now have the most beautiful story of our wedding (beautiful bound) to treasure forever and share with our children. I’d love to read it as a family each year on our anniversary to help keep the special memories in all of our minds.

Emma blends into a wedding day perfectly and is super professional. She captures so many wonderful details and beautifully describes the emotions. Having a wedding report to go with your photographs really does make for a perfect combination.

You can read our wedding report on Emma’s lovely new website. Have a tissue to hand!

Thank you again Emma for being a part of our celebrations and for creating the most beautiful, treasured story, which we will hand down the generations. x

I love the fact that I get to have two Happy Birthday posts on my blog today! For two super lovely people. My daughter shares her birthday with our great friend Christian who has a very special birthday today! Here he is with Imogen the day after this very special day!

As well as being a very lovely friend Christian is also a very talented dress maker. He made my wedding dress {as well as half the dresses in my wardrobe!} and all the bridesmaids’ dresses for my wedding. The man is a genius! The whole experience of having a bespoke Mr Christian dress is so special. I can highly recommend him. My dress was made from vintage cotton lace from the year I was born! In the day it was all white but in the evening we changed the bow and the underskirt to hot pink! The following day I wore my dress with jeans instead of an underskirt for my son’s naming ceremony. So many looks from just one amazing dress.

{thank you to Charis and Owen for these two photos!}

If you are in Birmingham you must visit Christian’s shop People, which he runs with the gorgeous Allison and Jo! It is quite simply my favourite shop in the whole world.

Christian, I hope you have a truly magical day full of love, happiness and lots and lots of smiles! We love you! xxxxx

When we started planning our wedding a little over a year before the big day we very much hoped that our third child would be both conceived and born in time to be a part of it! Little Max was just 4 months old (minus one day) on our wedding day, so you can imagine that the run up to our wedding was rather challenging with three little children under five to look after, and one of them being very little indeed. Before Max arrived I had done quite a lot of planning (or so I thought) but there was still so much to do.
Our wedding was completely DIY – apart from the cake table which we hired from the venue – everything else had to be sourced, borrowed or made. It was exactly how we wanted it to be but obviously took a lot of work from a lot of people to make it happen. I could do emails but phone calls were more tricky as I rarely had a moment with three sleeping children. My contacts on Twitter were amazing at helping me find suppliers, friends were fabulous at finding things we needed and could borrow, Stef’s mum was a star charity shop shopper but I couldn’t have done any of it without the help and support of our super wedding planner, Charley of London Bride. On the day (or I should say weekend, as she worked incredibly hard Friday-Sunday!) she made sure things went smoothly and without a hitch. I didn’t have to worry about any of the details or things and people arriving the right time. I could just relax and enjoy the day. And what an amazing day it was.

(Taken with love by O&C Photography)

Here are some cute name tags that Charley kindly made for everyone to wear on the Friday and Saturday morning, so people could get to know each other before the wedding. Such a fun and pretty idea!

If you are considering a DIY wedding (and I don’t just mean the details, I mean pulling the whole thing together with a blank canvas to work with) then please consider hiring a wedding planner (or two!) to help you keep it all together in the run up and make the day run smoothly without you having to worry about a thing.
If you are getting married and have young children or a husband/wife-to-be that works insanely long hours (I have both of these things!) then a wedding planner is essential. You just won’t be able to manage it all yourself. And, that is probably true for any type of wedding. Not just one like ours!

We cannot say thank you enough to Charley for helping us to create a wedding beyond our wildest dreams! Three cheers for the wedding planner! xxxxx

I thought it would be nice to post some of my planning here. Lots of the planning involves making. How could the wedding of two creatives not involve a lot of DIY styling? We have more ideas than time, so have spread the making love around our friends and family too.

More coming soon but here’s a little taster of colours, fabrics and buttons. There will be lots of buttons!

We all like a bit of structure in our life {whether we admit to it or not!} and although floaty, floral and ruffled details at a wedding can be beautiful, clean lines, structure and more angular shapes can be particularly striking and modern. An emerging trend in wedding design is origami.

Of course, inspired from the East where origami is believed to have originated as an art form, gold and oranges seemed a great highlight colour to combine with the folding and pleating details, and just a dash of pink softens the overall look.

Whether or not you are a dab hand at it, there are so many different ways of incorporating this into your wedding style and whether it’s just a few tiny touches like paper cranes {which are a sign of peace} here and there or making more bold statements such as the style of the dress, I think there are elements for everyone and their budgets in this board.

Golden Fold ~ Credits {from top left}

An alternative to the guest book is this Wish Tree where guests leave a note for the bride and groom ~ Paper Bird Design 

This Lily bouquet is an alternative to fresh flowers show your inner creative and make your own or head to Etsy for something similar ~ The Princess of Pop Ups

Take your guests back to their childhoods and give the cute Love Origami fortune teller as a favour ~ Cox and Cox

Dress your girls up in this uber slimming structured Tango Kaitlin dress ~ Reiss

Paper cranes are one of the biggest trends right now learn how to make them with this video ~ Sparkling Sweet Origami

Ensure the groom is in the running of the style stakes with a flamboyant orange bow tie ~ via One Simple Addition

Add a touch of bling with this Stella McCartney pyramid bangle in gold of course! ~ Net-A-Porter

For the main event, choose a structured dress like ‘Romeo’ with folds, pleats & pockets the simple clear lines look striking ~ Rosa Clara

Every bride needs a good luck charm and what better way to have it adorning your neck with this gold peace crane necklace ~ Max Steiner

Make your own paper pinwheels and line them up for a wonderful whimsical view ~ via The Bespoke Wedding Company

This beautiful origami heart invitation will stay in the hearts of your guests for a long time to come ~ Paper Bird Design

Get the girls together for a craft session to make their own origami boquets like this zingy tulip one ~ Flickr

For real attention to detail, these Lotus Flower place settings are beautifully crafted ~ Paper Bird Design

With all this structure break free and rebel a little by wearing these cheerful Posie peep toes under your dress ~ Asos

Jazz up a simple white iced cake with decorative cranes scattered over the cake ~ via Brooklyn Bride

This year I have decided to write about ideas for weddings in addition to my wedding photography. I came across these cute and deliciously scented bath flowers while in Paperchase the other day. They would make perfect wedding favours for a Spring wedding.

The company is based in Scotland and they produce beautifully printed, letterpress designs. Being the stationery addict that I am I fell in love with it and am looking at working with them for some of my new 2009 products.

If you are looking for gorgeous wedding stationery to really wow your guests then look no further!

So, weddings are detail heaven for me! Having spent several years working on my fine art photography before turning my attention to weddings, I like to create beautiful images from the small but very important details I find. These images are often some of my clients’ favourites because these are the details they have spent months, sometimes years, planning.

Here are some of my favourite details from 2008!

It was a great day and really busy, so that was super. I was particularly impressed by the stand opposite me – Elizabeth’s Emporium. Her cakes were amazing to look at and tasted divine. I often find at weddings that the cakes can look gorgeous but taste dreadful – Elizabeth has a winning combination in design and taste.

On Saturday it is my sister’s wedding in Devon. I can’t wait! I have been helping her to organize various things for the wedding and was delighted when this beautiful bag of rose petals arrived from Shropshire petals.

The packaging is perfect and they smell wonderful. I can’t wait for these to be scattered down the aisle by my little girl!