Lively & Fun Party Wedding at The Lordship Pub Dulwich

Welcome to the lively and fun The Lordship Pub wedding in Dulwich of WWW readers Charlie and Nicole! Their day began with a beautiful ceremony at Asylum Chapel in London, before guests hopped in a vintage bus to the pub reception.

Firstly let’s chat about the outfits. Nicole donned a gorgeous fitted gown with an epic train and veil, before changing into a sensational evening gown for the party. Charlie and the groomsmen wore dapper black suits and the bridesmaids were in black frocks. They all looked incredible!

There was lovely stationery, a gorgeous black and gold cake as well as greenery laden tables. So many ideas and fun moments to be inspired by.

Lase Photography I can’t thank you enough for sharing with us these amazing images.

Lordship Pub Dulwich Wedding

The Proposal

I feel like I should preface this by saying that my husband is not the most romantic person. He’s very practical and finds most romantic gestures really uncomfortable, so the proposal was never going to be a huge public declaration.

Although I think I would have hated it if he’d done something in front of people, I still give him a little bit of stick about the proposal. We also take the mickey out of each other a lot which without that I only mention as without context this is such a bleak story haha!

Charlie asked me to marry him on the sofa the day before I was going to a friend’s hen party (terrible timing). He suggested we open a bottle of champagne and I was like “I’m going to the airport at 7am tomorrow, why would we do that?” and then he asked if I’d like to be his fiancée.

It would actually have been a lovely proposal but I asked him if he was going to get down on one knee and he said “nah, you’re alright”. We had bought the ring together earlier in the year on holiday in Sri Lanka so although I had sort of expected it at some point, the timing was a bit of a surprise.

The Vision

Charlie’s family are from South East London and he has a really large group of school friends and we just knew we weren’t going to be in a position to accommodate all of them for the full day. This helped narrow down a location as it needed to be somewhere that they could travel to for the party in the evening without having to go too far.

I found the Asylum when searching for venues and absolutely fell in love with it. There was no contest as to where I wanted to get married, I just needed Charlie on board because he didn’t really get it from the photos. Luckily the minute he walked in he understood why I loved it so much.

I didn’t really think about what I’d want from a wedding until we’d bought the ring but then I started looking online for inspiration. Charlie is pretty happy to let me run with ideas in most aspects of our lives so I had free reign to do what I wanted with just a cursory check on whether he liked things.

I knew I wanted it to be relatively minimalistic because the space is just so powerful it doesn’t need much added and the team provide the candles as part of the package. I also knew that I wanted it to be really easy for our guests and as the Asylum is only for ceremonies that meant taking care of transport between that and the Lordship Pub in East Dulwich where we held the reception.

Everything was organised for September 2020 and then the pandemic started and we decided to postpone. I think I was a little over-cautious honestly as so many people were convinced we’d be back to normal by September but I just wanted to give us the best chance of the wedding we originally planned with all 150 guests so we moved it to September 2021.

After nearly 2 years of lockdowns and uncertainty, it was even more important that we threw the most ridiculous party that we could and that everyone who came had the most incredible time.

The extra year was a blessing and a curse as it gave me additional time to add things to the day but I wouldn’t change anything if we did it again.

The Venue

Our ceremony was at The Asylum, Caroline Gardens Chapel in Peckham and the reception was at the Lordship Pub in East Dulwich.

All the guests were transported on a vintage Routemaster as a nod to Charlie’s grandpa who used to be a bus driver.

The Ceremony & Music

The ceremony was conducted by Ricardo from Southwark Council Registry office and he was incredible. We really lucked out. He was just so fun and made everyone laugh with little jokes throughout the ceremony. At one point he reminded Charlie to look at me and not him when saying his vows and we have the most incredible photo of everyone laughing.

I pulled together a playlist (which I didn’t tell Charlie about as I knew he’d think it was a bit dramatic) and before I walked down the aisle there was a reading by Alan Watts about falling in love and how mad it is. I walked down the aisle to Amy Stroup – With Wings.

Everyone was really nervous but I was just so excited my dad had to slow me down because I was walking too fast.

Your Outfits

My wedding dress was Beautiful by Enzoani and I got it from The O-Zone in Brighton and I bought it in December 2018. I hadn’t intended to buy a dress as early as I did but I told Christine I wanted a sheath dress with a low back and it was the first thing she pulled.

I think I’d tried on maybe 3 dresses before that but I just knew. It was also incredibly reasonably priced and a lot of boutiques I’d called told me that style of dress started at about double what I paid. They took the lace off the front of the straps and replaced it with a little bit of diamante which I adored.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t go to the bathroom without taking the whole dress off as it wouldn’t lift up so I had a second evening dress from Jarlo which I changed into once we got to the pub. It had a high split so was much easier to move around in. This was the best decision as the bottom of it was completely black the next morning and I would have been absolutely devastated if it had been my actual dress.

I wanted Charlie and the ushers to be in tuxedos but it was the one thing he put his foot down about so they wore 3 piece black suits and looked amazing. They all got their suits from Slaters suit shop and Charlie’s was Ted Baker.

My bridesmaids were also in black as it’s my favourite colour which got a few strange looks from people when I told them, but they all looked so elegant.

Your Photographer & Filmmaker

We had Lauren and Sam from Lase Photography who I found looking at photos on Instagram from the Asylum. They had the exact style of photography I wanted, just very in the background, not intrusive at all and the MOST stunning photos. They captured more than I could have even dreamed of honestly.

For video we had Emmanuel from Emmanuel films. He was so lovely to work with too, my mum didn’t even realise we had a videographer he was just capturing things in the background and we have the most beautiful cinematic video of the ceremony and speeches and a little highlight video that I watch all the time which always makes me cry.

The Styling & Decor

There were pretty limited decorations because the venue is just so impactful on its own. The Asylum provide all the candles so we just had 2 large flower arrangements on either side of the altar and then some posies on the chairs. The ushers and my dad had buttonholes and the girls each had a smaller version of my bouquet.

In the pub, we just had white table runners with greenery over them and the table numbers were in gold frames. I’d printed off the table plan and put it in a huge frame and the name place cards were just little black cards with gold calligraphy. I wanted to make sure everyone could talk easily without having too much on the tables to get in the way.

My overall colour scheme was black, blush and burgundy with a little bit of gold.

The Honeymoon

We were supposed to go to Sandals in Jamaica but Covid had other ideas so we spent two weeks in Ibiza which was amazing. It’s so much more beautiful than I expected and we went over to Formentera which has the most stunning beaches I have ever seen.

Memorable Moments

We had a silent disco which was incredible. It meant that nobody stopped dancing for the whole night. Normally when the DJ plays a song that people aren’t that keen on the dance floor empties but it meant you just flipped the channel.

It was also hilarious watching everyone dancing to different things and it meant that I could dance my heart out to all the music I want when I’m drunk (Linkin Park, Nirvana etc.) with no complaints.

We also had a beer pong table which went down really well and we’d overbudgeted for how much we’d need to spend on drinks for the wedding breakfast so we covered the bar costs until about 10pm which I don’t think anyone (including us) was expecting.

Advice For Other Couples

Nobody will remember the details, but they will remember how they felt. They won’t remember what they ate, but they’ll remember if it tasted good. Make sure the food is great, that there is free-flowing booze and that your guests don’t have any time sitting around with nothing to do.

Most of all though just have fun with it, don’t let anyone tell you what you can and can’t do and if you really, really want something (provided you can afford it) just do it.