Tag Archives: Tattooed Bride

Miss Jo Black’s Tattooed Tales – The Proposal

She’s here! Marry Me Ink’s blogging bride of 2015 – Miss Jo Black! I’m a regular follower of @missjoblacktattoos and one day, I saw the most beautiful ring I’ve ever seen appear in my feed. That’s where it all started. I contacted Jo and got her to enter her engagement story and Pinterest board to be Marry Me Ink’s new blogging bride. I’m SO glad she did – Jo and her fiance Leigh are due to get married at the end of the year with the most awesome theme I’ve heard of. This is where I now hand you over to Jo..

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I guess this is my hello to the world of internet blogs and my first post as a “Blogging Bride” for the lovely folk at Marry Me Ink!

So… I’m Jo Black, or JoJo to my fiancé Leigh, I own and tattoo at a studio called Black Inc. Tattoo in the sleepy countryside town of Frome, Somerset… and that is exactly where and how we met.

Leigh, my bearded babe, came into my studio on a sunny morning with his son Finn to book himself in for a large tattoo on his back. He must have prepped Finn for their visit to impress me and the other ladies in he shop because Finn repeatedly told Leigh how much he loved him and what a great dad he is… come on what woman doesn’t melt when they know a man is a good dad! But anyway, after some time chatting about what he wanted and where, he and Finn went for a wander around Frome, when he left me and the other girls in the shop Alison and Neko joked that he was gorgeous and one of us could end up marrying him, I believe Neko’s words were “He’s RED HOT”.  A while later I went to get a round of coffee for the shop I noticed them waiting in line for milkshakes, I went over and chatted some more… And that’s where it all began.

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For the next couple of weeks leading up to his tattoo we spoke almost every day, joking and chatting via text and Instagram.  When the weekend of the tattoo loomed we had come to the decision that we just wanted to spend a bit of time together and instead of doing the tattoo we went to the Frome World Food Festival and ate and drank and fell in love! It took me almost a year to actually get round to tattooing him at all and still to this day we haven’t done the one he booked back then!

Two years on and Leigh and I are living together in a flat in Frome, with our dogs Spike and Bobbie and more in love than ever. My family adore him, and would probably rather spend time with him than me! And I adore his family too, he has rather a lot of family!

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So, with being so happy and on track, when we went to watch Funeral For a Friend play in the local venue just before Christmas 2014 and he started acting very strangely, ducking out here and there, whispering to people, taking phone calls and texts in private… I started to think something was up… I actually said to a friend that evening ‘I reckon he wants me to think he’s going to propose tonight and then he won’t do it’. That friend, who knew what was going on, laughed at me.

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A Brighton, Fabrica Wedding With A Bride In Gold – Alex & Robin

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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!

Alex & Robin, Brighton

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.

Alex & Robin, Brighton

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!

Alex & Robin, Brighton

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.

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A Fun, Quirky Farm Wedding – Jessica & Red

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You may remember tattooed bride-to-be Jessica and Red’s engagement shoot last month from Chris Nachtwey Photography. They met when they were 13 and didn’t see each other again until Jess was 21. Red proposed on Halloween at a concert too but you’ll have to read the engagement story for that! (It’s seriously awesome!) Well now they’re married and I get to share with you their day!

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We love nature so there were cute vintage owl figurines on our head table that have their heads leaning toward each other, also our cake topper was custom made for us on Etsy as a drunk husband being dragged by his bride, both with fishing rods in hand.  Red grew up playing and helping on his grandparents’ farm and so that’s why I picked the farm that I did, in Litchfield, where their farm was. But the whole feel of the day was as if you stepped back in time and that’s exactly what I was hoping for… a feeling of a better time, when people loved for a lifetime, as Red and I do.

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Most of my wedding was DIY. I made lanterns from mason jars with ribbons and lace, which I have to say was the most fun because all of my girls got together at my house and drank wine and decorated together!  I ordered mis-matched vintage china online to be used instead of plain white, all the vases and other random items were vintage pieces I either had or bought, and I was able to find lots of vintage lace table cloths and shawls to place over the dark brown table cloths to give this really awesome vintage shabby chic look.  My aunt made the most amazing bouquets for us, along with this gorgeous sash for my dress (which she put my mothers earrings and brooch into that she wore at her wedding to my father) I also made and decorated little birds nests to place on tables, since I had a nature theme, and had found little birds on clips to clip onto some beautiful lighted willow branches as centrepieces.

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A Pennsylvania Brewery Wedding – Elyse & John

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Tattooed bride Elyse and her husband John were married at Stoudt’s Brewery in Adamstown, where Oh, Karina Photography shot their wedding. Elyse got her dress from Asos and it looks amazing! I got a chance to speak to both her and John about their wedding day..

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John: There are a lot of highlights from our day to choose from, but what still sticks in my mind is the realization I had later on in the reception that the day had gone so well in so many ways. I’d look around the room and see everyone entertained in one way or another. Dancing, chatting around the tables, toasting at the bar, smoking cigars in the open air. We, Elyse and I, could move from one circle to the next, individually or together, or withdraw for a few minutes and be by ourselves, and everything continued on regardless. It was the realization that we’d surrounded ourselves with exactly the atmosphere we’d talked about in the months leading up to the wedding; we didn’t have to be the center of attention, but we could be. We didn’t have to try to be everywhere at once, because our guests were enjoying themselves regardless of our immediate presence. We were able to enjoy our own wedding which, as surprising as it ought to sound, some couples don’t get to do.

So yeah, there are individual moments, but it’s really the culminating realization that lingers and will continue to linger in my memory. At the end of it, and for the days and weeks afterward, we were able to say to ourselves, honestly, that our wedding was a lot of fun for everyone, ourselves included.

Elyse: Agreed on that, but I personally loved the dancing. I always love to dance, and the positive energy that John just described gave me the freedom to not worry about a damn thing and just go dance. The DJ hit my musical taste right on the nose, too.

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