tiara | real life bride
And the bride wore Blue...
Bridal designer and owner of Blue Bridalwear in Rhiwbina, Angela Pitcher and new hubby Stuart enjoyed a sunny ceremony and intimate garden party
After meeting in Egypt three years ago while on separate windsurfing holidays, Angela, 44, and Stuart, 40, knew it was meant to be. And to top off their post-wedding bliss, Angela has recently given birth to their daughter Daisy Angel - congratulations both! 00
tiara | real life bride Planning Neither of us is quite sure how, where or when we decided to get married, it just sort of happened! Once things were underway, I think we took around ten weeks to plan the whole thing - not a timescale I’d recommend to other brides if they want to remain sane. I started my planning by asking my friend and photographer Mark Cleghorn which dates he had free, and then began arranging from there. We decided on 0708-09 as the date for our wedding - we thought this would be an easy date to remember for future anniversaries!
Photographer Mark has been photographing my dresses at Blue beautifully for many years, and I love both his work and the way he works - so it was great to have him capture our day. Although normally I’m standing behind him when he’s photographing my dresses, so it was a bit weird being the one in front of his camera for a change.
Venues There was no theme as such, but we were both certain that we wanted a small wedding with just our immediate family. So on the day of the ceremony 13 of us gathered for an intimate service at St David’s Hotel in Cardiff Bay. The building is amazing and we had excellent service there. Since both Stuart and I are keen windsurfers, it was lovely to be married in one of the small function rooms that overlook the bay where we sometimes sail. A week later, we then had a garden party to celebrate our marriage with our wider family and friends.
Rings When my company Blue Bridalwear was exhibiting at the Tiara Wedding Exhibition last year, Brooklinde jewellers had the stand next to us. It was there that I spotted a very delicate platinum wedding band, channel set with beautiful diamonds. A conversation and a few sketches later we came up with the design for an engagement ring to complement it.
The Dress After nearly 20 years of making wedding dresses for other people it was finally my turn to wear one! I loved the ‘Lulu’ dress from our latest collection, so I decided to have that style made in a pale blue silk jacquard. I really love the dress because it’s quirky and flirty, but I also wanted something special to wear over the top. As a designer one of my sources of inspiration is Audrey Hepburn, so I designed a very ‘Audrey’ pale blue duchesse satin crop sleeve coat, with a deep roll collar. The belt was trimmed with a specially made pearl and crystal encrusted buckle. Then inside both the dress and coat was a little pocket made from a piece of fabric from my mum’s wedding dress. In each of the pockets I had a crisp cotton hankie, one was my grandmother’s and the other belonged to one of my great aunts. Also sewn into the pocket of the coat was a ribbon loop to keep my engagement ring safe until I could put it on again after the ceremony.
Hair On our way to the hotel, Stuart dropped me off at Ken Picton hairdressers in Mermaid Quay. Whilst I was having my hair done, Stuart took it easy in the steam room at the hotel. My assistant Jayney did my make up for me. One of the more glamorous aspects of our job is that we regularly
Photographs by: Mark Cleghorn Photography www.markcleghorn.com Tel: 029 2046 4626
do photo-shoots, so as a result we’re both quite practised in co-ordinating all the different aspects of a bridal shoot - location, outfits, hairdresser, make up artist, and photographer. The only difference this time was that I was the ‘model’!
Any Hiccups? I wept all the way through the ceremony! The tears started as my dad and I entered the ceremony room. Then by the time I was standing at Stuart’s side I was scrabbling for my emergency hankie. Also, while we had glorious sunshine and blue skies for the day of our ceremony, we had fine drizzle on the day of our garden party. But do you know what? It really didn’t matter!
Honeymoon We piled all our windsurfing kit into the back of our van and headed down to West Wales for a week. While Stuart was loading our boards and sails into the van before we set off, I got busy with ribbon and lipstick to decorate the outside of it. I like to think that we made a lot of people smile when they saw us driving past. We certainly had lots of waves and toots of car horns – we stopped counting when we got to 90!
Special Touches Our whole day felt truly special. It was just super to share our special day with the people who are most special to us - corny but true. And if I could offer just one tip to other brides-to-be? Savour every single second because the day passes in a flash. Or on a more practical level – take emergency hankies!
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