She Walks Like Summer….part 2

Oh how we love pretty cakes. And interesting D.I.Y decor that is both imaginative and super effective….

How lucky we are then that Gavin and Amy’s W-day has both, as well as lots of laughter, love and general merriment.

As before all of the gorgeous images are courtesy of (the very excited and incredibly nice!) Lucy Stendall.

A Perfect Account

Our brilliant photographer was Lucy Stendall and she captured the day perfectly for us. She was recommended to us by another photographer and had to travel all the way up from the East Midlands. Although we hadn’t seen any wedding photos from Lucy before we hired her, we knew from the style of her other photography that she was exactly what we wanted. In her own words she is creative, observant and aims to capture the spirit of the day which she absolutely did for us and we love every single photo she took for us. She also got stuck in with the decorating the night before the wedding, gave great advice and made me feel even more excited about the day ahead because she was so excited herself! We have a perfect account of the day and memories of all the little details that made it unique to us.

Sweet Tooth Heaven

Sarah, a friend of my sisters, designed our cupcakes for us. We had vanilla sponge with vanilla and chocolate buttercream icing and they were decorated with a variety of raspberries, coconut and star sprinkles. Sarah arranged them for us on cupcake stands and our DIY cakestands which looked great and fitted in well with the country farm style. More importantly they tasted great! Gav and I both have a big sweet tooth so we also had a dessert buffet that we’d asked our family and friends to contribute to since so many of them are great bakers! We had a huge selection of cakes, tarts, torts, pavlova and dumpling, yum!

Drops Of Jupiter

Our band were The Blackjacks who played a great mix of tunes from Ben E. King and Otis Redding to the Killers and Stereophonics. We loved them and everyone commented how great they were. They sang the songs in their own style which made them even better. They also provided the DJ set with all the songs we’d requested which made the night really special.

Of course we also had some ceilidh music which is always great fun and gets everyone up dancing! Our first dance was Drops of Jupiter by Train. Since Gav and I have been together for so long (about 8 years) we had a lot of songs to choose from but this is one we both really like and thought it would work well to dance to. My sisters were determined that we’d planned a secret Dirty Dancing-esque routine with a lift at the end so I hope they weren’t too disappointed!! I would have quite enjoyed surprising our guests but I know Gav’s feelings about dancing so it was out of the question!

A Gift That Would Last

For the favours we wanted a gift that would last and people would remember the day by. I found a shop on Ebay that sells heart-shaped slate with a tartan ribbon for hanging them. They were really cute and fitted in well with the other decorations we’d made for the day. I used them as place settings for the meal and wrote the guests names on one side and ‘Amy & Gav 18/06/11’ on the other. We also handed them out to the evening guests.

A DIY Conquest

My favourite part of the wedding preparation was thinking about the decor. I like doing craft projects so I decided to really get stuck in and I’m glad because it made the day even more personal for us. My mum and sister were a great help, (they’re not quite as enthusiastic as me about making things, “…how about we just buy you some bunting instead?…”) but made a great effort with everything I forced on them.

We made LOTS of bunting from fabric scraps and curtains from charity shops – even Gav was taught how to use the sewing machine! For the tables at the meal we made teacup candles and hessian table runners with gorgeous East of India cotton ribbon lining. We wrapped about 50 jam jars (kindly donated by a friend) with hessian and lace and ribbon to create mini vases and tealight holders. The pièce de résistance, however, were the hanging string balls that took centre stage in the barn for the reception. We had a lot of fun and got covered in glue and corn flour trying to make them!

Since it was quite a rainy day the venue had put up some lovely little marquees in the courtyard to keep the guests dry. They were decorated with fairy lights (and even had leather sofas!) and made a great, cosy outside space. Towards the end of the evening we set off sky lanterns. I had seen photos of them before but never in real life. They looked amazing and our guests didn’t even mind being rained on to watch them float off into the hills.

Laid Back Approach

I really enjoyed the planning stages of the wedding. Usually I’d be super organised with to-do lists and dates and files and receipts but I approached the wedding totally differently so it’d be more of an enjoyable experience rather than a tick off list with meetings and deadlines and stress. Don’t get me wrong, I did write down lists when I needed them, paid the suppliers on time and collected a huge amount of ideas and inspiration from the web but I just worked through the different projects as they came along and picked up ideas as I went.

I think we were really lucky in that everything went so smoothly but I think the laid back approach worked well for me and I’d do it all over again (I keep telling my friends to hurry up and get engaged so I can help with their wedding planning!). I think it’s important to try and enjoy the run up to the day as much as the wedding itself because looking back, doing all the crafting and preparation ourselves made it feel very satisfying and it spread out the wedding excitement over a good few months

Venue – Knockraich Farm

Photographer – Lucy Stendall

Entertainment – The Blackjacks

I know. A whole table of cakes. Well it is Friday – I think at least one fondant fancy is allowed?

Coming up later…. A boy does D.I.Y. AND photographs it himself…

If we’re nothing else we sure as hell are risky.

Charlotte xxx