Our Mad Men wedding

I wasn't born in the '60s, my parents weren't married in the '60s, and I've never really loved the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. Ditto my husband-to-be. So why pick the 1960s as the theme for our wedding?

'D448' by Alfred Sung

Well, it probably comes down to two things: falling in love with some beautiful bridesmaid dresses that look like they were made for Audrey Hepburn, along with me finally finding out what all the fuss was regarding Mad Men. Talk about amazing hair, outfits and, let's face it, Joan Holloway's general magnificence.

So we have a theme, great! However, I soon realised that bringing 1960s style into a tightly budgeted wedding set mainly in an early 20th century hotel building in Birmingham has its challenges.

When I first started looking for inspiration online, the few 1960s-inspired weddings I found had some amazing, stand-out touches, like being held at a retro recording studio or having a 1960s-era scooter as the wedding car. It seemed to me that all our location and budget could manage, bar the bridesmaid dresses, was hiring a 1960s limousine. Nice, but it's no powder blue Vespa...

As time (and research) went on, however, I realised we could bring in the styling through a variety of other ways, namely:

• I used 1960s-era fonts in our stationery:

Honey Script (based on 1950s/1960s font Filmotype Honey)

and Eloquent (based on 1960s typeface Pistilli Roman):

• We've hired The Vintage Salon to give the bridesmaids and me Mad Men-inspired hairstyles:

• I'm having a 1950s/1960s-inspired wedding dress made:

• The men aren't in 1960s clothing as such, but instead of old-fashioned cravats, cumberbunds and the like, they've got smart grey suits:

• Finally, instead of a guest book and bog-standard white cardboard 'postbox', we'll have a 1960s vintage typewriter and suitcase. Okay, not the most original of ideas, particularly since the whole 1950s/1960s wedding styling seems to have really taken off. (The wedding blogs are now full of them!) But at least we've made an effort to add a bit of the era to our elegant-but-neutral venue. I haven't found a pic of exactly how I'd like this to look, but it'll be something similar to this:

So there you have it: Mad Men styling through our stationery, outfits, hair and a little bit of venue styling. Oh, and not forgetting that 1960s limousine!

With all that sorted, the only thing left to wonder is: will any of the guests notice?