Fun Kate Spade Inspired Wedding

Sophie & Leigh

Sophie loves Kate Spade – so it was obvious to her that her wedding would be a fun Kate Spade inspired celebration. From her sparkly gold Kate Spade heels to black and white polka dot napkins, each element of the day was infused with her love of the fun preppy style and all captured by Ben Howland.

Sophie tells their story. “I’m (Sophie) from Newcastle and Leigh is from Melbourne and we went all the way to London to find each other. We met through friends Tom and Simon one (surprisingly warm) Sunday afternoon in London’s Finchley Road Walkabout pub (where else of course)! From that day on we bonded over snakebites and Manchester United on Walkabout’s table no. 4. It didn’t take long to fall head over heels for each other and everything happened quite quickly, we rented our own flat together just 3 months after we met – as they say “you just know”.

Little Bridge Designs created black, gold and white wedding stationery for the day.

The groom and groomsmen each wore a navy suit and polka dot bow tie, Sophie noting, “Leigh’s gorgeous Nan did the best job making all of the boys bow ties.”

Sophie chose a lace gown from Heather Sellick, noting, “Heather was AMAZING, she is so lovely and gave me my dream wedding dress – if your looking for a bespoke wedding dress look no further.”

Sophie’s bridesmaids wore custom made gowns with gold tops.

Sophie walked down the aisle to Eva Cassidy’s “Songbird”, the couple choosing St Mary’s Star of the Sea Newcastle for their ceremony.

Sophie tells, “I loved the ceremony, we aren’t super religious but we are both catholic and wanted a traditional wedding, we were slightly unsure of how full on the ceremony would be and if it would be more about the church rather then us as a couple, our priest became sick and we ended up with the Newcastle Monsignor – he was absolutely fantastic!!! He kept everything to the point and it was in the ended up being really personalised ceremony. We also got to read out four prayers that we had written ourselves, I thought this made a lovely touch.”

Of their photographer, Sophie notes, “When we first met with Ben we knew he was right for the job! He has a super friendly persona and made all of us feel super comfortable on the wedding day plus he has a great sense of humour! His organisation (I love organised people) and communications leading up to the day were fantastic. And you will see how great his photos are!”

Lovely Rita Designs created floral arrangements for the day. “It worked out perfectly that peonies (my favourite) are only available in November so of course we had these as the main flower – and I have to say Nichole from Lovely Rita Flowers did the BEST job!”

The Creative Type styled the wedding in Kate Spade style, the bride remarking, “Caroline our wonderful stylist organised everything for the tables from the gorgeous bow napkins to the striped place mats, chairs, charger plates and candle holders. She created all of the table names, signs, menus, super cute card box and the fab seating plan. We bought all of the frames and spray painted half of them gold. The napkins ended up being quite popular and we saw a couple of guests even wear them all night around their neck, anyway 13 people decided to take them home not realising we had hired them and they were the only napkins of that kind available in Australia – we gave up trying to find who had them! We also found out half of the guests couldn’t bare to unwrap them and use them as napkins – they just looked too pretty!

Its no shock that I love Kate Spade, gold, bows and polkadots, so this was the main theme of the wedding (yay) and Caroline mastered it perfectly. I still say “wow” every time I look at the pictures. Everything was so bright and happy – just what we wanted.”

Sweet Perfection Cakes created a black, white and gold Kate Spade inspired cake.

“We really wanted to make our wedding unique to us and our style – so we personalised as many details as we could. As we met in London we wanted to incorporate a little bit of this into the wedding we had London cabs as two of the bridal cars, all of the boys had matching London tube map socks and we had table names (this was Leigh’s idea which he was very excited about) all of the names where special places we have been together on our travels.”

Sophie and Leigh held their wedding reception at Merewether Surfhouse , Sophie noting, “As soon as we were engaged Leigh turned to me and said, were getting married at Merewether Surfhouse, I was super happy with that because I wanted to get married in my home town. We didn’t even look anywhere else it was the perfect location for us – an amazing spot right on the water with our favourite view of Newcastle. We had spent so much time telling our friends and family in Melbourne how amazing in Newcastle was and we felt Merewether Surfhouse really showed off Newcastle’s beauty. On the night the staff were fantastic, everything went to plan the food was beautiful and the friendly staff kept all the guests glasses full”

One of Sophie’s favourite parts of the day was, “The speeches – we loved the speeches every single one of them, they were all so beautiful. My Uncle told us there was only one thing missing from our wedding – a box of Kleenex on the tables. My 17 yr old sister blew everyone away and my best friend Nicole even surprised me with a speech (she couldn’t even speak at her own wedding – she hates public speaking). Our dads, my mum and the best man also did amazing jobs!”

“Our wedding was not just about our love for each other but about the family and friends we shared it with. We feel so lucky to have spent our special day/night with 175 people who came from all over Australia and 9 people traveled all the way from England 🙂 As it was a bit of a destination wedding for half of our guests, we had the most wonderful time with them around the wedding – memories we will cherish forever and we will be forever thankful for everyone’s generosity and involvement.”

Of the first dance, Sophie remembers, “We admit, we had a few lessons, we didn’t want anything choreographed because we knew we would just end up forgetting it all and falling into each others arms dancing to Van Morrison “Someone like you” (how corny does that sound) but we just learned a few steps and a bit of a twirly thing. Which was funny because I knew I wouldn’t be able to do do a full twirl as my dress limited how far I could put my arms in the air, I had to pull our instructor aside and whisper it to her, Leigh was kind of puzzled, but it all worked out on the day and I even managed to do my full twirl.”

Bob Corbett kept the dance floor moving all night. “We have had so many people enquire about Bobby, he was awesome and created the real party atmosphere we wanted, the dance floor was packed all night!”

Congratulations Sophie and Leigh! Thank you for sharing the details of your day with us! Thank you also to Ben Howland and The Creative Type for sharing today’s wedding!