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Blog: real bride Caroline

Charlie

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

Charlie

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…

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! 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: 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: Caroline tells us about making a wedding cake and getting help from family and friends

Charlie

The countdown for TNWC Real Bride Caroline has really begun – her wedding is less than a month away now so preparations are going at full tilt! Caroline, and her Mr-to-be Gareth, are planning a very homemade wedding on their farm in Nottinghamshire with a picnic lunch full of local produce. On top of it all, this month Caroline has been busy making a wedding cake for her friends wedding!

Over to Caroline to tell you what she’s been up to in the lead-up to her wedding…

Well the most exciting news this month is that the cows are out of the barns and in the fields!!!

The clean up job has officially begun! This is the bit where I gracefully bow out (I have sooooooo much crafting to do so not possibly time to get up to my elbows in cow poo!!) and leave the mucking out, power hosing and yard sweeping to the boys.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Caroline tells us about their picnic style wedding lunch and foodie favours

Charlie

Another Tuesday rolls around and I have another lovely guest blog from a TNWC Real Bride. Today Caroline who is planning an eco-friendly farm wedding is sharing her delicious sounding plans for a picnic style wedding lunch, foodie wedding favours and a pork pie wedding cake. Yum yum!

I’d advise reading this while munching a biscuit or your own lunch or you are likely to feel extremely hungry by the end of it…you’ve been warned!

Eleven weeks to go, and the lists are getting longer, hours spend asleep are getting shorter (I keep waking up in the middle of the night remembering things I have to do – it is SUCH a good idea to have a pen and paper next to the bed to write them down!). And the spare room is getting fuller and fuller of wedding related paraphernalia!

I thought that for this months blog post, I’d share our food plans with you, as planning and organising that bit is proving to be heaps of fun, and I think one of the most enjoyable and important parts of our day.

Gareth and I are both big foodies, and we try to buy locally wherever we can, and having a picnic lunch is a brilliant way to be able to use local suppliers and get to know lovely local food producers in our area. It’s also a fab way to make sure the foods amazing, even on a limited budget!

Picnic Wedding Menu

So far for our menu we’ve decided on:

Sourdough and olive bread from Welbeck Bakery, ham and smoked salmon pate from The Country Victualler, lots of homemade chutney from my lovely friend Jo, bags of Pipers Crisps, cheeses from Long Clawson Dairy (Thomas Hoe Red Leicester and Stilton), Lincolnshire poacher cheese, Mike Maloneys pork pies, salads made by my brilliant big sister (we haven’t decided quite what salads yet though!), houmous, grapes, apples and celery.

I’m sure there will be a few extras added too though, and we have a lovely farm shop just down the road who I’m sure will be having lot of last minute visits from us!

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: introducing Caroline and Gareth’s laid back eco-friendly farm wedding

Charlie

It’s pretty exciting to be into the third week of introducing you to my TNWC Real Brides – so far we’ve met Emma and Chris, Nik and Chris, Myfanwy and Tom, and Sarah and Lee. If you haven’t yet read about their wedding plans, grab a cup of something hot and enjoy a lovely read all their different ideas.

This week I have two more TNWC Real Brides to welcome, starting today with Caroline who is marrying her Mr-to-be Gareth on their family farm in Nottinghamshire. I love that Caroline dreamed of being a farmers wife and ended up falling in love with a farmer – happy reading everyone!

Caroline + Gareth: 18th May 2013, Nottinghamshire

As soon as I met Gareth I had a sneaky feeling he was ‘the one’ – I’ve always had a little dream of living a simple life and being a farmers wife, surrounded by the smell of freshly baked bread, with roaring fires, and of course reality isn’t actually quite like that – the smell of bread is usually overpowered by the smell of cows, and being woken up at 4am each morning as the boys start work isn’t always brilliant when you fancy a little lie in on a Sunday , but I still love it just as much as I always thought I would!

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