Inspiration

Well aren't these two the sweetest?! We love a laidback festival style wedding, especially when the couple have poured their heart and soul into creating such a lovely day for their guests. Hayley and Al pretty much created everything you see below and the final result is simply joyful. Wildflowers, hand illustrated signs, ribbons and pompoms galore, it's a riot of colour from start to finish. Hayley looks gorgeous in her low backed gown and Al looks rather dapper in jeans and a waistcoat, we're loving his laid back look. Images come from Livvy Hukins, enjoy!

Our Wedding

From the couple: We wanted a relaxed, informal, homemade, outdoor folky feel wedding full of friends and family having fun. To achieve this we made and did as much as possible ourselves with help from friends and family in a rustic, but pretty style.

The Stationery

Al designed our wedding invitations, we then followed the font, style and palette through to other aspects of the wedding.

The Bride

I wore a delicate lace ivory maxi dress with beaded straps and a low back – I loved it, it was figure hugging, delicate and detailed and best of all it was super comfortable. I found it in a small dress boutique, Alta Costura in Maidstone, Kent. I wore flat beaded sandals, which matched perfectly, and was lucky enough to spot the last pair in the sale at House of Fraser. I did my own make up and my sister did my hair, I wore a floral headpiece made by one of the bridesmaids using gypsophila and lavender.

The Groom

Al doesn’t do suits, and although neither of us wanted anything too formal, he liked the idea of a tweed style waistcoat. He wore lightweight blue denims from House of Fraser, a white shirt and blue waistcoat from White Stuff.

The Wedding Party

The girls wore a mauve maxi dress with metallic gold lace top from ASOS. We added some gold ribbon around the waistband ourselves to cover the elasticated waistband. I wanted something that was comfortable for the girls to wear which they could dance in, the lace of their dresses was a similar style to my wedding dress. They wore gold beaded sandals from Primark. We all did our own make up and helped each other to do their hair – a plaited up do with curls, which worked really well with all their styles. The men wore their own dark jeans, with a soft blue shirt and the same blue tweed waistcoat as Al from White Stuff. All the groomsmen wore a lavender and gypsophila buttonhole made ourselves. We brought them all pocket watches as gifts to finish the look.

The Venue

We chose Bloomsbury's Biddenden as our venue as we were able to hire the whole site, which included the glamping site with Yurts and Tepees. This meant we could spend more time with our loved ones, over the weekend. The venue was quirky and had a laid back feel. We pretty much had a blank canvas on which to personalise everything and the restaurant décor fitted our overall look.

 The ceremony was outside under a wooden gazebo, we decorated it with ribbons and homemade flower bouquets made by the bridesmaids. We created the aisle and seating using straw bales from Hayley’s work (farm), we covered them in cream calico covers with tied with ribbon. We also grew and planted lavender and lobelia in pots at the end of the aisle.

The Ceremony

We included our own personal vows to read to one another. We walked down the aisle to Elbow, ‘One day like this’ playing. Hayley’s mum made the natural eco-friendly confetti by drying out petals, and made the confetti holders.

The Flowers

We grew some flowers and ordered the majority of them from The Flower Monger an online flower wholesaler – they were brilliant and really helpful, advising on quantities and species of flowers after discussing our wedding style and colours. Using the beautifully fresh flowers Al’s mum made the stunning bouquets for the bride and bridesmaids. 
Table setting and centrepieces – 
The seating plan was created using old wooden ladders and slate tiles. The table centrepieces were created from home cut oak wood slices topped with jam jars decorated in ribbon and filled with flowers. We created the wedding favours using small wood slices and used pyrography to burn everyone’s nicknames on. We decorated the glamping site with fairy lights and pom-poms. We made giant lawn games (corn hole, twister, croquet) and had space hoppers and even a tug-of-war. Al designed our glamping map. We loved having extra time with our guests before and after the wedding.

The Evening

We decorated the dance hall with ribbons, pom-poms, and created two large photo boards full of all our friends and families. The venue set up a temporary bar at one end, and Al built a light up bar sign. Our friends made a rustic wooden cake stand from ash wood slices, which was adorned with the tastiest cupcakes all homemade and gluten free. We had a ceilidh band for our evening music, and it was a great choice, all our guests loved it, young and old.

The Photography

From our first meeting with Livvy it was like a friend was photographing us, she was relaxed, down to earth and quickly made us laugh and feel at ease in front of the camera. We didn’t want formal photos but did want something that captured us, Livvy was great, she was even up for getting her feet wet and her camera a little covered in colour powder during the engagement shoot! The photos were a perfect collection of our memories from the day and Livvy captured every minute to a tea. Our wedding was an amazing 2 and half days filled with our family and friends, made perfect thanks to all their help.
Fern Godfrey

Written by Fern Godfrey

Bride: Alta Costura | Groom: House Of Fraser | Venue: Bloomsbury's Biddenden | Bridesmaids: ASOS | Flowers: The Flower Monger | Band: Bow Reed

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