REAL WEDDING: OLLIE & FLO
When did you get married? 6th September 2020.
Was this your original wedding date? No. Our original date was 27th June 2020.
Where did you get married? We got married at Chelsea Old Town Hall and had a lunch with 27 friends and family afterwards.
How did it differ to what you initially had planned? The original plan was to get married in a beautiful country church near my Dad’s home in Oxfordshire, followed by a marquee reception for 200 guests in his garden. We had glamping arranged for all the guests on the evening of our original wedding date followed by a Brunch/BBQ the next day. Instead, we got married at Chelsea Old Town Hall, London and had a little gazebo in the garden at our home in Battersea. It was so special having the lunch at our house as it was personal to both of us. It’s hopefully somewhere we will be for a while, so we can tell our children that this was where we had our wedding celebration.
We organised for all our guests to be picked up from Chelsea Old Town Hall by rickshaws, and to then do a loop of Battersea Park on the way back to our house. We walk our dog Sam there every day, so wanted it to be part of the day. Thankfully, the weather was gorgeous, so we were able to share the beauty of the park with all our friends and family. It was so amazing cycling through with people clapping and beeping their horns. Ollie and I will never forget that incredible feeling, and my Grandma, who drove all the way from Norfolk for a few hours of the day, said she had never experienced anything quite like it before before. We both burst into tears of joy! My Dad mentioned in his speech that you don’t see London any better than that, and I think he was right! We feel incredibly lucky.
When did you make the decision to go ahead with a smaller wedding? I was toying with the idea straight away during the first lockdown, but we didn’t commit until the end of June when the lockdown was easing a little. It was a worry to pay deposits without guaranteeing that we would actually be able to get married, and we didn’t want our money to be tied up in too many places. We booked the ceremony, then everything else was done in the last 2 weeks. Just in case! Surprisingly, you can organise a wedding very quickly during a pandemic as lots of suppliers have last minute availability.
As I am a wedding and event photographer myself, work has been pretty scarce this year so I wanted to create something that we could look forward to and that my friends and family would love doing. For us, the main thing about getting married was having a special day with each other and beginning that chapter of our lives.
How did you inform some of your guests that they would no longer be invited, and how did they react? We are hosting our original wedding plan next year still, hopefully in June. We have sent everyone a save the ‘new’ date. We hope to have a blessing in the church next year and then a party afterwards – but we shall see what happens.
How was it dealing with all of your suppliers given the uncertainty of the situation? All of our suppliers were so amazing and moved to our new date in June 2021. For our wedding this year in September, we used completely different suppliers and friends from the industry that I work with a lot. It was actually really nice to have people I know and love working with there on our day as numbers were so limited, and it felt like they were part of the celebration. We will look forward to next year having a completely different concept and suppliers to work with to make it a very different celebration to what we were lucky enough to have this year.
What did you wear? I had two dresses as I couldn’t decide and it was all rather last minute, both from Self Portrait. One for the ceremony and then one for afterwards that was a little bit shorter :)
Was it the wedding dress you had always planned on wearing? No. The dress I chose for our wedding wouldn’t have fit the town hall. I am hopefully going to wear the original dress next year if I fit into it!
Did you have an outfit change? Yup. I thought why not!
Do you think your style changed in creating a 'micro wedding’? We decided that our micro wedding would be styled to the theme ‘ When Life Gives you Lemons…’ Covid - 19 being our lemon. We had hundreds of lemons everywhere and decided to have a slightly Mediterranean theme. We were blessed with a gorgeously sunny day, thankfully – as everything was outside to keep within the rules. Our amazing caterer Lara made the most delicious paella with seafood (Ollie and I ate this on our first date). We loved having the food cooked in front of the guests as an interactive experience. We wanted our guests to feel like they were on holiday as no one has really been able to travel this year.
Do you have any tips to stay calm when planning a wedding during a global pandemic? I would say just enjoy it. Don’t overthink things. Have a list of the things that are important to you and cross them off as you go.
Do you have any advice for people planning to do the same? Personally I would just say go for it. A small wedding is so perfect and you can really make it amazing as there are less people so your budget can go further. Get married now and have a party with everyone else another time. We honestly had the most amazing day that we could have ever asked for, and feel very very lucky that we were able to celebrate with the small number of guests that we did. Our wedding is special to us the way it was: it’s our own marriage story, and that is what is important!
What was the best part of your day? The whole thing. It was just so wonderful being amongst our closest friends and family and having a day to share with them all. I think emotions were just flying so high because of the fact that we were able to have a party after everyone had been cooped up for so long!
Will you do a bigger celebration once this is all over? Yup :) It is really important to us that we celebrate with all the friends and family that weren’t able to make it. We are both very close with our families and it was such a shame not having them all there. And although it didn’t take away from the little wedding we had, it will be nice to have a big party once this is all over.
Caterer: Lara Rodgers from Luna Larder
Flowers & Event Organiser: Ali Rodgers
Photographers: Barker Evans
Dresses: Self-portrait
Groom’s Suit: Hackett London
Headpiece: Fernanda Lewis Millinery
Shoes: Castaner
Invitations: The Putney Painter
Masks: Cotton Sense
Just 4 Linen: Just 4 Linen