{"id":194395,"date":"2017-03-23T14:00:19","date_gmt":"2017-03-23T14:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whimsicalwonderlandweddings.com\/?p=194395"},"modified":"2026-02-11T10:49:50","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T10:49:50","slug":"fun-quirky-1950s-style-wedding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wedissimo.com\/blog\/fun-quirky-1950s-style-wedding\/","title":{"rendered":"Fun & Quirky 1950s Style Wedding"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Fun<\/p>\n

You’ve got to love a wedding style which is both fun and unique right? I am totally coveting this lovely day and the 1950s theme, with so many fun moments to boot. You really can’t go wrong with oodles of entertainment, especially when WWW faves Deckheds are behind the playlist, not to mention limbo and conga lines being formed on the dance floor. Yes.<\/p>\n

WWW readers Johanna and Richard were hitched on the 3rd September 2016 and held their wedding party at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens<\/a>. Being a wedding coordinator herself, bride Johanna had the skill set to pull off the perfect wedding day. Their focus was on fun rather than details, but they really did include some lovely touches. For example they bought and arranged all of the flowers themselves, they were a high triumph. There was also a bake off instead of a traditional wedding cake and lovely maids in prom dresses, so cute!<\/p>\n

Johanna dreamed of a tea length dress and found hers before customising it with a colour pop blue petticoat. Richard continued the blue theme in a navy suit, red bow tie and tan shoes. Amazing.<\/p>\n

Thanks so very much to Lisa Carpenter<\/a> for sharing these wonderful shots with us.<\/p>\n

\"Polka \"Hydrangea\"Flowers\"Fun \"Fun \"Fun \"Fun \"Fun \"Fun \"Fun \"Fun \"Fun \"Fun \"Confetti \"Fun \"Fun \"Fun \"Buckets \"Cake\"Fun \"Fun\"Watering \"Table \"Fun \"Succulent \"Fun \"Watering \"Fun \"Fun \"Fun \"Blue \"Fun \"Short  \"Buttonhole\"Fun\"Sapphire\"Fun \"Fun \"Fun \"Crochet \"Fun \"Fun \"Fun \"Fun \"Fun \"Fun \"Fun \"Fun \"Fun \"Fun \"Fun \"Fun \"Fun \"Fun \"Fun \"Fun \"Fun<\/p>\n

THE PROPOSAL | Ibiza, on the beach at night with a full moon! Oct 2014.<\/p>\n

THE VISION | A fun filled, British wedding with a 50\u2019s twist.<\/p>\n

THE PLANNING PROCESS | I\u2019m a wedding coordinator for a venue (The Bond Company Birmingham) and so I thought planning would be really easy. I found the logistical side really simple because it was the same as at work, but choosing things like the bridesmaids dresses and decorations was really hard. Pinterest just gives you more options so I think I planned around 4 different weddings before managing to pull the whole day together. Rich is an accountant so he had an excel spreadsheet ready to go from the start, this did help keep us on track with our spending! We were so excited to give out our invitations; we wanted to do something that people could keep and came across wedding tea towels from The Original Wedding Tea Towel Company. They were amazing, they put our rabbits in the invite!<\/p>\n

BUDGET | \u00a315k.<\/p>\n

THE VENUE | Ceremony – St Margaret\u2019s Church, Olton, Reception: The Birmingham Botanical Gardens.<\/p>\n

THE DRESS & ACCESSORIES | True Bride dress from Your Wedding Shop, altered and customised with petticoat from Jo @ The Couture Company.<\/p>\n

FINDING THE DRESS | I found finding the dress really difficult, because I knew that I wanted a tea length 50\u2019s dress. This meant that the shops only really had one or 2 dresses for me to try. I ended up finding a ready made dress which I then had fitted and customised by The Couture Company. I wanted a pop of colour so added the wonderful full skirted bright blue petticoat, which was so fun to wear!<\/p>\n

GROOM\u2019S ATTIRE | Ted Baker blue suit from Slaters.<\/p>\n

THE READINGS & MUSIC | A Lovely Love Story, Edward Monkton, Song Of Solomon, Verse 8 chapt 6-7. Procession: Handel\u2019s Water Music, Alla Hornpipe, Recession – Mendelssohn\u2019s Wedding March, Hymns: Jerusalem, Give me Joy in my heart, I Danced in the morning.<\/p>\n

BEAUTIFUL BRIDESMAIDS | I had 7 (eek!) bridesmaids, made up of my 2 sisters, school friends and uni friends, and a flower girl (Rich\u2019s niece). Finding the bridesmaids dresses was very tricky, as all the girls are different shapes, heights and colouring. To fit the theme, it needed to be 50\u2019s style and we ended up with fantastic blue polka dot dresses with white or red petticoats. The vibrant blue looked fantastic next to all the green of the Botanical Gardens.<\/p>\n

THE FLOWERS | We did the flowers ourselves with the help from my very talented mum and family! Having got a quote for flowers that we couldn\u2019t afford, we decided to go to the flower market 3 days before the wedding at 4am and see what we could find. We came back with 2 cars full of flowers for \u00a3250! It then took 2 days to put together the flowers but the overall effect was so worth it. I had a wonderful bouquet of delphiniums, eucalyptus, and 2 different types of protea.<\/p>\n

THE CAKE | As part of the informal feel of the day, we had a great brummy bake off and invited our guests to enter a cake. There was a wonderful collection of entries, and we had all our guests vote for their favourite and gave out prizes while the DJ was setting up.<\/p>\n

YOUR PHOTOGRAPHER | The wonderful Lisa Carpenter. I knew I wanted Lisa before I\u2019d chosen a venue or picked a date, we had worked together on a wedding before and I really enjoyed spending time with her. Then when I saw the photos from her wedding I knew she was for us. I think the most important thing you want from a photographer is that you get on with them; you are spending a long time with this person so you need to like them!<\/p>\n

THE DETAILS & D\u00c9COR | We made the table plan from an old pallet, on which we hung photos of all our guests and their table written below. We wanted vintage china cup and saucers for the afternoon tea, so we sent my Grandma out to scour the charity shops to find them for us. She enlisted her knit n natter crew and between them all they collected all the china we needed! We decided on watering cans for the centrepieces to reflect our garden venue. We love cocktails so named our tables after our favourites. We put together buckets of fun on each of the tables, which had table jenga, bubbles, fake moustaches, and jars of sweets. The room was lovely without having to do too much, so we decided to focus our attention on the food and entertainment instead of the d\u00e9cor. We had a magician for the drinks reception<\/a>, a trio of 50\u2019s singers during dessert and after dinner and then a DJ for the evening. The girls really got the party started, they were fantastic and got everyone in the party mood, there was a conga line and limbo!<\/p>\n

THE HONEYMOON | 3 week tour of the Southern States of America, through New Orleans, Memphis, Nashville and Louisville – we wanted music and bourbon!<\/p>\n

MEMORABLE MOMENTS | The whole day was amazing, but Rich\u2019s favourite moment was seeing me walk down the aisle, I think mine would be the locomotion conga, and trying all the different types of cake!<\/p>\n

ADVICE FOR OTHER COUPLES | Have the day you want, think about what is most important to you about the day and focus on that. For us we wanted everyone to have a great time so we went big on entertainment and made sure we were up dancing most of the night!<\/p>\n

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE |<\/p>\n

Photographer | Lisa Carpenter <\/a><\/p>\n

Bridesmaids Dresses |  Lindybop<\/p>\n

Dress Customisation |  The Couture Company<\/a><\/p>\n

Singers |  The Candy Girls <\/a><\/p>\n

Magician | Owen Strickland <\/a><\/p>\n

DJ | Karl & Kate \u2013 Deckheds *WWW wedding directory members*<\/strong><\/p>\n

Additional D\u00e9cor | Timeless Elegance<\/p>\n

Invitations | The Original Wedding Tea Towel Company<\/a><\/p>\n

Venue | Birmingham Botanical Gardens<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Well that really was a brilliant party right?<\/p>\n

Thanks so much to Johanna and Richard for sharing their utterly perfect nuptials with us xo Lou<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You’ve got to love a wedding style which is both fun and unique right? I am totally coveting this lovely day and the 1950s theme, with so many fun moments to boot. You really can’t go wrong with oodles of entertainment, especially when WWW faves Deckheds are behind the playlist, not to mention limbo and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":194409,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[382,38,654],"class_list":["post-194395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-real-weddings","category-vintage-wedding","tag-birmingham-wedding","tag-blue-wedding-ideas","tag-diy-flowers"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"mv":{"thumbnail_id":194409,"thumbnail_uri":"https:\/\/whimsical-cdn.wedissimo.com\/2017\/03\/Johanna_Rich_Wedding_Botanical-Gardens_0158-300x217.jpg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wedissimo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wedissimo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wedissimo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedissimo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedissimo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194395"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wedissimo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":400919,"href":"https:\/\/wedissimo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194395\/revisions\/400919"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedissimo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wedissimo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedissimo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wedissimo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}