• Blog
• 02/02/18

The Wedding Gallery

Cutture’s new home for weddings

Towards the end of last year we were working on designing and creating a new permanent show space in London. Billed as ‘The worlds first wedding department store’  The Wedding Gallery was a project we have been involved in for quite some time. Thrilled to have been approached to be a founding member way back in 2016, we could see the potential and requirement for something like this was huge. Having known the team behind the concept, One Events and curated by Anna McGregor and Lotte Martin of Lamp productions, 2 planners who we have had the pleasure of working with on many jobs in the past, we decided to say yes and get involved.

Background – how it all came about

There has been a need for a beautiful, curated and collaborative space for the Wedding industry for quite some time, however, for the luxury sector it would have to be a space that is curated and designed well, really well.. So now here we have it, courtesy of the vision of the founding team The Wedding Gallery has been created exceptionally well. Hiring respected retail architect Christian Lahoude (formerly lead store designer with Gucci and design director at Tiffany & Co) from the start, made sure their vision was realised, this couldn’t be done by halves and the space at One Marylebone is complex and stunning. This was a firm favourite for events we’ve attended in the past, vaulted rooms, hidden spaces and well, a former Church, it just cried out to be used as a permanent space.

Today it is a luxurious space housing some of the UK’s and global top luxury wedding brands with the service to match. It truly is a space where Bride and Grooms can come and browse many brands without feeling overwhelmed, in a calm environment, the experience will be such a special moment for a couple’s  planning of their day, and that is for Bride and Grooms, not just the girls!

Designing the Cutture show space

When it came to planning our space we had to think about the fact we wouldn’t be there ourselves to talk people through our work, so the space had to speak for itself. We wanted to create something we knew would be different to the ‘trends’ that are happening with display stands right now and to really speak to the potential clients who we know will just ‘get it’ when they see us. We embarked on creating the concepts, focussing on raw materials, craftsmanship and of course Paper, showcasing the possibilities.

Modular flexibility

There had to be a feature wall, there had to be a functional wall, in not a huge amount of space..we then worked with a former neighbour in Bedfordshire who specialises in creating framework for motor industry exhibitions, and discovered this modular framework which got us thinking about flexibility and the possibilities for changing it up throughout the year.

Usually the framework is not on display and creates temporary walls, but we decided to powder coat it in white, then had some bespoke shelving made from laminated plywood to insert as the shelves. We created a grid like formation, allowing for flexibility to change it up occasionally. Claire worked on a super cool design, where we have incorporated signs within the actual framework in interesting ways, peeling forward, laser cut scenes and tensioned wires to house collections. We can hang things, great for on the day inspiration and simply display some of the more elaborated bespoke pieces which just speak for themselves.

‘That’ feature wall

You can see behind this framework is a rather special feature wall, this really deserves a blog feature in it’s own right! We are quite renowned for our ‘feature’ walls at exhibitions so we felt this had to be done at The Wedding Gallery, so with a little help from our friends at the ever wonderful G F Smith we came up with the below….

The feature wall was a total labour of love…Claire painstakingly drew panels upon panels of geometric shaped, 3 dimensional strips of card which all had to protrude out of the wall. Weeks and weeks were spent on the designing and then our incredibly patient team of makers made every single piece, some panels taking hours each. The result is a complex, undulating swath of paper, really it should be a display in it’s own right! It has however provided an interesting backdrop behind the shelving and is a great talking point, really highlighting how paper can be pushed to limits with a bit of creative thinking…

We do hope you will make it down to The Wedding Gallery, if you would like to make an appointment there pleawe visit The Wedding Gallery website or of course call us directly and we can arrange an appointmetn for you, it really is quite a treat!