Mina & Perrys garden party wedding ♥

Mina & Perry have a wonderful wedding story… and some very cool photos. This really is one of the most fun weddings ever. Everyone looks like they are having the best time, maybe its all those smiling faces 😉 I am also a tad jelaous that Mina is rocking the purple converse too. Love Converse!

So the details we love…
Mina & Perry got married in her parents back garden on the 25th August 2012.
The Proposal…
The proposal happened on 9^th July 2011 in Paris on the balcony of our room where we were staying at the cutest B&B.  We had been planning this trip for ages and Perry had even asked my parents before we went away … I called my mum after and had to listen to her screaming for ages down the phone … it was also the same weekend we made the decision to relocate to Dubai and we moved over at the end of September 2011.

The Vision for the day…
There wasn’t so much a vision for the day … we had originally planned a big wedding for next summer but we changed our minds and decided to get married in Thailand in March … we had the holiday planned already so we managed to build it into our trip. So the idea was that we would just throw a big garden party in the summer when we were back in the UK to celebrate with whoever could make it … the main vision for the day was for it to be as unfussy as possible …

The Planning process…
Almost all the planning had been done from Dubai … with lots of help from my parents and Perry’s parents … as my family were hosting the party a lot of the general organising such as the marquee and catering they did … and Perry’s family picked up the alcohol, and came up to London a few weekends to help prep/DIY stuff in the run up to the party

Budget…  There really wasn’t one … just to be as little as possible.
No. of Guests…  we had about 100 guests in total on the day.
Finding My Wedding Dress…
This was the first and least stressful thing to sort out … when I typed Wedding dress into a google image search I was surprised to find the first dress I saw was the one I fell in love with … it was the Abilene dress by Maggie Sottero … I rang around a few places to see if there was anywhere I could go try it on but nowhere had a sample … it was in a new range of dresses which would only be in store a couple weeks before we moved to Dubai … so in the mean time I did go and try on a bunch of other dresses … none of them really compared to the one I’d first seen online … when I did finally get to go see it with my mum I fell in love with it immediately when I put it on and that was that … it was ordered and actually was probably the least stressful thing I had to deal with … and after we decided not to do the ‘big wedding’ I thought since the dress had already been bought and paid for I would still wear it for our garden party.

My Lovely Accessories…
As is traditional in Iranian culture the bride’s family buy the bride’s jewelry for the wedding so I didn’t get to see what these were until the day of the party … thankfully my mum knows my tastes in jewelry well so I wasn’t worried. The other main accessory were my Purple/green custom converses … Perry and I had decided we wanted to be comfortable on the day … I hate wearing heels and have a tendency to injure myself when I wear them … since we are both fans of converse’s it made sense to us to have these as our shoes for the day … I custom made mine on their website and had them delivered, while Perry found his Comic book style ones at Mall of the Emirates one day while browsing … I had also secretly bought Perry a Tag Heuer watch he’d been eyeing for years as a secret wedding gift which I gave to him before the party started …

Groom’s Threads…
Fitted Italian style suit, with a simple white cuff linked shirt, a lovely purple silk tie and to top it all off special edition converse high-top trainers with DC comic characters over the ankles.

The Flowers…
Flowers were all sourced locally by my mum in London and a close family friend of ours did the arrangements the day before … along with the table settings and most of the other décor.

The Cake…
The Cake was from a local Iranian bakery … they did a special cake for our engagement party the year before made of my favorite Iranian dessert pastry … its basically an Iranian version of a mille-feuille turned into a cake format … except this time he did it bigger …

My Details + Décor….
Décor was kept quite simple … I wanted to have a garden party vibe for the evening … a lot of it all was DIY’d and done ourselves. Perry’s dad helped a lot with the gardening in the run up to the event, his mum and my mum did a lot for the party favours which were small jars of homemade jam called “Spread the Love” … I got a bunch of disposable cameras which guests were encouraged to use throughout the evening … being a photographer myself I love photos and was really excited to see the party from other peoples perspectives in the disposables after … instead of a traditional guest book we had paper luggage tags and asked people to leave us some Life Advice hung up on a lit up tree … the marquee was my dad’s idea … which turned out to be a great one as earlier in the day we’d had torrential rain … thankfully this eased off for the evening … and my dad even constructed a roof over the area to be used by the caterers for their BBQ the day before the party so they could stay dry … also we purposefully didn’t have tables for all the guests to sit down and as such didn’t have place settings … we had plenty of seats/sofas/chairs etc for everyone to sit but wanted to have enough open space for dancing and mingling and to keep the relaxed garden party feeling … we felt a seating arrangement would have defeated the point of that making it too formal … I also asked one of my closest friends to do the photography for the day and had another friend on hand to take over for him at times so he could also enjoy the party …

Our Honeymoon…. As we got married whilst on holiday to Thailand the rest of the trip was our honeymoon
Favorite moments…
Seeing the guests face’s when they saw what shoes I was wearing for the first time … for some they hadn’t noticed till well into the evening and the sudden gasps every now and again were rather amusing … Seeing Perry’s face when he saw the watch I’d gotten him was amazing for me … the stress I’d gone through to be sure he didn’t know about it was ridiculous … overall the whole evening was a lot of fun and it was very relaxed which was exactly how we wanted it to be … it was great to see everyone having a great time …

Advice for other couples…
Do what makes you happy … don’t do something you don’t want to just because someone else expects it … it’s not about them the day should be about you as a couple … by all means include others in the process but remember it’s supposed to be a celebration of your love for each other.

Credit for friends, family & suppliers…
Aaaahhh … so many people need to be thanked for helping make the day so special … my auntie did my alterations for my dress … my mum’s wonderful hairdresser did my hair for the day … and my nails too … he was rather flabbergasted when I told him I was going to leave them unvarnished grabbed a nail file, purple polish and just did it before I had a chance to say anything … a close family friend of ours did my makeup … another friend did all the flowers and table arrangements … my dad for sorting out the catering, the marquee and other odds and sods … my mum for all the little things, making and packaging all the jam, spending hours on skype with me going through ideas … Perry’s parents for getting the alcohol, taking the time to travel up to London several times to help prep the house and garden … my brother for his speech and photo slideshow he put together without our knowledge … and all of our family and friends who took the time (some came from as far away as Canada and Iran to make it) to come celebrate with us …
Awhhh what an amazing wedding. And guess what, LOTS more photos coming later today. Oh and did I mention that Mina is a very talented photographer? I think you need to check out her blog. *here* More of her work coming very soon. ♥ x