Real Wedding | Ashlee + Ed

Ed and Ashlee got married in Merida, Mexico with 55 of their family and friends present. The couple met on set on a fashion shoot when they were both assistants and live together in East London.

Ashlee is Australian and Ed’s parents are from France and the UK. "The majority of our friends live in Australia and the UK and we knew that no matter where we got married we were going to put someone, somewhere out - we were always essentially going to annoy somebody. So, we decided to do it wherever made us happy and forget about trying to please everyone else!"

The couple had had their first vacation together as a new couple a year before in Mexico and they absolutely fell in love with the country - the food, people, culture and landscape. "We also needed to consider warmer destinations for the time of year we wanted to get married and November in Mexico felt like the right choice." Their day was beautifully captured by LA photographer Caleb Hill.

Both Ashlee and Ed work in creative fields. Ashlee is the Fashion Editor of the Violet Book and Ed assists some of the worlds biggest photographers, as well as being a beautiful documentary style photographer in his own right.

Ashlee ended up wearing two gowns - an Ella Moda wedding dress and an Alessandra Rich evening dress. "I actually found it incredibly hard to decide what to wear. It was probably the single most stressful part of the wedding process. I ended up buying four dresses in the dress madness that took over my life. It’s hard to establish what kind of bride you want to be when there are so many options. There are so many shapes I love and so many colours and cuts, that it felt impossible to pick just one. When you have other people throwing in their opinion on top of that, it becomes really difficult to navigate where to go with your outfit. That’s why I was very adamant about not dress shopping with anyone else. I took my mum and my sisters to one dress appointment but all the rest I went to on my own. I generally know what I like and what suits me and I didn’t feel like anyone else’s opinion was going to help me. I just felt like it would confuse me even more."

"The Ella Moda dress was the dress that got me! It felt different enough and most importantly my mother disapproved! I like it when people have an adverse reaction to what I wear. My mum obviously came around to the dress and thought it was beautiful in the end, but there was a bit of persuading to begin with. In terms of the Alessandra Rich dress, it was one of the first dresses I bought, literally a week after I got engaged. The lace gown was going to be the wedding dress but as I tried more and more dresses on I realised I did really want to walk down the aisle in white. I had plans on adding a train to the back of it with a massive bow if it was going to be ‘the one’. I loved wearing it in the evening though. It was so fun to dance in and it felt very me."

Ed tried on two suits and picked the first one. "It was such a different experience for him!" Ed wore a Saint Laurent suit, shirt, tie and boots on the wedding day. "I helped out and made sure the tailors were fitting everything to him perfectly when it came to adjustments."

The most important aspect of planning their wedding was that Ashlee and Ed wanted the wedding to feel like them. "We were determined to not make this wedding be like ‘a standard’ type wedding. It needed to feel personalised. If anything, we just wanted a big party with great company, great food, great music and great drinks!"

The couple mostly threw tradition out the window. "We used some of the traditional structure of the day but then just went in our own direction where we wanted. We wanted to be as relaxed about the whole thing as possible".

Any tips for couples getting married? "Let go on the day and any little hiccups that come up; don’t let them eat away at you!"