Today’s wedding is just making me long for those lush spring days when the English countryside is covered in cow parsley and buttercups. Hanna and Guy were inspired by childhood storybook’s and fairytales, with fun details dotted throughout their wedding, which took place in a beautiful family garden.

We adore this kind of wedding, with its down-to-earth feel, involvement by family and friends, and those magical moments – in this case a marching band leading the bride and groom through a field of cow parsley (see below). This wedding was beautifully captured by our friend Joanna Ornowska of Images for Life, one of our TNWC Recommended Suppliers. Over to Hanna to tell you more about her whimsical storybook garden wedding…

A back garden wedding inspired by childhood stories

I liked the idea of having a wedding that was as tailored to our personalities and values as possible, and so the idea of using a venue that was licensed for civil ceremonies and had already hosted countless big days was immediately dismissed. Instead, we decided to have a humanist blessing in Guy’s mum’s glorious two-acre back garden, which is somewhat incongruously hidden away behind a suburban bungalow in rural Cambridgeshire.

We’re both passionate about traditional children’s stories and so we chose to follow a loose ‘storybook’ theme, transforming the garden into a magical fairytale land that we jokingly called ‘Ermine Island’.

Storybook inspired activities for wedding guests

The invitations were handmade, printed on kraft card using unique fonts and stamps, and accompanied by parchment ‘treasure maps’ that were all individually watercolour painted.

We wanted to offer our guests plenty to do and so we split the garden into a number of different areas, including the ‘Great Hall’ (a marquee decorated with a roof of hanging stars, a la Harry Potter), a ‘Queen of Hearts Croquet Lawn’, a ‘tavern’ packed with beer barrels, the ‘Mermaid Lagoon’ (a swimming pool with a boat on it and plenty of mermaid inflatables in the water) and the ‘Mad Hatters Tea Party’.

DIY budget friendly wedding ideas

Our budget was limited, and so many of our decorations were handmade or sourced secondhand from eBay. We spray painted cut-out wooden hearts gold and hung them from the trees with red ribbon, asked friends and family to make stars for the marquee and decorated the king poles by pulling ivy off a few old walls and winding it up them.

I also made nearly 100 gingerbread men, each designed to look like an individual guest, and painted wooden signs with quotes from our favourite books to hang around the garden. It was hard work, but it was worth it!

A ‘do it together’ family and friends wedding

We received a lot of help from friends and family. My grandpa plays saxophone in a jazz band, and they led a procession of bride, bridesmaids and ushers down the village street to the ceremony. My immensely talented sister made a huge cake designed to look like a fairytale castle, as well as creating the bouquets and hair decorations for the bridesmaids from garden flowers.

Family friends made the buttonholes, lent us endless strings of fairylights and solar powered lights, and turned up on the day with pots of flowers to create an outdoor aisle. Guy’s brother, a chef, also designed and cooked the most incredible vegetarian picnic lunch for everybody.

Keeping the wedding guests entertained

I often find myself feeling bored at weddings, so I wanted to make sure that everybody had plenty to do. We started early (10.30am), and the ceremony was followed by champagne on the terrace accompanied by the jazz band before we all headed to the marquee for lunch.

Then we had a wonderful local ceilidh band lead a big barn dance in the marquee, as well as a tea party (using crockery and cutlery from Freecycle), a croquet match and other entertainments going on. The day ended with a buffet supper supplied by a local vegan caterer and dancing to a fabulous sixties rock ‘n’ roll band.

Keeping your wedding personal

Our aim to keep things personalised and not to go with any big, generic suppliers was what made the day for us. Our humanist celebrant Hannah Wroe Gill was in touch with us for months before, so it really felt like we knew her, and created the most beautiful ceremony tailored to us.

Our photographer Joanna really listened to what we wanted (a documentary style, with no group shots) and shared many of our own green, vegetarian values. The band leaders were both absolutely lovely, as were the caterers in the evening, and having people like that to support us really made our day.

Hosting your own wedding and making much of the food, decorations and stationery yourself is, of course, hard work. Ultimately, though, it delivered the most perfect day of our lives.

If you love Joanna’s photography and are planning an eco-friendly vegan wedding, then check out her exclusive 10% discount to our visitors.

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Photography: Images for Life
Venue: Groom’s mother’s garden
Celebrant: Hannah Wroe Gill
Cake: Bride’s sister