Plans for a DIY Devon country village wedding

It’s really lovely to be back again to introduce you to our second TNWC Real Bride of 2015 – Vicky – who is getting hitched this summer to her Mr-to-be Steve. I really love how hands-on Vicky and Steve seem to be with creating their wedding (helpful when your Mr is a builder!) and that they have chosen their home village as the spot to hold their celebrations.

>> View Vicky and Steve’s DIY village fete wedding here <<

Over to Vicky to tell you more…

A proposal in Greece

Hi my name is Vicky and I will be marrying my fiancé, Steve, this summer.  Steve and I have been together for over 6 years now and much to the relief of our friends and family we are finally getting married this July.

Steve proposed last year in Skopelos, outside the church from Mamma Mia, with a beautiful ring he’d bought in secret. It totally floored me. I’m not sure what actually amazed me more, the proposal (I’d have staked a lot of money on that never happening after 6 years!), the fact he had managed to get the ring to Greece without losing it or that he’d been confident enough to tell practically everyone we knew what he was planning – even announcing it in the village pub before he left!

Typically he waited until the very last day of the holiday before asking me, leaving our families at home convinced he’d changed his mind at the last moment! Once I’d got over the shock I finally remembered to say yes and started crying – which pretty much carried on all day! As you can see from the photo!

Planning a Devon village wedding

Since then it’s been full steam ahead with the wedding planning. I can’t honestly say I had any real idea of what our wedding would be like when we started planning it, we probably had more idea of what we definitely didn’t want. Steve didn’t want it to be in a hotel where we had to fit in around them and I didn’t want it to be too prescriptive with a set colour scheme and matching outfits etc.

Ideally we would have found a quirky venue, like an old cinema or something, but living in the middle of South Devon rather limits your options as we didn’t want to travel far.  This left us with the choice of hotels or churches, so the church won!

This was really the starting point for our very ‘village’ wedding in Slapton, South Devon where we live. Everything will be within a 5 minute walk from our home, with the reception being held on the local cricket pitch (ummm field would be a more accurate description), I’m even hopeful we’ll make it to the beach for some photos during the day.

Local wedding suppliers

All of our suppliers have been recommended by friends and are based locally which we’re really pleased about.  Even though I’m not sure any wedding can be very eco-friendly we are doing our best where we can, using local produce, cutting back on transport and recycling and up-cycling where we can.  We’ve even created a wedding website to save on invitation inserts using Getting Married software.  This was an idea I got from a past TNWC Real Bride – feel free to have a look here.

We have already started doing lots of DIY bits for the wedding. We are busy scouring charity shops for cut glass bowls for the cream tea and vases for the flowers. Along with these I’m gathering as many jam jars for the tables and the pews as possible, all of which will need decorating.

My Mum and I are making blankets to spread over hay bales and we are planning on making the wedding cake too! We can’t really afford to hire or buy beautiful vintage cups so we are trying to make the tables look pretty in other ways so I am making 110 floral napkins and painting 120 teaspoons!

A handmade wedding

After that there’s table names to create, wooden stands to cut and a bit of glitter to throw into the mix! Then we’ll move on to confetti bags, cutlery sets in printed bags, fancy dress props, signs and banners and backdrops! The list seems to get bigger!

Luckily Steve is a builder so soon we’ll be starting on the major DIY projects. These will include…building a bar, making two giant V and S letters with lights in (I’m sooo excited about these!), cutting and painting a set of smaller letters to spread across the field – like the Hollywood sign but better! A coconut shy, a photobooth, a picture display board and many many signs and other bits and pieces. He’s also readying his own Sloe Gin ready to serve the guests.

Our stationary is being designed by an old friend of mine who is an amazing graphic artist and a neighbour has kindly agreed to do all the flowers for us.

Loads of our ideas have come from The Natural Wedding Company so it’s brilliant to now be writing on it and to be one of the TNWC Real Brides. I’m really looking forward to sharing all the details with everyone as we approach the big day and hopefully getting advice and ideas on how to pull it all together and survive the wedding madness!

Love Vicky

>> View Vicky and Steve’s DIY village fete wedding here <<

Images: (1) ; (2 – 4) Brides own pictures