East-meets-West : Wedding of Tracey + Robert : Part II

Since sharing Part One of Tracey and Robert’s wedding yesterday… I’m sure you have been excitedly waiting for this second part of their East-meets-West {British-Chinese style} wedding! Well, rather than rambling on … shall I just go ahead and show you the fabulous photos which CG Weddings beautifully captured?! Big thank you to Tracey for sharing the details, her thoughts and thank you’s from her big day.

 

The Wedding Cake… Pipedreams Cake Company in West Kirby, Wirral were who we chose to design our cake. I saw a few cakes I liked the design of and merged the elements I liked from each one. It was a simple but elegant four tiered square cake, with white icing and diamantes scattered on the sides of the cake. I provided the shop with co-ordinating ribbon that I used for all my stationery to wrap around the bottom of each cake to tie my wedding design together.

I wanted a really personal cake topper – I therefore asked Character Creations to create us a personalised cake topper of me, Rob and our precious cat Elvis.  It is even more treasured to us now because our cat devastatingly recently passed away and we can look at our topper and see how much Elvis meant to us because we wanted him included on our wedding day.

 

Reception Flowers + Details … For the top table display I chose to have white Gladioli, white Gerberas and Roses with alot of greenery. For the table centrepieces, I had more white Gladioli plus some lucky curly bamboo and greenery in tall clear vases.

All the tables for our Wedding Breakfast were named after the twelve signs of the Chinese Zodiac.  On the back of the table cards were the characteristics of each animal for that particular table. At each place setting were American style Chinese Takeout boxes which contained a mix of British and Chinese favours – fortune cookies, fortune telling fish, a Lottery Scratchcard with a lucky Chinese coin. We also had mini Cadburys Dairy Milk and for the men a Miniature bottle of Brandy. The boxes were tied with co-ordinating ribbon and personalised labels. As an icebreaker for each table, I made two tongue in cheek booklets – “Lern Yerself Scouse” and “Beginners Guide to Chinese” so that the guests from the south could understand the Liverpool lingo! The Chinese booklet was a little fun in style with Chinese proverbs and Chinese humour. These were a big hit, and caused a few arguments among guests who fought over who were taking them home!

Our Menu … For our wedding breakfast was segments of melon with seasonal fruit to start, then guests chose either Roast Sirloin of Welsh Beef Yorkshire Pudding, Red Wine Pan Juices or Pan Fried Chicken Breast wrapped in Smoked Bacon, Oyster Mushrooms & Thyme Jus for the main course. This was then  followed by an assiette of desserts  which were Cheesecake, Trio of Chocolate and Fresh Fruit Pavlova.

 

Something Blue … Rob is a huge Everton fan, and I included a few touches to his favourite football team. I wore an Everton garter, had Z Cars playing as we entered for the Wedding Breakfast (Z Cars is the theme tune that the team run onto the pitch too at home games!) and my flower girls were supposed to hand out Everton Mints – but instead threw them onto the grass! I presented Rob with a signed and framed Everton shirt as a surprise.

Chinese Lion Dance … We had Chinese lions performing before the Tea Ceremony which attracted interest not only from our guests but also from guests at another wedding at the same venue! Many of our guests hadn’t seen a Chinese Lion Dance before so it was great to demonstrate something from my heritage. The performance worked really well at our venue, as we had them perfom outside in the grounds where we held our wedding ceremony. My two little nieces who were flower girls changed into little cheongsam dresses too and we all held Chinese parasols.

 

For the Little Ones … I think a successful wedding is one which reflects the couple and if you think about the guests who will be there, and consider what they would enjoy, then everyone will have a great time. It doesn’t necessarily mean you need to spend a lot of money, just spend time on thinking about your guests as they make a wedding. We wanted children to be a part of our day, and wanted the parents to be able to enjoy themselves without worrying about occupying the children. For the children we had an area set up for them, with a TV and DVD’s, colouring books and pencils, goody bags for the children which were given to them before the speeches. We also provided garden games for them – although the adults enjoyed it too!

 

Chinese Wedding Tea Ceremony … I wanted to incorporate the traditional Chinese tea ceremony in the day, so after the wedding breakfast and before the evening reception, I changed into a traditional two piece Kwa which my Dad bought for me in Hong Kong.  It was heavily embellished with beads and sequins and was very heavy to wear. I wore a pretty red flower hairpiece in my hair and had red shoes again from Dune which were very similar to my ivory pair I wore earlier in the day. I was given some beautiful Chinese gold jewellery which was bought especially for me but also wore some pieces which belonged to family members.

From the onset, we wanted a relaxing, fun and personal wedding, where nobody went hungry so I looked at our wedding as if I was a guest in order to come up with ideas to make it relaxing, fun and personal. We had a sweetie table which was a big hit, a caricaturist, a vintage ambulance complete with a vintage dressed ambulance man (I work for the Ambulance Service!) and a Big Brother style Diary Room which we provided lots of fancy dress props so our guests could have fun when recording us a message

I surprised myself on the morning of the wedding at how calm I was, having not had many hours sleep in the nights leading up to the day! I was quite relaxed but started to feel quite emotional when I saw my Dad well up just as we were about to walk down the aisle. I cried as I approached my handsome groom and cried during the vows. During the speeches, I was quite overwhelmed and again when my brother gave a speech instead of my Dad.

 

Our first dance … was to Neil Diamond’s ‘Forever in Blue Jeans’. It’s not your traditional first dance song, but it was our song. It’s the one we would pick for karaoke, and the one which reminded us of happy times – singing in the car and playing our imaginary drums! The lyrics also felt appropriate too.

Tracey’s Advice for Brides-To-Be! … If you feel in your heart that there is something you want to do or have at your wedding, and other people try to put you off it, just go for it and follow your instincts. I wasn’t going to have the Chinese Lions, because someone told me that they were not appropriate for weddings but I knew that they would be spectacular at our wedding and be a real talking point and it was.  Guests still talk about our day when we see them, and they tell us how much they enjoyed the Chinese elements to the day.

If you are anything like me and like to pay attention to detail, then don’t be afraid to do this on your big day. I was obsessive about the little details. I thought about every eventuality and catered for it, such as providing a basket of essential items in the men’s and ladies toilets containing plasters, deodorant, safety pins, hairspray, baby wipes etc, and baskets of flip flops for the ladies with sore feet! I wanted our guests to enjoy our day and not to have any worries and feedback afterwards was overwhelming, and proved that people do notice the small details, and they appreciated the thoughtful gestures.

Thank You To Liam of CG Weddings … Photography plays a huge part of my life, I am known for my love of taking photos of everything, so trusting someone else to take photos of my big day was a hard job, but after meeting Liam Crawley of CG Weddings there was no contest. We booked Liam 2 years in advance, and his work just got better and better (and still does!). We had a pre-wedding shoot at Goodison Park, the home of Everton FC which helped prepare us for Liam’s style of photography. The shots he took were amazing and made us so excited for our big day. We absolutely love how Liam captured our wedding day so beautifully, the images he took are just beautiful and so classic. We have since used Liam again to photograph our precious baby girl Beth and again, he didn’t disappoint us. We highly recommend Liam – for stunning photographs from an award winning photography team.

Carms : A big thank you to Tracey and Robert for having me share their gorgeous wedding and the beautiful photo of them with their adorable little girl. Wishing you both a lifetime full of happiness together with your gorgeous family… Carms x