Tab Venue Shoreditch Wedding Photography Alex and Gudrun

Tab Venue Shoreditch Wedding Photography – Alex and Gudrun

Alex and Gudrun’s London wedding at the Tab Venue Shoreditch

I loved working with Alex and Gudrun. They were such a pleasure to be around on their wedding day. From their first look in the garden of Gudrun’s family home, to a pre-wedding wander through Walthamstow Village in East London, to their short but sweet ceremony at Vestry House ceremony and their Tab Venue Shoreditch reception. Gold dresses, East London bus rides, balloons and lots of happy vibes.

Laura is amazing, supportive and so talented. She made us look beautiful and we both agreed she was one of the best decisions we made!

Here’s what they had to say about their wedding photography and working with me: To be honest, we felt like we didn’t talk to Laura at all during the day – we’d discussed everything and she made everything so easy that we’ve decided she should have some higher role than ‘just’ photographer – we think she was probably crucial in keeping the day together!

However, that’s a testament again to Laura, she was unobtrusive whilst also getting all the photos we wanted and has produced something beautiful – we decided originally to book Laura because her photography is incredible, but she also fitted with our personalities and just made us feel so secure about everything we would do together.

Laura is amazing, supportive and so talented. She made us look beautiful and we both agreed she was one of the best decisions we made!

Scroll to the bottom to read all about the rest of Alex and Gudrun’s day in their own words. Here are pictures from their beautiful day in Walthamstow and at The Tab Venue.

One date and love at first sight

ALEX: I had moved to London a week before, Gudrun and I met on the internet, went for a single date in Angel and just fell in love and became best friends very quickly. We lived on opposite sides of London, then with some of our best friends, then we found our own way. We got engaged in Las Vegas – I was there alone for work for 5 days – Gudrun flew for 30-odd hours to meet me, and we got engaged the day after my 30th birthday.

GUDRUN: At first we felt a bit odd about going home engaged without a ring so we had a whirlwind last few hours of our holiday rushing round San Francisco trying to buy a temporary ring that wasn’t awful! We finally realised that being engaged wasn’t dependent on the ring and we should do what wanted rather than what was expected and gave up the search. This idea of what we wanted versus what was expected set the tone for the rest of our engagement and wedding.

Designing the wedding rings

We always knew we wanted Alex’s Sister Camilla to make my ring and so were secretly engaged for a month, until we could take a trip to see her and choose the stones together which was great fun. I gave Alex my Swiss family crest ring as his ‘engagement’ ring to show that he was joining my family too. We got engaged in April 2015 and were married in Sept 2016

A ceremony at Vestry House in Walthamstow

We originally booked a lovely registry office in London for our ceremony, but once we started thinking it through we realised we wanted something with a bit more to it. Vestry House Museum is a gorgeous little place in Walthamstow (where i grew up and we live) It has lovely gardens and when we found out it was licensed for weddings we changed our plans straight away!

A blank canvas reception venue in Shoreditch, London

We found the Tab Venue when I was looking at venues for our previous ceremony venue so although the journey from Walthamstow to Shoreditch was a bit further than we had originally planned the venue was worth it. It’s totally dry hire and more importantly for us, it’s a charitable organisation so all money it makes from hire fees go back into its brilliant community projects. I’m a big believer in surrounding yourself with good things to create good things and we tried to do that with the wedding.

A groom in Suit Supply

ALEX: I bought a suit from SuitSupply – they do very nice suits made from nice material without spending crazy money. I like nice shoes so I bought a new pair of Barkers. I loved looking classic for the day – it made me feel elegant – then used colours like the orange tie in to the flowers etc. I did get a bespoke shirt made, which makes a huge difference as your suit can fit you without ruffled sleeves and so on. Gudrun found me a tie clip and had it engraved with our new initials.

A bride in gold sequins

GUDRUN: I tried to buy a ‘proper’ wedding dress, I even went on a shopping trip with my Mum but nothing felt right so i turned to the internet. I’d always fancied wearing gold sequins and when I saw the Badgley Mischka dresses online I was pretty convinced. The one I wanted was only available in the US and I wasn’t sure of my size so when I saw an unworn dress on eBay I thought it was worth buying to try for size before I committed to importing something. As it turned out the dress fit beautifully so I stopped my search there! My shoes were massive, and blue and brilliant. I’d be lying if I said they were comfortable all day but adrenaline is a wonderful pain killer and they looked great!

A short, sweet and wonderful wedding ceremony

Our ceremony was short and sweet and wonderful. We didn’t want an aisle or for me to be given away – which my Dad was totally in agreement with – so we walked in once everyone was seated and stood in front of them.

One traditional Bride thing I did do was keep everyone waiting, not because we were late but because I didn’t realise everyone was waiting for me, I assumed at least one of our friends was late so was hanging about wondering why we hadn’t started yet!

A John Cooper Clarke reading

We had some lovely readings by our great friend Katie and my Mum, both were poems that set a nice tone (John Cooper Clarke’s I Wanna Be Yours and OJ Preston’s Chapter One of One Thousand.) We wrote our own vows mainly to ‘bulk out’ the ceremony but standing there saying them was actually quite the highlight! Also, mine totally made people cry which I didn’t realise until later!

British flowers with a wild feel, from The Flower Appreciation Society

We wanted the ‘wild-flower’ look, which we both love and we wanted the flowers to be British – just so that they weren’t travelling too much. The Flower Appreciation Society fulfilled the whole brief straight away, and Gudrun fell for them. The buttonholes were thistles and were just perfect. We used pretty much entirely dahlias and cosmos, with flashes of hydrangeas and thistles.

We did the flowers for the venue ourselves, going to New Covent Garden one morning to pick up all the flowers, and Gudrun’s family all helped to arrange them into throw-away jars that we could recycle straight away. This made everything easy to clean up, but also looking beautiful.

Other wedding styling touches

Gudrun’s sister basically designed everything stationary wise. She’s an architect with an amazing creative talent, so she just made something that looked great and we did all the invitations, signs, menus etc from the design that she did, and it was perfect.

Luckily the Tab Centre doesn’t need much decor as it’s such a lovely room but I am a bit crafty and also quite…tight…..so I made the rest. I cut out and sewed together 50M of coloured spots, my mum made the table runners with fabric we bought from Walthamstow Market.

Home made wedding cakes

Alex and I made the cakes, which was really fun and quite a therapeutic break from doing all the other stuff – also who wouldn’t want to be able to claim that they have baked a 6kg lemon cake?? We had to include our beloved cats, Odin and Loki, so I printed off life-sized pictures and had them ‘helping’ with the table plan.

Our DJs

Our friends DJed which was perfect – we thought originally we would have a band, but in fact it would have been too much. Having some of our favourite people play tracks we all knew and loved was much more personal and went really well. By the time we were round to dancing, everyone had had a drink or two, so dancing to UK garage and Disco was just the thing.

Words of advice for other couples

ALEX: There’s the usual advice: slow down and enjoy it, you won’t speak to everyone, don’t worry too much about cake and other small stuff, because it won’t be noticed as much you think it will. Basically, stop doing what anyone else tells you to do and just book stuff – I realise money is a problem but do the best you can and find things you like,, everyone else will love it, because you’re what they like, you’re the reason they’re there to celebrate.

GUDRUN: If you surround yourself with a gang of suppliers who are lovely and on the same wavelength as you, everything will be easier, because you don’t have to ask for things, they just understand. “Perfectly Imperfect” – this is the phrase you need to remember – no wedding guest accepts your invitation to come and criticise your choice of partner/ venue/music/food; they’re all there to have a nice time with you and for you.