Bleach London co-founder and creative director Alex Brownsell met her future husband, songwriter and music producer Fred Appleby Macpherson, over a decade ago, at a friend’s 21st birthday party. “We didn’t have to arrange many dates because it was an era where most of our friends would be in the same three bars every night,” she remembers. “One of the first times we got together we went to McDonald’s and Fred didn’t offer to pay for my Happy Meal, which he reminded me of in his speech.” The couple got engaged in Bulgaria on New Year’s Eve in 2019. “We were on a ski lift and he opened the box upside down about 25 metres above the snow-covered ground,” Alex laughs. “Thankfully it didn’t fall…”
After the pandemic derailed their wedding plans in 2020, it took them another five years to actually walk down the aisle, with the couple having two children in the interim. They settled on September 6, 2025 as their wedding date, and asked Abi Ford for her help with creative, set and floral design (with the couple’s gardener, Jake Tulley, also pitching in on the latter), and Good Times Collective to run the creative production side of things. The ceremony was scheduled to take place at the Henry VII Lady Chapel at Westminster Abbey, but finding a suitable reception venue proved trickier. “Once we discovered the Columbia Hotel, everything else started falling into place,” says Alex. “It’s an amazing building with a slightly The Shining-esque feel that’s been in the same family for generations. Unlike so many hotels in London, it hasn’t been done up to within an inch of its life, and its historical decor is what makes it so unique. Sophie Fresco and her team there were the best hosts we could’ve asked for and really made the wedding perfect.”
Finding a dress that complemented the history of the Abbey and its colour palette was front of mind when Alex was looking for her wedding dress. “I was taken aback when I saw this gold Edwardian lace gown at Jane Bourvis with green detailing on the front,” she shares. “It was the first wedding dress I tried on, and I loved it straight away.” With the first look decided on, she knew she could have a bit more fun experimenting with her party looks. “My second dress was an ’80s ivory silk gown I found via a Canadian seller on Etsy and re-worked a bit, and my third was a custom latex Poster Girl dress, made by my friends Francesca Cappa and Natasha Somerville,” she says. Each dress had different shoes: Manolo Blahnik for her first look, 2010 Marc Jacobs for her second, and vintage transparent Margiela heels from Aro Archive for her third.