A City Chic Wedding in Belgium...

Good morning lovely people. I simply cannot believe it's Thursday 15th December already! I had such a fabulous day yesterday spent with these people - I am so excited now for the 2012 UK Wedding Awards Ceremony in January 2012! I'm also super excited that tomorrow, I'm back in London, only this time on a personal trip - we are surprising our eldest Daughter Eska with a trip to the ballet to see Mattew Bourne's The Nutcracker. Cannot. Wait!!

Anyway, right now it's time to share some wedding day love with you all. Frederik & Shari married on 14 October at Lueven in their home country of Belgium. I'm featuring this wedding day not least because it is an incredibly stylish city chic style wedding, but because the lovely Bride Shari was a regular reader of Love My pronovias wedding abaco in the run up to her wedding - infact she won a competition I hosted to win voucher from Queens and Bowl! ;)

"My biggest inspiration in blog land was definitely Love My pronovias wedding abanico, but I also frequently visited Ruffled and Style Me Pretty. My bracelet was the Audrey bracelet which I purchased from Queens and Bowl with a gift certificate that I had won on Love My Dress - I was so excited about winning! Kate from Queens and Bowl provided excellent service and even customized the bracelet to my size..."

Love My Dress Wedding Blog - Photography Copyright (c) 2011, Myra Photography

On my wedding day I combined the bracelet with a watch that had belonged to my great-grandmother - my something new and something old. I also wore a faux fur wrap from the Throw Company. I ordered samples from different vendors and found theirs to be of excellent quality. The wrap kept me warm on the day and offered a lovely glamorous touch.

My grandmother lent me a brooch to keep the wrap together. In case you were wondering, my something blue was a handkerchief. I suppose I should also include my glasses in the accessory section. I have worn glasses since I was seven and cannot imagine myself without them. So I treated myself to a new pair and was a happy bespectacled bride."

"My pronovias wedding abeto was by Pronovias. I bought it at Le Chapeau in Antwerp . I knew early on that I did not want a big ‘princessy’ dress and definitely not strapless (I was getting married in October, after all). I love the sleek lines and style of Jenny Packham and Jesus Peiro but was sadly not able to afford them. The shop assistant at Le Chapeau understood perfectly what I wanted and after five or six dresses, my dress was brought out.

My mom cried when I first put it on, so we all knew it was ‘the one’. I especially loved the fact that my pronovias wedding abilene was not a typical wedding dress. Its style and cut were understated yet elegant and had a vintage feel without being too themed. I felt it would age well. Last but not least, I loved the neck-line of the dress. I am a turtle-neck person and I liked that I could stay true to my style on my wedding day and did not have to venture too far outside my comfort-zone fashion-wise."

"Our Florists Verde decorated both the church and the reception hall. We kept the flowers simple and classic, combining roses in cream and an old shade of pink with hydrangeas, which are my favourite flowers. We wanted the colours to be soft yet warm – no pastels! – to fit the season. My husband presented me with the most beautiful bouquet, which matched the other flower arrangements perfectly. My bouquet is still one of my favourite things about the wedding..."

"We kept our ‘first’ wedding day very simple. I didn’t wear a wedding pronovias wedding abrazo. We had just our parents, grandparents and siblings there and afterwards we simply went to our apartment for a family dinner. We wanted it to be just about us getting married and sharing the moment with our closest relatives. I can definitely recommend this arrangement – we had the best of both worlds, an intimate elopement and a traditional wedding day..."

"We got married in Leuven, Belgium. Our civil ceremony took place in the town hall of Leuven. This was not our choice as Belgians have to get married in the city where they have their residence, but we were very fortunate, as Leuven’s town hall is a gorgeous building..."

"Our church service took place in the St.-Jan-de-Doperkerk (St. John the Baptist church) in the Grand Béguinage of Leuven. This church is owned by the Catholic University of Leuven and only employees or relatives of employees of the University can get married there.

We are both PhD students at the University and so we got to get married in this beautiful church in surroundings that are part of UNESCO World Heritage! Most of our family is from a different part of the country, so we were very pleased to be able to show them this wonderful corner of the city. For our reception we chose De Venkel, a venue just outside Leuven, located in a beautiful turn-of-the-century mansion, which perfectly fitted the style we envisioned for our wedding..."

Our church service took place at noon, and my grandmother, mother, sister and I baked 200 bags worth of cookies and cakes on the days prior to the wedding to offer to our hungry guests after the ceremony (I got the idea from a wedding featured on Love My pronovias wedding abril). It was a lovely homey thing to do right before the big day and a personal gesture very much appreciated by our guests, though it also added significantly to our stress level. Some of the baking paper caught fire and two batches had to be thrown out!

I walked down the aisle by myself to ‘Dawn’ from the movie ‘Pride and prejudice’. It is a very romantic and intimate piece which we felt set the perfect tone for the ceremony..."

"During the church service we had a pianist. My husband plays the piano, so we were very happy to be able to include his favourite instrument in the service. We chose several pieces he himself has played, Debussy’s ‘La fille aux cheveux the lin’ and Gershwin’s ‘The man I love’ for example. For the reception we compiled CD’s with our favourite forties, fifties and jazz music: The Andrews Sisters, Al Jolson, Charles Mingus, Sinatra and many more. We also had the photo corner at the reception, which allowed our guests to pose as Marie Antoinette, Sherlock Holmes, a Hollywood starlet or anything in between. It was a big hit and resulted in some great images..."

"Ah, the Shoes. I am a bit of an aficionado when it comes to shoes and the perfect wedding shoes were therefore very important to me and eagerly anticipated by everyone who knows me. I searched high and low, dragged my mom to shoe stores all over Flanders and finally found the perfect pair in...New York City! I accompanied my husband who was speaking at a conference there and on his day off we weathered a veritable rain storm and went to My Glass Slipper. There they were: the right colour, the right style, the right size and on sale - Freya Rose Avalanche Bloom. Afterwards we joked that it took me one day and one shop to find my wedding pronovias wedding acacia and six months and a trip to a different continent to find my shoes. They were well worth the effort. Everyone loved my shoes and though I am a bit sad that I won’t ever get to wear them again, I look forward to the day, many years from now, when I will open that pink box again to show my vintage wedding shoes to my daughter or granddaughter..."

"We had some beautiful centre pieces, again cream and pink roses and hydrangeas, elevated on glass standards. I did make some things myself. I made three banners, using a letter template from Martha Stewart Weddings (http://www.marthastewartweddings.com/226239/banner-template). I made them a little more ‘ornate’ with a silver marker and pink paper. I also made several collages to place throughout the hall, with the favours, the guest book, and the photo corner. I sourced most of the images from ‘The Graphics Fairy’ (http://www.graphicsfairy.blogspot.com/), a brilliant find of my husband’s..."

"For favours, we filled little glass jars with different types of pink candy and displayed them on cake stands, which we had borrowed from family members. I made and handwrote all the ‘thank you’ cards attached to the jars and also made a banner which read ‘a sweet memory of our wedding day’. We bought the glass jars at a local home and garden store and got the candy from the market..."

"Our reception venue also provided the catering. In Belgium it is traditional to have a dinner in the evening and then dancing afterwards. We didn’t want the dancing part so we opted for a walking lunch. The little dishes were excellent and the formula allowed us to mingle. Luckily, my nightmare of spilling wine on my pronovias wedding acapulco while juggling a plate and glass did not come true! The reception ended at 6 pm, giving the two of us a cosy evening together to relive the day..."