Rustic coastal farm wedding

In the past few years of running my business I have been lucky enough to meet and make some lovely friends, many of whom I know will be lifelong friends. I met Nik, today’s bride, two years ago, when she won a place on a cut flower course via the blog and we spent a day together learning how to grow and arrange homegrown flowers.

Since then I’ve followed Nik’s adventures as she has moved to Wales and set up her own business, and last summer when I was heavily pregnant I saw her again when we holidayed in Cardigan. It is an absolute pleasure to share Nik and Chris’ wedding with you all, it is utterly beautiful but completely down-to-earth and full of love and laughter – which seems to me a true reflection of this sweet and kind couple.

Nik and Chris got married last July on the farm where they live in Wales, with a beautiful outdoor ceremony, champagne on the beach, and a chilled out barn reception. If you are having any wobbles about staying true to yourselves when planning your wedding, or whether it’s possible to have a beautiful wedding on a budget, then this is the wedding for you.

By now, if you’re a regular blog reader you’ll have also probably recognised Nik as she was one of our TNWC Real Brides – you can read all about her wedding planning and handmade details here.

This wedding was captured by Pete Cranston, who is one of our recommended photographers on the directory.  Do pop back to the blog tomorrow as I have Nik and Chris’ wedding video to share, which brings to life their wedding day

Over to Nik to…

“As I’m sure everyone does, we wanted our wedding to be very ‘us’, which meant that the usual frills and bow and formalities of a wedding  were definitely not on our wish list. Finding The Natural Wedding Company was a revelation, as it opened up a world of weddings that matched the way we saw ourselves as a couple – humble, natural, eco-conscious and down-to-earth.

Intimacy was something else we were keen to have and we decided very early on that we only wanted a handful of guests (there were 25 of us in total), to keep it very relaxed and personal.”

“We moved to Pembrokeshire in West Wales in August 2012 to live by the sea, so there was no question that we would get married in our new home county. One of the things we both felt was important was to spend time on the beach on our wedding day, which narrowed our list of venues right down!

We fell in love with the beautiful Llys Meddyg at Newport, but when our landlord offered us the use of his farm (we rent a cottage on the land) it was a no-brainer. We started our life in Pembrokeshire there, and it felt so right to marry there – plus it was perfect for the small, simple and relaxed wedding we wanted.”

“Our ceremony was outdoor (smack in the middle of the incredible summer heatwave!) we’re very outdoor people and it felt unnatural for us to get married indoors. It also meant that we could be surrounded by all the animals on the farm – there were three collies, two Chihuahuas, a cat and a handful of hens at the ceremony, along with God knows how many birds chirping away in the trees, the fish in the stream and the gentle snuffles of the horses in the neighbouring fields!”

“As outdoor weddings aren’t legally binding in England, we’d got the legalities out of the way in the morning, by attending the registry office with our parents.”

“Nearly all of our wedding was homegrown – from the table runners that I made from vintage fabric, to the paper chains and signs that directed guests to the farm, to the hand decorated mugs we served hot chocolate in, then gave as ‘favours’.”

“We commissioned thirty vintage teaspoons, handstamped with ‘LLwy Garu’ (Welsh for ‘love spoon’) to give to our guests along with their decorated mugs. Everyone loved them, and I keep seeing them in friend’s houses – some use them day to day and others are displaying them in pride of place. They were so popular I now stock a range of handstamped cutlery in my shop from the same maker – they are a bestseller!”

“The week before the wedding had been a blur of activity as we prepared the farm and the outbuildings for the day. We knew there was a danger that we could get lost in preparations and forget to step back and absorb the moment, so the morning of the wedding, we got up early (part intentional, part nerves and excitement!) and took ourselves off to our local beach.

We had intended to have a wedding morning surf, but the hot, still weather meant that the sea was like a millpond, so we went for a refreshing swim instead. We had the beach and the water all to ourselves and it was an amazing moment of stillness between us before the festivities commenced.”

“After we returned, I had two buttonholes to make and some flowers to put in position, but other than that my mum took charge and coordinated all the outstanding tasks – she was a dream.

I found my dress on a shopping trip with my mum and two sisters – we were supposed to be hunting for bridesmaids’ dresses but it seemed only fair that I tried on some frocks too! It was the silk Avalana dress from Coast, with an asymmetric hem and sweetheart neckline – straight off the rail.”

“I had intended to hire a dress – our budget for the wedding was small, and I felt quite strongly that I didn’t want to spend a fortune on a dress. I actually tried it on for a laugh – it looked hideous on the rail and I was going to leave it behind. I think all our jaws dropped to the floor when I emerged in it – far from looking hideous, it suited me down to the ground, despite being nothing like the sort of dress I had envisaged myself wearing.”

“It was definitely ‘the one’.  At £450 it wasn’t breaking the bank; and it could be easily shortened and dyed to wear again after the wedding, so (with encouragement from my mum) I took the plunge and bought it. I still haven’t got round to shortening it…”

“The farm we live on is equestrian based, so I decided to team my dress with vintage cowboy boots and a plaited leather belt to tie in with the horsey vibe! Obviously I planned this before I knew we’d all be roasting in 32 degrees, so on the day the boots got swapped out for flip flops quite quickly! I was hoping to wear my grandma’s veil, but it didn’t match my dress, which I was really disappointed about.”

“Instead I wore emerald cut zirconia drop earring set in white gold, which were a 21st birthday present from my grandparents. The necklace I wore was a gift from Chris, which he left at the side of our bed for me on our wedding morning. It’s an artisan-made brass and pearl necklace of two peas in a pod – which is what we are.

My bridesmaids were my two younger sisters, Heather and Georgia, and our eight-year-old niece, Oli (whose birthday was on the same day as our wedding!). For my sisters it was their first ever opportunity to be a bridesmaid, and it felt really special to be the one to give them that experience.”

“All three girls wore the same dress, which was another ‘off-the-rail’ purchase from Hollister, chosen by them. They all wore cowboy boots of their own choosing to keep in with the casual vibe of the day. The older girls also wore a tan leather belt and carried English dried lavender bouquets, and Oli wore a homemade ivy crown and carried a dried rose pomander.”

“Chris is not suited to being a traditional groom at all – he’s a casual dresser and doesn’t ‘do’ suits. It seemed silly to force him to be something he isn’t on a day that is supposed to be a celebration of us and who were are, so he wore DC tailored shorts and a plain white shirt with black buttons (sewn on by me, as he thought the original ones were too boring!), teamed with RipCurl flip flops.

He didn’t want a wedding ring, so instead I gave him a braided leather bracelet with a stamped silver tag stating the date and time of our wedding (so now he has no excuse to forget our anniversaries!) – much more his style!”

“With our wedding day being so informal, there wasn’t really any need for Chris to have a ‘best man’ as such, and he really didn’t want to choose between his brother and two best friends, so instead he had a team of three ‘groomsmaids’ who all wore tan tailored shorts, flip flops and a white shirt of their own choosing.”

“After bagging myself a free spot on The Natural Wedding Company and Catkin Flowers cut flower growing course, I really wanted to put the knowledge into practice and grow some of our own flowers for the wedding. However, I only had a very short growing season to pull things together, and in the end I only had a few sweet peas, some cornflowers and nigella, and a few stems of bupleurum!

I wasn’t worried though; we have tons of hedgerows surrounding the farm and they were abundant with beautiful seasonal summer blooms and foliage, so the day before the wedding, my mum and I went off with our wicker basket and secateurs to grab the season’s best.”

“I topped them up with some British grown peonies from the local florist, some dried oat sheaves and lavender, and some potted freesias I’d grown. We arranged the loose blooms very rustically in all sorts of containers – from tin cans to jam jars to milk churns! I actually ended up with much more colour than I’d intended – I was planning a white and green theme with heavy foliage – but it looked beautiful and I loved that it was a true reflection of the wild hedgerows.

My mum commissioned us a set of wood slices from a tree they had felled in their garden, bearing our initials and the date, and she presented them to us the week before the wedding; so we positioned them all around the farm alongside jugs of flowers and vintage farm objects that we’d found lying around the place.”

“Everybody loved their homemade buttonholes, which had been made from everything and anything! They were all totally different to one another, but were all tied with the same ribbon. We just passed out the box and let the men choose the one they liked the best.

I made Chris a special one using a single white cosmos flower with a bit of lavender and foliage. His favourite hen, Mrs Dorothy Brown had been taken by the fox a few months previously but I’d managed to save one of her feathers, which I wired and put in, along with a shell I’d picked up on the beach the day he proposed to me.”

“My bouquet was a mix of dried lavender, gypsophila, delphiniums and rose heads and was tied with a piece of gypsy lace that my mum had bought from a traveller whilst pregnant with me. It’s so nice to still have it around – it makes me smile every time I see it.”

“Chris and I decided to walk down the aisle together –  so after all our guests were seated, I met him round the back of the tin barn. Seeing him all dressed up and wearing the buttonhole I had made for him made me feel such pride and happiness. I think we just beamed at each other! It felt quite odd to think that we were about to do something so important when it felt like the most natural thing in the world.”

“The venue was naturally very beautiful, so we kept decoration simple. We hung white paper pom poms in the ceremony tree, put containers of home grown flowers next to the straw bale seating and scattered handfuls of dried British flower petals down the aisle (provided by The Natural Wedding Company supplier Forage For).”

“My bridesmaids set off in front of us and they were the cue for our friend James to start playing Slide Show by Travis on his acoustic guitar for us to walk down to. It wasn’t a song I’d known before – we’d let James choose a song he felt was fitting – and it summed everything up so perfectly (great wedding song, if anyone’s looking for one!). We walked down the long and winding aisle hand in hand (I think I was gripping quite tight!) with huge grins on our faces. It was magical.”

“We married beneath a horse chestnut tree next to a stream that flows in a secluded woodland area of the farm, next to the apple orchard. It was very overgrown and we had to do a lot of work in the months before the wedding to clear all the weeds and mark out paths for us and our guests to walk down – never mess with a bride-to-be wielding a pair of loppers and a bow saw!”

“We wrote our own vows as the traditional ones we’d seen felt too formal and out of character, and we wanted them to be personal and meaningful to us as a couple (I promised Chris I would always be his surfing buddy, and he promised me that we’d always make up silly songs to help us get through bad times). We both finished our vows with the line ‘and I promise that I will love you in all times, in all places and in all ways, forever’.”

“Every time I practised my vows prior to the ceremony, I’d ended up in floods of tears and completely incomprehensible, but when the time came I held it together just perfectly, so if you’re having similar worries then you may be reassured to know that you might just be alright on the night!”

“We had two readings – my sister Heather read the (now very popular) reading from The Velveteen Rabbit, which was special to us as I had read it at our best friends’ wedding two years before, and my mum read a reading she had found online and amended to be personal to us.”

“In fact, it was so personal that I think everyone in the congregation was fighting back tears, and my mum had to pause for several breaks to get herself together!!”

I love the ‘just married’ smiles…

“Straight after the ceremony, we all jumped into cars and set off in convoy to Druidstone beach – which is where Chris had proposed to me on Christmas Day 2012. We had just got our beloved VW Beetle, Reggie, back from his pre-wedding re-spray so Chris and I led the convoy in him, with a ‘Just Married’ sign in the window and hessian ribbon sashes attached to the front.”

“We took down picnic baskets full of prosecco and local hedgerow liqueur and made champagne cocktails for everyone.”

“We didn’t have a particularly strict agenda for the day, and with the weather being so incredible we hung around on the beach for a while – paddling in the sea and messing around on the sand and generally just letting the significance of what had just happened absorb into us.”

“After their trip to the beach, Nik and Chris along with their family and friends headed back to the farm for a laid back barbeque and evening of music.”

“By the time we got back to the farm, the barbeque, provided by Trehale Farm at Mathry, was raring to go. We always endeavour to eat organic, sustainable and local foods at home and it was really important to us to ensure the catering at the wedding reflected that.”

“Adam from Trehale was totally on our wavelength  and provided the most amazing feast – there were hand-reared chilli pork burgers, incredible local scallop and bacon wraps, homemade cous cous, rustic breads and the best cheesecake I’ve ever tasted to finish things off (homemade by Adam’s wife).”

“We didn’t have a seating plan – we set out wooden picnic tables in the barn and everyone just grabbed a seat wherever they fancied. My parents were great and kept saving me bits of food – I kept going off chatting to people or having photos taken so it was nice to have someone in charge of feeding me!

After the meal, Chris and his friend James played a set of acoustic music atop a straw bale and pallet stage as the sun began its slow descent. Then it was onto an iPod playlist, making merry and mingling!”

“Woody, the haflinger pony who I ride from time to time, is drop-dead gorgeous and a real poser. His owner was actually the one who suggested we should use him as a photo prop, so I suggested it to Pete our photographer, who jumped at the opportunity for a challenge!”

“We tried to sneak off during dinner to do the shots, but my friend cottoned on to what we were doing and insisted I ride Woody out to show everyone – I just rocked up on top of a pony whilst everyone was eating!! It was completely random and a little bit cringeworthy, but I think I’ll live it down… eventually.”

“We’d brought in three firepits to light for warmth and a heap of recycled wool blankets from my shop, but the weather was so cracking that they weren’t needed until much later.”

“It was about 10pm before any of us were sufficiently cooled down to serve our late night treat of real hot chocolate and marshmallows, which we cooked in a cauldron over one of the firepits – hung from a tripod made specially by our friend, sculptor and film maker Pat Hurst (he also did our wedding video, which is hands down my favourite memento of the day).”

“I’m quite fortunate as I run a vintage and ethical homeware shop, from which I was able to ‘borrow’ all sorts of things to decorate the venue. It was hard work putting together a venue from scratch with minimal outside help and it did result in quite a few stressful moments during the planning stages!

It’s easy to fool yourself that certain things will be easy and cheaper to do yourself; the ‘how hard can it be?’ mentality, but it’s easy to bite off more than you can chew. Etsy and Folksy are great for finding handmade and unique things for your big day without all the work being on your shoulders.”

“Our photographer was Pete Cranston, who is based in Bristol, and I would absolutely recommend him to anyone who is having a wedding that is a little bit of a break from the norm. He’s a top bloke – down-to-earth, a great laugh and not at all gushy about weddings, which I think makes him a fabulous wedding photographer!”

“I first saw his work on The Natural Wedding Company, as he attended the Bristol Riverstation wedding fair in 2012, and I liked the subtle vintage quality of his images. Seeing that he had done another wedding in our neck of the woods prompted me to get in touch. His enthusiasm for our plans, flexibility and offer of a pre-wedding shoot sealed the deal.”

“He has such an incredible eye and comes up with some really unusual ideas. He puts you right at ease (we hate having our photo taken!) and goes for natural shots that really capture the moment rather than forced poses. Find a great photographer that understands you and your day – it is worth every single penny and you will be transported instantly back to your wedding day every time you look at your photos.”

“We had a great time having photos taken on the day! There were so many quirky little things around the place to pose with, including my beloved hand-reared hens Norma and Baby, who were more than pleased to get their 15 minutes of fame.”

“Pete has a great eye for locations and we were happy to go along with him and his ideas, popping off from the party here and there when he had an idea for a shot or when the light was good. He even managed to make the hideous old static caravan that is rotting away in a corner look cool!”

And for any brides wanting to ‘steal’ some of Nik and Chris’ wedding style, where did they take inspiration from?

“We tried to steer clear of the majority of wedding blogs and magazines in the run-up to the wedding, as I didn’t want to be tricked into thinking I needed something I didn’t or feel unnecessary pressure to have my day a certain way.

The only blog I turned to was this one, as I feel that The Natural Wedding Company focuses on the things that actually matter – their real weddings are always very beautiful, yet very achievable, and feel inspiring rather than out-of-reach.”

“I found other ideas from Pinterest, where I started a wedding inspiration board to pull out patterns and themes I liked, and from lifestyle magazines such as The Simple Things, Coast and Country Living.”

“Since the wedding, I’ve been focusing on building my business and have been keeping busy opening a new shop in West Yorkshire – it’s good to have a project to fill the gap that wedding planning once filled!

We’ve also just started refurbishing our rented house on the farm – we love living here and have built a little family with the hens and dogs and people around the place (much of which was facilitated by the wedding), so we’re making some little changes and decorating in our own style so that we can stick around as long as possible.”

I just love these two! I’m trying to think of something wise or witty to round up their wedding with, but I know I’d just ruin it. Instead I’ll just remind you to pop back to the blog tomorrow to watch their wedding film, and bookmark this page for those moments where you’re having a wedding planning wobble – I’m certain it will remind you what’s most important.

{ Details }

Photography: Pete Cranston Photography
Venue: Bride and groom’s home
Wedding Dress: Coast
Bridesmaid Dresses: Hollister
Brides Lavender Bouquet: Pollyfields
Flowers: gathered and arranged by the bride and her mum
Petal Confetti: Forage For
VW Beetle ‘Reg’: Little Blue Beetle Hire (bride and groom’s)
Wedding Favour Vintage Spoons: Rescue & Revive
Catering: Trehale Farm
Blankets, Dried Oats & Other Accessories: Little House in Town