UK Archives - Page 59 of 60 - Smashing the Glass

Rachel & Emile | Moroccan Themed Jewish Engagement Party in London

24/07/2013 by Karen

I normally only like to focus on weddings here on Smashing The Glass, hence the name of the blog, but this Moroccan themed engagement party and Blake Ezra‘s amazingly energetic photos from the occasion swayed me into sharing it with you.

From the spirited dancing to the authentic Moroccan decor to the colourful traditional henna ceremony there’s lots of lovely personality, tradition and detail to focus on at this engagement party extraordinaire.

Rachel, a teacher from Melbourne, and Emile, an online marketer, met two years ago when Rachel moved into a flatshare in Hendon when she had just arrived in London. The room that she had moved into was actually Emile’s old one. After two days of being in the new apartment her housemates threw a party and at that party she met Emile although they didn’t actually start dating till about 5 months later.

The couple got engaged in December 2012 and threw their (what can only be described as ‘mini-wedding’) Moroccan engagement and henna party in May of this year. I’ll hand you over to Rachel now for all the juicy details but before I do I’ll just give you a little background as to what a ‘henna’ is.

Image: Henna By Sienna

WHAT IS A HENNA?
The henna ceremony is a cultural and spiritual celebration practised mainly amongst Sephardi Jews that is supped to bring good luck to the engaged couple. It involves crushing the leaves of the henna plant into a powder, which, when mixed with water, becomes a dough that stains the skin orange. The henna is arranged in intricate lacey or floral patterns on the hands or feet, and symbolises good health, fertility, wisdom, protection or spiritual enlightenment.

Rachel: I’m an Australian from Melbourne and have been living in the UK for two and a half years now. Emile is British but his dad is Moroccan Israeli so that’s where the Henna ceremony/ party would definitely have had to come in either way. We had to make a decision on which country to have the wedding in and we decided to do it in Australia in March 2014. So having a big engagement party in London incorporating a henna ceremony made perfect sense as we could have all our British and international guests who may very well not be able to get to Australia for the wedding, celebrate with us at a big fun affair too.

INTERNATIONAL GUESTS
Emile’s dad had over 20 of his relatives fly in from Israel for the week and I had my parents come in from Australia. Emile and I both had family from Canada and New York celebrate with us too and we couldn’t have been more thrilled to have such an international array of family and friends have a ball with us at our London engagement party.

I have to admit it felt like a mini wedding – it was the ‘London leg’ as it were. We loved that everyone could feel part of a big celebration no matter what country they were in.

INVITATIONS
With so many foreign guests to invite we thought that using Paperless Post for our invitations would be a good idea. It’s a great service as you can customise the invitation however you want and then you can really stay on top of things with all the RSVPs and messages. We didn’t need to worry about a designer, printing, postage or addresses or RSVPs getting lost in the mail. We loved it!

VENUE
We wanted to hold the party somewhere local that would be easy to get to and big enough to house our 200+ guests. Kinloss Hall was a blank canvas and we loved the fact that we could dress up the room to the degree that we needed to.
DECOR
Being an authentic Moroccan, Emile’s dad had a vision of how he wanted the room to be set out. He arranged palm trees and lanterns and pouffes and all kinds of fabulous Moroccan props. We didn’t have to hire anything – all the stuff is within Emile’s family – so it was all totally authentic. We weren’t pretending to do a Moroccan party. It was a genuine Moroccan party!

Lee & Gary | Show-Stopping Jewish Wedding at The Criterion, London

16/07/2013 by Karen

Lee and Gary married at the gorgeously opulent Criterion Restaurant in Piccadilly, London. And when I say opulent, I’m talking a sumptuous neo-Byzantine Piccadilly haven with marble walls, decorative archways and a glorious golden mosaic ceiling.

And that’s not the only reason I’m excited to feature this wedding. You see I’m also totally in love with Lee’s couture dress and head piece which she designed herself. AND the fact that Le Gateau Chocolat, the big black transvestite opera-singer, with a penchant for being wrapped in body-hugging glittery lycra, performed at this wedding!

So here’s their story: Although this gorgeous couple are both Jewish, Lee (a former fashion designer, now a full-time mummy) and Gary, a barrister, are both, in their own words, “devout atheists”. Even so, both felt a need for some familiar cultural background in a partner and ended up finding each other on the Jewish dating site, JDate.

I’ll now hand over to Lee with all the delicious detail from the day:

VENUE + DECOR
Lee, the Bride: Gary, my then fiancà©, had been to The Criterion Restaurant before and knowing my love for art deco, thought I might like it. He literally thought of it the day after he proposed (which by the way completely flew over my head as he did it in his usual verbally subtle way!) We were on holiday at the time and arranged to see the venue a few days after our return over lunch. The moment we sat down and took the place in, we knew we needn’t look any further.

With such a beautiful venue choice, we didn’t need or want a theme or colour scheme as we didn’t want to detract from the beauty of the room with many other colours. Our floral and table layouts were fairly clean and simple too, with a combination of old school & clean modern – just how we like it!

Andrew & Elliott | Uber-Stylish Soirée Wedding at One Marylebone, London

11/07/2013 by Karen

Today you lucky readers get not one but two lovely grooms who together organised an incredibly entertaining (think confetti canons, swing band, full-on Shirley Bassey wedding entrance) and glamorous black tie wedding in the heart of London’s West End. Their story is full of phenomenal detail, useful tips, fabulous eye-candy and impeccable style.

Andrew, originally from Australia, is an Operations Director for a boutique London creative agency, and Elliott is a Client Relationship Manager for a global investment manager. They met in Melbourne, whilst Elliott was traveling for work, and the rest, as they say, is history.

With their wedding being very much a joint planning effort (and boy was there a lot of planning), the account of their double groom w-day is recounted in both their words:

AN EXCUSE TO THROW THE BEST PARTY WE COULD IMAGINE
Andrew + Elliott: As well as being a celebration of our Civil Partnership we always wanted our day to be a celebration for our friends and an excuse to throw the best party that we could imagine. For a venue, we imagined a lavish stately home [with Andrew being from Australia, he had always had the grand notion to have a lavish party in a stately home or palace (somewhere older than the 225 years of his colonised country)], but in keeping with the idea of it being a party for friends we were also adamant that we wanted a Central London location so that guests didn’t need to plan accommodation or travel. Free from needing to marry in a “place of worship” we also wanted the ceremony and reception in the same venue so that there was one less travel logistic for our guests and us.

The problem we faced with a lot of the Central London properties available was that they were either sterile, were just another banqueting room in a grand hotel or were private member clubs with dominating dà©cor that would stop any chance of us adding our own personal touches. We started with a list of over 30 properties that could accommodate 100 guests. We researched via the web and various venue guides and then shortlisted around half a dozen that seemed to meet most of our requirements.

Off we trotted to spec out the various venues on the shortlist after work or on weekends. Several we wrote-off without even entering the building, others were excluded because of silly charges and inflexible terms and conditions. One, in particular, we rather liked but we didn’t gel with the event planner — her creativity extended only as far as suggesting neon pink lighting because this was a gay event! We were becoming slightly worried that our expectations were too high. We started to reconsider the stately home alternative. We unconsidered it again and armed with a bottle of wine we sat down and spent another evening reconsidering venues that we had previously ruled out (thinking we should at least go and inspect them as we were only reliant on photos from the web). A late addition was One Marylebone, which a good friend of ours had recommended.

WOWED BY ONE MARYLEBONE
We went to see One Marylebone one wintery evening after a stressful day at work, and apart from being wowed by the beauty of the building we immediately hit it off with Alicia, their fabulous event planner. We’d barely taken our coats off and already her suggestions were filling us with inspiration. We knew there and then that One Marylebone was the right venue — as an event space it was new enough that we would be original, as a venue it is awe inspiring and needs little additional decoration and, above all, we knew Alicia would make our day into what we wanted it to be!

Kiruna & Gareth | Wedstock Festival Theme Jewish Wedding at Holton Lee, Poole

02/07/2013 by Karen

This is such an awesome wedding on so many levels. First of all, Kiruna’s amazing couture wedding dress is made almost entirely from paper! (mostly with the pages of an old copy of Alice in Wonderland together with that of an erotic novel). Secondly with an actress and a comedian marrying each other the relaxed feeling and originality that shine through this ‘wedstock’ wedding is just fabulous.

Kiruna Stamell, originally from Australia, and Gareth’s paths had crossed a couple of times over the years but as is so often the case, the timing wasn’t right. When a mutual friend re-introduced them in 2011, everything felt like it was meant to be and Gareth proposed to Kiruna after just 4 months.

They meticulously organised a weekend Wedstock wedding that took place in September 2012 complete with a fish ‘n’ chips van, camping, tipis, chill-out tents, a fabulous cake competition, and lots of crafty and DIY details all made by the very talented Kiruna herself!

Kiruna, the Bride: We wanted a relaxed, bohemian party and Holton Lee, our chosen venue, delivered our festival dreams and then some! Our wedding lasted an entire weekend with guests camping onsite with us. Holton Lee is actually a not-for-profit charity so you’ve got these beautiful camping fields and wonderful facilities but also disability-friendly buildings right next door which was essential as we were hosting several disabled guests who needed accessibility.

THE VENUE + THEME

I wanted a pretty picnic lovely camping theme inspired by my experiences at English music festivals but with more of a civilised touch. I was amazed at how much discrimination I came across when I first started looking for a disability-friendly venue but Honeybells who supplied our romantic and chill-out tents came to the rescue with the suggestion of the beautiful Holton Lee and it ticked all our boxes.

We both wanted a ‘picnic festival’ even ‘Woodstock’ feel. We wanted to create a social / non-wedding / relaxing afternoon during daylight on the Saturday and then we would have this shift as the Sabbath went out at sunset on Saturday evening and it turned into the wedding element of the weekend.

The venue was a godsend and it was wonderful to know that the money we spent was going into their not for profit ethos.

DIY CREATIVITY

Paper was a massive part of my theme which is why most of my wedding dress was made from paper.

I love the nostalgic element of brown paper packaging and string and as well as collecting lots of it I asked my local cafe to save the coca cola bottles to be my vases on the table and saved loads of money by making all the flowers myself out of paper.

The brown paper was the starting point and I then started collecting recycled scraps of paper in different colours to make festival bunting, and other artefacts in the months leading up to the wedding. The table centres were newspaper-covered K’s and G’s that I also made.

Continue Reading

Karen & Jeremy | London Jewish Wedding at the Wallace Collection Art Gallery, London, UK

19/06/2013 by Karen

As the founder of Smashing The Glass it’s only right that I share my own wedding day, and all the creative ideas that were behind it, with you.

I love so many of the centuries-old Jewish traditions such as the hora, the beautiful songs, the chuppah, the smashing of the glass etc. but what my now-husband and I very much didn’t want was a party that followed the typical London Jewish-wedding-by-numbers formula… ie. fancy hotel, too many guests, the same kosher caterer that everyone uses, the same band etc…..

VENUE

I had always dreamt of an outdoor summer wedding and that’s one of the reasons why I love Israeli weddings – the chuppah under the stars, the all-night party vibe, the abundance of food and having the ceremony and party all in one venue. But when it came to organising our wedding it meant the world to us to have Jeremy’s 97 year old grandmother there and as she is unable to travel, a wedding abroad with guaranteed summer weather was out of the question.

London, our home city, was our next choice and the criteria for a venue was to have a feel of being in the outdoors without worrying about the unpredictable British weather spoiling the party, and a stylish, intimate venue, preferably with an arty slant to reflect our creative sides.
The Wallace Collection, once a family home, and now a stunning art collection, in the heart of the West End was our perfect choice. The stunning Courtyard flooded with natural light and dotted with trees and sculptures felt utterly al fresco, yet protected us from the elements with a phenomenal glass roof. Breathtaking and intimate at the same time, it ticked all the right boxes.

We wanted to have both the chuppah ceremony and the dinner dancing in the Courtyard to really feel as if the majority of the wedding was outdoors. We also loved the idea of the changing daylight from the hopefully sunny (and it was!) afternoon to the starry night sky. In between the ceremony and dinner our guests were able to look around all the artwork on the first floor of the house where all the galleries were open to our guests to meander round as they chatted, imbibed and grazed on Zafferano‘s (our chosen caterers) delicious canapà©s.

In terms of getting ready and spending our first night as a married couple, we stayed at the gorgeous Home House in Portman Square just a few minutes walk from the Wallace Collection.

Share this post:

Share this post:

Share this post:

THE VENUE + THEME

DIY CREATIVITY

Continue Reading

Share this post:

VENUE

Continue Reading

Share this post: