The Dress
Jenny The Bride: I instantly fell in love with my dress it was like nothing I'd ever worn before. I spent 17 years as a ballerina and wanted to find a dress that had the look of a ballerina. I got it from the first shop I went into with my mum! I chose to wear one of my Grandmas stunning necklaces in honor of my Grandma Joy. She was unable to make the wedding, as she is unwell. I'm so inspired by her and Grandad they've been married for over 70 years and I want my marriage to be like theirs. During the service I wore some sparkly heals from
Next. For the reception I wore some amazing gold glittery wellies! My friend called them 'weddingtons'. Everyone loved them!
Grooms Fashion
Adam The Groom: I wanted to go for pastel colors - because we both really wanted a relaxing wedding after all the hard work we and our families had put in to getting everything ready the outfits had to follow suit. No brash colors, no shiny material, just some washed out light grey for me and dark grey for the groomsmen. Easy on the eyes (like my wife). As we were having a rustic woodland countryish theme it was important for mine and the groomsmen's outfits to fit in thematically too. The bowler hat was a last minute touch as my hair was doing its own thing that day!!'
Venue
Jenny The Bride: We both love the outdoors and campfires and woodland and wanted our wedding to be fun and laid back. We fell in love with
Angrove Park as it met all of our needs, woodland, a campfire, hay bales, shepherd huts and facilities for people to camp out. Our guests were able to stay over at the site and camp so we made a weekend of it. Adam and me stayed over too in a really cool converted bus with a hot tub! The morning after the wedding we had a big campfire breakfast with all our friends and family. It was a dream.
Colour Scheme & Decor
We didn't have a specific color theme. Our theme was 'woodland'. We made almost all of our decorations. We used small stumps of wood and turned them into tea light holders for the tables. We also collected conkers and acorns (last autumn) and put them in jars with hessian and lace tied around them. We scattered pinecones on the tables also. Our pride and joy was the bunting it took hours! We bought a couple of £1/£2 old distressed encyclopedias from charity shops and made 80 metres worth of bunting out of them. It looked great and cost next to nothing! We also hung fairy lights around old pallets and turned cable drums from a skip into little seating areas in the bar. Andrew and Jane the parents of the groom set up a little photo booth with fairy lights and hung lanterns from the ceiling of the barn where the bar was. They also wrapped balloons in brown string then popped the balloons inside which made gorgeous hanging string lanterns. Angrove Park provided us with hay bales to sit on round the campfire and toast marshmallows!
Flowers
Jane, Andrew and Jo Westerman parents and sister of the groom made pew ends for the church. They used old music sheets and hung them from the pew ends. They filled these cones with statice, gypsophila, sweet pea, cotoneaster, eucalyptus, lady's mantle and daisies. Judy Bancroft and Adele Pollard mother and sister of the bride made the bridesmaids bouquets and the brides and all the buttonholes. To suit the summery outdoors woodland theme we wanted wild flowers like giant daisies and gypsophila and heather. We had small milk bottles on the tables holding bunches of wild flowers. We also had some garlands of silk pink roses, which we found in The Range they looked so realistic and look cute hanging up in our cottage now!
Bridesmaid Dresses
I chose the bridesmaid dresses, as I wanted to go for a pastel pink colour. I had a huge ribbon around the waist of my dress and I wanted the dresses to match that colour. I originally wanted to have the dresses full sequin however once we came up with our laid back woodland theme I knew full sequins would be a bit much ha! So I spotted these gorgeous
pale pink maxi dresses where half of the back was just sequins they were just perfect pastel sequins and comfy. We had a relaxed morning getting ready and two of the bridesmaids went out to pick flowers and make headbands they looked super cute. My 3rd bridesmaid hates dressing up so I let her off the headband and she wore shiny airmax trainers under her dress haha! Adam who wanted to keep the laid-back summer look with the short sleeved, collarless shirts and braces chose the groomsmen’s outfits. The mother of the groom and mother of the bride both wore pastel colors, my mum wore pale blue and Adams mum wore pale pink.
Ceremony
We got married in a gorgeous small Yorkshire village called Swainby. I used to live there and had happy memories of when we started dating there. The church was really old, we squashed 200 people into it and there was such a buzz around the village people were stopping to look what was happening! Our friends baked cakes for afterwards and Judith and Rebekah served tea, coffee and cloudy lemonade in the church hall. Adam and myself are both Christians and the church service was really special. Our close friends spoke at the service and sang and read readings from the bible.
Entertainment
Our friends as mentioned above played live music for us and we danced all night. Our first dance was 'you are the best thing' by Ray La Montagne. We wanted to try and keep things as low cost as possible so we spent a few fun nights before the wedding drinking wine with friends and coming up with a fun party playlist for the evening. Instead of hiring a DJ we just had our friends play some live music and a Spotify playlist. This was so much fun as people could pick the songs and we played some bangers ha!
Cake
Judy Bancroft mother of the bride made the wedding cake; she hadn't made one before it was amazing. On our wedding invites we two bunnies so we chose to have them as wedding toppers. Again part of the woodland look! We went for a sponge cake. For the main meal we had a ploughman’s lunch with Yorkshire cheeses and pies from the local village, which was well received on a summers day. In the evening we had a fish and chip van which went down a treat and wasn't too expensive!
Photography
We had the amazing
Holly Rose Stones taking our photographs! We were childhood best friends so it was really special having her there. Despite not seeing each other for over 15 years (I moved away from our old town), it was so relaxed and we felt really comfortable and happy having the photos took. I was worried we might have to pose and feel awkward but Holly let us do what we wanted and directed us with no pressure at all. It shows on our photos how fun and natural it was having them took. We especially love the hay bale photos.
Videographer
We chose not to have a videographer, which may seem strange but we wanted our memories of the day to be in our head and on our photos. (Plus we knew we'd both sob loads and didn't want to watch back embarrassed haha and we sure did cry during the ceremony!)
Advice
If we were to give any advice after planning our wedding we would say do whatever you want dream up your vision and go for it. There can be so much pressure to have your day a certain way and do it by the book but it's your day! We'd also say, it doesn't have to be a huge expensive event. Pick a budget and do as much as you can with that budget. Get help from your friends and family find out what talents and time they have to offer and do it together. The times we found most fun planning were the ones where we were sat in a pile of torn up book pages drinking cups of tea and crafting, or the times where we'd be out with friends picking up pine cones and hunting for conkers on dog walks, or the times where we were chopping up wood or checking out a skip for old pallets! Try not to get bogged down in the seriousness of it all, make your last memories as boyfriend and girlfriend together having fun prepping for your special day!