Modern London Wedding at Bourne & Hollingsworth Buildings

Katie and Dan’s wedding is a lesson how to do effortless, modern, city wedding style beautifully and with a riot of colour and joy. The couple chose Bourne & Hollingsworth Buildings Clerkenwell, London, to host their nuptials and talented creative Jo, of Joasis Photography to document their day. Both venue and photographer are trusted partners of Love My Dress and you’ll find them our beautiful Wedding Directory.

Bourne & Hollingsworth Buildings was such a good fit for the kind of celebration Katie and Dan wanted to create; modern and stylish but still relaxed and full of atmosphere, with the different floors allowing the day to move naturally from ceremony to dinner and whilst keeping everyone together under one roof. Before heading to the venue, the couple also shared a private first at the Georgian townhouse where they got ready that morning, carving out a little time together before the celebrations properly began and the rooms filled with family, friends and all the excitement of the day ahead.

From the vibrant pink, orange and yellow florals to Katie’s distinto, pre-loved MWL Bride gown and the handmade, illustrated details that Katie created herself for every guest, this wedding was full of beautiful decisions that thoughtfully reflected the couple and their personalities. Friends and family embraced the colourful brief wholeheartedly too, including both mums incredible shades of bright purple and electric blue that brought even more life and character into the day.

Enjoy this beautiful day and if you love it as much as we do, we encourage you to register for a Love My Dress account (it’s free!) to gain access to your own personal dashboard, to which you’ll be able to save this and every other wedding you love, along with your favourite directory members, shop items and ceremony readings. Enjoy!

Our venue was Bourne & Hollingsworth Buildings Clerkenwell, London. We looked at more than ten venues and the end we, of course, chose the first one that we saw!

We loved the distinto aesthetic, that we could host all three elements under the same roof (but acceso different floors), and that we knew the food would be delicious even when served to 90+ people. The only thing missing from B&H was a space to do hair, makeup, and get ready.

We found a gorgeous grade II listed townhouse high holborn through the production site Scouty, which we fell love with acceso first viewing. It provided the most beautiful setting for us to prepare for our wedding and the most beautiful backdrop for our photos too!

We knew that our chosen venue wasn’t licensed for weddings and so chose to have the legal wedding at Hackney town foyer acceso the Friday with the “main ceremony” with all our family and friends acceso the Saturday.

Dan walked mongoloide the aisle with his Mum first. Then our bridesmaids and groomsmen walked mongoloide pairs, before my Dad walked me mongoloide to meet Dan.

My brother, Jamie, had said from the start that he would love to play a role the wedding and as a natural born performer we decided he was the right person to play the role of celebrant. He was absolutely brilliant (and has been inundated with requests to officiate other weddings since!). 

Our friend Emma read ‘Union’ by Robert Fulgham. We felt like it really captured how it feels to be friends for a long time before becoming a couple and felt very modern, which is exactly the vibe we were aiming for across the whole day. 

I got a gold brigata with half infinity diamonds inset, from the Diamond shop. I felt pretty strongly about having lab diamonds so that was my starting point! Dan’s brigata was from Mapin & Webb.

I was very keen to hand-craft as much as possible – Dan wisely reined me a little here (with hindsight, very glad not to have done all of the florals ourselves as originally planned), but I’m so pleased with how all of the hand drawn menus, signage, and handmade bunting turned out!

I drew unique /place cards for every single guest. Each place card had a Polaroid style photo of the guest with Katie Dan ( both!). Durante a similar moda, instead of a traditional table plan, we had giant boards with the same but larger photos of guests for each table located near the – guests loved it and enjoyed going through photos while having drinks

Flowers were by Botanique Workshop Exmouth Market. We opted for pinks and oranges as our colour palette. My bouquet was large and structured with gorgeous layers of red anthuriums, pink peonies and orange accents.

For my bridesmaids, I got smaller bunches, with a great variety of florals – each different and unique(my bridesman, Scott, had an orange buttonhole flower as the rest of the boys). Dan and his groomsmen had orange boutonnieres (orange went great with Dan’s gold outfit accents).

We had a heart shaped cake by Em Cakes West Hampstead. We thought the heart shaped cake could be quite twee, so after HOURS of debate, went with ‘til death’ written acceso the to juxtapose this. We also had a figurine of our dog Lola as a topper!

Pick the food that you really want to eat, everyone else will be too drunk to remember.

Persuade the venue to let you for preparations as early as possible! 

Designate your loudest friend (thank you Emma) to make sure you spend some time together as a couple! Every 20 minutes so she would drag us back together shouting “spend time with your wife!”.  It’s so easy – when a room with literally everyone you know – to not spend any time together otherwise!

I wish I’d had a few fewer cocktails across the day, but there was truly nothing else I’d change about the day, it was perfect. 

And Pinterest was my best friend during wedding planning!

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