A treat for y’all today – another Skully Wedding! This one’s from Sassy and Ian in England. They created this magical Christmas wedding with a slight gothic twist. I love Sassy’s wedding dress – especially the corset from Angels Carrying Savage Weapons (watch our for a feature on them soon!) and the fact that guest kept pieces of her dress as mementos! Read on for their amazing story.

singing the register to a caroling choir

Who Be You?

We be Sarah aka Sassy and Ian aka E. We are from the very civilised and conventional village of Langford in the Cotswolds, England. Ian is a mechanic and I am the head of a support for a software company.

What makes your day a ‘Skully’ Wedding?

We love Christmas and thought it was a great time of year for a wedding, not to mention unusual. I have been to countless summer weddings but never a winter one so we thought Christmas would be perfect. Our main aim was for our guests to have a fantastic day and for the whole thing to be memorable and ‘us’. There is nothing worse than attending a wedding where the people getting married have done what was expected of them and not what they wanted. However, we also wanted to take our families in to consideration.

Christmas tree wedding decorations added festive flavour

Our theme was Christmas with the traditional red and gold colour scheme, we were aiming for a cosy romantic feel for the day but with an unusual twist. I think its fair to say I am not your ‘normal’ bride after all I had been dyeing my hair bright red for nearly two years, add to that our tattoos and random personalities. I don’t think a traditional big white wedding would have washed with our friends and family.

We chose the venue for the wedding as its our local church. It dates back to Saxon times so it’s a very historical and unusual church, especially with the pink Saxon tower. Ians family have a long history in the village we were married in and his granddad’s memorial is at that church so we felt it was appropriate to follow the family tradition.

The historic Saxon church Sarah and Ian used as their wedding venue

As we were sticking to a traditional theme we decided to hold the reception at the village hall, which we felt worked really well with our cosy, romantic winter theme. It was a squeeze with 80 people not to mention tricky as we had to hire everything including tables and chairs. The food was traditional country winter foods with three menu choices including venison casserole. Our reception drink was warming mulled wine to help our guests defrost after the church service.

The beautiful wedding cake

We decorated all of the hall ourselves which meant really late nights in the run up to the wedding and included us spending far too long trying to hacksaw off the bottom of our Christmas tree with a very blunt hacksaw…lol. Our service hymns were carols and we had the choir singing further carols during our signing of the register. It was dark when we came out of the church which really added to the atmosphere.

Christmas wedding centrepiece

The decorated christmas hall lit up by hundreds of fairy lights from above

Tell us about your favourite wedding details

Our cake was a Christmas cake (3 tiered) made by my best friends mum which we then marzipaned, iced and decorated. We decided on a wintery themed cake which encompassed the golden and red tones from the wedding.

All of our wedding stationary was handmade by me (which took ages) with a black, red and gold theme.

Our bridesmaid dresses were made by Ian’s mum and we used a gold satin basic fabric layered with burgundy silk chiffon to create a shimmering effect. Then she put black lace around the dress under the bust and finally a handmade, hand painted flower was added (made by Ian’s sister). To top everything off we put them in black lace bolero’s, it ended up looking quite gothic but beautiful.

The bridesmaids waiting outside the church

My dress was a combination of the creative genius of Vikki (my long time friend and now sister in law) who has started her own business making bespoke dresses and accessories to any requirement, she particularly enjoys making unusual pieces and creates some fantastic embroidered spiders and creepy crawlies and Angels Carrying Savage Weapons (genius corsetiers from Nottingham ). The corset was from limited run of only 35 and was made to my exact measurements to ensure all day comfort and perfect fit. The skirt and jacket were made from the same pale gold raw silk as the corset.

Sarah's unique wedding dress

Sarah's Angels Carrying Savage Weapons custom-made bridal corset

The magic was the flowers, all handmade, hand painted and encrusted with glass beads, crystals and pearls. These were pinned on as we chose to attach each flower to a brooch pin to ensure I can remove them after as I wanted to give some of them away to my family as memento’s. What better memento than a piece of the wedding dress! We teamed the dress up with a gorgeous burgundy petticoat and decided to expose it one side, why hide it!

closeup of the beautiful handmade flower pins adorning Sarah's dress

My tiara was made specifically to match my personality, hair and dress and it was impossible to capture its full beauty, it sparkled brilliantly in the candlelight.

The bridesmaids carried cream roses with hypericum berries hand tied with raffia and my bouquet featured deep burgundy amaryllis, ivy, holly and hypericum berries.

We decorated the hall with fairy lights, candles and vases filled with pine cones and Christmas pot pourri. The tables were all named after our favourite love songs.

Our wedding car was a huge white stretch Hummer which was almost as large as the village but it was fantastic!

Instead of favours I put all the money together and created 6 large stockings packed with goodies. I then went round to every person and had them draw sticks and gave the stockings to the people with the coloured tips to there sticks. The stockings included sweets from my childhood, childhood puzzles and a favourite love film (including the very unusual Priscilla Queen of the Desert).

The lucky winner of a santa wedding favor

Most Memorable Moment

I guess there are a couple of memorable moments. The hummer driving past with Ian in it as I was getting ready to go. Rushing to get me laced in to my corset and to pin the extra flowers on without pinning them in to my skin like a previous fitting…lol. Reaching the front and wondering why Ian hadn’t looked at me only to look across and see him in floods of tears. Oohh not to forget the first dance, we got bored of twirling round in circles so we just went mad (see pics)!!

The couple giggle while they dance

Any advice for Wedding Skulls?

The best advice I can give is to be true to yourself, do what you want and don’t do anything unusual just for the sake of it, only do it if it’s you. Be careful about things that you think will be a funny part of the day in years to come you could look back and think it was inappropriate.

A Christmas wish come true