Tim and Lauren were inspired by a vast array of concepts for their wedding, deciding they were going to include everything they wanted to. With a Disneyland Paris proposal, the old Hollywood glam of the Tower of Terror was their starting point, and they added the colour palette and playlist from BioShock and Fallout games. They chose a cabaret as entertainment, and named their tables after Cats, inspired by the Jellicle Ball.
They managed to pack a lot into their day, with two ceremonies, a three-course meal and a two-hour cabaret. Lauren told us, “It’s easy to get stuck thinking you have to have a traditional wedding timeline and it is quite difficult to change your thoughts, realising you don’t have to do that at all. You don’t need to follow traditional timelines. You 100% will not have given yourself enough time to do things, even if you weren’t squishing in as much as we did. But on the day you really don’t mind about these things because you are just in a world of happy emotions and happy tears!”
With such a busy day, a wedding planner was a must. They explained, “Filling the day with two-hour cabaret seemed wrong but was so good on the day. It was exactly what we wanted. And although it meant there was less time for mingling, our wedding co-ordinator organised the timings within an inch of their life!”
Their ceremony was again, exactly as they wanted, with Lauren walking down the aisle to an orchestral version of Linkin Park’s Numb, a nod to her love of the band. She told us, “Walking down the aisle was the most intensely emotional feeling we have ever felt and it was amazing seeing each other, looking all gorgeous, filled with leaky eyes and giant smiles. But also after the years of Covid, it really was being able to sit in a hall with everyone, the room being full of love and smiles was definitely something we won’t forget anytime soon.”
With Covid restrictions stopping overseas family attending, Zoom was a vital feature. Lauren explained, “It was a super emotional little ceremony, with my family on Zoom looking in, and my sister doing a lovely reading all the way from Sydney. We really made sure that the Zoom was part of the day, with my sister and Dad doing readings and speeches and finding the biggest telly we could to see their faces throughout the day.”
With only 30 allowed at the official ceremony, a second ceremony took place at Stanley Arts Theatre in South London, with the other half of Tim’s old performance double act ‘marrying’ them again. Lauren told us, “An additional 120 people descended on the Theatre. We didn’t want anyone to feel they had missed out on the ‘wedding’ part. It was awesome to get in our love of being general idiots alongside touches of tradition. We chose to do our vows here in front of everyone, which was a lovely way for us to get a touch of us and our love into the day without everything being a comedy bit. It was still filled with tears and laughter, and saying ‘I do’ again was just as romantic.”
The couple’s £16,000 budget stretched itself to £19,000, but they found ways of saving, with Lauren making all the flowers out of paper, and asking a lot of their friends to perform in the cabaret. Lauren told us, “The wedding breakfast was the biggest cost of the day, but we were absolutely certain we wanted to have something that felt really elegant and bouji in the mix of such a non-traditional day.”
Lauren and Tim also took their wedding coordinator’s advice, to ensure they made the most of their busy day! “We made sure we had hourly chunks throughout the day to mingle and take photos. It definitely was a squeeze but it meant we could do the cabaret with an interval in the middle. We made sure we could cater for all needs, so that’s why there was a glorious mix of musical comedy, songs about Pasta Bakes, opera singing and drag queens and kings. A truly personal day, but the couple’s advice would be, “Realise that there will be things that go wrong, things that you can’t have or afford, and that despite all your planning, things will change! And hire a videographer, because you will forget all those lovely moments and I have already watched our day a million times.”
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