Katie and Dan’s wedding is a lesson in how to do effortless, modern, city wedding style beautifully and with a riot of colour and joy. The couple chose Bourne & Hollingsworth Buildings in 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 in 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 dancing whilst keeping everyone together under one roof. Before heading to the venue, the couple also shared a private first look 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 chic, 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 in incredible shades of bright purple and electric blue that brought even more life and character into the day.
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Wedding planning was an absolute whirlwind. The whole thing felt so ‘us’. I love bright colours so knew straight away that I wanted lots of hot pinks, yellows, oranges and thankfully, our guests know us well enough that most of them went for bright colours too, including the amazing bright purple and blue our mums wore!
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The Venue & Location
Our venue was Bourne & Hollingsworth Buildings in Clerkenwell, London. We looked at more than ten venues and in the end we, of course, chose the first one that we saw!
We loved the chic aesthetic, that we could host all three elements under the same roof (but on 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 in high holborn through the production site Scouty, which we fell in love with on first viewing. It provided the most beautiful setting for us to prepare for our wedding and the most beautiful backdrop for our photos too!
The Ceremony
We knew that our chosen venue wasn’t licensed for weddings and so chose to have the legal wedding at Hackney town hall on the Friday with the “main ceremony” with all our family and friends on the Saturday.
Dan walked down the aisle with his Mum first. Then our bridesmaids and groomsmen walked down in pairs, before my Dad walked me down to meet Dan.
My brother, Jamie, had said from the start that he would love to play a role in 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!).
One of the most special (and bizarre) moments was when my brother, Jamie, asked everyone to hold hands, close their eyes, and think about the concept of love with the strangers next to them. A few nervous laughs later, he revealed that his grandfather had asked the same thing of the guests at his parents’ wedding 30 years earlier – a unique and touching moment that will be hard for our guests to forget we’re sure!
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 band 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 band was from Mapin & Webb.
In short, we met at university when Dan became friends with one of my housemates. The longer version of the story involves me massively crushing on Dan for a couple of years before eventually admitting this (through tinder!). We had a long-distance relationship between London and York for a year, and then I moved down to London and the rest is history. We got engaged in September 2023 after Dan planned the most gorgeous and intricate proposal on Hampstead Heath!
The Reception
I was very keen to hand-craft as much as possible – Dan wisely reined me in 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 designed and made the wedding signs – we had the hand drawn menus, signage, and handmade bunting for the venue ceiling with pink and light orange colour ribbons that matched the flowers and my bouquet.
I drew unique menu/place cards for every single guest. Each place card had a Polaroid style photo of the guest with Katie or Dan (or both!). In a similar fashion, instead of a traditional table plan, we had giant boards with the same but larger photos of guests for each table located near the bar – guests loved it and enjoyed going through photos while having drinks
Flowers were by Botanique Workshop in 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 in West Hampstead. We thought the heart shaped cake could be quite twee, so after HOURS of debate, went with ‘til death’ written on the top to juxtapose this. We also had a figurine of our dog Lola as a topper!
Our first dance was to ‘Grow’, by Kidnap. We were keen on finding a song that felt personal, wasn’t a typical first dance song, AND picked up around half way through so that the rest of our guests would join in dancing with us! We went on a date to the Grow album launch at the Greenwich planetarium a very long time ago and when reminiscing realised that it fit the bill perfectly.
Words of Wedded Wisdom
Pick the food that you really want to eat, everyone else will be too drunk to remember.
Persuade the venue to let you in 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 or so she would drag us back together shouting “spend time with your wife!”. It’s so easy – when in 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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