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Blog: farm wedding

Charlie

Caroline and Gareth’s spring wedding on their farm with a rustic barn reception and pretty homemade details (part one)

Charlie

Spring farm wedding (part one)

I have a super special real wedding to share with you today. For regular readers or those who’ve been following last year’s TNWC Real Brides you probably remember the lovely Caroline who was planning her wedding with a real focus on homemade details and supporting local businesses.

Back in May last year she tied the knot with her Mr-to-be Gareth, on their farm in Nottinghamshire, and today I have the delight of sharing all their official photographs from their beautiful day. Caroline has also shared so much of what went into their day and how it went, I’m sure that many brides-to-be out there will find not only creative inspiration but reassurance ahead of their wedding day.

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

Before I hand over, I want to start with this wonderful quote from Caroline, that I think is so beautifully worded about what your wedding day is really all about:

“At times it was hard work and with the weather not on our side we were really tested (big puddles all over the barn floor after a torrential downpour 2 days before the wedding worried us a little!) but on the day, none of it really matters. You’ll always have the best day ever, surrounded by all the people you love the most and at the end of it all you’ll be Mr and Mrs, and at the beginning of an amazing adventure through life together – and that’s really what its all about.”

Over to Caroline to tell you all about her wedding day…

“We knew what we definitely didn’t want was a traditional, formal, wedding day feel to the day and the style was most definitely a handmade, relaxed, informal country wedding and just a jolly good knees up really! We were both bought up in the country, for our second date Gareth bought me a pair of wellies and we took his dogs for a long walk around the farm which I think was pretty much the moment I knew he was ‘the one’, so it seemed quite fitting to have a wedding that gave us a chance to get our wellies on!”

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides Married! Nik’s back to tell us all about her relaxed coastal farm wedding

Charlie

This lovely TNWC Real Bride has become someone I consider as a friend, so it’s been a real treat to hear all about her wedding day (and I’ve been buried in all her ‘official’ wedding photos recently which will soon be gracing these blog pages). Nik and Chris had, what I think was a very chilled out and down-to-earth wedding (two in fact!) back in July, with champagne on the beach and lots of animal appearances on the farm where they live in Wales.

Over to Nik…

Six Months On

Recently we celebrated our six month wedding anniversary (ok, I know, not technically an anniversary, but nice to acknowledge it all the same). By a happy coincidence, it turned out our wedding caterer, Trehale Farm, were hosting their annual wassail on the same night, so it seemed quite fitting for us to go along to toast the apple trees, drink cider, eat great food and commemorate our first wedded milestone.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides Married! Caroline’s back to tell us all about her laid back eco-friendly farm wedding

Charlie

We’ve had a little break from our TNWC Real Brides but we’re back today with the lovely Caroline who got married back in May. Along with her now husband Gareth, they planned a beautiful and laid back wedding on their farm in Nottinghamshire. It has been a long time coming but I’m sure you’ll enjoy reading about her day and soon I hope to share her official wedding photos.

Over to Caroline…

Wow – has it really been 6 months since our wedding day! I really can’t quite believe how much time has flown, and in some ways, our day seems like a lifetime ago, but in others it feels like yesterday!

I know everyone says that your wedding day is the best day of your life, but it really, really is! We had the most magical day right from the second we woke up and it wasn’t raining (hooray!!) until we finally stopped dancing at 2am, and were whisked away to a secret location for our first night as Mr and Mrs Stafford.

The days leading up to the wedding were heaps of fun and not nearly as stressful as I had feared they might be! I left my little shop in the capable hands of mum and my now mother-in-law and had the whole week to get things ready.

In the months before our big day, apart from cleaning the barn (which to be fair was a fairly big job!!) Gareth had a pretty easy ride of it, but in the last week, bless him, I don’t think he managed to get much sleep! 400 metres of bunting was hung, along with 400 metres of fairy lights and about 100 paper pom poms and he spent most days up on the roof of the barn trying to repair a few leaky spots (the forecast for our wedding day was looking pretty dismal) and around all of this he had 500 cows to milk every day!

The day before the wedding was full on from the crack of dawn – Karen from Darby and Joan arrived at 8am to help start dressing the barn, and within an hour the transformation was already looking pretty special. The only word to describe Karen was ‘amazing.’

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Nik’s been busy on the farm doing DIY projects with only a few weeks until her wedding day

Charlie

Just like TNWC Real Bride Emma last week, Nik has only a few weeks to go until her wedding. Her and Mr-to-be Chris have been busy over the past few months with lots of DIY projects for their coastal farm wedding in Wales, and nothing has changed for this creative duo in these final few weeks before their big day.

Today Nik’s got a fab round-up of what they’ve been up to recently, including a lovely reveal of their beautifully restored VW Beetle, making a wedding swing, and some ‘before’ pictures of the barn that will host their wedding reception.

Over to Nik…

The farm is abuzz with life at the moment – not only have the flowers and trees begun to burst forth with summer colour to brighten the place up, but we too are frantically whizzing around doing odd jobs, trimming and pruning, clearing and tidying and generally making preparations for our wedding day on the 11th July.

There’s been so much going on it’s impossible for me to pick just one topic to write about this month, so I thought I’d share a few of the projects we’ve been getting on with.

Reg Returns!

One of the most exciting parts of our wedding day is the fact that Reginald, our vintage VW Beetle, gets to act as wedding car.

Chris has owned him for over 10 years (longer than he’s known me!). One of my earliest memories of Chris is seeing him get out of Reg in a car park and thinking ‘ooh, nice car…hang on… nice owner!’ Unfortunately, when we first got engaged, Reg was rather looking his age after a few years in a damp garage and was in desperate need of a Gok Wan style makeover.

We sent him off to the paint shop for some TLC and he has come back looking pretty fabulous indeed!

I’m so looking forward to cruising down the winding lanes towards the sea after our ceremony, with tin cans rattling behind us and our ‘Just Married’ sign in the window!

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Caroline’s final guest post with just two sleeps until her handmade, eco-friendly farm wedding

Charlie

This is a pretty special post today – in just two days my first ever TNWC Real Bride will be getting hitched! The lovely Caroline will be getting married to her Mr-to-be Gareth this coming Saturday in Nottinghamshire. I love this weekend and time of year, it’s the same weekend two years ago that me and my Mr got married, and despite the recent rain the countryside is looking stunning.

Caroline started sharing her wedding journey with us back in February, and now three months later her big day has almost arrived. She has one last post to share with us all, and I’m delighted to hear that she’s already keen to come back and tell us all about the wedding in a couple of weeks.

For everyone who’s followed along with Caroline’s plans for a laid back, eco-friendly farm wedding, I hope you enjoy this last instalment, and if you have a moment to leave her some well wishes that would be lovely. Over to Caroline…

Wow- this is it – 2 more sleeps to go until the big day! I honestly can’t quite believe that in 2 days time I’ll be waking up on the morning of my wedding day! (It’s 5.30am as I’m writing this – have pretty much given up on sleeping beyond 5am this week – way too excited!)

I’ve managed to wangle the whole week off work, thanks to friends and family pitching in and taking care of REloved for me, so we’re properly able to enjoy this last week of getting everything ready. Gareth and I have soooooo many lists all over the house, that get a bit shorter, then a bit longer, then a bit shorter again, and now the only things left are the fun bits – the final touches, and I’m loving it!

300 Metres of Fairy Lights

We’ve decided to leave a lot of the barn decorating until Friday, after a torrential downpour last Thursday left rather a lot of puddles all over the floor (eeek!) but thank goodness, it seems that ‘normal’ rain showers are ok, as its pretty much rained every day since on and off and other than a couple of drips its all ok!

We have however been busy collecting small hay bales from a local farmer and making sofas in the barn, and a couple of nights ago Gareth asked me to go out to help him move a few of them and when I walked into the barn, he’d only gone and strung up 300 metres of fairy lights, so instead of an old cow shed, for the first time I walked into a wedding venue and it pretty much took my breath away.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Nik tells us about their DIY wedding invitations and building a wedding website

Charlie

Welcome to our second TNWC Real Brides guest post of the week! Today we’ve got the lovely Nik to tell us all about her beautiful DIY wedding invitations and how they created their wedding website. I’m a little bit jealous because I love the style of Nik and Chris’ invitations and think they fit so well with their coastal farm wedding.

If you’ve not read Nik’s first few guest posts, you should first read about her plans for their relaxed coastal farm wedding, and her experience of choosing an ethical wedding dress.

One of the first jobs we tackled upon choosing our chosen wedding venue was our invitations. Our announcement of plans for a summer wedding was immediately met with panic from several relatives and friends about potential holiday clashes. Getting the invites out six months in advance gave everyone plenty of time to plan their hols around the wedding, and has meant that we’ve only had one clash resulting in absent friends on the day.

Our wedding celebrations will be split into two very different parts: a very small ceremony with 25 close family and friends on the farm where we live in Pembrokeshire; and a big all day reception two days later in our home county of West Yorkshire. This gives us the best of both worlds: a relaxed, intimate ceremony where we can focus on the day and what it means, but also the opportunity to celebrate our marriage with our wider network of friends, which is very important to us.

Ceremony Invites

We planned to DIY our invites from the word go: we wanted them to be very personal, I wanted them printed on ‘green’ paper and Chris is a graphic/web designer so it seemed silly not to take advantage of that! However, in the end, we decided to buy our ceremony invites ‘off the rack’ as we realised that we just couldn’t print them at home without compromising on the quality and appearance. Lela of doodlelove was fantastic and worked with us to create a complementary design to match our theme, even incorporating the little chicken illustration that has sort of become our invitation mascot!

Charlie

Special offers on wedding venue hire for 2013 at Huntstile Organic Farm in Somerset

Charlie

I know that not everyone spends months and months, or even years, planning their wedding, so if that’s you and you’re searching for a beautiful venue for spring 2013, why not take advantage of these special offers at Huntstile Organic Farm?

Set in the stunning Somerset countryside, Huntstile Organic Farm provides you with multiple options, from a cosy farmhouse reception to a marquee in the garden. They also have the added benefit of a Stone Circle for handfasting ceremonies atop a hill with the most incredible views, and a tractor to take drop off your guests in rustic style.

Charlie

Anna and James’ relaxed country tea party wedding at South Farm

Charlie

Country tea party wedding at South Farm

I’m utterly delighted to be able to share Anna and James’ relaxed country tea party wedding on the blog today. They got married at South Farm in Cambridgeshire back in June and the lovely Dasha Caffrey captured their wedding.

“Our idea was to have a really relaxed country wedding with bunting, vintage tea cups and hopefully an outdoor ceremony if the weather was good enough! James and I are also real ale enthusiasts, so we had a good number of polypins [barrels] of beer on the bar, which along with the pimms and croquet, helped create a lovely village fete type atmosphere.”

“We fell in love with South Farm as soon as we saw it – it has a very natural charm and just felt like a friendly place. We thought it would be totally out of our budget, but decided to go and have a look anyway as it’s only about 20 minutes from where we live.” It turned out a number of Anna and James’ friends had either been married there or been to weddings at South Farm and all highly recommended it. “I guess having so many personal recommendations just clinched it for us!”

Charlie

A rustic Lithuanian village wedding celebrating old traditions and a simpler way of life

Charlie

Rustic Lithuanian village wedding

It’s always nice to get inspiration from other countries and cultures when it comes to all aspects of life, but in particular I love seeing the way the other people celebrate their wedding days. I am so excited that I get to share with you this gorgeous Lithuanian wedding shot by photographer Svetlana Batura (who also captured this timeless autumn wedding I featured).

Svetlana took the time to tell me all about the wedding of Irminta and Artur and what they were inspired by, I particularly love the horse drawn cart ride for the bride and groom and their friends – more about that below!

Irminta and Artur were inspired by their love of nature, old traditions, the naturalness they feel is missing from everyday life, and of their grandmother’s stories of village weddings. They wanted to combine old and new styles to create a wedding day that was beautiful, fun and that celebrated their family traditions.

Charlie

A rustic and friendly wedding venue surrounded by rolling countryside – a visit to Huntstile Organic Farm in Somerset

Charlie

A few weeks ago Mr Rigg and I were lucky enough to be invited to spend a night at Huntstile Organic Farm in Somerset. Hunstile is one of the beautiful wedding venues listed on The Natural Wedding Company directory – it’s a gorgeous organic farm run by some of the loveliest people I’ve ever met.

We were warmly welcomed to Huntstile by Lizzie and John (the farm has been in John’s family since 1951 but dates back to the 15th century!) after making our way down lush green winding lanes. The farmhouse is breathtaking, a mixture of warm stone, mullioned windows, and white wash – the ancient front door thick and full of secrets.

Surrounded by rolling farmland, stunning views and a lovely menagerie of goats, ducks and pigs, Huntstile Organic Farm is a tiny piece of heaven and I can’t imagine a more lovely setting for a relaxed country wedding.

Huntstile even has its own stone circle where you can hold a marriage ceremony atop a hill overlooking the farm, a magical spot on the edge of a small copse with views all around. To get you and your guests to the stone circle, Lizzie and John have a wedding tractor and trailer, or if you’re getting married locally in church you can also arrive by tractor.

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