The ultimate DIY wedding: Tipi Tent Reception

 

Sorry for the delay in sharing part III, but here it is at last! After the wonderful service we returned to Winstream for the afternoon's festivities. We were super lucky to have a journey back in the in-laws car through the Kent backlands! Our chauffeur, brother-in-law, was super speedy, so lucky I had a giant veil to use as a hair-scarf to keep my barnet in place!! :)

We were so lucky that were the night before had been soggy muddy ground dried out suddenly with the morning sun and that sunshine then continued to beat down on us all day! The boys in their tuxes may have been a little less impressed, but I for one was over the moon!!  And this is what the venue looked like bathed in the unexpected sunshine! What a welcome :)

We took a quiet moment, en famille, in the house to share a glass of champagne which was lovely and then we made our grand entrance across the bridge into the magical tipi field to celebrate with all our lovely family and friends.

Continuing the two wheeled transportation theme from the wedding stationary we pimped up two gorgeous Pashley bikes, on loan from family (sooo much more photogenic than our functional, sleek road bikes!) to frame the entrance to the venue. We decked them out in ribbons, baskets and hydrangeas until they looked too cute!

We kicked off with just a handful of formal photos, usual suspects: The family. :)

Isabella, playing gorgeous for the camera!

Fabulous fun photo of my lovely new family. I love the grins all round! :)

My and the official Wedding Goffer (aka Best Sister Ever!). Love you Iz!

The boys looking super dapper in their suits!

And some of my favourite photos of our lovely guests enjoying the bubbles, canapes and sunshine! These are my crowd of school friends, crazy to think these lovelies will soon have known me for 20 years, sheesh! Nothing you can hide from the people who knew you way back, when you were a spotty, swotty, silly teenager!

w

Family chilling out on the bales. Love Rhian's facial expressions here (and her legs that go on for ever!)! We begged and borrowed blankets from all the family to cover the bales dotted around the field. Some of these are genuine woollen Welsh family heirlooms, so it was lovely to add them into our special day! 

Photo of a photo! And above, the general hub hub in the field. Love pictures like this that tell the story of all the goings on, rather than just who was there.

Some of the cute littles who joined us for the afternoon reception. What a smart little nephew in his mini-tux. Very dapper!

Boys with their toys! 

What a cutie-pie. Those eyes and those curls!

My Ma and Aunty chinwagging and setting the world to right no doubt! 

And since this is waaaaaay beyond the maximum advisory number of photos for a blog post, and you're probably all about starting to feel an afternoon snooze coming on, I'll take our leave with a big wave from the whole gang before we vanished inside for some grub! :) Woo!

Again, all photos in this post courtesy of the lovely Anushe Low Photography.

DIY Fantastic: Bunting Bonanza

Photo courtesy of Anushe Low Photography

You will soon see that our wedding day was Bunting Central. (Big un-subtle plug for the next instalment of the wedding photos, coming very soon. And a very sneaky peak of the decked out venue up above!!)

In the months leading up to the wedding, the bunting was the one (and only!) thing we did start early. As a result, we simply kept on going, literally churning out miles of the stuff!!!! By the wedding day itself we (another team effort between Chief Goffer, Mama, Leila and I!) had sewn reams and reams of bright and colourful bunting, enough to decorate the venue 3 times over!!!

This is testament to how straight forwards it is to make yourself. So I'll keep the steps simple, it's more about the theme you fancy, be it country florals, pretty pastels, circus brights or moody black and whites! We chose a series of bright pinks, oranges and corals as the base colours with a few yellows and blues thrown in for good measure.

First up, the ingredients:

• Fabric, we used a range of cottons and ploy cottons, cotton generally needs more care (eg ironing to look smart) but I find it easier to work with. Trade-off, you pick.
• Template - this is a straightforward triangle. Be it fat, thin, skinny, pointy, the choice is yours! Just remember your final flags will end up almost a cm smaller all round, so add on a small seam allowance of 1cm all the way round.  
• Cotton tape or bias tape - plenty of cheap options on Amazon or your local haberdashers, we went for simple white to offset the brights.
• The usual suspects - scissors, pins, sewing machine that does a simple straight stitch

So let's jump to it. Number one, iron you fabric so it's easier to use (we're going for precision here folks!) and use your template to start cutting triangles with your template. Keep going till you run your scrap fabric supplies down to the ground!

Step 2 - pair off your triangles...you can do matching, contrasting, go crazy kids it's up to you - I hinted this would be tough! ;) Place your paired triangles correct sides facing in towards each other and pin together.

Step 3 - next sew around the two long edges of your triangle to create the sharp point between them. Trim the excess around the inside of the point of your sewn area so that you can get a better point when you flip it inside out and then...yep you guessed it - flip it inside out!

So there you have your first bunting triangle and the next objective is to repeat ad nausium until you have enough to make your desire length of bunting or until you start seeing triangles floating in your sleep.

The final job is to sew them altogether. Iron the cotton tape so that it is folded in half. Trim the tops of all the triangles so you're working with clean edges and slot the unwed side into the folded tape and pin securely - step 4.

You can experiment with the distance between triangles, anything from 2 - 4 inches works well. Sew along the tape, ensuring you capture both sides of the tape and triangle within your sewing line.

Finally when you've attached all your triangles in this way sit back and admire your handy work...until you have to get the ladder out to put it up!!

Exhibit A - Mummy Jones sewing the final lengths of bunting at our Wedding HQ barn merely days before the big event itself! Super-Mom. And below, the never-ending bunting creating magic and making all the effort worthwhile!

Photo courtesy of Anushe Low Photography

We found thumb tack pins or some short bits of string the best way to fix it up. So far we've decorated an outdoor barn, the kitchen for a dinner party and the tipis for our wedding day so I'd say they've already earned their keep and I'm sure they'll get plenty more use to come...

The barn by day, and by night - magic! :) Yep, that is a hot tub. And it was epic.

The ultimate DIY wedding: the service

And on to part two, the main event - the wedding service itself! All these photos are once again courtesy of our lovely photographer Anushé Low

Don't Ben and the boys looked super dashing in black tie?! We made matching coral bow ties for the wedding party and sprung them on the lads along with coral socks and fuchsia braces the morning of the wedding (less opportunity to object!)! Ben loves a bit of Bond and kept joking he wanted to be James Bond on his wedding day. Black tie is as Bond as you get and I love any excuse to dress up, so we went for it. And I'm so pleased we did! Thank you to everyone who made the effort to dress up, either in black tie or an equally stylish get-up, you all looked fabulous! :)

Waiting at the altar, no sign of nerves! ;) 

The service was lovey, Felicity our curate made it super special and personal and delivered a lovely message we wholeheartedly believe in. I am so pleased all our family and friends were there to witness and share our vows with us, it gave them yet an extra level of depth and meaning (as if they weren't meaningful enough already!!).

Dad's singing always puts a smile on my face! :) I had dad in one ear and Ben in the other so I have no clue if I managed to stay in tune!! ;) See more of the orders of service that we designed and made here.

Anna and Joanna both did a splendid job despite only coming three quarters of the way up the lecturn!! ;) They both delivered such lovely readings that were equally moving and entertaining. This was the part of the service where I almost lost my composure!

Don't they all look beautiful! We are so lucky to have such a gorgeous and loving bunch of family and friends!

The singing is always my favourite part of a service and I was super stoked to have everyone singing their hearts out! Ben's motto is always - get the menfolk excited about dancing the girls will follow suit. And I think the same applies for singing! So we had all the sporting classics - Jerusalem for the English, Bread of Heaven for the Welsh and Give Me Joy...for those who don't like sport!

My cousin Dylan has an unfair share of all the family's Welsh choral genes. I would give almost anything for an ounce of his talents!! But he was super sweet to agree to sing a gorgeous acoustic rendition of My Song while we signed the registers. It was beautiful and my only regret is we were too busy signing to really listen as intently and completely as I would have liked!

The whole thing was over so quickly and soon we all burst out of the church into the sun to celebrate with everyone. I loved this bit, with so many people to say hello to and hug and high-five!

The confetti run was hilarious! As you can see all our lovely guests made a really long line so it felt like it went on for ever!!! Ben insisted that we make a run for it ('they shouldn't have all the fun!') so I hoicked up my skirts and we legged it. I think maybe you can tell I found it hilarious! :) Couldn't resist a sneaky little gif at the end here.

Next we were whisked away back to the reception venue in the convertible to be greeted with champagne and canapés...(dot dot dot!!)

A few key links below for the curious:
Photos all courtsey of Anushé Low
Ben's tux is from Ted Baker
Ben's black Loake brogues
Isabel's coral maxi dress
Flowers ordered from the Triangle Nurseries
Church St Peter's and St Paul, Wadhurst

Mum's coral Topshop jacket

The ultimate DIY wedding: peaceful preparation

And finally we have it!! The big day itself. Our vision was for a fun, loving, relaxed and cuddly day. To bring a bit of glamour and vibrancy to the field, to create a sense of occasion and round it all off with a fabulously boozy and banging knees up!!

These are the first selection of wonderful photos captured by the gorgeous Anushé Low. As you can see, her style is light, airy and relaxed and exactly what we were looking for. Inundated with over 700 photos, the exercise of picking out our favourites has been agonising! (Hence it's taken me so long to share and the multiple posts to come!!) But I'm sure you'll agree that Anushé has done a fabulous job of capturing the love, fun and laughter that abounded on the day.

We did so many things for this wedding ourselves, that the few weeks leading up to it were a complete frenzy! Izzy calls me a little whirlwind on a regular day (creating a swirl of energy and chaos everywhere I go, apparently!), so I can only imagine what sort of weather phenomenon I resembled in those weeks...a full on tornado I imagine!! Anyway, I'll share those projects next, but on the morning of the wedding a calm descended on me and despite running around town, decked out with our coiffured hairdos and diamante accessories, to grab a few last minute supplies nothing seemed to be able to ruffle my feathers (thank goodness!). 

I enjoyed getting dressed up and was so pleased I'd decided to do my own makeup. We had a few practice runs, swotted up on tips from a series of makeup blogs and bought an array of fancy makeup from Selfridges to add to my collection gifts from my mother-in-law. :) I didn't go crazy and make any statements, but tried to do all the basics very very well (emphasis on the 'tried'!).

  

My wedding dress was designed and made by my dear Ma. It was a true labour of love and a real team effort! I'll share more about the process as it deserves it's own post it was so involved! But suffice to say, it turned out better than I could have imagined! :) My something borrowed and old were the gorgeous pearl and diamond earrings that my sister in law so kindly lent me. She had worn them on her wedding day too! I completely forgot about my something blue, but luckily realised I'd picked out some blue lacy undergarments for the day. (Not pictured!) ;) Phew!

The heart locket was a lovely gift from my God Father the evening before the wedding. I hadn't really formulated a plan as what to wear, with all the bling on the dress I had even considered going naked! But the locket was a perfect fit, bold enough and simple enough to really work with the bling rather than fight against it! It was empty on the day, but I shall definitely fill it with mini pictures of my loved ones to wear on special occasions going forwards. 

The garter was my Mum's idea - she found it in my sewing kit (I'd been planning to use the lace on it for another project!) and whipped it out on the morning! It was fun to put on but slipped down after about three steps!

The colour of choice was coral - although I really couldn't restrict us to one colour on most things!! Side note for future brides to be, pick an easy colour that isn't absolutely impossible to match!!! Izzy had a lovely silk maxi dress from Boden in coral that we jazzed up with some leftover diamantés from my dress to tie it all in.

The flower girl dress was also made from leftover silk from my dress and embellished with little coral roses. So cute! Isn't our flower girl an absolute sweetheart, she was good as gold all day! She kept telling me I had 'such a big dress!!' She would run over for a cuddle every five minutes - she certainly knew something out of the ordinary was going on and that she was a big part of it!

We arrived in our Landrover Discovery, just visible in the background there - glamorous eh?! But luckily it is super roomy inside for all those underskirts and a fetching champagne colour that went well with the colour scheme! All part of the grand plan! ;)  

This view when I finally looked up from the bottom of the path really got me. Knowing that Ben and all our guests were hiding inside, awaiting out entrance. Suddenly it all felt like a BIG DEAL. Isabella joined the wedding party and seemed to approve of us all, so we figured we must have scrubbed up ok and were fit for the day ahead!  

As we approached the steps of the church with Dad doing a fantastic job with the flowers! We had no time to catch our breath or have a pep talk amongst us. Felicity, the curate, promptly flung the doors open, announced our arrival and started off the procession. Dad and I took a big deep breath and stepped into the church...

And I'll leave it there for today! We'll be back with the service next!

A few key links below for the curious:
Photos all courtsey of Anushé Low
Isabel's coral maxi dress
Flowers ordered from the Triangle Nurseries
St Peter's and St Paul, Wadhurst

Mum's coral Topshop jacket