A Paper Garden Handmade Wedding!

Hello Land of Blog!

So I did something very grown up this year and in early September I got married to my lovely partner Helen! 

We officially Civil Partnered at Bristol Town Hall a few days before our big day which was actually really lovely - just our mums at witnesses and a cheeky bottle of wine afterwards. For us this was the just the legal part, our actual wedding was going to be a few days later.

We had our wedding at Middle Coombe Farm in Devon which is stunning, wrote our own ceremony and had a dear friend as our celebrant. It was a very small wedding and, as it was on a farm, it had a very handmade, rural and eco friendly feel to it. Every part of the day was perfect.

According to the top wedding planners in the country, the average wedding budget is around £16K (whaaaaaat!!). We just couldn't afford to spend anything near that amount of money so we decided to keep costs down by sourcing materials ourselves, making decorations, finding local food suppliers & even making our own dresses. And actually by doing it this way we had so much fun and free reign to design anything we wanted! Nothing was mass produced or bought. Out of everything I think the most money we spent was on the Ceildh band (who were incredible!) !!

We sourced vintage suitcases, new & recycled materials, books & lighting. We even sourced our own flowers and produced our own table flower arrangements which was a lot of fun to do.

In the Cider Barn is where we had our dinner (local caterer who cooked us all a yummy bbq!). The barn was also host to an amazing Ceildh and some good ol' dancing! We handmade all the bunting and sourced all the lights.

We also had a marquee which we decorated with handmade bunting, fairy lights and some colourful decorations given to us by a friend. We hand painted and illustrated the blackboard and sourced hay bales for here.

Instead of spending lots of money that we didn't have, we locally sourced flowers & did our own arrangements, we hand decorated jars, handmade folded books & hand constructed and hand stamped 77 favours/place names.

Instead of buying expensive flower bouquets from a florist, we decided that we wanted to create something that we could keep. We each had a large bouquet made from handmade material flowers (satin, linen, lace, hessian) and then each of our bridesmaids had a smaller handmade posy. My bridesmaids posies had lace flowers made from off-cuts of my dress!

Each large bouquet had over 30 handmade flowers in it so it's safe to say they definitely weren't thrown!

A handmade, eco friendly wedding was perfect for us, as time consuming as it was! It made us both realise that creating this special day was something that we would like to do again. It's something that we would like to do for other people who are getting married that might need some help. Not everyone has the time or the money to throw at their wedding; so what if we could create it for you - make your vision a reality? Stress free and for those on a budget! All locally sourced, upcycled and handmade items and decor!

Watch this space - we are busy creating a business plan and website for our wedding design service launching early 2014! :)

 

Photographs courtesy of Fine Pair

xo