Asylum Chapel wedding | Gaby & Shun

Asylum Chapel wedding photographer

Brunswick House wedding photographer

Vintage wedding dress

Black tie wedding

A black tie wedding at Asylum Chapel and Brunswick House

“We wanted our wedding to be fun and unique and because Shun is Japanese we wanted to ensure we respected his heritage as well as bringing in humour from our love of rugby. In Japan, it is meant to be lucky to hand make 1,000 paper origami cranes and this provided the backdrop for our exchanging of vowels. We used cherry blossom as inspiration for the colour scheme, and added lots of personal touches with the décor.”

Gaby wore two stunning vintage wedding dresses, both from House of Vintage, Shoreditch

“I couldn’t decide between the two dresses but one of my bridesmaids helped me justify getting both as they were so different and also fitted the change of venue perfectly. The first dress reminded me very much of Japan (kimono style) with heavy silk embossed roses (my maiden name) throughout. I loved the low back with bow detail and chose my headpiece to compliment this. The second dress was much more sophisticated and befitting of an evening event, especially as we had asked our guests to wear black tie.”

Gaby wore a bargain pair of second hand Jimmy Choos on eBay, and for jewellery she wore an amethyst pendant that had belonged to her Grandma (something old). Shun surprised her with an antique pair of earrings to match.

The stunning flowers were from Darling and Wild.

“I wanted my bouquet to be unusual and fell in love with the idea of having a succulent as the central piece, surrounding by pink roses. I absolutely loved what Lara created and gave it to one of my bridesmaids at the end of night who had kindly shared her birthday with our wedding.”

The Asylum Chapel made for a stunning wedding ceremony venue, with its historic architecture, stain glass windows, vintage furniture, and candlelit interior

“I fell in love with the Asylum Chapel immediately. It reminded me so much of the venue where Ross and Emily married in Friends, plus had the vintage feel I was hoping for.”

“We sourced cherry blossom and pussy willow branches for the chapel and placed them in vintage spaghetti jars either side of the altar. My mum and I covered large polystyrene balls with cherry blossom petals, and supported them on top of frosted Bonne Maman jam jars with LED tea lights inside, to be in both venues.”

“I painted lots of gold framed chalk boards to introduce guests to the chapel and we suspended handmade origami paper cranes within painted hula hoops from the ceiling of the chapel.”

Gaby walked down the aisle to “Everybody’s Free” from Baz Lurhmann’s Romeo and Juliet, sung by the Some Voices choir.

“We fell in love with them when we saw them perform a live soundtrack to the screening of Romeo and Juliet in a church in Marylebone.”

For readings, Gaby and Shun picked two unusual but lovely choices- Carrie’s Poem, from ‘Sex and the City’ and an extract from ‘Beauty and the Beast’ by N.R. Hart.

Gaby’s wedding band was an antique ring purchased in Hatton Garden, and Shun’s a rose gold band from Grey’s Antiques in Mayfair.

Wedding reception at Brunswick House in Vauxhall, an active antique reclamation yard

“Brunswick House perfectly matched the theme we were going for. We are both avid lovers of all things antique and vintage so the venue being an active reclamation yard was perfect.”

“Shun created ‘player profiles’ for all of our guests. He photoshopped their face onto a selection of Japanese or English rugby player head shots and we created statistics of ‘most likely to’, ‘alcohol tolerance’, ‘AKA’, and placed them underneath guests plates for some fun during dinner. We also gave the male guests origami cranes to put into their button holes.”

“Our favourite cake is red velvet so we splurged and went to the best, Hummingbird Bakery, for 100 mini cupcakes. In Japan, it is traditional to break open a barrel of sake to mark your wedding, so we chose to focus on this instead of cake cutting.”

A bride’s advice: don’t forget to take it all in

“Enjoy every moment! One of my friends gave me some advice from her father who is a vicar – pause at the start of the aisle before you walk down to meet your partner and just take a moment to soak it all up.”

Shun and I absolutely love Tim’s work and have followed him for ages … we we thrilled he could shoot our wedding. He has a unique ability to capture beauty in every shot, and was so patient with us both on the day.

— Gaby & Shun