Today I’m so happy to be sharing a very lovely {and fun!} Double Happiness day with you from Beautiful Life.

Joy and Shaun of Beautiful Life have a huge amount of experience in capturing Chinese weddings in both photography and in film, and I’m always excited to share their work with you.

This is the wedding of Lee and Amy. The bride and groom had their fun Door Games, the Chinese Tea Ceremony and also their beautiful civil ceremony at Down Hall Hotel.

Amy and Lee’s wedding day had the combined elegance of a beautiful English country house and the traditional banquet at the contemporary Yi Ban restaurant  in London. Perfect!

No Chinese wedding is complete without the Door Games! I spy leg waxing and sticky seaweed!

One sweet moment…

It seems to me that just having the morning games didn’t satisfy their Tze-Mui’s and Hing Dai’s… so for their evening banquet, more games there were. This time for the bride and groom!

What a lovely day it was! Thank you so much to Beautiful Life for sharing with us. Don’t forget to come back tomorrow as I’ll be sharing Amy and Lee’s film highlights.

Carms xo

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Photography + Fiming – Beautiful Life | Ceremony Venue – Down Hall Hotel | Chinese Banquet - Yi Ban

Hannah and Michael are incredibly busy people. They work 7 days a week around the clock for the family business and to plan a wedding too was impossible, so they knew it was time to get in touch with me to help them. With so much to do and each week was getting closer to their big day, I was virtually working round the clock myself! We had late night meetings as they start work early and didn’t finish work until 7-8pm and we had to get every small detail in place from invitations, flowers, the most incredible vintage Porsche for the groom, decorative items, finalise the catering, car parking for guests for the city banquet reception, arrange timings for all four dress changes for Hannah, including make up and hair, finalise the lion dance route and instructing bride and groom… the list seemed never ending. But the day went so perfectly and smoothly! A huge thank you to the team who worked from early until late for Hannah and Michael’s big day and to Butterworth Photography for these lovely photographs!

Oulton Hall -

Hannah and Michael had chosen the beautiful Oulton Hall for the ceremony and on the morning of the wedding we had gorgeous blue skies and sunshine. The bridesmaids were preparing for the door games and I had selected the most perfect suite for this. Big enough for the brides family to remain in the suite and a private hallway for the Hing-Dai’s!

The fantastic Louise Ingman Hair and Rachel Liney Make Up remained with us all day for Hannah’s hair and make up…

Chinese Door Games

Nervous Hing-Dai’s ready or maybe not so ready?! The Tze-Mui’s were certainly ready!

Seaweed and something super sour! This is for the Sweet, Sour, Bitter and Spicy tradition

Firenza Floral Design was a great pleasure to work with and both of Hannah’s bouquets were gorgeous. We decided to have a bouquet to complement Hannah’s different dresses in particular one for her Chinese Kwa and another softer bouquet for her white wedding dress.

Oriental City -

The bride and groom were greeted by the traditional Chinese Lion Dance on arriving at Oriental City, where the Chinese Banquet was hosted. This was also a very well known restaurant in Leeds owned by Michael’s family.

May I take this opportunity to once again Congratulate Hannah and Michael on a very long and blissful marriage!… Carms xx

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Wedding Planning – Carmen Weddings | Photography – Butterworth Photography | Ceremony Venue – Oulton Hall | Reception Venue – Oriental City | Florist – Firenza Floral Design | Make Up Artist – Rachel Liney | Hair Stylist – Rachel Ingman | Porsche Speedster – Private Hire

Every year someone will always ask ‘Do you love or loathe Valentines Day?’ or ‘Is Valentines Day just another expensive day?’… well, I personally just looove the sweet February the 14th!

But this year Paul and I are celebrating a little differently. My brother-in-law is getting married today! Depending what time you read this, I may well be just getting ready to put my frock on, or we’re witnessing Andrew and Hayley become husband and wife… or maybe right now I’m giving my now sweet sister-in-law the biggest congratulation hug!

So, what will you be doing on this Valentines Day? I hope you have a very sweet and romantic day too.

Lots of hugs + love to you all xoxo

May the year of the snake bring you much love, happiness, great success in all you do and most importantly, good health.

I’m very much looking forward to celebrating with my family with a delicious traditional home cooked Chinese New Year dinner {Mami’s cooking is the  best!} Chinese New Year is always a time when we get together and spend a little time at home, looking forward to what this brand new year may bring us…  I know whatever happens, this year will be more amazing than the last for us all : ) xx

Chinese New Year Card by Ananya Cards

If you’re not familiar with this Chinese tradition, the Tung-Shing is the Chinese calendar and is used to select ‘Good Wedding Dates’… if you visit this website, you can see the full calendar with a list of the complete recommended dates for a wedding. Or click here to download the printable version - please bear in mind the dates are in Year/Month/Day

For a traditional Chinese wedding, a date is normally very difficult to set until the couple have either consulted a fortune master at the temple or they normally wait until the Tung-Shing is published at the very end of the previous year or at the very beginning of the current year. You can purchase the 2013 – year of the Snake Tung-Shing on Amazon also – this version is most popular among the people of Hong Kong and Guangzhou, China.