Homemade Pretty Pink & Green Wedding

Let’s start the week with a happy sun shining loved up celebration shall we?

WWW readers Jake and Terrie tied the knot on the 28^th July 2013 at the lovely Dodford Manor, Northamptonshire. With a vision of relaxed wedding day with all of their loved ones, they went for a handmade feel with a pretty pink and green colour scheme.

Perfect home made touches included the amazing dolls house table plan, decorated jam jars and luggage tag place names. The bridesmaids looked gorgeous in pastel coloured flowing frocks and I adore the lush blooms.

Terrie donned a Pronovias lace dress with lovely Harriet Wilde shoes while Jake looked dapper in grey tails and tan brogues. Oh soooo delightful.

Thank you so much to the wonderful Jordanna Marston for sharing her photographs with us today.

The Proposal

I’m a teacher, and on the last day of school before the Easter holiday Jake surprised me by picking me up from work. When I got in the car he told me we were going home and that I needed to pack a bag – but he wouldn’t tell me anything else! Just to pack a few nice evening outfits and some casual day outfits. That night we drove to a hotel and the next morning he flew me to Venice.

I had an inkling at first that he might propose but then I noticed when we flew in that he was leaving his bag lying around – which I didn’t think he would do if there was a ring inside, so I put the proposal idea out of my head completely.

On the second night, we went for a lovely meal and then found a little hole in the wall in a square that sold every kind of wine and Prosecco and there was live music – it was lovely – Jake suggested a walk and I didn’t want to leave, but he insisted and we walked down a wooden peer all lit up in fairy lights and he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. I was shaking and I didn’t answer at first, in my head I was saying yes but I couldn’t speak – he had to ask me again! Of course, I said yes.

The Vision for the Day

We knew we wouldn’t get away with having a very small wedding as we both have such big families and we couldn’t bear the thought of leaving anyone out, so if we couldn’t have small we definitely wanted it to be relaxed.

We both love all things vintage and we wanted as many of the details to be homemade with a vintage theme as possible. We loved two colours and couldn’t decide on one so we decided to just have both! We just wanted everyone to be able to come and celebrate and relax and enjoy themselves.

The Planning Process

I started planning on the plane home from the proposal! I’m not kidding. I brought 3 wedding magazines from the airport and got to work straight away, making lists and pulling out pictures to make collages! My lovely bridesmaids took me to quite a few wedding fairs to get some ideas and we started meeting up to plan what we were going to make.

To be honest, we started so early with ideas that we kind of forgot how much we had to make, but luckily all of my closest friends chipped In and after a few late night detail-making get togethers and a few glue gun accidents we managed to make everything on time!

The Venue

Dodford Manor – a fantastic venue that was quite new when we booked our wedding. It’s a lovely barn conversion with a really relaxed but luxurious and elegant feel. It was big enough to fit our big families but still felt intimate and has a lovely space outside for the children to play and the adults to mingle. It was just the perfect venue – and there’s nothing else around but fields, so no noise from traffic or anything like that.

The Readings + MusicWe chose a cross between traditional and modern reading because we didn’t want to get too tongue tied on the day.

Picking the music was one of our favourite parts of planning the wedding, we’re both really into our music, which is why our tables were actually named after our favourite bands! We got a lot of nice comments on our music choices.

The guests walked in to ‘Home’ by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros and ‘Us’ by Regina Spector – when I heard that music start and peeked at the guests coming in my heart was in my mouth! It gave be serious butterflies.

My bridesmaids walked down the aisle to ‘I Love NYE’ by Badly Drawn Boy and I followed to ‘Maestro’ by Hans Zimmer.

‘Beating Hearts’ by King Charles played whilst we signed the book and we walked back up the isle together to ‘Somewhere over the rainbow’ by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole. A perfect eclectic mix of all of our faves, as was the music for the reception and wedding breakfast.

Beautiful Bridesmaids

The beautiful bridesmaids were dressed in lovely, free flowing floor length chiffon dresses, two in antique pink and two in a dusky green and they looked absolutely stunning. All donned relaxed up do’s, courtesy of THE most fantastic hairdresser, Jade Tipper. In their bridesmaids gift bags I also brought them each a lovely Pandora bracelet to wear, all different colours depending on what I thought they would like. For bridesmaid’s shoes, I told them to wear whatever they felt comfortable in – the dresses were so long that we couldn’t really see them anyway and I wanted them to feel relaxed and comfortable.

The Flowers

Most of the flowers were from Perkins Florist in Northampton, a lovely local florist in my mum’s village and Rosie did an amazing job putting together the bridesmaids and my bouquet and buttonholes as well as decorating the ceremony and reception room. Her brief was vintage, dusky pinks and green foliage, not too neat and she did a fab job, the flowers were perfect. She threw in lots of little extras too which were a lovely surprise, such as covering the tables in rose petals and adding hand tied flowers to all of the chairs.

Some of my dear friends had a couple of late nights gluing ribbon and lace and buttons to old jam jars with me a few nights before the wedding which were filled with flowers from the market. In all, the centre piece clusters of flower jars for 15 tables cost around £35, and £28 of that was spent on the flowers!

The Outfits

I knew I wanted a vintage looking dress and when I saw my lace number on the hanger I was in love even before I tried it on. My mum cried when I tried it on so I knew it was the one. It’s a Provonias lace dress with lots of fantastic detail. I brought the dress from Serendipity Brides in Northampton. I am in love with the accessories I found and I try to find any excuse I can to wear them again and again.

I was worried about losing some of the detail because I’m so short but there is an absolute wonder woman called Irina in Northampton who is THE best seamstress I have ever met. She worked her magic and none of the beautiful detail was lost. All of my accessories were from a wonderful shop in Northampton called Lola Bridal – where the girls are brilliant, they made me feel so welcome and helped me pick the perfect accessories for my day. The lovely delicate pearly bracelet and hair piece I wore were both glitzy secrets from Lola.

My shoes are Harriet Wilde and were completely out of my budget, but Lola saved the day and as I loved them so much they offered me such a good price I couldn’t say no. I had such a good experience in Lola I really would recommend them to anyone who is on the search for their wedding.

I think the trick to finding the perfect dress is not to try on too many. I limited myself to three shops and I decided to only pull out the ones I really, really liked. Otherwise it just gets too confusing and overwhelming. The dress I chose in the end was in the last of the three shops but it was the first one I tried on in that shop. I knew as soon as I saw it on the hanger, I just had my fingers crossed that it looked as nice on me as it did hanging up! Luckily I loved it even more on – I didn’t want to take it off.

I left Jake’s attire up to him completely which the lovely lady in Vicker’s, Northampton was shocked about. But I knew he’d look handsome in whatever he chose and he has a really good fashion sense anyway so I really wasn’t worried. He chose a gorgeous grey suit in the end and towards the end of the night, he swapped his waistcoat for a pair of brown braces which looked amazing. He also wore brown brogues which he still wears all the time now actually. They were an absolute bargain, I found them in a House of Fraser sale reduced from nearly £200 to £55!!

The Cake

Made by my close friend and colleague Peter Baker (very appropriate name) as a wedding gift. I didn’t see the cake until the day and I couldn’t have been happier with it. Actually, them, as he also made 100 cupcakes, a lemon cake, a chocolate cake and a carrot cake! There was a lot of cake!

Your Photographer

Jordanna Marston, found through a friend who heard I was searching far and wide for a vintage wedding photographer. I had searched, a lot, for a wedding photographer, as what we wanted was photos that were relaxed and natural whilst still being stunning and Jordanna filled that brief perfectly.

I don’t usually like having my photo taken so I was quite daunted by the prospect of all those photos being taken on the day, but on our engagement shoot, Jordanna made us feel so relaxed and comfortable that we actually ended up really enjoying ourselves. Probably one of the larger parts of our small budget was spent on photography, but it’s the only thing you have left over to remember to best day of your life, so it’s well worth spending a few extra pennies we think.

The Details + Decor

We had jam jars decorated with lace and ribbon and buttons, all recycled or brought from the market. I made the luggage tag place names with my mum one Saturday- I think they came to a grand total of £11 to make. Another lovely friend made the album cover table cards for us which turned out great. One of my favourite details had to be the dolls house seating plan made by one of my brilliant bridesmaids Roxi Yon.

She’s an artist and wanted to make us something special for the day and I couldn’t be happier with the result. Each room was based on one of the bands that Jake and I chose to represent the tables at the wedding breakfast and everything inside was hand made. We even went to every local DIY shop to get wallpaper samples for the rooms!

The Honeymoon

The day after the wedding we drove to St Ives for a week and stayed at the best bed and breakfast (if you can call it a B&B) call The Tide House. Our days were spent eating amazing food, walking along the beach, and shopping in some lovely little boutiques whilst reminiscing about the wedding. St Ives is one of our favourite places, so it was a perfect start to our honeymoon. After that, we came home briefly to say goodbye to all of Jakes family from Canada and my Maltese family who flew over the wedding, before setting off for Rhodes for another week of glorious sunshine and lazing by the private pool to our swim up room. Bliss.

Memorable Moments

As the music came on, I peeked through the one way arrow slit window in the bridal retreat at all of the guests coming in – when I spotted Jake at the end of the aisle I remember feeling so nervous and excited, I started crying when I saw him, I couldn’t wait to marry him.

Another memorable moment for us was when we went to the bridal retreat just after the ceremony to take a couple of minutes to take it all in – we couldn’t stop smiling.

Jake’s 95 year old grandma out-dancing everyone at the reception, despite just flying over from Canada!

My dad coming in to give me away and choking up when he told me how beautiful I looked.

Advice for Other Couples

Enjoy it. Try to remember why you are getting married in the first place and that little things like getting the wrong shade of napkin don’t really matter – you won’t even notice them on the day – you’ll be so happy and excited and overwhelmed with talking to everyone that those things really won’t matter.

Make time to make things if you’re on a budget. We made lot’s of our own details and the invites and really enjoyed it. There are always friend and family willing to help you out and it is a fantastic way to save money – plus we really enjoyed recycling old things and making them into something new. You just have to make sure you start getting crafty way ahead of time.

Set a realistic budget. We didn’t count things like dress alterations and postage to send out invites which all really adds up, so it is important to include everything when you make your budget and to shop around – there are always cheaper alternatives if you shop around a bit.

Credit Where Credit is Due…

Photography | Jordanna Marston Photography

Band | Pure Genius

Venue | Dodford Manor

Dress Shop | Serendipity Brides

Honeymoon | The Tide House

Make Up | Liza Smith Make Up

Flowers | Perkins Florists

Suit | Vickers Menswear

Bridal Accessories | Lola Bridal

Dress Alterations | Irina

Perfection. Such a lovely day.

Thanks so so much to Jake and Terrie for sharing their beautiful wedding with us today XOXO Lou