Archive for April, 2009

Having announced their engagement back in February (read our Denise Van Outen engagement article) we’re delighted to hear that our Essex Girl Denise has just celebrated her wedding to Lee Mead on a beach in the Seychelles.

We were hoping that Denise may of stayed true to her roots and enjoyed the finest Essex beaches in Southend or Clacton, however the happy couple opted for perhaps a slightly more sun kissed and romantic option.

Friends of Van Outen were beginning to worry that her long-cherished dream of settling down and starting a family may not come true, that was until TV’s “Any Dream will Do” star Lee Mead swept her off her feet when Denise was a judge on the show.
27 year old Lee went on win the talent show, and earned the lead role in the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat.

According to a source, Denise, 35, just told people they were going on a holiday, the only wedding guests in the Seychelles were both sets of parents, and a small group of best friends.

The Bride opted for a strapless white wedding dress with her hair tied back at the Labriz silhouette luxury resort.
After the wedding ceremony, the newlyweds were happily seen kissing on a boat. – For pictures please see the Daily Mail.

Denise and Lee stayed in the hotel for ten nights, reportedly in the Presidential villa, being the most expensive room at the hotel, with it’s own private pool.

Denise’s long awaited dream white wedding comes 8 years after splitting from her on / off boyfriend Jay Kay, lead singer of Jamiroquai. Once labelled a “ladette” Denise has always been a traditional girl at heart.

She and Lee say they started dating in November 2007, a claim disputed by Mead’s ex-girlfriend who states that their relationship was a secret for months.

Lee previously said: “Denise and I clicked instantly. We had the same sense of humour”.
“I knew at once it was right. She is very down to earth.”

Congratulations to both Denise and Lee from everyone here at Essex Wedding Services.

Feel free to share your thoughts or comments on their wedding below.

These sort of stories are what our blog was made for, wedding ideas, making your wedding day a little more fun, and what could be more fun then a Shrek Wedding ? Er…. what?

Yes It’s true, Once upon a time in a far far away land (Devon)… a fairytale dream wedding for the happy couple who decided to get married dressed as movie cartoon characters  Shrek and Princess Fiona.

Every little girl’s dream wedding day is to arrive like a princess and be swept off her feet by the handsome prince, hospice nurse Christine England, 40, had part of that dream come true – sort of.

The bride was every inch the princess, the one from the ogre films anyway. Dressed as Princess Fiona, Christine married her fiance Keith GREEN (you couldn’t make this stuff up could you) – who was is full Shrek costume, complete with bald head and pointy green ears, for their wedding day.
The 100 wedding guests also got into the Shrek theme and turned up to celebrate the marriage in full fancy dress attire.

The new Mr & Mrs Green (1st April has passed hasn’t it ?) from Barnstaple in Devon, spent around three hours with their make up artists to achieve the shrek style look before walking down the aisle.

Christine said: ‘The idea just came to me. I knew what we would go as because Keith looks just like Shrek. (charming comment from the lady you’ve just married)
‘It was funny because when we said our vows Keith had these green ears sprouting from the top of his head.’

Wanting to take the whole Shrek themed wedding a little further, Christine tried to get her 18-year-old son to dress up as Donkey, the sidekick of Shrek from the movies, but said ‘he wasn’t having any of it’.
You can imagine the conversation can’t you, “Son, fancy dressing up as a donkey for my wedding day?” – “No thanks Mum, don’t be so ridiculous please”.

Keith Green, a builder who seems quite happy with the ogre title from his new wife added: ‘It was a very strange experience to say the least, but a thoroughly enjoyable one. We love the films and my wife tells me I bear a resemblance to Shrek.’

Christine’s mother Annette England, 66, said: ‘It’s not necessarily how you imagine seeing your daughter get married but it was great fun.’

Where you at the Shrek wedding ? Have you been to a wedding that was wackier then the shrek wedding day ? Leave us your comments below.

Royal Wedding Cake

Every now and then we stumble across an excellent wedding article on the internet, but this one really takes the cake – literally.

Believe it or not, a piece of Royal wedding cake is set to be auctioned that is an unbelievable 138 years old.
The slice of wedding cake is thought to be the only surviving piece from the wedding celebrations of Princess Louise, daughter of Queen Victoria, and the Marquis of Lorne.

As tasty as it sounds, the wedding cake is wrapped in parchment and tied with string and is expected to raise around £150 at auction in Birmingham this week.

So if you’re planning a wedding this weekend, consider the old tradition of keeping a slice of wedding cake, wrapping it up and asking your great grandchildren to auction it in 138 years time, they may rustle up £150 for themselves, or less perhaps as you’re probably not a Royal !

The wedding in 1871 caused uproar at the time due to the fact that it became the first royal wedding to marry a commoner since 1515.

But while this slice of wedding cake obviously stood the test of time, the same could not unfortunately be said for the happiness of Princess and Marquis’ marriage. Sadly, the fact they never had children meant the two drifted apart from one another.

On it’s day the Royal wedding cake stood at 1.52m tall from its base to the top tier, weighed over 225lbs, was finished in fine white icing, and elaborately decorated by the Queen’s chief confectioner, reportedly taking three months to make the wedding cake.

Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Antiques dealer John Shepherd, who is selling the slice of history, “It will make an absolutely wonderful heirloom to pass on to future generations.”
In his opinion.

Realistically, what are you going to do with a 138 year old sliver of wedding cake ? The surviving slice is an inch wide, and would have given the “lucky” wedding guest the smallest of mouthfuls.

If you want a delightful and fresh wedding cake, why not speak with one of our Essex wedding cake specialists today.

We’ve had a few requests lately to provide more information about the legal side of getting married in Essex, to help engaged couples plan their wedding in Essex county.

So, we used our knowledge, researched a little more and wrote this guide to getting married in Essex.

There’s plenty of useful information to help you get started when you’ve just become engaged, with links to the Essex county website too.

Hopefully if you’re a newly engaged couple in Essex and are starting your wedding planning process, you’ll read through our information and find it useful.

So, now that you’ve found us, ensure you bookmark our website and keep coming back whenever you’re looking for ideas for your wedding in Essex.

Happy Wedding Planning !

Wedding Cake Disasters

So the bride couldn’t make up her mind whether she wanted a two tier or three tiered wedding cake – in the end she managed to achieve both.

Planning your wedding is one of the most fun and exciting times of your life, so best you ensure that the wedding services you hire for your special day are of the best quality you can find to meet your wedding budget.

Get the best wedding cake

Cutting corners or asking friends to help when it comes to something as important as your wedding cake really isn’t recommended, and this video clip shows why. Don’t forget the wedding cake is one of the most photographed part of your entire day, so make sure whether you go for a grand wedding cake or something a little less formal, it still lasts the day, unlike this poor unfortunate effort here….

We were chatting to a bride to be on Monday whose wedding in Essex is coming up at the end of May and she was telling us all about her wedding plans.
The excited young lady was laughing at the fact she’d got everything done and her wedding plans were running so smoothly she could relax and enjoy the final month’s preperations without any stress.
Her final booking was made a few weeks ago when the couple booked a harpist to play for their wedding ceremony.
Her wedding DJ was booked, as was the photographer. The dresses were on order and the men’s suits were booked with the hire company.
The wedding flowers had been arranged and the happy couple were just finalising details on how they wanted their table centrepieces to look, and even the wedding favours were all delivered and ready for the wedding guests. Everything was in order and the bride to be looked very happy, excited and pleased to be so organised.

That was until we asked her whether she was having a videographer for the wedding, to which she replied no, and was now nervous that everyone had asked her this and she now regrets not booking one.
The fact was that they had reached their set budget for the wedding and felt a wedding videograher wasn’t a necessatity for them.

It’s true, plenty of the wedding guests will own a camcorder, some of them may even bring it with them, and maybe one of them will record the back of your heads from their seat towards the back of the ceremony – but nothing beats watching a professionally made DVD capturing all the moments of your big day.

The thing is, hiring a videographer at your wedding is something you’ll never regret, during the day you’ll barely notice they are even there. They’ll arrive before you and leave after they’ve captured hundreds of moments from your wedding day that you didn’t even realise happened.

Asking a friend at your wedding to point a camcorder in your direction will never have the same results as a proffesionally produced wedding DVD, and you certainly won’t get the same excitement went sitting down to watch a shaky effort from your mate as you would do from a proper wedding DVD.

Even with today’s IT programs, you may be able to edit the clips at home, add some titles, and a bit of background music, but can you be sure that the end product is something you’ll really want to watch again and again ?

Our recomendation of the day is that should you find you have sufficient budget for your wedding, you’ll certainly never regret hiring a videographer to capture your wedding day and present it to you on a wonderful DVD for you to enjoy for the rest of your life.

For more info on how to get a quality DVD of your wedding day – speak to one of our wedding videographers in Essex.

For Chidi Ogbuta, her perfect wedding had to have that extra layer, something a little different, something her wedding guests would remember, a personalised wedding cake.

Rather then the usual floral decorations and the happy couples names brightening up your wedding cake, American Chidi opted for a life-size wedding cake made in her own image, perhaps a little vein you may think – you’d be right.

Standing over 5ft tall, the “spectacular” wedding cake, consisting of butterscotch and polymer clay, was an exact replica of the bride in her wedding dress.

A dream come true for the Texan, the six-layered wedding cake took pride of place when she re-newed her wedding vows to her husband of ten years, Innocent.

“Growing up I have always wanted a doll made in my likeness,” said Chidi, a 35-year-old mother of four.

“So, when we started planning for our church wedding I told my husband that I wanted a unique, personalised wedding – a wedding where my dream will come true.”

Well, judging by this delightful photograph, we think Chidi got her wishes….. we’d love to hear your comments, leave them below.

You may be shocked to hear that a bride has married three different men in the same day.

Mrs April Loof of Manchester started her wedding day walking up the aisle to marry 1st husband Daniel, everything was going well until moments after the registrar proclaimed them the new “Husband and Wife” at which point Daniel had second thoughts running out of the ceremony to gasps from the wedding guests.

After long conversations, several tears and much anger from April, she decided that this was to be the happiest day of her life and decided Daniel was not the man for her, turned to his best man and oldest friend Peter for support.

Peter, then announced his undying love for April and claimed to of loved her since the moment they first met.
Delighted by the response, the registrars confirmed that as the registry hadn’t been completed between April and Daniel, the second wedding to Peter could go ahead.

Half way through the 2nd ceremony, the registrars asked the usual “Does anyone know of any reason why these two people cannot be joined in matrimony” – at which point a lady in the seats behind them stood up and announced that they were actually brother and sister and the wedding should be immediately stopped.
Further tears, anger and long conversations later, April found that Peter was in actual fact her long lost brother and informed him it was best that he left immediately.

Just as they were about to finally put the wedding guests out of their misery, another man dropped to one knee and asked April to marry him, as he thought he would never marry and the moment was fate.

Being awash with the romantic gesture, April shocked the wedding guests one more time and said YES !
After a short argument with her father about her morales and reasons for wanting to get married, April Loof married Richard Fools and lived the rest of her life happy as Mrs April Fools.