Autumnal Wedding Ideas with Aerial Dancers

Unique woodland wedding ideas are coming your way this evening in the form of this majestic styled inspiration shoot, put together by photographer Nina Emily and floral designer Stories Of Style, and planned and styled by LND Events. Together, they wanted to push the creative boundaries of weddings and curate a shoot that combines aerial performance with a late Summer woodland wedding and the result, as indicated in the title, is majestic. Not only have they created such gorgeous woodland wedding inspiration, which we know you are all going to love, but they have also explored the very special friendship and trust that is needed for two aerial dancers to perform together and we love this. Quite often the styled shoots we feature are about two people in love but this is about two very good friends and my goodness have we all needed a very good friend this year!

As well as celebrating friendship, there are so many other elements to love about this shoot. The colour palette of the décor, with it’s warming mix of later summer hues and Autumnal orange tones, works perfectly with the woodland backdrop and against the rich dark oak of the furniture used within the intimate table setting. We also love the way citrus fruit is used as a table runner and the incredible cake with its artistic buttercream design. It is the sort of cake you really want to seek your teeth into!!

But most of all, we love how the suppliers have wanted to push their creative boundaries through this shoot. Like so many of the shoots we have featured over the last 3 months, Majestic Brides was planned during lockdown and took place as soon as restrictions were lifted. They were desperate to flex their creative muscles and the result is something very unique and inspirational for us all to enjoy.

Ellen of LND Events talks us through Majestic Brides.

Enjoy lovely people – this shoot is a keeper!

Igniting Creativity…

In mid July when the nation were beginning to come out the other side of lockdown restrictions, wedding suppliers were itching to get back to some sort of creative outlet.

Weddings and events were still deemed unsafe due to the numbers typically involved in hosting them so it left us with styled shoots. This is something suppliers like to get involved with as a way of showing off their own personal style to the couples they’d like to attract.

We typically come together on a collaborative basis (rather than a paid one) and show our various skills to help you imagine what you could have for your big day. It can be as little as the style of napkins we use that you’d like to replicate, right through to the entire set up.

Shoots are usually more flamboyant than a real wedding because it gives us a chance to push our creative boundaries…. A bit like watching a haute couture fashion show and knowing a high street chain will make a more wearable version, we can come up with some over the top ideas which we don’t always expect our future couples to replicate but we want to ignite the creative juices and of course, if any one is daring enough to go with the full replication, we’re in our element!

This shoot definitely lay in the former category. When looking for inspiration for this, it was really hard to find wedding based aerial artist imagery. Whether that be the brides or grooms themselves or people performing at a wedding of this style.

To me this is always exciting. It’s hard to be original in this industry so doing something that I haven’t seen replicated lots of times is a bonus but as a team, we want to be able to show couples that it can be possible and inspire them into different themes or looks.

An Aerial Inspired Wedding…

Nina Emily, a Sheffield based photographer had posted on a group dedicated to collaborative shoots, about her ideas for an aerial inspired wedding set up. Two professional women who wanted their skills capturing in a different kind of setting had already approached Nina and she had developed an inspiration board to suit some ideas she had that could help them.

The mood board looked amazing and I, along with lots of other suppliers were keen to be involved. I took over the organisation of the shoot; selecting suppliers who had wanted to take part that I felt fitted the look Nina wanted to achieve.

For this shoot, Nina had selected a location just outside of Sheffield in the Peak District called Blacka Moor. It was a woodland location and although we were going to shoot this in August, I felt the greenery of the woodland would fit well with some Autumnal hints as we began to move towards that season.

One of the suppliers who also loved Nina’s initial concept was stylist Colette from Stories of Style. Colette is also a florist so it meant she and I could work together on the look of the shoot and where I lacked in certain products, she was able to provide.

A Celebration of Friendship…

There are no rules when it comes to styled shoots and whoever organises them can have as many elements of a wedding as they choose. For this shoot, I did want to show a table scene and involve a creative cake maker but I chose not to replicate a ceremony scene because this shoot wasn’t about pretending our two professionals were getting married. The more intimate images of them are to highlight their close bond from working in such an intense and trusting job. The two women are housemates – something that had only just happened before lockdown so that thrust them into a new level of closeness and their performances are highly dependent on safety and knowing they can be there for each other.

The Passing Summer…

To bolster the styling of the table that Colette and I would be doing, I asked Cath from Raspberry Toast to provide stationery in the form of menus and a full invite suite and Grace from Grace Emily cakes to provide something in keeping with the colour tones I had selected.

Cath provided a variation of olive green headed menus and orange ones, which matched two of the tones of my mood board. They fitted perfectly against the trees we nestled the table in, and the bright citrus fruits I chose to help decorate the table with, which were a nod to the passing Summer but the oranges you also see through Autumn.

Grace’s cake was created using a painted buttercream technique in rusty orange to keep with the mood board and add to the warm Autumnal atmosphere created in the styling of the shoot. Grace mixed buttercream and fondant to add another textural element to the cake that created extra interest to the eye.

On the table Colette and I laid a burnt orange chiffon runner down the middle. The table itself was an antique that replicated the bark of the trees so we didn’t want to conceal it with a full cloth. We used brass coloured cutlery and candlesticks as again they are a warmer Autumnal tone with neutral crockery and napkins so the menus on top became the highlight.

Amber coloured tea light holders and goblets for glasses blended into brass tones. Colette then created a centerpiece floral display of various shades of orange and cream roses, green spray, chrysanthemums, phlox and ruscus that were also replicated for the bouquet, complimented by an olive green silk ribbon.

Gowns With Fluidity…

On Nina’s original search for collaborators, Louise Rose Couture had volunteered her services to create from scratch, two gowns to suit the models.

With this being an aerial shoot, our models were in fact professional artists and both Rebecca and Jessica needed to be able to move completely freely in their attire. Rebecca needed something with a low back due to the positions her shoulders needed to be able to expand whilst hanging! The dress also needed to have splits for full leg movement, whilst maintaining some modesty for Rebecca so Louise had a challenge on her hands.

For Jessica we decided that a jumpsuit would make a nice variation to the dress, with the trouser part allowing Jessica the ability to perform her routines.

There was no intention to suggest Rebecca and Jessica were marrying each other by putting them both in bridal attire but more that we wanted to show the variation of bridal clothing and how working with a couture specialist rather than off the peg, can bring complete freedom of movement… if you can literally swing from the trees, imagine wearing something that can adapt to being as adventurous as you wish on your day.

Changes To The Rules…

On the run up to the shoot, the government had gone from announcing make up artists could begin to work on clients again, to withdrawing that agreement a week before we were due to collaborate. I would always recommend a make up artist for your wedding day if you can. A lot of brides have a fear that they will be turned into something that doesn’t resemble them anymore but a good make up artist should always work to enhance your natural beauty and use their skills to ensure your make up stays ‘camera fresh’ all day. Luckily with Rebecca and Jessica both being professional performers, they are used to applying make up with the same techniques and adapted to having to do it themselves for the shoot fantastically. If you are in any worry about your imminent wedding having a make up artist cancelled as they were before, there are ways in which they are adapting such as teaching Zoom lessons on application which I would highly recommend.

Luckily hair artists were still able to work and as Rebecca had Afro Caribbean hair, we needed a specialist who could treat it with the respect it was due. This was quite a challenge to find. Sadly not many wedding Hair and Make Up artists seemed to be trained in working with Afro hair – something that hopefully will be rectified soon.

For our shoot, amazingly Grace who was supplying the cake, had a connection to Lois from Touch By Lois based in Manchester, who although does not directly work in the wedding business, was happy to help and had enough experience to also style Jessica with an up do.

The challenge for this shoot came from the fact the site was not accessible by car. Although it was only a five-minute walk from the parking, there were a lot of trips back and forth with equipment and props that could only be done on foot. Wedding suppliers live for the visionary aspect though and in these times where we want to adapt to our couples needs as much as possible, never let it be said that we won’t go the extra mile to get you the shots you want!