BUDGET WEDDING/BRIDESMAID DRESSES

This post is actually what sparked all of my other wedding round-ups. I wasn't going to blog that much about the ins and outs of wedding planning and such, but a conversation on Twitter reminded me how much research I did into wedding dresses and that my encyclopaedic knowledge (and experience!) of online shopping might actually be useful to someone other than me.

My wedding dress was from US brand Reformation. I actually saw it before I was engaged on Carrie's blog, when they photographed a wedding, and I found out from her where the dress was from. I thought about it a lot before we were even engaged! When we got engaged and I was properly thinking about my dress, I knew I didn't want to spend more than £1,000, but so many of the boutiques in London with styles I liked had £1,000 as their starting point, so I looked online and kept coming back to this one (they've since discontinued it and brought out the same shape with straps, which I would recommend as it didn't stay up very well!).  The story of the dress is funny, actually. I wanted to try on the dress, but calculated that the customs charges could be £100+, and if the dress had to be returned, I would lose that money. My friend was living in New York at the time and my dad got me a ticket on air miles for £120! In the end, my Mum wanted to be there with me so we planned a quick 3-day trip together. She asked me many times, 'wouldn't you rather just spend this money on the actual dress?' but the trip was so much more special than an expensive wedding dress ever could have been! In the end, I tried on beautiful dresses at J Crew and Lovely Bride, but this Reformation dress was still my favourite.

Full disclosure, we had to make a lot of alterations to it! My amazing bridesmaid Antonia, who happens to be a tailor, took in the bodice, put darts in the bust where the fabric puckered and gaped and cut about 2 feet off the hem. I also don't think it's all that well made - they are handmade and the quality control isn't really up to scratch, so I imagine the fit might even vary from dress to dress. Annoyingly, the little off-the-shoulder bits, which drew me to the dress in the first place, are flipped up in loads of the pictures, but in the end I don't really care. I was SO comfortable and I felt amazing on the day - this dress really comes into its own when you're moving!

If you're looking for wedding dresses on the UK high street, I highly recommend Needle & Thread, Monsoon and ASOS.

I wasn't originally going to have a veil, but in the end I decided that this is the only time in your life you're likely to wear one, so I wanted to wear one at least for the ceremony. Antonia made it from a single piece of tulle, trimmed just above the waistline and fixed onto a plain comb. At the last minute (the morning of the wedding!), we added a little tape bow and I was so in love with it, I didn't take it off all day - in fact, I think it was my favourite part of my whole wedding look! Oh and my shoes were the heeled version of these Loeffler Randall sandals. Love at first sight!

I didn't want my bridesmaids looking too matchy-matchy, so I picked a selection of different light pink dresses from ASOS. You can filter by colour, so it was easy to see what looked good next to each other. They even offer free shipping all over the world so I could send Ayumi's to Japan for her to try on! The sandals were also from ASOS and Dune (via ASOS). When I finally saw all the dresses hanging up in person the night before the wedding I was so excited at how pretty they all looked together.

The boys hired suits from Lipman & Sons for about £50 each and Darren bought them light yellow ties from T.M. Llewyn. Darren's waistcoat was handmade as a wedding gift by Antonia - he actually picked the light yellow colour scheme for the boys and it was just perfect!

All gorgeous, wonderful, amazing photos by Jo Crawford.