Wedding: Venue, Decor + Little Details

Today I’m talking you through the decor, decoration and allllll the little details and touches we added to make our wedding day extra personable and special for our guests!

Venue:

Wiltons Music Hall is the oldest surviving Music Hall in the world, dating back to 1859. I grew up visiting Wilton’s with my parents to see various performances and also took G to see an improv night there on one of our early dates. It’s my dream wedding venue and I was SO excited at the prospect of getting married in such a gorgeous building with so much history around my home in the East End of London. The building is full of wooden floorboards, crumbling brick walls, with such an old-world beauty that it made the perfect backdrop to our wedding day. There are multiple rooms and bars in Wiltons meaning that we had so much space to use – we had the cloakroom downstairs, we closed off the Mahogany bar for the kitchen and catering team and had 5 rooms upstairs for our guests to explore, enjoy canapés + for our drink reception. Then there is the main theatre where we had the ceremony, wedding breakfast and party and the balcony where we cut our cake! There’s also a backstage area so we had a couple of changing rooms for us to freshen up with space for me to change into my evening dress.

As Wilton’s is still a theatre venue, they only release a select number of wedding dates per year, so we held out from planning our wedding until they had sent out the 2022 wedding dates at the start of 2021. I’m so glad we did as the day was perfect. Luckily the venue was so beautiful, it didn’t need much decoration but you can read below on the other little details and touches we made to make our day more special.

Flowers:

I immediately knew that I wanted a family friend, Esta and Steph from Minoux Flowers to bring our wedding floral vision to life! I’ve known Esta since we were tiny and trust her completely and I was actually gobsmacked at just how incredible the flowers were for our day (G even said when he first walked into the theatre on the morning and saw the flowers he got emotional!).

I wanted a colourful garland of flowers on the stage which would then be moved down a level for the wedding breakfast and … wow. This was so much more beautiful than I could have ever imagined and really made the ceremony look like we were in a magical meadow.

Closer to the wedding date we also decided to add on a big floral display on a plinth which looked stunning. I knew I also wanted flowers going down one side of the main staircase in Wilton’s as well as ikebana’s on the tables throughout the wedding breakfast and on tables in the cocktail bar too. Another quite late addition was a backdrop for the Photo Booth – I haven’t got many pictures of it but Minoux sourced a crescent moon shaped prop which they fill with flowers – I wish we could have this as a permanent feature in our home!

As for the bouquets and button holes – the flowers they used were so beautiful, I really can’t recommend them enough!

Little Touches:

For the wedding favours we used Tunnocks teacakes with little that I wrote with a calligraphy pen for each guest.

For the wedding breakfast menu I bought from eBay and spent a couple of hours writing and decorating them. We had our favourite video games that we’ve played together as a couple for the table names and after lots of research, we decided on some beautiful copper pipe stands from Etsy to present them. We definitely went over budget on these but I think they looked fab! G designed the table name sheets, had them printed and then we hole punched and threaded ribbon through them to hang on the pipes. I also purchased and LED candles (we couldn’t have open flames in Wiltons) for table decorations. We used those LED candles on the stage during the ceremony too!

To present the table plan I purchased and again we printed the tables off and stuck them on with some fake wax seals.

We had quite a lot of little touches throughout the wedding breakfast (you can read about our menu in another blog post) but the starters were served in picnic boxes. To make this special, I had a custom stamp created with one of the assets from our wedding invitations, which we used on some kraft paper tags and then wrapped with twine and rosemary.

We had custom aprons that we designed and had made for our VIPie guests, along with VIP golden tickets and our caterer kindly supplied the chefs hats for them to wear as our budget was very tight towards the end! For the dessert my dad hand made 10 wooden boxes to hold all of the sprinkles and toppings for our ice cream sundaes! Again I painted them black and wrote on the side!

We also had disposable cameras on each table alongside an ‘I Spy’ tick sheet so guests could take pictures and help us capture memories we might have been too busy to see! I can’t wait to have these developed. We also purchased a bunch of mini maracas for our bridesmaids and groomsmen to shake and make a noise with for our surname reveal entrance into our wedding breakfast.

For the order of the day I knew I wanted it on a wooden palette, but couldn’t find the right size and shape to restore anywhere, so I ended up We presented it on an which I had varnished to match the colour of the palette.

I found the most incredible wooden postbox for cards and gifts on Facebook Marketplace – it was probably the best bargain of the wedding! It was quite dusty and broken so I restored it, glued bits back together and used chalkboard paint in the centre to write our names and the date.

In the evening I supplied a wicker basket of flip flops for guests to dance in if their feet were sore and we also made up 100’s of pick and mix bags of sweets the weekend before the wedding, for our guests to snack on in the evening. Both were placed next to the evening bar. In the evening we also had a Mr and Mrs cocktails, and again I purchased some mini chalkboards and wrote on them the two cocktails for guests to choose!

In the bathrooms I wanted to add a box of refreshments so I got some wooden boxes from tiger, painted them with chalkboard paint, added some little words of encouragement and filled them with deodorant, mouthwash, hairspray, perfume, plasters, safety pins, dry shampoo, sanitary products, condoms and chupa chups!

For confetti I dried some of my own flowers but I couldn’t make enough, so I ended up purchasing a bag of rainbow coloured biodegradable confetti (link). I’m SO happy I made this decision as they looked incredible in the pictures!

We also got permission from the council to hang bunting in the alleyway outside Wiltons Music Hall. To cut back on costs, we asked Wiltons if they could use some off the bunting they’d had left over from previous weddings and they agreed! So we mix-matched some different colours and prints.

To make sure our guests had enough juice on their phones for pictures and to get home safely, we bought a phone charging station and G also had a ‘power of love’ sign framed to go alongside it.

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Phew, I think that’s everything! I can’t believe we managed to add so many small details into our day but I’m so glad we did – all of our guests complimented how personable the day was, and our caterer Marie said that we’d gone to more effort with those extra little touches than any of her previous wedding clients! I hope this has given you some inspiration for your wedding!

Lots of love, Katie x

Venue: Wiltons Music Hall | Photographer: Ed Godden | Catering:Easy Gourmet | Flowers: Minoux Florists | Videographers: PaperTwin (complimentary) | Dress:Catherine Deane | Shoes: | Bag: Vintage via Vinted | Earrings: Helix and Conch | Suits:Jack Bunnys | Bridesmaids: Highstreet | Entertainment Band: New York Brass Band | Transport: London Bus | Cake: Lily Vanilli | Makeup:Jennifer Makeup + (complimentary) | Hair: Jack + Samantha Cusick (complimentary) | Perfume: (Complimentary) | Confetti:Proper Confetti  | Bow: Gigi + Olive | Lashes:Nouveau Lashes | Brows: HD Brows | Save The Dates:Wilbert and Willow | Wedding Invite Design: Kristyna |