A Fun-Loving Wedding featuring a Tractor & Space Hoppers

You can't help but fall for this fun-loving couple. Tasha and Niall DIY'd their wedding from the ceremony up, and their personalities shine through every brilliant detail. I love their handmade marquee decorations - the bunting, ribbon chandeliers and burlap table runners, and their genius idea to ask all their friends to make cupcakes for their wedding cake. They hosted their reception in Tasha's parent's orchard, and filled it with lawn games, giant jenga, a child-out area, and even a calypso bar. Amazing! Enjoy these pictures by Michael from My Beautiful Bride - he's really captured the spirit of the occasion.

It was an easy choice to have the wedding reception in the garden of my family home where I grew up, as it's so beautiful there. 

We set up lots of different areas around the garden; we had a calypso bar with a rum punch bowl, an orchard with lots of games like giant jenga, a chill out area and a photobooth with costumes for silly pictures.

Our photographer, Michael from My Beautiful Bride was brilliant. His fantastic photos speak for themselves!

Our wedding flowers were DIY'd by my mother and my mother-in-law on the morning of the wedding. 

Together with friends and family we did lots of DIY decorations, which obviously saved money, but meant we had really unique and personal things. 

Instead of a wedding cake some of the family made over a hundred cupcakes and on the day everyone decorated one. The effect when they were all done was brilliant! 

For entertainment, a friend played the piano in the afternoon {we're lucky enough to have very talented friends!} and after dinner we had a 50's rockabilly band The Hound Dogs. These were absolutely fantastic, playing so many classics that appealed to all the generations.

We made bunting, ribbon decorations, signs, hung hearts and ribbons from all the trees and did our own flowers. Our marquee was provided by County Marquees.

After the speeches we gave everyone a pair of these amazing glasses that turn every light into a heart. With them on we watched fireworks with Michael Buble's 'Feeling Good' blasting out! Definitely a highlight! 

We are so lucky to have so many fabulous people in our lives that helped make the day amazing. We definitely couldn't have done it without them! 

Our caterer was Sarah Hollowell of Goodys Cake Company - she was brilliant - the food was delicious.

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A Fabulous Festival-Style Marquee Wedding

This incredible boho wedding features a folly, a tractor, and a trio of Space Hoppers. It's pretty special!  Tasha chose her family home for her marquee reception, but took a chance on the weather, and picked an outdoor folly on the edge for a corn field for her wedding ceremony to Niall. Luckily the sun shone, and all the guests loved their personalised vows. Other DIY details include all the wedding flowers, which were arranged by the mothers of the bride and groom, the design of Tasha's wedding dress, and most of the marquee decorations. They even managed to persuade a local farmer to lend them a tractor and trailer for wedding transport. Love it! Don't miss the reception pictures in my second post of today - brilliant wedding photographer Michael, from My Beautiful Bride has done us proud!

It was an easy choice to have the wedding reception in the garden of my family home where I grew up, as it's so beautiful there. However it was harder to decided where to host our ceremony.

My husband's three-piece suit was by Duchamp London. He teamed it with a purple tie and simple white handkerchief and shirt.

For my dress I ended up going to a bespoke wedding dressmaker, Dana Bolton, who is based in Muswell Hill in London.

I tried the shops and found lots that were lovely, but none were completely perfect, so I designed one combining all their best features. Dana was on the same page as me throughout and she did such a beautiful job.

Our wedding flowers were DIY'd by my mother and my mother-in-law on the morning of the wedding.

I had bridesmaids from one year old to thirty one, so ended up with three different styles of dress. We linked them by putting the younger girls in white dresses by Monsoon, with sashes that matched the older bridesmaids and they all looked to die for {especially the one year old!}.

For our wedding transport we managed to persuade a very kind local farmer to lend us an old vintage tractor that pulled a trailer, which we decorated with red material and ivy. For seats, we put in an old sofa and a load of beanbags. 

On the way back to the reception we had about fifteen of us all piled into the trailer! It was great to have something that all the young bridesmaids and ushers could enjoy together with us. 

My grown-up bridesmaids' dresses were by Alfred Sung on the Dessy website. I chose a fab teal colour in four different styles, and paired them with nude heeels.

We had to think about where to have the ceremony, as we didn't fancy a church wedding. In the end we took a massive gamble on the weather and had it outside at a beautiful little folly in some fields just down the road from the reception.

It completely paid off as we were so incredibly lucky with the weather. We kept it rustic with hay bales for seats, big white festival flags in the fields, flowers and an ivy arch behind us. 

Because the ceremony location wasn't licensed for weddings we did the legal part in a registry office a couple of days before, which meant we could have free reign over the ceremony.

We wrote our own vows, my brother in law took the ceremony, friends and family did a reading, poem and prayer, and at the end we all sang 'Can't take my eyes off you'! It worked so well - personal, emotional and lots of fun.

Our photographer, Michael from My Beautiful Bride was brilliant. His fantastic photos speak for themselves!

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A Perfect English Summer Wedding with a Teepee! - Part 2

This summer wedding season has been all about the teepee marquee, and I'm happy to wager the trend will last us all the way into 2013. I love their rustic simplicity, and the fact you don't have to buy in expensive draping and lighting. Add in family style dining tables, big vessels of wildflowers and hay bale seats snaffled from a local farmer, and your all set for your wedding reception. Cheryl and Richard celebrated their big day on the perfect English summer's day, with tonnes of beautiful wedding details. I love how they themed their tables with personal photographs, and DIY'd their place-markers with bird stamps. Their wedding cake is work of white chocolate art, hiding a rather delicious chocolate biscuit interior, and their flowers were DIY'd by one of their bridesmaids. Huge thanks to Cheryl for all her lovely recommendations on how to plan your wedding, and big love to wedding photographer Hester Marriott, for her amazing pictures from the day. Don't miss Part 1.

My flatmate at the time, Charlotte Bromley Davenport is a wedding photographer, and she recommended Hester Marriott who is not only local to the church but a brilliant wedding photographer. We were adamant that we wanted someone with a great eye and reportage style as well as a warm and likeable personality, so soon as we met and she showed us her portfolio it was clear she was our photographer. 

On the day itself Hester was a true professional yet sensitive and gentle with us all; we hardly saw her and yet we were given the most beautiful shots which perfectly captured our day.

I have so may wonderful memories from the day - standing at the back of the church on the hottest day of the year seeing all my favourite people in one place, having our photographs taken as a family in the gorgeous sunshine whilst our friends sipped champagne, standing barefoot on a hay bale as my new husband gave his speech, my new husband grabbing my hand and pulling me out of the tipi to see fireworks overhead....I could go on and on!

I'm a country girl at heart so it felt only right that we have a country-style wedding. Richard was wonderful and really let me indulge my little-girl dream of a tipi outside the church overlooking the farm, hay bales, lanterns and a fire. It was rustic and beautiful - everything I had hoped for on my wedding day.

One of my bridesmaids offered to do the flowers, which was brilliant. I was pretty specific about the look that I wanted; traditional mismatched English flowers tumbling from vintage jugs, watering cans & enamel buckets.

We were kindly lent the vases for the table decorations so deliberately chose a mismatched rustic look. We wove ivy around the beams in the tipis and hung lanterns everywhere which were lit as the sun set.

Our photographer, Hester Marriott, recommended the caterers Mange 2 who are local to the church. As soon as we met Georgie and had our tasting session it was clear they were the ones for us. They worked with such sensitivity to give us our dream wedding, with hessian baskets for the sweet jacket potatoes, the most incredible hog roast and fantastic staff to serve it all. 

The food was absolutely exceptional; literally every single guest commented on it, especially our fabulous canapes and our beautiful chocolate biscuit wedding cake covered in white chocolate.

I loved planning our wedding day. We had five months to pull it all together and it far surpassed everything we had hoped. I had to find my dress pretty swiftly to ensure it was made in time but everything else fell into place. I'm a huge fan of lists (!) and found that a detailed plan for the day was crucial, to enable the ushers to follow your instructions on the day without overloading anyone.

Our wedding band Saloon Star came through a recommendation from a friend; we were absolutely DELIGHTED as they encapsulated the folksy, lively, rustic feel to the wedding. Everyone danced their socks off!

♥ Want more wedding marquee ideas? ♥ Or how about more blue themed weddings? ♥

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