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Colour lovers, you are in for a real treat today! Think all the colours of the rainbow, a mismatched scheme and all hosted in a beautiful Bedfordshire<\/a> back garden<\/a>. Oh YES.<\/p>\n WWW readers Elton and Olivia were hitched on the 20th<\/sup> May 2017 on a beautiful Spring<\/a> day, with a church ceremony and marquee wedding<\/a> reception. One of the loveliest moments has to be the country walk back to Liv\u2019s family home, complete with super cool smoke bombs<\/a>. A relaxed, fun and personality packed celebration was the combination of all of their DIY<\/a> efforts. I am loving the multicoloured lanterns in the marquee to the pastel bouquets and Star Wars references. It was just so<\/em> awesome!<\/p>\n Nicola Casey Photography was on hand to capture all the festivities, and I think you’ll agree her shots are utterly gorgeous. Thanks so much Nicola.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n THE PROPOSAL | 20th<\/sup> June 2015. For Liv\u2019s birthday we had our first summer BBQ in our new house, so invited Liv\u2019s family and some of our closest friends over. We had a great time partying away and when Liv\u2019s mum pulled out Pass the Parcel no one was surprised as it is her signature party game \u2013 it took 17mins to get to the last layer, which landed on Liv. She\u2019opened it up to find what she thought was a pair of earrings from mum, only to find her late grandmother\u2019s antique amethyst and diamond engagement ring. Elton was down on one knee and everyone was screaming! Liv burst in to tears and nodded a lot and we were engaged!! Elton had asked Liv\u2019s dad\u2019s permission a couple of weeks earlier and her mum had given him the ring, he suggested that Liv\u2019s mum did one of her epic Pass the Parcels and she was well up for it. There is even a video of the proposal, which neither of us can\u2019t watch without bursting in to tears!!<\/p>\n THE VISION | We always knew that we\u2019d have the reception at Liv\u2019s mum and dad\u2019s house in a small village in Central Bedfordshire. We\u2019ve been to over 20 weddings in the 8 years we\u2019ve been together so we\u2019ve seen a lot of things that we loved, and a lot that just weren\u2019t our tempo. We wanted it to be bright, vibrant and not too matchy matchy; there wasn\u2019t a colour scheme that we could agree on, so we decided to have all colours!<\/p>\n Most of all, we wanted it to be relaxed, fun and a reflection of our personalities. The last thing we wanted was a \u2018paint by numbers\u2019 wedding, but we weren\u2019t going to re-invent the wheel in the process.<\/p>\n THE PLANNING PROCESS | Liv is a Project Manager and Elton is a Creative, so Liv spent most of her time nagging Elton to do the invites.<\/p>\n We used as many local suppliers as possible, which could some times be challenging as we live in South London. We had a year and a half to plan and once you\u2019ve done the big things you\u2019ve just got to keep up with the smaller bits. Then it gets to the week of the wedding and if feels like the to do list will never end.<\/p>\n BUDGET | We spent about \u00a320k in the end, which was more than we wanted to, but with the amount of people we had (and a free bar for them) it soon added up.<\/p>\n THE VENUE | We were lucky enough to have an incredible venue in Liv\u2019s family home in Bedfordshire, they\u2019ve got a huge garden, but even that wasn\u2019t big enough, so her dad removed the vegetable patch, took down some fences and levelled out a part of a field to accommodate our marquee. Two of Liv\u2019s sisters have had their wedding receptions at the house, so we knew how well it would work.<\/p>\n A short walk up the field and down a track leads you to a gorgeous 17th<\/sup> Century church on the top of the hill, overlooking the village and the surrounding fields. Whenever I (Liv) thought about walking up the field with my dad and my best friends, and in to the church to say my vows it choked me up, I knew this was where I wanted to get married.<\/p>\n THE DRESS & ACCESSORIES | (Liv) I had my dress hand made in The Wedding Workshop in Ampthill and they were incredible. Hollie was my consultant and she was attentive, helpful and never pushy.<\/p>\n The veil was borrowed from my sister, my shoes were LK Bennett (thanks to my aunt Sandy for helping me choose them), my mum lent me a pearl and diamond necklace and I wore some simple diamond studs. I didn\u2019t want any other jewellery on the day.<\/p>\n We had our hair and make up done by Lauren and Chelsea of Sweet Lemon Beauty and they were fantastic. Such nice people to have around you on the morning of your wedding and we all loved the result.<\/p>\n FINDING THE DRESS | (Liv) Knowing that I was going to be walking up the field, that I\u2019m also quite short and seeing a lot of my friends shuffle around awkwardly under the weight of their dresses (and having to help them go to the loo), the full length, huge gown didn\u2019t appeal to me.<\/p>\n I went to The Wedding Workshop in Ampthill and got mum and my bridesmaids to choose a dress each that they thought I should try on. Even though I knew I didn\u2019t want to buy a long dress, I tried a few of them on anyway. The first dress I tried on I was in love with, I would have happily got married in it there and then!! They have example dresses but make all the dresses from hand, so I could make changes to the dress. That was in the November of 2015, so I knew I had a lot of time to look. So I went to a few other shops near to where I live in South London and didn\u2019t find anything nearly as nice as the dress in The Wedding Workshop. I found that the wedding shops were pushing me to like a dress that I wasn\u2019t comfortable in a bit too much. I did get some good inspiration for the final dress, which I used with The Wedding Workshop.<\/p>\n GROOM\u2019S ATTIRE | (Elton) After looking at lots of suits in high street stores, none of which fitted my bizarre, potato-like frame, I decided to spend the extra money and go bespoke. Our friend got married a few years ago and I really liked his suit, so I found out where he got it from and it was his ex-flatmate who has started his own tailors business based in Bristol. After going through the Saville Row stalwart, I didn\u2019t feel like I was going to get the best personal service for the money I was paying, it felt like they couldn\u2019t be bothered with me because I wasn\u2019t spending the big bucks, I needed advice and I wasn\u2019t getting it.<\/p>\n I arranged to meet David from Brown in Town in London one week and after the first meeting we clicked. I felt like he totally understood how I wanted to look and feel on my wedding day and he gave useful advice and recommendations. David explained what would suit me and why and I felt very informed. He actually changed my mind completely from what I originally wanted.<\/p>\n The final piece was a brown, lambs wool, three piece suit with gorgeous purple paisley lining. I wore a classic white shirt from Charles Tyrwhitt and Liv made the tie and pocket square for me. The cufflinks were Darth Vader from M&S. I bought brown leather semi-brogues from Dune.<\/p>\n David was very accommodating considering the time constraints (I left it quite late deciding on a suit) and managed to make additional alterations to make me feel more comfortable in the suit. He was a really nice bloke and I enjoyed seeing him for the fittings.<\/p>\n THE READINGS & MUSIC | We have a very eclectic taste in music and wanted to use it as a tool to show our personalities.<\/p>\n Liv walked down the aisle to the piano version of Nobody Does It Better, by Carly Simon. We then had The Lord\u2019s My Shepherd and Lord of the Dance as hymns. When we signed the register we had Woman in Love, by Barbra Striesand and How Deep Is Your Love, by the Bee Gees. As our final hymn we had our friend Bayley play the guitar and the whole congregation sang Crazy Little Thing Called Love, by Queen, which was absolutely brilliant! On the way out of the church we had God Gave Rock n Roll To You, by Kiss.<\/p>\n For readings we had John 15:9-12 as our religious reading, read by Elton\u2019s sister Kirsty. We had Liv\u2019s sister Rachel read a Tom Lehrer song called When You\u2019re Old and Grey, we urge you to have a listen if you\u2019ve not heard it before!!<\/p>\n We introduced the wedding party to the wedding breakfast with Long Live Rock n Roll, by Rainbow.<\/p>\n Over dinner we had an epic playlist of classic 70s disco tunes and it was great fun to see everyone singing along and dancing in their chairs while eating!<\/p>\n Our first dance was to Don\u2019t Let The Sun Go Down On Me \u2013 the George Michael version, this gave us the perfect excuse to use it as an introduction to the newly married couple (Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr and Mrs Elton Lambden\u2026), but also to our amazing Karaoke Band, Rockaoke!! We sang the last verse and then the bridesmaids, then the best man, and then Liv\u2019s sisters got up and sang.<\/p>\n In between the band sets we had playlists that we\u2019d made that contained all manner of things, the mini-mosh to Slipknot was particularly fun!<\/p>\n BEAUTIFUL BRIDESMAIDS | (Liv) My gorgeous best friends, Nicola and Claire, were our bridesmaids. I\u2019ve been best friends with these two since I was 5 years old, they are part of the family. I knew exactly the type of dress I wanted them to wear\u2026. colourful and floral, but it took a while to find them. I finally found these dresses on ASOS in the sale for \u00a327 each! However, when they were delivered they\u2019d sent a completely different dress for one of them, but in the same fabric. The other dress was nowhere near as nice as the one I\u2019d chosen, so I panicked for a bit and then managed to find the right dress in the right size, with its tags on eBay, which was brilliant.<\/p>\n The dresses came with a cropped jacket, which as a joke we put on Claire backwards to cover her massive boobs and lo and behold it looked awesome! So Claire was actually wearing the jacket the wrong way round for the whole wedding.<\/p>\n Their shoes were from M&S, lovely nude courts. With a dress that colourful we didn\u2019t want to even try and match the colour with the shoes.<\/p>\n For the walk up the field I bought us some cheap white tennis shoes and replaced the laces with colourful ribbon.<\/p>\n THE FLOWERS | (Liv) An old friend from school is a florist as a hobby and came highly recommended by several people. Oonagh O\u2019Neill loved being given free reign on the colours. I just wanted anything that was bright in the bouquet, I did insist on peonies though, they are my favourite. My mum is very green fingered so her and Oonagh discussed the types of flowers that would be in season in May.<\/p>\n The bouquets were absolutely gorgeous, and we also had buttonholes for the men and corsages for my sisters and Elton\u2019s sister Kirsty too.<\/p>\n For months before the wedding we collected crystal cut vases from car boot sales (where you could pick up 2 for \u00a31) and ended up with about 5 vases per table. Again, it didn\u2019t matter if they matched or not, the more variety the better. Mum bought and arranged all the flowers for the tables, which was an incredible feat. The brief once again was colourful!<\/p>\n THE CAKE | Liv\u2019s aunt is an incredible cake maker and sugar craft expert, so it was a no brainer to ask her to craft us a beautiful cake. We gave her a brief of colourful and floral with Star Wars and she created a beautiful double sided cake that everyone loved. She made every single of the flowers on the cake by hand, which is just amazing. The layers were lemon, chocolate, Victoria sponge and fruit cake.<\/p>\n We topped the cake with a little Lego bride and groom.<\/p>\n YOUR PHOTOGRAPHER | It took us a really long time to find Nicola and we\u2019re so glad we were patient. We wanted the pictures to look exactly like the day had done to us, so no filters or weird colour effects. We didn\u2019t want anything too clich\u00e9d, so collected all the naff wedding photography we\u2019d seen and made a Pinterest board, when we found photographers who were local or in our budget we found a lot of the naff photography was in their portfolio. Luckily, some friends of ours had used Nicola for their wedding and we absolutely loved the pictures. They were full of life, movement and colour and we knew it was exactly what we wanted. We had a Skype call with Nicola and she was so friendly and attentive to what we wanted. She\u2019s got her own style and it\u2019s exactly what we were looking for. Too many people told us they could match a style we\u2019d seen on the internet and that just didn\u2019t sit right with us.<\/p>\n THE DETAILS & D\u00c9COR | Colourful, bright, fun, eclectic and non-matching. Elton would have had black, white and red as the colour scheme but we\u2019d seen it done so many times, Liv wanted to have something that looked completely different from all our friend\u2019s wedding pictures.<\/p>\n We used Pinterest to find our inspiration and the colourful lanterns was one of the first things we\u2019d seen that we agreed on! Elton wanted Star Wars and Liv wanted Liberty print, so we had to come to a happy medium where we both got what we wanted and we didn\u2019t go in to a theme wedding.<\/p>\n We started sourcing the cut crystal vases from car boot sales, Liv ordered loads of things from eBay and started crafting things.<\/p>\n The print for the ties took quite a while to get right as Elton hand drew the flowers and then added in Star Wars characters. We then made 4 different colourways and got the fabric printed and then it was up to Liv to make 5 ties and pocket squares.<\/p>\n One of the simplest and most successful things at the wedding was cutting some Liberty fabrics in to strips using pinking sheers and tying it around the napkins. We didn\u2019t have a single one of them left by the end of the night, everyone took them with them.<\/p>\n For the name places we got beer mats printed with space for us to write each name on. They looked brilliant once we set the tables up.<\/p>\n We had a ton of inflatables, tattoo sleeves, glow sticks and wigs for the party. It\u2019s always fun seeing very drunk people passionately playing an inflatable guitar.<\/p>\n Liv\u2019s dad made an 11ft solid oak bar out of an old church pupit and pews. It took him months, it was modular and it took about 4 blokes to lift it! Elton did some excellent branding to make it The Pissed Priest and it was the bar for the wedding, everyone absolutely loved it. We had ale and larger taps, classic pub art and most importantly snacks!<\/p>\n THE HONEYMOON | In 2014 we were travelling in Asia for 3 months and absolutely loved it, so the plan is to do some more travelling with the money our lovely friends and family gave us. However, the plan is on hold at the moment due to work circumstances.<\/p>\n We did however get away to a lovely hotel in Turkey for 5 days on the Monday after the wedding. Liv\u2019s work colleague recommended the Barut Lara in Antalya and it was fantastic. We\u2019d never gone all inclusive before and were very impressed by the quality of the hotel, the food, the restaurants and the service. We paid a bit more to have a Jacuzzi on the balcony, so we enjoyed getting in that in the evening and having a drink and a snack from the free mini bar.<\/p>\n MEMORABLE MOMENTS | For Liv it would be walking up the field exactly as she\u2019s imagined in the sunshine.<\/p>\n The congregation singing Crazy Little Thing Called Love was also excellent and worked perfectly.<\/p>\n The speeches were amazing. They were so funny and sincere and we even got a few tears out of the guests.<\/p>\n While we were having the photos done we got the chance to relax, look at all our friends and family enjoying themselves and that was great, we were so proud of what we achieved and how everything came together.<\/p>\n Liv doesn\u2019t remember much past the first dance.<\/p>\n ADVICE FOR OTHER COUPLES | Think about what is really important to you on the day and spend your money on that. Don\u2019t spend money where people can\u2019t see it. Be different but don\u2019t be radical. Keep the planning up and don\u2019t leave everything to the last minute. However, when it\u2019s crunch time and you\u2019ve got 10 things to do and only time for 5, really consider what is important and let the other 5 go, you honestly won\u2019t notice on the day, and your guests sure won\u2019t.<\/p>\n GET A BABYSITTER! We had two lovely girls come and look after our nieces and nephews (5 kids all 5 and under) while we had dinner. It gave the kids a chance to chill out, watch a film and eat food they actually want to eat. We also made up party bags for them, which was a huge success. This also gave their parents the chance to catch up with family and friends over dinner without having to worry about keeping their kids occupied.<\/p>\n Men \u2013 don\u2019t leave it too late to get your suit.<\/p>\n Most of all, enjoy the process, it can get stressful (especially when it comes to things like the guestlist), but it\u2019s not worth having feuds over.<\/p>\n CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE |<\/p>\n Photographer | Nicola Casey Photography<\/p>\n Wedding Dress | The Wedding Workshop<\/a><\/p>\n Suit | Brown In Town<\/a><\/p>\n Marquee | UK Tents and Events<\/a> (Marquee, toilets, refrigerated van, tables, chairs etc)<\/p>\n Food | The Illustrated Chef<\/p>\n![\"Rainbow](\"https:\/\/whimsical-cdn.wedissimo.com\/2017\/12\/Olivia-Elton-35.jpg\")
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