Emily & Luke

The heavens may have opened during the outdoor ceremony at this DIY festival wedding, but it certainly didn't dampen the spirits of the bride and groom, or their guests. Mother nature even blessed them with a rainbow as the clouds cleared, which fit in perfectly with the bright colour scheme. Have you seen the beautiful bouquets yet?! Tim Dunk Photography manages to captured the fun atmosphere of this day perfectly, never before have I wanted to go to a party so much. It's probably safe to say you're going to wish you were there too. Enjoy.

Our Story

Emily the Bride: Our story began 15 years ago, Luke had just left school and I was in final my final year, we were child hood sweethearts :) We met a local nightclub in Skipton, shared a snog over 'Pretty Green Eyes' and the rest is history! We spent the rest of our teens and early 20's having a lot of fun together clubbing and going to festivals. After 11 years we committed to each other and bought our first home together to begin the next chapter of our lives together (the grown up part). Much to everyones relief after 12 years Luke surprised me and popped the question on his 30th Birthday over an amazing sunset at Pena Palace in Lisbon!

Venue

We both wanted a relaxed kind of wedding, somewhere that would be personal to us and where we could create a festival vibe.....knowing how ourselves, friends and family love a good party we wanted somewhere where we could party into the night with no restrictions. Growing up in the rural Yorkshire dales we were set on getting married in a field in this beautiful part of the world. We were were lucky enough to know someone who was kind enough to let us use their field and barn as a blank canvas to set our creative minds to, and set up our festival style wedding. We chose a Petal Pole Marquee from Wills Marquees as the main reception area which fitted the setting perfectly. There was also a working barn in the field which we decided we would clear out and dress up to use a chill out area. There were even chickens living in the barn which we decided to leave there as we thought they would enjoy the party too! We knew this was going to be a lot of hard work but would be so worth it in the end.

Bridal Gown

From the beginning I had in mind I wanted a bohemian style dress, something that was lace and unstructured so I could move easily..... and would be suitable to trek across a field in. I visited quite a few wedding dress shops and tried on lots of different styles, just because I could! In the end I fell in love with the brand Daughters of Simone, there was a particular style I had my eye on, I visited Ghost Orchid Bride in Hessle who where the only stockist in the UK who had the dress I liked. If you are looking for something different I would highly recommend Ghost Orchid Bride, they have an fab range of unique designers and the girls there are really lovely. I wore a few pieces of jewellery, a drop chain necklace and a quartz bracelet that matched the ones my bridesmaids wore. One of my bridesmaids had handmade me an anklet from tiny shells she had collected in Tahiti, it was beautiful! Instead of a flower crown I went for a Pearl and Jewel headpiece from Forever Soles. I wore velvet sandals which soon had to be swapped to wellies due to the weather!

Grooms Attire

Luke knew he wanted to wear something tweed. Working in the fashion industry I was able to order some fabric from Abraham Moons, a local Yorkshire based Woollen Mill. He chose a blue/teal tweed for a trouser, waistcoat and jacket which a local tailor made for him. The best men and ushers had waistcoats made in the same fabric, they all looked amazing!

Flowers, Decor & Styling

We wanted the venue to have a wild bohemia festival feel that related to our personalities. The venue really was a blank canvas so there was lots of DIY to be done. I wanted the flowers to have quite a wild feel to them with lots of ferns and foliage with highlights of bright colours. We used Sam Williams for our florist, from our first meeting I could see she was very creative, it was fab working with her and bouncing idea's around, she totally got the look we were going for! Myself and my bridesmaids all had quite large bouquets, Sam incorporated pheasant feathers into all our bouquets which fitted the Yorkshire Dales perfectly. We went for a very rustic look inside the marquee. A friend grew lots of flowers to use on the tables, and we gathered loads of foliage from people gardens to create a large hanging foliage centre piece. Everybody chipped in to help, it looked amazing! I spent a lot of time going to vintage and car boot sales to collect old medicinal and alcohol bottles to use for vases. We used hessian for the table runners and made our own name place and candle holders from sliced wood we'd foraged from a forest. Myself and a friend hand made linen dip dye napkins to inject some colour into the space. For our wedding invitations we replicated 7 inch vinyl sleeves using vintage vinyl as the invitation inside. Following on the festival theme we based our table plan around the Glastonbury stages, using vintage vinyl for the stage markers. My bridesmaids helped me make colourful tassel hanging hoops for the top table back drop , we dressed the hoops with foliage and flowers, it was a lot of fiddly hard work but looked really effective! We wanted to turn the barn into chill out area, we dressed it with loads of fairly lights and our florist lent us a stags skull head for a centre piece and used wooden coils and hay bails for seating and tables, it looked magical!

Cake

We were lucky enough to have Luke’s mum for our cake maker, she made us four fantastic different cakes, all had their own different character and created a great focal point.

Ceremony

We were set on having our ceremony take place in the field with the back drop of the beautiful valley of Littondale. We created a naked tipi structure with flowers and hay bail seating for the outdoor ceremony area and made our own fire beacons to place around the field to create a real festival feel. I had my bridesmaids arrive in the back of a trailer, to everyones amusement we got the farmer to release a few sheep out of the trailer into the field before my bridesmaids appeared! I followed in a vintage baby blue VW camper that was just like the one we used to travel Europe in growing up. We chose to have a non religious ceremony so we could tailor it to be as personal to us as it could be. We found a brilliant celebrant Louisa Starr who created a festival style ceremony for us, her humour and whit and all the little details she included suited us down to a T, she basically helped make the best day of our lives the best it possibly could be! She was able to write a really special ceremony for us from start to finish with so many personal touches I don't know where to start, there was lots of laughter and tears throughout! We wrote our own vows and incorporated it with a handfasting ceremony so we could include our closest family and friends into helping us tie the knot. Both our younger sisters gave a reading and a personally written poem. We walked down the isle to Bill Withers "Lovely Day" which we thought was a perfect song to set the tone of the day and of course we had to have a sing along and chose Bob Marley, 3 little birds which everyone belted out with their arms in the air, this one was of our favourite moments of the day!

Photography

We love Tims style of natural emotive photography combined with his creative eye . We really couldn't have been happier with his work and had so much amazing feedback from our guests reliving the day as they looked through our photos. He managed to capture our story and happy energy of the day perfectly from start to the very very end. He is such a nice guy to work with and made us feel really comfortable and like it was loads of fun!

Entertainment

We're both really into House music with Luke being a DJ and working in the industry we've done our fair share of clubbing over the years. This song reminds us of our Speed Queen days where we used to club when we 1st met. It's an amazing song and has all the elements from the piano intro to the jazzy section! The words fit perfectly and it was the perfect song to get everyone on the dance-floor and get the party started straight away. We also made lots of summer fate games consisting of a coconut shy, pineapple bowling ally, ball in the bucket and a limbo pole. In the barn we'd provided a fancy dress box filled with lots of inflatable props and wigs and moustaches, a feature which everyone loved and provided lots of laughter! For the music we went all out and tried to bring a mini festival line-up kind of vibe. Throughout the day we had the super talented singer Alyshah performing an acoustic guitar set after the ceremony. She had the most amazing rainbow coloured hair and the voice of an angel! Then came the band The Rebel Sounds who were one of the best wedding bands we'd ever heard playing funk renditions of 90's & 00's house classics. They had the dance-floor packed right from the 1st tune. With many of our friends being DJ's there was no shortage of music with Disco, House & Old Skool favourites provided. Luke himself of course had to have a cheeky mix. We enjoyed ourselves so much the morning sun was starting to rise as we left the field! At midnight we lit up the Yorkshire Dales sky with a firework display and throughout the night we had 2 magicians going round entertaining the guests.

Favourite Moments

Strangely enough our favourite parts of the day where a consequence of the rain! The lead up to the wedding had been a very unexpected wet one, to enter the wedding field there was a beck and ford to cross or a small bridge if all else failed.....however there had been so much rain that neither entrances could be used unless you had a good old sturdy Land Rover! Luckily the locals came to our rescue with one and trailer in hand. Everything had to be transported over the beck on the back of a trailer, including our guests on the day! Someones shoes even floated away down the river (luckily they had a spare pair of wellies!) Although this sounds like a total nightmare it made the whole experience something special to remember and was such a laugh. Everyone had their wellies on and in with true Yorkshire grit got stuck in and cracked on. We were lucky enough to be able to start our ceremony outside, however half way through the heavens opened (once again!) and we all dashed inside the Marquee, which made for some great photo's from Tim! We resumed the ceremony inside the marquee, everyone was in full spirits by now as the mad dash had been quite comical. Later that day a double rainbow appeared, it felt like the most magical moment!

Advice

Enjoy the whole process. Every bit of hard work and effort put in is worth every last bead of sweat and tears! Try to make as much home made stuff as you can. We had all our friends and family making stuff, painting signs and collecting bits for us. It's fun, gets people involved and helps save money. We made every bit of detail from the Vinyl invitations to the outdoor games. If it's outdoors prepare for every possible outcome and have a back up plan. Don't worry about the rain though, it absolutely made it for us.