Where was your wedding held and how did you go about looking for your perfect/ideal wedding venue?
We arranged a viewing for our shortlisted venues and noted down key points such as maximum capacity, in house catering or any package deals available with other suppliers. We were looking for a reasonable size venue that could hold up to 350 guests, as we did not want an overly crowd venue with lots of seating. This was important as we opted for a wider walkway aisle. We also ideally wanted a separate lunch hall so it would not obstruct the main wedding hall. After viewing several venues that we had on our shortlist, we decided to book The Amber Suite at The Hive as they best facilitated our requirements.
How many months/years in advance did you start to plan your wedding?
We started 1 year in advance to look for our wedding suppliers. My partner being a wedding videographer had already worked with many suppliers that he had in mind, so we went to see them first to discuss our requirements and what they could offer. Planning a year in advance is the best as the suppliers are not overly booked out and there is a chance they are available for your dates. As our wedding was in October, most of the suppliers we went to see were available.
What part of your wedding planning process was the most difficult or challenging to do and how did you tackle this difficult stage?
The most difficult process of the wedding planning was choosing our wedding videography and photography team. As my partner already had a vision of the photo and video quality we both wanted someone we were comfortable around and be our natural selves, we also wanted an element of surprise within the shots, therefore creativity and detail within the work was important to us. We went to see several short-listed photo and video suppliers, which we really liked the work of and also got on well with the individual. So this became a difficult decision for us to make. In the end we took into consideration our budget and the best provided quality and booked accordingly.
We had designed our own wedding invites and wanted them to be custom cut, therefore we also found it challenging to look for a printing company based in London that could meet our budget. We went about this after gathering a few quotes and samples from UK printers, and then taking them to India to see if they were able to do custom cut cards with a pearl glitter finish. Communication in India can be difficult, and workflow can be slow, therefore we kept on top of it and explained exactly how we wanted it and ensured the final artwork files were not amended in anyway. This saved us proofing time and after they printed around 10 samples, we gave them the go ahead to print all the card inserts. These were printed and packaged within a week and therefore we brought them back with us on our return to ensure there were no issues later with shipping.
What was unique about your wedding?
Our wedding was unique to us as we put a lot of effort in designing and hand crafting many of the items ourselves. This included things like, our wedding cake topper, invites for all the individual events, designing our guestbook and even the littlest things like the grooms sword. This saved us money but took a little more time, but being creative this was a fun challenge for us to do together. For our mehndi night we had the full Kaykay & Co. live band playing a fusion of Bollywood and western songs, which really made the night special and unique. Everyone enjoyed the atmosphere as we also opted for a LED background provided by Target AV, which showed amazing visuals to match the songs and made it more personal to us. We also had the same band for our Indian wedding, which was a last minute decision and possibly the best one. This created a whole new meaning to the wedding and added emotion, as the traditional songs were sang brilliantly with a modern twist. This went really well with the mandap ceremony performed by our priest Ajitbhai Pandey, accompanied by RV Sounds. All our guests were engaged and captivated by the live singing in conjunction with the priest’s explanations and the subtle background music.
What was the hardest thing to arrange on the day of your wedding and how did you overcome this?
There wasn’t much for us to arrange on the day, except to doll up and turn up on time. We did however delegate a task list to a few of our cousins and friends. We also created a generic itinerary of all our events and sent these out to our suppliers and key family members to keep track of the running order. We struggled with our venue in the morning, as we were told there would be a football match kicking off at 2pm, which would not affect our wedding. However, on the day the match was moved to 11am. This created a small dilemma, as we were not allowed to let off any smoke bombs during the grooms jaan entrance. Despite this, we did not let it ruin our day and the groom still came in with a bang and family members enjoying a dance. As our suppliers who were great friends of ours helped out in most of our arrangements we had full trust in them to ensure the day ran smoothly without a glitch.
Where did you get your inspiration for your wedding?
Our inspiration for our wedding came from researching on latest trends. This meant going through Pinterest and pinning the things we liked. We used The Wedding Hut’s Pinterest boards, as they were grouped into categories, which helped us to find the items and match them to our colour scheme. As we went for a subtle pastel colour theme for our Indian wedding and a peacock theme for our engagement, we searched online for different ideas and came up with a few original ones. Sticking to a colour theme helped in designing each item of the different occasions and this contrasted well with our outfits.
Attending a few weddings before ours also helped us generate ideas as we carefully observed what was happening and when.
What would you do differently and why?
There is nothing majorly we would change, however, I would recommend that the groom carries another pair of shoes, as my partner was unexpectedly attacked by my family for his shoes.
Would you recommend your selected wedding suppliers to other brides/grooms? Please also mention any suppliers you contacted through The Wedding Hut Portal.
We would definitely recommend our wedding suppliers to any brides and grooms that are planning their wedding. They were very helpful and comforting which is really important as on the day there’s a lot happening and you do not want to stress out, especially when you have all eyes on you, plus this will show later on your wedding photos and film. So relax and enjoy the day and let the suppliers stress out for you.
We booked several of our suppliers through The Wedding Hut, including:
Thank you to The Wedding Hut and all suppliers for helping us and making our day extra special.
Video by Chaiya Film
How was the overall outcome of your day and did everything go according to the way you planned?
The overall outcome of our wedding day went accordingly to plan. We were actually 1 hour ahead of our schedule for both our engagement and wedding day, which was really surprising, however this gave us more time to get our portraits done with our wedding photographer, Nik Thakar Photography and Chaiya Photography for our engagement photos. We had pre designed our floor plans of the venue décor and created an itinerary, which was really helpful for our suppliers to get in advance so they could allocate their team to create as per the floor plans and follow the days events according to the itinerary. As all weddings go, things usually never goes as per the itinerary and keeping up with the time is never that easy, however we were both on top of this to ensure that the day ran smoothly and that the suppliers knew what was happening next.
Did you have a specific budget in mind and did you meet it?
We had a budget in mind, for each of the events, however it can be very easy to get carried away when you are planning your own events. This however did not mean we were over spending but we kept in mind the items we could make ourselves rather then buying it directly from the shops or suppliers. We had created an Excel spreadsheet in order to keep a record of our expenses and spending’s. This was really helpful and would certainly recommend to all those who are planning a wedding to do that same, as you will find it hard to remember and keep track of your spending’s. Even the smallest things we brought went into this spreadsheet so we could compare and remove any unnecessary items or save costs by looking at package deals or asking a friend to help us create something we really liked.
How did you go about in finding your perfect wedding outfit(s)?
As we decided on a pastel colour theme, we wanted our outfits to compliment each other. We did a lot of research on social media to get ideas of the designs that could be available in our chosen colours, which was pastel green for the groom and pastel pink for the bride.
My plan was always to go to India to find the outfits, nonetheless, to keep my options open, I also went to a few wedding outfit shops within London to see what was potentially available incase I didn’t find anything in India.
I really wanted to be a Sabyasachi bride but it was over my budget, so I went to India hoping to find something similar to the wedding outfit I wanted. After arriving in Mumbai, I started to shop for our outfits. To my surprise, I saw plenty of wedding outfits in these pastel colours and after looking around, I finally found the outfit I wanted and instantly fell in love with it. I tried it on, alongside with a few other outfits but ended up buying the one I initially liked. As my husband was unable to make the trip to India, I also searched for his wedding sherwani in the pastel green shades. I found my husbands outfit in the first shop I visited and sent him a picture of the outfit, so he could see what it looks like, he also instantly fell in love with it too and found it to be different to the traditional outfits. I purchased the sherwani and as it had to be custom made according to my husband’s measurements, I gave these to the tailor and it took about 1 month to complete.
Our engagement was 6 months before the Indian wedding and our theme for this was the peacock colours. We visited local Indian outfit shops, based in, Wembley & Southall. After browsing several shops, we found what we were looking for and purchased our outfits from Mongas in Southall. My husband’s outfit was customised to match the colours and floral patterns from my outfit.
What part of the wedding planning process did you enjoy the most?
Food tasting!! As my Husband and I are both foodies, this was the most enjoyable part of the wedding planning for us. We tried out different varieties that we were not even aware off and gave us an idea of how differently we could make our wedding menu.
What advice/tips would you give to other brides and grooms?
Here are a few tips that we could give you:
How was your experience on using The Wedding Hut portal to find your wedding suppliers?
We found it pretty straightforward, as we could send out enquiries for availability and quote requests to multiple suppliers and discuss directly with them what our requirements were for each event. We particularly found the “Inspire me” page helpful as we could filter by keywords and categories. We used The Wedding Hut Pinterest and Instagram page to get more ideas and saved them to our personal Pinterest board. This was very handy as we could share the ideas directly to a particular supplier.
– Deepti Bhudia
Video by Chaiya Film
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