Can you be a creative bride outside of London?

Yes of course you can. I was mar­ried in Northum­ber­land and still felt my wed­ding was cre­ative. It’s all about want­ing to do what you want to do. You shouldn’t feel restricted because you don’t live in a city.

The inter­net is a mar­vel­lous thing!
anna and the ring´s last [type] ..oh me oh my!

I live in Suf­folk and I’m try­ing to plan a wed­ding with a bit of a twist. I’m find­ing that most of the more quirky fairs are in Lon­don. How­ever there is a vin­tage fair in Nor­folk soon that I’m look­ing for­ward to. I agree that the cre­ative side can get over­looked when doing your bud­get! I’m try­ing to stick with it!

As you know, I felt the pres­sure to con­form to a fairy­tale wed­ding (espe­cially dic­tated ini­tially by where I’m get­ting mar­ried) — but I didn’t know it was pres­sure until I realised I could do some­thing dif­fer­ent — and as Anna says — the inter­net is a won­der­ful thing! With­out wed­ding blogs I wouldn’t have realised I could be more cre­ative — the indus­try really is chang­ing and peo­ple are dar­ing to be bold and dif­fer­ent and express more of their own per­son­al­i­ties in their spe­cial day.

I wouldn’t say it’s hard to be cre­ative in plan­ning your per­fect wed­ding, it is just often over­looked!! So yes, per­haps some of the lit­er­a­ture and brochures given out by wed­ding venues et al should evolve ever so slightly, if just to accu­rately reflect what peo­ple are doing these days!
Salma´s last [type] ..Tues­day Treats – Queens and Bowl

Surely the point is that cre­ativ­ity is piqued by restric­tions. Peo­ple say­ing you can’t/opposition to your ideas/fewer “cre­ative” spaces to get spliced/etc. I find the idea loath­some that there has to be a mar­ket for cre­ative wed­dings or that you’d need to go to Lon­don, or any­where, to pick up cre­ative ideas — they’re some­one else’s ideas, not yours. The mar­ket is in your head, the ideas are already there, the cre­ativ­ity is within you. If peo­ple oppose it, that’s great because it means you can work out why they don’t see how this cel­e­bra­tion reflects you so per­fectly and improve the rela­tion­ship — or end it.
Tony Staggeredface´s last [type] ..Real Grooms– Richard Gordon

Agree with Tony. I don’t think this is about cre­ativ­ity, it’s about indi­vid­u­al­ity. When you’re plan­ning an event such as your wed­ding, you, as a cou­ple, grav­i­tate towards ideas that res­onate with you as indi­vid­u­als, not as cre­atives. That might be the sort of wed­dings that fea­ture on sites like this, off­beat­bride, rockan­droll­bride, et al, or it might be those that fea­ture in Harpers. It might be bet­ter­ing the wed­ding of your cousin from last year, hav­ing the most fire­works shoot­ing off your head-dress, or the biggest cake. Unless you’ve got a strange sense of what you’re get­ting mar­ried for, you want your guests to join a cel­e­bra­tion that says things about you and your partner’s love, not one that shows how cre­ative you can be and shows off your ‘talents’.

Thank god blogs like Eng­lish Wed­ding exist, they give me ideas of how other peo­ple who’s style I admire are express­ing them­selves. But no idea is unique. Ask your­self, as I have, when you stack your cup­cakes, ran­domise your shabby chic sweetie table, build your antique photo-wall and sew another string of bunting — is this cre­ativ­ity, or is it using cur­rent trends to build your own vision? We’re using at least two of those trends for our wed­ding, but judg­ing by what we see on the blogs I know we all look at, this sort of look/feel is a trend in itself.

We are a group of indi­vid­u­als choos­ing to style our wed­ding in a cer­tain way, regard­less of loca­tion. What this whole process has made me realise, as I go deeper into the realm hand­made signs, whim­si­cal pho­tog­ra­phers, hand-tied herb bou­quets and steampunk-themed accor­dion­ists, is that if we were hav­ing a recep­tion in the local Hilton with a chicken din­ner, a three-tiered fruit­cake and a disco, I would be just as indi­vid­ual as I am now. Because we would have cre­ated our per­fect day, just as we’re doing in reality.

Cel­e­brate what you are, not what you want peo­ple to think. And you can def­i­nitely do that out­side Lon­don! In fact, it’s much cheaper!

Its cer­tainly made peo­ple talk .… which is a good thing. In fact today this topic was raised whilst on a pho­to­shoot in the wilds of North Yorkshire…most def­i­nitely Its Not Lon­don.. In fact the very words ‘Its Not Lon­don’ seems to be the mantra of vitu­ally all stylists/wedding mag­a­zine edi­tors and wed­ding jour­nal­ists who appear inca­pable of fea­tur­ing or high­light­ing the work of any­one who is out­side of the M25/South East…if Its Not Lon­don its not ‘cool’ ‘cut­ting edge’ ‘cre­ative’ etc etc .… or maybe this is an ‘easy label’ for them lets face it Heaven for­fend any­one actu­ally doing some proper jour­nal­ism, get­ting out there doing research & dis­cov­er­ing instead of hav­ing every­thing laid on and deliv­ered to your desk by courier…
So I sup­pose if you dont exhibit at the Designer Wed­ding Show your not one of the ‘coolest wed­ding sup­pli­ers’ then? That with the great­est of respect is rub­bish along with the notion that there arent as many quirky spaces to get mar­ried should you want it… Man­ches­ters got lots ditto Leeds/Liverpool/Edinburgh/Glasgow etc etc… but as some­one else pointed out already cre­ativ­ity comes from within and not the lat­est ‘must have’ thrust at you from a mag­a­zine.
Yes cre­ative wed­dings most cer­tainly do exist out­side of London…the rea­son this ques­tion has been raised in the first place is because of the relent­less deifi­ca­tion of Lon­don as the be all and end all by the wed­ding indus­try itself and in the main the magazines…

Hi Claire,
It’s been really inter­est­ing to read everyone’s com­ments on this. I think one of the big issues for brides who want to be cre­ative (cer­tainly many that I see) is con­fi­dence. They start out with fab­u­lous ideas for a unique and indi­vid­ual wed­ding, and are then slowly and surely worn down by out­side influ­ences — a bol­shy brides­maid with her own strong ideas, a mum that thinks her daugh­ter should be hav­ing the full meringue fairy­tale princess day, mag­a­zines that insist you must have this or that to have the per­fect wed­ding. It takes a bride with a very strong per­son­al­ity and clear vision to be able to just go for it and have the day that she really wants with­out her cre­ative ideas being watered down by what every­one else thinks.
If you have peo­ple around you with very strong opin­ions about what you should and shouldn’t have, maybe con­sider leav­ing them at home when you go and visit your sup­pli­ers. There’s noth­ing worse for a sup­plier than to be thrust into the mid­dle of a fam­ily feud dur­ing a con­sul­ta­tion! Speak­ing from per­sonal expe­ri­ence, it is so hard to get some brides to speak up and say what flow­ers they really want if their highly-opinionated mother (or mother-in-law!) is sat next to them, pulling faces and turn­ing their nose up at the bride’s ideas. Some con­sul­ta­tions end up in a full-blown argu­ment, some in frosty silence — nei­ther help the bride to focus and feel com­fort­able and con­fi­dent with their deci­sions.
My advice would be to stay focussed on what is impor­tant to you and your part­ner — if you hate cake, don’t feel pres­sured into hav­ing the tra­di­tional white-iced 3 tiers just because Aun­tie Mabel would be dis­ap­pointed. Have a cheese cake, a dessert bar or even an ice­cream van if that’s what reflects your per­son­al­ity and life.
I would also encour­age peo­ple to trust their instincts when try­ing to find cre­ative sup­pli­ers — we are out there, I promise! Do your research, read blogs and web­sites, visit shops, email or phone us — if you like what you see and click with the supplier’s style and per­son­al­ity, they are prob­a­bly the one for you. Once you have found one sup­plier that you like and trust, they will usu­ally be able to rec­om­mend other cre­ative peo­ple that they have worked with on pre­vi­ous wed­dings.
So stay strong, trust your­self and your sup­pli­ers, and remem­ber that it is ulti­mately your day — a reflec­tion of who you are. Cre­ative sup­pli­ers love work­ing with cre­ative brides — you will get the best out of us, and we will be able to do what we do best, with­out compromise!