WOW, just look at the pictures of Rosie and Ben’s amazing London wedding. As the couple say, this wedding is full of food, booze and dancing, and these images show just what a fantastic day they had. The reception took place at their favourite steak restaurant, and we love the modern styling and little touches, such as the Polaroid picture name cards, giant light up letters and the speech betting slips.
We are sure that you are going to love every detail of this wedding, captured perfectly in these amazing pictures by Tom Biddle Design and Photography.
“We were both keen on keeping things as informal as possible and felt that our wedding day should be filled with our favourite things; incredible food, fantastic company, tonnes of booze and a lot of dancing. Whilst I’m originally from the West Country and Ben also spent time living there, London is our home, so it seemed right that we should have a city wedding.
“I found our florist, Rebecca from Ivy Pip and Rose, on a wedding blog and instantly fell in love with her laid back style. From our very first meeting I knew she’d create something beautiful and the bouquets she made for me and my bridesmaids, tied together with long, pretty ribbons in shades of cream, pink and grey were completely perfect.
“Neither of us are religious, but we still wanted a grand setting for our nuptials and Islington Town Hall ticked all the boxes. I walked down the aisle to ‘Sea of Love’ by Cat Power, and whilst I was unbelievably nervous, walking in and seeing the smiling faces of all the people in the world that we love the most was just the most amazing (and completely overwhelming) feeling, and one I’ll never forget. Our lovely friend Alex, a close friend to us both, read a poem that she’d chosen herself and it was so special having that as a surprise on the day.
“For the reception we didn’t want anything too ‘wedding-y’ and instead wanted it to feel like we were taking all our friends and family out for dinner somewhere amazing. When we found out Hawksmoor Guildhall did weddings (without doubt our favourite steak restaurant in London) we knew that was the place for us. The staff on the day were incredible, really relaxed, brilliant fun and very accommodating of our drunken guests who didn’t leave until 4am!
“The décor in Hawksmoor is amazing so the only additions we made were small flower arrangements in mason jars on each of the tables and some giant light-up B and R letters from Vowed and Amazed at the end of the dance floor. They created a real focal point to the room and were a great backdrop for all the dancing later on.
“We decided not to do favours and instead printed Polaroid pictures of each of our guests and added them to their place setting. It was great seeing everyone’s reaction to the photos we’d picked as they took their places for dinner. We named all our tables after Glastonbury stages as a nod to our love of music, the time we’ve spent there together and the fact it was our mini-moon destination just after the wedding.
“Hawksmoor really is all about the meat (sorry vegetarian parents!) and we served a sharing menu of three different cuts of steak with a range of sides including triple cooked chips and their famous Mac ‘n’ Cheese. Because it was a pretty hefty main, we skipped dessert and opted for salted caramel Rolos and espresso martinis to get the evening celebrations started. Our evening food came in the form of lobster rolls and a cake of cheese from The Cheese Shed.
“Each table had a betting slip for guessing the length of the best man speech and the winner of each got a cocktail at the bar after dinner. The kids all had bags of sweets and disposable cameras to take photos during the reception which was a lovely way of involving them in our day.
“We had our first dance to Baby I’m Yours by Arctic Monkeys and then, after a lot of deliberating, eventually opted for a classic covers band who got everyone up and dancing. For those that were still standing at midnight we put together a Spotify playlist to take us into the small hours. We both love music and have a mixture of both good and terrible tastes! We wanted the evening to take us on a journey through our favourite genres (however dodgy!), so it started with a Garage hour, moved on to 90’s dance/indie belters and then finished with a complete mash-up of favourite songs from friends that we’d asked to contribute to the playlist. The dance floor was packed all night and the lovely people from the dance floor company sat and patiently waited about 45 minutes for us to vacate it for before finally removing it at the end of the night!
“We are very fortunate to have an incredibly talented friend who agreed to do our photography. We didn’t want too many formal or posed shots, but some of those have actually ended up being my favourites because of Tom’s incredible eye for detail and his distinctive style. He captured the day perfectly and it’s been amazing to look back and see that everyone else was having as much fun as we were.”
Images © Tom Biddle Design and Photography
