I love it when a bride wears a coloured dress. That’s exactly what tattooed bride Alex did when she married Robin at Fabrica in Brighton and her gold dress looks gorgeous (which was purchased on eBay – Amazing!). With killer shots from Jay Emme Photography, I can’t wait to share their day with you!
All the way back in August 2011 after the London riots, myself and a friend put together a little fundraising picnic in the middle of Brighton to help the community clean up efforts. Although Brighton wasn’t affected, we both had a lot of friends who were living in the midst of it all and wanted to help in a small way. We put a call out on Twitter and, among others, Robin turned up; we were both attached at the time but there was definitely an attraction with hindsight. He used to be in a sketch show which involved him dressing up as a pink bear, so I said to him “You’re the pink bear!” and he, rather embarrassedly, nodded and we didn’t really speak again that day so I thought he thought I was an idiot. Turned out later he thought I’d thought the same.
A little over 6 months later, he invited me to his house for dinner and we hit it off immediately. We became inseparable after about 2 weeks and then in July 2012 he proposed. We’re both big Batman fans and he got up before a packed, opening weekend showing of the Dark Knight Rises at our favourite cinema in Brighton and proposed – when he got up and picked up a microphone, I said “WTF are you doing??”. I said yes, obviously!
The highlight of our day was probably finally getting to speak to each other after the ceremony was over. We were both a bit giddy and hadn’t spoken properly for nearly two days so we were just gibbering about how weirdly fast everything had gone and how much we were both dying for a drink!
Also being able so see so many great pals who had travelled from all over to see us was really special. It was important to us that it wasn’t at all formal and we could just relax with friends and enjoy ourselves.
We tried to put a bit of ourselves in everything we had at the wedding. We both have a very silly sense of humour and the 1980s kids badges we gave to everyone in our favours, which Robin picked up as a job lot on eBay, were a reflection of that. We’re both really into film so we also put together a playlist of all our favourite film music to play over dinner – everyone was trying to guess what music was from what film which is exactly what we wanted.
Most importantly, we wanted our day to be informal and fun for everyone who came and far away from anything traditional.
Pretty much all the decor was DIY. We spent years collecting pretty craft beer and spirits bottles on our travels to use as vases for flowers, each of which reminded us of different places we’d been together; we had so many that every cupboard at home had been overflowing with them! We’d also collected loads of postcards of old films and Vogue covers to use as a guestbook and made a little postbox for them to go in when they’d been filled out.
Everything we didn’t do ourselves was mostly done by friends or family; my mum made the cake and arranged the flowers, two of my dearest friends were DJs, my friend Charlotte at Black Heart Creatives made my jewellery and the cake topper, even our friends helped with the decor. It was so wonderful to have so many great people to be so happy to get involved – it was a real collaborative effort that went beyond just the two of us and that was the best part of the whole experience.
Because I have quite a lot of tattoos, it would be difficult to not have them on show in some way. I changed my mind so many times while dress shopping and I ended up with mine out of luck – in fact I found it on ebay when I should’ve been revising for my degree finals! I’m so happy with how it turned out. I knew I didn’t want a traditional bridal look because it didn’t feel me – I always knew I wanted gold.
“Do what feels right and what makes you happy. Conventions are there to be broken; if you want to do something that’s “against the rules”, just do it.”
How awesome is Akex and Robin’s Fabrica wedding? Thank you to them both and to Jay Emme Photography for sharing with Marry Me Ink today – Be sure to leave them some love!
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