DIY Pink & Gold Glitter Quirky Wedding

I have a LOT of love for this colourful, DIY celebration held at Pollokshields Burgh Hall in Glasgow. Why? Let me share all.

WWW readers Sara and Neil were married in a humanist ceremony on Friday 22nd May 2015, which celebrated their 11 year relationship. They injected a Spring feeling with seasonal bright blooms and a fun pink and gold colour scheme. They incorporated giant letter balloons, DIY décor and gold glitter throughout which really added personality. Their son, nephew and niece all walked down the aisle with balloons which was super sweet.

Sara’s Flossy & Dossy gown was adorable teamed with blue heels and birdcage veil, the bridesmaids wore vibrant raspberry frocks, while Neil went for a traditional kilt. You guys are going to love this wedding.

Thanks so much to Photography34 for sharing these marvellous images today.

THE PROPOSAL | After 10 years and a having our son it still came as a massive surprise, Neil arranged an overnight stay at the St Andrews Old Course Hotel to celebrate our 10 year anniversary at the end of October 2013. I had no idea at all what was in store, on arrival we were informed we had been upgraded to a suite, and being a bit naïve I thought our luck was in, unbeknown to me Neil had already been in contact with the hotel informing them of his intentions, entering our luxurious suite which had amazing views across the east coast and along the famous old course fairway I couldn’t believe our luck it was then Neil proceeded to explain that it wasn’t luck and the real reason was that he wanted to ask me to marry him….! After I got over the shock, there was never going to be any doubt about my answer!

THE VISION | Having been to our fair share of weddings over the years we knew what we liked, our day had to be a simple, fun, relaxed, light hearted celebration of us becoming the “Hubbert” family that involved all our family and friends.

We had to have live music, good food and a ceremony that reflected us.

THE PLANNING PROCESS | Working together we researched and booked the big 5 (venue, humanist celebrant, photographer, caterer and band) within a couple of months of our date being set.

Everything else was based on the last decision, my dress style set the overall theme of fun and colour so with that the invitation style was set, décor, bridesmaid dresses, kilts and flowers followed. Using inspiration from Pinterest, forums and wedding blogs we were able to find the right suppliers and products.

BUDGET | We set a budget and we stuck to it, with no idea of how much wedding stuff would be I made a spreadsheet and estimated costs for everything that I thought we would need and made it my goal to bring everything under that estimate, and I am proud to say we done just that!! By bringing in our day under budget it allowed us to look at our wish lists and we were able to hire in a photobooth that we arranged 3 days before the wedding!

THE VENUE | We knew from the outset we wanted a venue that we could bring in suppliers, and make the day our own, to be honest we didn’t look anywhere else, Neil was best man at his brother’s wedding at Pollokshields Burgh Hall a few years before and we loved its location on the edge of Maxwell Park which is just 5 minutes away from the centre of Glasgow. We were able to hire the whole venue which allowed us to have designated areas for ceremony, reception, bar and seating area we also had access to the park for our drinks reception after the ceremony. It truly is a beautiful timeless building.

THE DRESS & ACCESSORIES | My amazing lace tea length dress was made by the very lovely and talented Wendy of Flossy & Dossy, using the same lace from my dress I commissioned Karen of Bridalblissonline to create my beautiful headpiece with birdcage, my blue shoes were from Roberto Vianni which I purchased from Debenhams, they were love at first sight. I wanted to keep jewellery to a minimum and only decided to wear my mums diamond stud earrings and diamond tennis bracelet the morning of the wedding.

FINDING THE DRESS | It only took one visit to a bridal shop for me to realise I didn’t want a traditional bridal dress, It was at the shop though that they introduced me to a tea length dress which made my mind up that was the style I wanted to go with. It was from there I started following the wedding blogs and forums for ideas on 50s styles that I found Wendy of Flossy & Dossy. The idea of designing my own dress and having the input into every bit of detail was too good an opportunity to miss and it really was surprisingly more cost effective. I really can’t recommend Flossy & Dossy enough, Wendy supported me through all my choices and made every idea a reality, I loved the whole experience and watching it all come together, and it was definitely one of my favourite parts of the wedding preparations.

GROOM’S ATTIRE | No Scottish wedding is complete without a man in Kilt, we choose the Grey Stewart Tartan with grey tweed jacket which we hired from Juliette’s Bridalwear & Kilt Hire, Neil and his brother/best man Gavin wore matching tartan ties and tan Ted Baker brogues. It was important to us that our son Leon and nephew Ross wore mini versions of the adults.

THE READINGS & MUSIC | Entry music: Bruno Marrs Marry You, this was my choice some may think it was cheesy but I loved how uplifting it is.

We choose to have a humanist ceremony after attending a friends and being amazed by the detail and how personalised you can make it. After 11 years we have had a lot of history and wanted to incorporate this into our ceremony and share the details of our relationship i.e. how we met, what we love about each other, and what being married meant to us we were also able add include the Scottish “cup of welcome” or Quaich were both our dads added whiskey to a Quaich to symbolise the families coming together.

We had 2 readings 1 from our sister-in-law Lynsey who chose “Marriage Is”

And 1 we chose for our friend Neil being:

“To a Weddin”

Lest ye forgit yer ain weddin’ day

Listen tae aw ay whit ah hae tae say

Be glad in yer heart fur aw whats tae come

Fur a husband yoo’ll be and a wife you’ll become

An ‘tak’ it aw in as they aw bid ye weel

As aw yer families hearts start tae sweel

Passin oot hankies tae wipe awa tears

A day tae remember through the passin’ ay years

An’ ‘here’s tae aw ay those that ur here

An ‘here’s tae those that we wished that waur near

A smile tae the wee yins that are bonnie and braw

An a nod tae the auld yins that ur here an aw

Tae the husband and wife, afore yoo’s begin

Mind an remember tae tak this day in

An ower the years when this day has passed

Yoo’ll aye be in love an lang may it last

For our ceremony exit song we chose The Verve Lucky Man!

We are both big fans of Sterophonics so for our first song we requested if our band could do an acoustic version of “You’re my Star” leading on full band version after the first verse, they did not disappoint!

BEAUTIFUL BRIDESMAIDS | My 4 bridesmaids are my childhood school friends 2 came over from Australia to be part of our day which meant so much to us both as I couldn’t have imagined being married without them by my side! A LOT of time and 100s of picture messages were shared finding their dresses, more so than my own. I originally wanted them to be their own people but they all insisted on matching, I fell in love with their raspberry coloured, knee length dresses from Warehouse at first sight and luckily the girls loved them too, we teamed them up with gold platform heels from quiz. My niece Robyn who was our flower girl wore a beautiful gold Estella dress from Monsoon, with gold shoes and of course no flower girl is complete without their flower crown of white gyp.

THE FLOWERS | I love how flowers can inject colour into a wedding, I knew I wanted bright, wild spring flowers, that looked as if they were just picked. I am very lucky to have a friend who’s mum is a florist and armed with my Pinterest board and magazine cuttings Ann created my beautiful flowers for my centrepieces, bouquets and the men’s thistle buttonholes (another Scottish must)!

THE CAKE | Our cake was included in our caterer package, fortunately for us they use Special Days one of the best cake suppliers for the West of Scotland, we choose a simple white iced 3 tier vanilla sponge, with white lace and pink peony design, and added our own gold glitter acrylic cake topper from Miss Cake.

YOUR PHOTOGRAPHER | I spent 3 months researching photographers….. it’s not until you start looking that you realise how much you appreciate a good picture, we knew we wanted natural, unposed reportage style so after months of trawling and following all the wedding blogs I came across Tony from Photography34 and we never looked back, he ticked all the boxes and luckily for us loves to travel which was just as well being based in Scarborough. Having booked Tony near enough straight away we made arrangements to pop down and meet up for a pre wedding family shoot with our son, which after a stroll in a downpour on a beach in Filey we got amazing pictures! So we knew our wedding pictures would not disappoint but they exceeded all our expectations, Tony was like a photo ninja and put in so much time and effort I can’t recommend him enough!

THE DETAILS & DÉCOR | I had big ambitions of creating a lot of the décor myself, there are so many ideas and inspiration out there with Pinterest, Instagram and wedding blogs I was maybe too overwhelmed, in the end I had to admit my limitations and focus on what we could do and outsource what we couldn’t!

I collected chip shop pickle jars that I gold glittered for our centrepieces that were filled with flowers and sat on log slices on hessian squares, Neil made Scottish Tablet that we gave as favours along with McMillan charity flower seeds that were used a place settings, these were given the gold glitter treatment also, we strung multi-coloured paper poms poms to twine and hung them around the reception hall, we sourced old tea trolleys that we covered with family wedding pictures, old suitcases with Flip flops (a must) and Tunnocks cakes and biscuits which we arranged around the venue.

With the reception hall having amazing high ceilings we added bunches of multi coloured balloons to add more depth, these tied in amazingly with the beautiful stained glass windows of the hall.

My family own a Kitchen and Bathroom Business, and with their contacts arranged to have our light LOVE letters made, which definitely finished off the décor and looked amazing, we now offer these out to hire.

For the ceremony room we kept it simple with some gold S & N Balloons and some flowers, we wanted the focus to be on us and our ceremony.

THE HONEYMOON | We spent 1 week relaxing in Rhodes with our son at a holiday village, after such a hectic few months it was great having some stress free family time in the sun.

MEMORABLE MOMENTS | Seeing our son, nephew and niece walking in with their balloons before the ceremony.

Sharing the Quaich with our dads during the ceremony, it meant a lot to us to have them involved.

When the beat kicked in during our first dance with our son and sharing it all with our friends and family joining in.

ADVICE FOR OTHER COUPLES | Don’t get caught up in the wedding hype, stand back and remember why you are getting married and what it means to you both.

Think outside the box, we made massive savings on searching out alternative suppliers.

And lastly accept all offers of help, the weeks leading up to the big day are the craziest so all help will be appreciated.

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE |

Photography | Photography34

Dress | Flossy & Dossy

Make up | Dale @ Pixie Hair & Beauty

Headpiece | Bridal Bliss Online

Caterer  | Top Class Catering

Flowers | Ann @ Rosemount Florists

Cake Topper  | Miss Cake

Kilts | Juliettes

Photobooth | Glimmer Booth

Humanist | Humanism

Love Letters | Well Lit Props

Utterly wonderful.

Sara and Neil, thanks so very much to you both for sharing your wedding story here today xo Lou