How to Support Small or Local Businesses When Planning a Wedding

Following on from my ‘How to Support Small or Local Businesses When Planning a Hen or Stag Do‘ post, I thought I’d share some great ways that we supported small and local businesses throughout our wedding weekender!

As a couple that always champions small businesses, especially local ones, we knew they had to play a huge part in our wedding, as they had done so with our hen and stag dos. We had a lovely long list of friends with businesses we wanted to support and have made lots of lovely local/small business friends along the planning journey too! (There’s more photos to be added when we receive them too!)

But how did we do it, and how can you do it too?

Use Local Venues

We always knew, for years before we were even engaged, that we wanted to get married at Langtons House, our local registry office, but it’s a stunning building too that happened to be a place where we spent a lot of lockdown due to the lovely surrounding park. Lots of towns have registry offices, and they’re actually quite in favour on those ‘Wedding Trend’ lists you see for low cost yet perfectly decent wedding venues! You can find your local register office here.

From there, we wanted to go to a local restaurant and feast. Our main focus of the weekend, aside from getting married, was on food and drink as it’s such a big part of both of our lives. We knew there was only one place for that; Stay! Just a short walk down the road from Langtons, and with our friend Scott as their head chef, we knew we’d be feasting beyond words!

Our final venue of the weekend was Legra Tap & Kitchen, a little further out in Leigh on Sea (where we had hoped to move to for a while!). We love eating and drinking there as the staff are top-notch, so we just had to make it part of our celebrations!

Use Local Caterers and Bakers

We weren’t originally going to have a wedding cake, but as a few our Friday evening guests weren’t going to our Saturday party to get a chunk of the cake there, we knew we had to get something made for the Friday also. There was no one else I was going to ask other than Jamie from Jamie’s Bakery as his brownies are one of my most favourite things to eat! I sent over a few images of vintage/gothic style one teir cakes, asked for navy with white decor and to be red velvet, then let Jamie get on with it. We bloody loved what he came up with, and it, of course, tasted divine!!

After our ceremony, we headed down to Stay, as mentioned! The food here is some of favourite especially when Chef Scott knocks it out of the park with a remake of the best burger I’ve ever eaten from Beefy Boys. Scott went so above and beyond to make sure my burger was even better than my favourite as all I ever wanted was to eat a burger on my wedding day! The rest of the guests had Roast Dinners, another of Scott’s specialities, and they went down a treat. We can’t wait to go back there for Christmas Day lunch as we know it’s going to be amazing!

You’ll see there’s a theme here, we also picked where we hosted our Saturday night based on how mush we love the chef at Legra Tap & Kitchen! Keir also does awesome burgers so we had them a little sliders on the night. We opted for a Mexican themed buffet as we know Chilli is an all-round winner and could easily be adapted for our veggie/vegan guests.

Our Saturday night cake was actually just a stack of cheese that then became part of our cheese board. We aren’t overly cakey people so we utilised Keirs skills in making cheese rounds look pretty! We had looked to get something similar from Costco but Keir took this into his own hands and we loved it. We are still eating slabs of wedding cheese a month later and we’ve saved the love heart truckle for when we host our first big meal in our new kitchen!

By using local businesses run by people we’ve known for years, it meant we could really personalise our wedding meals and big corporations weren’t cashing in. If you’ve got a favourite local restaurant or bar, then why not consider host your wedding there; it makes it far more personal and can keep costs down too.

Use Local Creatives

There are so many wonderfully creative people locally to us, but we knew we had to gel with them perfectly to help shoot and shape our day as we wanted it to be.

When it came to our photography, we had always said to our friend, Chloe Lee Photography, that she would shoot our wedding and that came true! We’d had a shoot with Chloe after Covid so we felt super chill with her, alongside being friends with her since I was 17/18 which really did make the photos feel super natural.

We struggled a little more with trying to find a videographer, as we didn’t want a traditional style video as our wedding wasn’t done the normal way. We spoke to a fair few videogrpahers, some came back at well above what we wanted to spend (we had a budget we wanted to stick to) and others just didn’t quite click with us and our plans. We finally found Foster Studios who doesn’t usually shoot wedding videos and we asked James to step out of his comfort zone with us and give it a go! What James sent over was just perfect, it captured our really chilled out day without dictating how our schedule should run.

Something I’d not thought of was Content Creation, which is odd considering it’s such a big part of my job! In slides Tamsin of Backstage Bride into my DMs and I’m so happy she did as she caught so many magical moments! Tamsin and I went to Coopers together and had stayed in contact once we left, and she’s just kicking off her side hustle of bridal content creation, so we teamed up and having her there on the say was so handy! Not only did she shoot great content, she was like my little right-hand man running all over for me so myself and the bridesmaids could get our hair & make up done without any worries; super handy!

We wanted to add a few personal touches to the wedding ceremony and what better way to do it than get a dear friend of ours to sing! The wonderful Sophie learnt a total of 4 new songs to perform for us as she sang as I walked down the aisle and then 2 lovely songs as we signed the registry whilst at Langtons. We then really pushed her out of her comfort zone and she sang our first dance for us; it was bloody wonderful (unlike our dancing!). If you’ve got friends that are blessed with musical talent then bring them into your day, it makes it so much more special.

Use Local Suppliers

I knew exactly how I wanted my hair and NG Hair made it happen. I was all about the simple vintage curls to compliment my dress and still look like me! We’ve known Naz for years, and having someone you know and trust involved in such a big part of your day makes it a lot easier! I’d highly recommend that you use your usual hairdresser as they know you and what your hair is capable of.

Finding a make-up artist was actually the toughest part of the wedding planning for me as I’m not a huge fan of wearing make-up, nor do I overly enjoy how I look in lots of make-up. Frances Gordon MUA came as a recommendation from a colleague at the time when I’d said I was struggling as I wanted very plain and classic make up. After a trial run, which I highly recommend, I knew I’d found exactly who I was looking for.

I always have fantastic nails, if I may say so myself, and they’ve been done by Beauty by Lynsey for quite some time now. After much diliberation, we opted to match my nails to the nails I had when Mike proposed as they were the right colours for the wedding and it was quite a lovely way to close my ‘engaged era’ with the same nails in which I started it.

My eyebrows weren’t a wedding addition, they’ve been on point for quite a few years now thanks to Beauty and the Brows, but they were topped up and perfected in the lead up to the wedding. There’s no way I could leave the house without my brows being microbladed now!

The Groom, Best Men and Father of the Bride’s suits were all hired from Jack Bunney’s. We are so lucky that this incredible suit shop is in our local high street, but we would have 100% driven quite a distance to have the service we received and the suits we had.

One final touch to my outfit was an unexpected one as mum spotted it in the window of Bella Sposa as she walked by one day. I’d always said I’d wanted a cape, not just for our wedding but just in general, and mum had spotted the perfect wedding cape! It worked so well as I didn’t want anyone to see my dress on the Friday as we moved from one venue to the next! I never thought I’d find something to perfect in a shop in our local High Street, so go and check your local bridal shops for sure.

The final local business we used was the S&A Wedding & Party Shop, which is quite literally an Aladdin’s Cave of goodies in Havering. Mum and I were willing to get creative with the flowers as I was 100% sure I wanted faux flowers for the Bridesmaids so they could keep them and I’m not really a fresh flower kinda gal! We picked various faux flowers to make up the two bouquets and whilst we were there, we got really quite confident in our capabilities and also ended up making the floral display for where Mike and I ate our dinner!

Use Small Suppliers

When it came to my dress, I knew exactly what style I wanted, no questions asked; I just didn’t know where to look. I knew I’d struggle to find a big selection of 1950s style dresses on the high street, so I asked the lovely members of the Rock n Roll Bride Facebook group for recommendations, there were so many responses for Cutting Edge Bridal so that’s where I trotted off to. Run by Suzanne, Cutting Edge Bridal has short tea-style dresses galore and by dress number 4 we had found the base of my dress! With some great ideas from Suzanne, my dress was finalised and sent to be made.

Then in steps Hazel from Sewing Rooms, Eltham (part of Swift Bridal) who then did all of the alterations and made my dreams of pops of blue come true! Hazel added the blue ribbon around the middle to create a lovely bow, and the blue into my petticoat. She also created the tiny blue bows on my gloves to bring it all together. Plus, my incredible bow headband was made by Hazel too.

When it came to our wedding rings, there was only one option; Karl Karter from London Rocks Jewellery. The man behind the creation of my stunning engagement ring. We met with Karl early this year to talk through ideas of what we wanted and he had some great concepts that, when they finally came to life, we were blown away with. My ‘gap ring’ sits perfectly into my engagement ring and has had so many wonderful comments.

By using small businesses, we found we were never rushed, there was so much attention to detail put into every aspect and we wouldn’t want to have done it any other way.