Sweet & Quirky Blue Glitter & Bows Wedding | Whimsical Wonderland Weddings

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Good morning, I hope you had a lovely relaxed weekend. To start a jam packed week here at WWW I have WWW readers David and Cali's September 2013 wedding.

David and Cali wanted their wedding to be relaxed, simple and low key. They chose the quirky Elephant Hotel, Berkshire to hold their day and post wedding celebrations the following day.

Cali had the loveliest bridal look, with her 1950s inspired dress, fun blue bow hair piece, glitter shoes and berry lips. David found his blue suit in Hugo Boss which he wore without tie for a relaxed look. So much style.

Thanks so much to the fabulous Julia & You Photography for sharing her photographs today.

The Vision for the Day... Relaxed, simple and low-key, avoiding a lot of wedding traditions we didn't feel reflected us or how we wanted to celebrate. We wanted close friends and family, good food, dancing and everyone to have a wonderful time. We also wanted an 'all-in' venue where everyone could stay and have breakfast together the next day.

The Dress + Accessories... "Heaven's to Betsy" from Courtesan Boutique. I bought my shoes in Paris and really it's less glamorous than it sounds. We'd gone to Disneyland Paris with two of David's sons for Minecon, a computer game conference and I'd snuck off for a bit of shopping, spotted these beautiful navy sparkly shoes for 30 euros in H&M.

As for the big blue bow, I'd been thinking about a veil and 'pinned' lots but wasn't sure if it would be too much. When I'd had my hair trial with Lucy we tried a black fascinator - the colour wasn't right but I really liked the overall effect so started looking for some kind of headpiece. I found lots of beautiful options on Etsy but had left it too late to order. Then I spotted this bow on Pinterest, clicked through and it was a headpiece from Minuet and it was in the sale! When it arrived the base was too big so I deconstructed it and reassembled without the base - perfect. The colour match with my dress wasn't quite perfect but I loved how it looked and it made me feel celebratory and frivolous and helped me play the part of 'Bride'

As I have my own nail polish blog the other key accessory was my choice of nail polish. I knew I wasn't going to go with the traditional bridal mani of a subtle pale pink. The right colour, Sloane Gardens, almost chose itself by being an almost perfect match to my shoes and was from my favourite polish brand, Nails Inc.

Groom's Attire... We were on our way to see a gig on moored cargo boat in Bristol and stopped off at the Swindon Outlets where we found David's blue/grey suit in Hugo Boss. He looked so gorgeous in the suit and the colour was beautiful, I knew it was the one. His shirt was a random spot at TK Maxx and matched the suit fantastically although we did have to get it altered as the collar was a little too Harry Hill! And in keeping with the relaxed feel he didn't wear a tie. We're both huge Mad Men fans (our save the dates were Mad Men themed) and I so wanted David to have the 'Don Draper' style pocket square - luckily I found a Hugo Boss silk square in a local men's shop. For David's three teenage sons we wanted them to feel comfortable and look smart-ish but nothing too Little Lord Fauntleroy. We found trousers, shirts, ties and waistcoats in BHS and paired them with canvas baseball shoes to keep it relaxed. The Best Man, Stephen, picked a lovely blue-grey suit from his extensive collection to tone in with David for the day and then changed into a natty rust Oswald Boateng number for the evening.

Neither of us is much of a cake fan but then I spotted a cheese alternative with differing cheese rounds stacked like a wedding cake on a blog and we were sold! We found a local deli who could supply as well as tastings, great advice and set-up. We termed it the Wedding Cake of Cheese so folk didn't think it was a cheesecake! We had fruitcake as the bottom tier and for the non-cheese lovers and the cake loving boys we went for a cupcake tower, with 2 different sizes and four flavours.

We did create all our own stationery (table plans, order of service, invites & menus etc) using fabulous printable templates from e.m.papers and spent time with the boys (David's 3 teenage sons) coming up with two film themed menus, one meat, one veggie, inspired by a long-standing family joke - the Lambshank Redemption. Our tables were also named after our favourite films.

We also sourced natural petal confetti from Shropshire Petals and cones from ebay.While researching dress styles I'd looked at old family wedding photos, my Aunt Mary's dress from her wedding in 1959 was a big inspiration, and I'd been struck by what a wonderful moment in time the photos were. We also wanted to recognise and celebrate all the people who couldn't be with us so we asked people to send us family wedding photos, the older the better, which we got printed and then arranged into 3 wonderful memory boards which we put up around the hotel. Everyone had fun spotting themselves, their parents or grandparents and just checking out the amazing outfits!

The hotel itself has quite a strong, quirky look and by luck they redecorated both of the main rooms between us booking and getting married. For evening entertainment we wanted some organised fun, notionally for the teens, but everybody really loved the photo booth and gaming tables.We're big fans of live music and luckily our favourite rock n' roll covers band, The Bastard Brothers, that we'd been going to see for 20 years agreed to play and Jules spent many hours pulling together a fantastic 'dance music through the ages' playlist for between the band sets.

The Honeymoon... A blissful 10 days relaxing and diving in the beautiful Egyptian Red Sea resort of El Gouna.

Memorable Moments... David's face when he saw me walking down the aisle - he hadn't expected me to be in a 'wedding' dress. My Mum's amazing speech. I'd never thought of my Mum as a public speaker but she wrote and delivered a very thoughtful, moving speech. Packing all of my amazing Hens into the photobooth for a fab series of pics. Wedding Brunch the next day, which was exactly how we'd hoped. We had a wonderful 3 hour brunch with folk eating, chatting, trading stories and reliving the day. And there were lots of laughs over the hilarious and personalised photobooth album that got created from all the pictures and messages. But really the whole day was perfect, confirmed when we got the beautiful photos through from Julia, looking through them all was like living the wonder of the day again.

Venue | Elephant Hotel, Pangbourne, Berkshire

Dress | Courtesan Boutique

Head Bow | Minuet

Grooms Suit | Hugo Boss

Shoes | Jones the Bootmakers

Pocket Square | Hugo Boss from Michael Chell

Rings | Vogue Diamond

Photographer | the amazing Julia and You

Hair | Hair That Turns Heads

Flowers | White Horse Flower Company

Cake of Cheese | Tastes Deli

Cupcakes | Vanilla Rose Cakes