The Bride Wore Simone Rocha for Her Intimate London Wedding—And Married With Her Baby in Her Arms
Lou Stoppard and Jamie Shaw always knew they would have a small wedding. “It fitted the time of life we were in,” says Lou, a writer and curator, who gave birth to a daughter, Clark, 10 months before she walked down the aisle in London’s Fitzrovia Chapel. “I didn’t have the brain space to think about hiring linens or glassware, so we ended up relying on the skills of our amazing friends and family.”
The two creatives (Shaw is a fine object designer, whose “blob” vases you may have seen on Instagram) had a talented line-up to call upon. Max Rocha, of Café Cecilia, hosted a wedding breakfast of bacon sarnies and homemade scones for the bride and groom, along with their closest family, and Stoppard wore Simone Rocha to the service in the ornate former hospital chapel. “I roped the Rochas in in a big way!” laughs Lou, who made the five-minute journey from The London Edition to the ceremony on foot, wearing the whimsical pearl-bedecked dress she likens to a child’s drawing of a bridal look.
“I found the idea of choosing a wedding dress a headache,” shares Stoppard, who sent Rocha a few pictures from previous collections but ultimately said, “Do whatever you want.” Simone declared it the best possible brief to receive from a bride and imagined an ivory confection that, says Lou, looked like it belonged to a different era. For a new mother still breastfeeding her little girl, the tropes of womanhood stitched into the very seams of Rocha’s work resonated with Stoppard as much as the thoughtfulness at the heart of her wedding dress. “I took Clark to fittings and the exaggerated curve of the hip was almost perfect to hold a baby on,” notes the bride of the special collaboration with the friend she met while working as a young journalist at Nick Knight’s SHOWstudio.
“It sounds unromantic, but there was an inevitability to the marriage and a sense of completing the family we have started,” continues Lou. Accordingly, Rocha, a mother of two herself, outfitted Jamie in one of her interesting takes on classic menswear suits and recommended Monbebe for a sweet snowdrop-colored look for Clark in the same realm. Lou went one further and sewed pearls around a Joha bonnet, so that her daughter’s face was shrouded by a halo of beads akin to those adorning her wedding dress. For the 70 guests lining the marble and mosaic-tiled space, it was adorable, but for the bride, having her daughter perched on her hip dissipated any nerves that might have bubbled up underneath all that tulle. “Holding Clark punctured any of the formality or stiffness and made it really intimate and light,” she explains. “Jamie and I had already made such a big commitment to each other, so the wedding didn’t feel momentous in that way. It felt special, but different.”
After a quick champagne toast in the chapel, Max welcomed the newlyweds, their parents, and around 40 pals back to Café Cecilia for a dinner of turbot, steak, and the restaurant’s famous bread and butter pudding. The set designer Juliet Caswell, who frequently works with flowers and also created the altar decorations, spruced up the table settings with tulips grown in the art couple Hikari Yokoyama and Jay Jopling’s garden, while Jamie himself created vases and candleholders from recycled plastic in gloopy shapes and pastel colors. “I wanted them to look like a melting wedding cake—a bit Miss Havisham,” explains Stoppard. When Max wheeled out the actual cake—a mountain of chocolate Guinness sponge iced to look like one of Shaw’s creations—it was a serendipitous moment only heightened by the lemon drop martinis and Lambrusco.
Lou had her hair cut by John Vial the day prior to the celebrations, but booked Joel Babicci and Laura Swaine, who have worked on the hair and beauty teams for Rocha’s fashion shows, to make her feel like the best version of herself for the wedding. A pearl headband, a custom veil, and silver crochet flats completed the Simone Rocha look, along with a pair of shell earrings by Georgia Kemball, who also made Jamie’s wedding ring. The bride’s own band was by Shaun Leane, whom Stoppard adores. Featuring a little thorn to snake around her vintage engagement ring, it was the perfect addition to the exquisite universe Rocha conjured up for Stoppard and Shaw’s big day.
After the night ended up in The Nelson’s pub with much dancing, Lou and Jamie closed out the celebrations with a morning swim in Parliament Hill Lido—a setting they hold dear. The groom, in fact, proposed underwater while on one of their regular splashes (with a “stunt ring”, of course.) “Neither of us are big wedding people,” reflects Stoppard. “We didn’t have a super clear idea of what we wanted, but we knew it had to be beautiful and interesting.”
Photo: Tara Juno Rowse1/50Breakfast at Café Cecilia consisted of bacon sandwiches, homemade scones, Guinness bread, and tomatoes and goat’s curd on toast.
Photo: Tara Juno Rowse2/50Juliet Caswell created the floral arrangements in vases made from recycled plastic by Shaw.
