Spring farm wedding (part two)

Yesterday I featured the first part of Caroline and Gareth’s beautiful spring wedding on their farm in Nottinghamshire. If you missed it – oh no! Make yourself a cup of tea and go click on the link to read part one. If you’re back to see the final part of their wedding, enjoy!

As well as all the gorgeous pictures from their rustic and homemade wedding reception you’ll also find their wedding film at the bottom of the post, to bring their whole wedding a little more to life.

Oh, and don’t miss the part where Caroline cuts up her wedding dress…mid-wedding…yes, really.

>> View Caroline and Gareth’s spring farm wedding (part one) here <<

Finally, I want to say a huge thank you to Caroline for sharing all of her wedding plans as TNWC Real Bride, to her wedding photographer Milestones Photography, and to all you wonderful readers who come visit the blog to read about these fab weddings.

Over to Caroline…

“The week before the wedding day itself was absolutely bonkers. I’d managed to draft in friends and family to look after my shop and for me the whole week was spent with our troop of helpers getting all the last minute crafting jobs done –  fluffing pom poms, decorating jam jars, making the table plan and table names to name a few.”

Don’t you just love how they transformed their working cow barn into a fantastic rustic reception venue, with hessian clad tables, and bunting and pom-poms hanging from the rafters.

“Gareth’s week was mostly spent up ladders fixing the endless leaks in the roof, and hanging the fairy lights and bunting (not a small task as we had over 400 metres of both!). Because the cows were in the barn until the week before, we couldn’t get any of the ‘dressing’ done in advance, so it was a case of having everything all ready to go – and then going for it!!”

“I think, because we had kept everything so informal and relaxed, I wasn’t worried about things not being ‘perfect’ (although as it turned out everything was absolutely perfect and I wouldn’t have changed a thing!) but we definitely couldn’t have done it without the help from Karen of Darby and Joan.”

“We enlisted Karen’s help quite early on having met her at a wedding fair in Derby – both to provide us with all the pretty vintage china and to help everything run smoothly on the day – we really couldn’t have done it without her!

She kept me calm and worked like an absolute Trojan from the crack of dawn on the Friday and the wedding day itself, hanging pom poms, dressing tables, arranging the flowers and just generally making everything look beautiful. She took so much of the stress away from me, I would recommend her a hundred times over!”

For their wedding meal Caroline and Gareth chose to have a rustic picnic of locally sourced produce.

“The picnic was brilliant, and one of the best decisions we made. It just fitted in perfectly with the theme of the day, and It was great looking around and seeing everyone passing food around, and discovering that their lunch came mostly from local suppliers just down the road!”

“One of the most important parts of the wedding for us was trying to use local suppliers for everything. I strongly feel that small independent businesses need support and we’re so lucky where we live to be surrounded by some amazing local businesses. It was heaps of fun to source all the food for our picnic lunch from local producers – and we had lots of tasting sessions for everything!”

“All the milk for our farm goes to a local dairy to make Stilton cheese, so we knew the food had to have a bit of a ‘cheese’ theme, so we collected picnic baskets and filled them with local goodies. Cheeses, breads, pork pies and cooked meats, roasted vegetable tarts made by a friend of Mums, chutneys made by one of my bridesmaids, and salads made by my sister.”

“For dessert we asked some of our guests that we know like to bake to bring along a dessert, so we had a HUGE pudding table!”

“The wedding cake was a joint effort. Mum made the top tier which was lemon drizzle, my mum in law, Sandra made a carrot cake for the middle tier and I made a chocolate cake for the bottom tier and decorated it. I have a bit of an on-the-side business making cakes, so I knew I couldn’t outsource my own!!!”

“We DIY’d as much as possible, partly to keep our costs down but partly because I’ve always enjoyed making things and we knew that personal touches would help make the day feel more special to us. Plus, all the craft nights sitting fluffing pom poms with my girlfriends, and tying raffia around jam jars, made some really lovely memories for us.”

With your wedding held on a dairy farm what could be more suitable than tables named after cows and placed into pots of jolly cowslips?

“We made the table names from vintage cow postcards, all tables names based on breeds of cows (we couldn’t really have gone with anything else based on having nearly 200 cows amongst the venue as well) and staked them in potted up cowslips.”

“For the table favours I made all the ladies a recipe book including some of my favourite baking recipes that I have collected along my travels (the men had mini pork pies which were sourced locally). We used little luggage labels for place names and to label all the food and stamped them with a tiny cow stamp that I bought from Etsy.”

“We made lace edged hessian table runners for all the trestle tables and cushions and blankets for the bales made from vintage table cloths.

I’d also seen lots of really beautiful fabric streamer backdrops on Pinterest, so roped in a couple of the bridesmaids to make our own version with pastel coloured crepe paper streamers, that were strung from baler twine at the back of the barn. I think they were about ready to drop by the time it was done, it took AGES, but it looked amazing!!”

“The handkerchief table plan was one of my favourite details. It was really easy to do (in fact I think I made that the day before the wedding!).”

“I just printed the guests names in reverse onto iron on transfer paper and ironed them on to the handkerchiefs. The hard part was deciding which handkerchiefs to use. They had all been given to me by my late Nan, so it was lovely to use them for such a special occasion.”

Whilst looking through Caroline’s beautiful wedding photos, I came across this one.

Yes. That is Caroline with a pair of scissors in hand looking like she’s about to cut up her wedding dress…! I had to know, did she really cut up her dress on the day of her wedding?!

“I did indeed! I had always had a plan to change into another dress for the ceildh dancing in the evening as I knew I wouldn’t be able to dance properly in my wedding dress, so I had borrowed a really beautiful tea length dress from a friend and had a mint green tulle underskirt made to wear underneath it.”

“When it came to it though, I just couldn’t bear the thought of taking my dress off, so I decided to do a little alteration! With the help of Val (who had altered my dress for me in the first place) my dress became much more dancing friendly, and still just as beautiful.

Everyone thought I was absolutely bonkers, but it was the best decision, I got to keep my dream dress on until the bitter end and yet had my legs free for some important barn dancing. It is now being properly re-hemmed and because it wasn’t a really ‘weddingy’ wedding dress, I think I’ll be able to wear it again.”

“Our photographers were Rebecca and Stacey from Milestones Photography. They specialise in photographing children, and Rebecca had done some work for me at REloved. I LOVE their style, and they just seem to capture moments and emotions perfectly, so I knew straight away that I wanted Rebecca to be in charge of our wedding photography.”

And what were Caroline’s favourite moments from the day?

“There was a moment, probably at around 4pm when everyone was eating, and Gareth and I snuck away to have a ‘take it in’ moment (we had promised ourselves to have lots of those, and I’d recommend all brides and grooms to do the same) – I just remember looking out across the barn with him, watching everyone laughing, chatting and sharing out the food, and both of us having a real ‘wow’ moment. I think that was the moment when I think it sunk in that I was Mrs Stafford, and we were right in the middle of our own ‘best day ever’ – a pretty amazing feeling.”

“My other best bit was the night before the wedding. Together with my bridesmaids and a few other close girlfriends we had booked a table at a local pub for a meal. I’m so lucky to have such a special group of friends, and because we’re all grown up, with lots of miles between us, and ever growing families that keep everyone busy, it was really really special to have an evening with everyone.”

“When it came to the end of the night, I asked for the bill, only to be told that it was already taken care of. Gareth had called up earlier and left his card details to pay for us all. We lost my Dad a couple of years ago, and I guess its usually a father of the bride treat. It was such a thoughtful and special gesture, there were tears all round, and I think it definitely got him A LOT of brownie points with all the girls.”

“Lots of my ideas came from wedding blogs and websites, of course The Natural Wedding Company was a definite favourite and I remember one afternoon, looking through ALL the real brides’ archives and collecting heaps of ideas. Pinterest, of course, was a huge source of inspiration too for the handmade details, though I know I drove Gareth mad when I kept sending him pictures of lovely ideas of things I’d seen that he needed to build!

One of my best Pinterest finds was the ‘love’ trailer. In the end, with a lot of help from some of mums friends who discovered an amazing talent for managing to turn a wonky old trailer into a work of art and a perfect photo backdrop, I think we managed to create something even better than the photograph I’d found!”

“I cant believe its already been over 8 months since our wedding. We honestly watch the video at least every couple of weeks still, and it doesn’t seem nearly so long ago. We had so much fun planning our wedding day, and the only way I can describe the day itself is absolutely the best day ever!”

“Because we made it so unique to us and so many of our family and friends were involved in one way or another we have a mountain full of special memories that we will treasure forever. It also makes me super proud to reflect back on what we achieved as a couple, organising our dream wedding together in a setting which is so special to us.”

I’m going to leave you with the film of Caroline and Gareth’s wedding, and a few words on what they thought about their videographer: “It was a totally last minute decision, and I am so glad we did. James from Digi-Scope was brilliant, I hardly even knew he was there, and it’s so lovely to have everything caught on film. I forgot so many details of the day immediately, I guess it’s all so overwhelming, so it’s fab to be able to be reminded of everything, and see all the bits that I missed or wasn’t around for.”

http://vimeo.com/68360311

>> View Caroline and Gareth’s spring farm wedding (part one) here <<

{ Details }

Photography: Milestones Photography
Venue: Bride and groom’s farm
Wedding Dress: via Ebay, then customised
Flowers: Catkin and Flowerpod
Make-up: Makeup by ALW
Styling & Vintage Hire: Darby & Joan
Ceildh Band: The James Joyce Band
Campervan: Alfie’s VW Camper Wedding Hire
Wedding Video: Digi-Scope Productions