Irina and Lorenzo wedding album staff picks

3rdsister • 12 photos • 27 Nov 2010, Greater London

How was the wedding:

Few days before the event I was complaining to the H2B let's arrange some other wedding, leave the country and cancel everything. H2B said yes darling, we could think about it after the wedding....which turned out to be the best day of my life. I have spent a lot of efforts, time and money for the day but I thought I'd just make a happy face and wait till it'd be over. But everything went so smoothly, even when things went not as I planned, we loved our wedding and everybody loved it. It was nothing like the usual formal wedding event and I'm so happy about it!

There were a few people who's helped a lot during the day and that's the most important thing to remember, as the bride and the groom should not be dealing with vendors on their wedding day! And some plans has been changed too, but it has only made our day better.

I got up at 5.30am as I couldn't sleep - only to find out there's no cold water in the bathrooms. Yes, no cold water means no water in showers and toilets too!!! but there was hot/cold water in the kitchen! So we used buckets to have a bath and I washed my hair in a kitchen sink! This mess has just distracted me from being nervous, then came the hairdresser and the photographer and the day has started.

My dad, best maid with her husband and the photographer we all arrived earlier to the Town Hall so we went for a cup of tea to a cafe, where I was showing off my wedding outfit :) Then it was the time to go...The registration was at 10am, I don't remember much of the ceremony, I was holding my husband's hand and didn't see other people around...we had our song playing which made everybody laugh, it was Cher's I've got you babe. And in less then 20min it was over since we've chosen the shortest vows.
That's when we had a gap in our plans as the wedding bus was to arrive in about 40min, but we took some pictures, waited for all friends to come over and a friend brought a champagne in a nearby shop so it was okay.
We got more champagne (collected by the bus company) and some sandwiches (collected by friends) on the board, made pictures and I brought bubbles, it was fun even though it was quite a cold day. We had 1 planned stop at London Eye for the pictures and then went to London Bridge - arranged on the day.

We had Turkish restaurant for the reception with about 70 guests, my dad's secretary has helped with table plan, place cards and flowers in the morning, the reception should have started at 1pm. The cupcakes were delivered and arranged in time, but the flowers were delivered only at 12-50am, so he had to run to the shop and get some other flowers according to my idea - I wanted a single flower vases with a rose and some petals around it. As a result, the restaurant looked exactly as I wanted even though the flowers were replaced, plus my friends made some funny posters about myself and the groom.

We had many people coming from different countries. I'm Russian, the groom's half Turkish -half Italian living all his life in London, so the guests list looked pretty much like some UN conference list :) We had cash-gift-list and I was soooo relieved we got most of our expenses back :)

The food was amazing, the vine was good, the service was quick and the music was as we liked it, we brought our DJ. Then we had a belly dancer, she made us dance too, omg that was fun!!! We had speeches and dance breaks, we had cut the cake and I threw the bouquet. We had no toast master but the reception went quite smoothly, at 6pm we were leaving to Paddington but the guest continued in some other venue, taking with them little sails (place card holders were the wedding favours) and some cupcakes (I've ordered take away boxes in advance).
The DJ was instructed not to pay attention to the guests requests, otherwise it'd be a mess, we had 2 photographers hoping to get more nice pix and I can say everything went as we planned and we loved it!!!

I can recommend ThisBus company, they allow to have champagne on board, can collect your drinks from Majestic Wine shop (good selection and reasonable prices) before they arrive and the staff was all so nice!
Also I can recommend my photographer Tim Churchill, though I'll get the pictures in a couple of weeks, the ones he's sent were really nice, and I loved the idea of 2 camera men!
The cupcakes were great, Crumbs and Dollies based in London.
The Ishtar restaurant in Baker street, where the reception took place, they were really good, the food, the service, belly dancer and the final bill - def recommend!
Had knickers done by Ell and Cee, they make embroidery of your choice, either plain Just Married or the Mrs Smith etc, I went for my husbands name, he was soooo pleased!!! :)
Didn't like Confetti website, they've sent me faulted table plan. Didn't like the Flower Station at Baker street, they were late with my flowers for the venue, even though they're located 10min from the restaurant.

1 With friends (by Tim Churchill)	2 Us :) (by Tim)	That was some dance!!! :) (photo by Tim)	2 Love this pic, like the President and the 1st...

On the bus, photo by a firend	The bouquet	1 2 Cutting cupcake	3 Newweds

2 I got these books in a gift shop, an...	2 3 We got really lucky with our photographers, huge...	First steps into married life :) (by Tim...	Chelsea Town Hall, London (by Tim Churchill)

Added 6 Dec 2010 • Like •