Pretty & Rustic DIY Farm Wedding

I adore how much love, thought and effort went into this wedding today.

Carolyn and Paul were married on Saturday 9^th April 2016 at The Barn at Dalduff Farm in Scotland. Their rustic meets pretty wedding was hand crafted by their own fair hands, with Carolyn not only baking the beautiful cake but making the stationery, bunting and all of the gorgeous little touches too. The barn looked just wonderful adorned in fairy lights and the nod to their love of Williams Brothers beers was pretty special. Every little detail was thought of and I am sure their guests had an amazing time.

Carolyn wore a lace sleeved gown called Amore by Rosetta Nicolini and she clutched the sweetest bouquet arranged by Sparrow and Rose. The boys all wore tweed ensembles which really looked very dapper, while the bridesmaids donned teal frocks. How very lovely.

Thanks so much to John Elphinstone Stirling for sharing these really fantastic images.

THE PROPOSAL | Paul wanted to make sure I had a ring that I liked and we both wanted something that no one else had. So, he took me to a ring designer in Glasgow that could make something individual for us. As it turns out this also ended up being much better value for money and the owners were incredibly helpful and provided an excellent service.

I vaguely knew when the ring would be ready, but Paul was adamant that the proposal would still be a surprise and assured me that he wouldn’t just pop the question as soon as it arrived. In fact, it was ready earlier than expected and so when Paul took me for a lovely hill walk in a snowy Aberfoyle (something we do often) I had no clue that he would be getting down on one knee at the top.

THE VISION | Paul and I are avid crafters and usually always have a project on the go, so for us, a DIY wedding made perfect sense. I have always loved barn venues and after lots of research finally found one that fitted in with our budget and travel distance for guests. The Barn at Dalduff Farm was the only venue we actually visited and it provided us with a blank canvas to decorate as we wished. It also had absolutely outstanding catering – another high priority on our list! Our overall vision for the day was to keep everyone relaxed, well fed and well entertained and I think we managed to pull it off as we have had so many comments from guests about how well looked after they felt and how much they enjoyed their day. Something else we wanted to include was Williams Brothers beers as they are our favourite and how we choose most of our date venues! We used some of their bottles to structure our table plan and Paul made wooden beer mats from pieces of skirting board and PDFs of the beers kindly sent to us by Williams Brothers to guide guests to their seats.

THE PLANNING PROCESS | We had just over a year to plan our wedding and the first thing we did was decide what kind of ceremony we wanted to have. As Paul and I both grew up in church there were many elements of a religious ceremony that we both loved and wanted to include in our wedding. However, we were also keen to be able to use our venue for both the ceremony and the reception, to cut out more travel for our guests who were already traveling some distance. We therefore decided to hire a registrar to perform our ceremony, knowing that this would give us flexibility to include some religious elements once “the legal bit” was over. In actual fact the South Ayrshire Registry department gave us more flexibility than we could ever have imagined, allowing us to include every element we wanted throughout the service, rather than only after the ring exchange. We were also able to have Paul’s dad come up and give a message, something which meant so much to both of us.

After this the hunt for a suitable venue began and Dalduff Farm was just absolutely perfect for us. We had originally hoped to have our ceremony outside in the beautiful gardens, but as the weather in the week leading up to the wedding was questionable, we decided not to risk it. As it turns out, having our ceremony inside the barn was perfect and we were able to add a different kind of magical atmosphere with our lighting that we wouldn’t have had outside.

Once we had our venue, the style for our décor was easy to choose and I spent lots of time looking at wedding blogs and pinterest to pick up crafting ideas for what I guess falls into the “rustic” category. We started our DIY projects as soon as possible as there were many we wanted to do and we didn’t want to be rushing to complete anything major in the days beforehand. These projects were ongoing during the planning process.

We actually found the planning process quite stress free. This was quite possibly because we had so much time to plan, but I think also because we were very thorough with our research and because I had lists for everything! I literally had a plan for everything I could think of – ceremony set up for a dry day, ceremony set up for a wet day, courtyard set up, dessert back up plans etc. etc. etc. It sounds majorly over prepared and over the top, but, it meant that during set up the day before and on the day itself I had absolutely nothing to think about and I felt so relaxed all day.

BUDGET | We sat down at the beginning of the planning process and worked out what we were reasonably going to be able to save in the year leading up to our wedding. Leaving some room for disasters such as broken cars or boilers, we set ourselves a budget of £12,000 with the aim to save as much money as possible through DIY projects. There were a few dream ideas we had to sacrifice to stick to our budget, but actually, they weren’t missed on the day and were really only luxurious extras.

THE VENUE | The Barn at Dalduff Farm is found just outside Ayr in Scotland. The owner, James, and the wedding co-ordinator, Kathryn, are incredibly helpful and ridiculously flexible. They offered us guidance on how best to use their venue, but gave us complete control over how we wanted to decorate, arrange furniture and arrange timings for the day, which, although not for everyone, was exactly what we wanted. The food from Dalduff Farm is also famous in its own right and the on-site catering was a huge bonus. We didn’t have to worry about finding tables and chairs or plates and cutlery as the venue provided all these and the food was simply immaculate. We had a meeting with James to discuss our “Wedding Feast” – a buffet-style meal, only served to the table – where he gave us lots of ideas to go and think about. In the end we chose to serve canapés as the starter, had four “mains” dishes and served our wedding cake as the dessert along with a few other little pies.

THE DRESS & ACCESSORIES | My dress was “Amore” by Rosetta Nicolini and I wore a veil from my sister-in-law as my something old and borrowed. My mum gifted me a lovely pair of earrings and a necklace as my something new and I made my own garter to include my something blue. My shoes came from the Debenhams wedding department and were a bargain £22! I know a lot of people like to invest in designer shoes for their wedding, but I wanted a pair that I didn’t have to worry about as I knew I could be walking through muddy fields around the farm for photographs.

FINDING THE DRESS | I only took my mum dress shopping with me as I felt too many opinions might make the choice difficult – I’m not the best when it comes to decision making. As my family live in Northern Ireland my mum and I decided to blast a few shops in one day to make the most of her visit. We booked four appointments in shops around Glasgow and went to them all, but inevitably I ended up back in the shop where I started. I didn’t really have that “this is the one” moment that people often talk about, but I knew that I really liked the dress and it fitted in with exactly what I thought I would always wear. I really wanted lace and most importantly wanted something that I was going to be able to dance in comfortably during our ceilidh. I’m so glad I took the “Amore” dress as it was so comfortable on the day and it even came in under budget, after alterations!

GROOM’S ATTIRE | It took a while for Paul to choose between wearing a traditional Scottish kilt or a suit. In the end he kind of mixed the two and had Scottish Harris Tweed trousers custom made to match the custom waistcoat he had been gifted as a groomsman at his best friend’s wedding. His groomsmen wore the same custom made waistcoats with their choice of tweed and coloured back, paired with heavy cotton trousers to differentiate them from the groom. Paul and the boys really enjoyed the experience of getting to choose everything down to the buttons for their outfit – I think they became even more picky than me in the end!

THE READINGS & MUSIC | Music was a massive part of our wedding ceremony as we are both keen musicians and actually sing together in our own little wedding duo. I chose to walk down the aisle to “Elliots” by Rura and we walked (or rather danced!) back down the aisle to “Toss the Feathers” by The Corrs. One of my oldest and dearest friends played the fiddle for us and one of Paul’s oldest and dearest played guitar. We also had one of our very talented friends sing “This is the First Day of My Life” by Bright Eyes during the signing of the register and yet another very talented friend who sang for our congregational songs “Inside Out” and “Blessed Be Your Name”. The readings for the ceremony were an extract from “House of Leaves” by Mark Z. Danielewski called “You Shall Be My Roots” and a Biblical reading, 1 Corinthians 13, which Paul’s dad chose to match his message.

In the evening we had Jiggered Ceilidh Band play for us. They do an excellent mix of ceilidh and popular tunes, so there is something for everyone. They even performed our first dance, “Shut Up and Dance” by Walkthemoon and learnt “Isn’t She Lovely” by Stevie Wonder for a special Father-Daughter dance.

BEAUTIFUL BRIDESMAIDS | I chose to have my two sisters and my niece as my bridesmaids and we looked for dresses in Northern Ireland as I thought it would be easier for them to organise fittings.   Apart from having a vague colour palette in mind I wasn’t really fussed on having matching dresses, just something that everyone looked nice and felt comfortable in. After trying many different styles and colour combos, it turns out that what actually suited everyone best was the same dress in the same colour – go figure.

THE FLOWERS | I absolutely love flowers and would have happily covered the entire venue from top to tail! Unfortunately that wasn’t quite in our budget… so we prioritised getting bouquets and buttonholes. Lisa from Sparrow and Rose did a superb job and created the exact wild and rustic look we were going for. She even sent me a pinterest board filled with different sizes and colours so that we could select our favourites – I loved that!

For the rest of the venue flowers we used a wholesaler in Glasgow. The day before the wedding we had a fantastic little flower arranging production line made up of family and friends. They did a super job, putting everything together in a couple of hours.

THE CAKE | I also love baking and, as we were trying to keep costs down in as many areas as possible, I decided that I would bake the cake myself. I chose a three tier naked cake (primarily because I like the look, but it was also handy that it made the decorating process easier!) and used different flavours for each tier. The bottom layer was White Chocolate and Raspberry, the middle Chocolate Guinness and the top a Vegan Lemon Sponge. Baking the cake myself meant I was pretty busy the few days before the wedding and that I also had some arranging to do the morning of, but it was totally worth it – we only had one piece of cake left at the end of the evening!

YOUR PHOTOGRAPHER | It took many hours of research, but eventually we came across John Elphinstone Stirling, whose artistic pictures fitted in exactly with the vibe we were looking for. We met John and his lovely wife Emma for a coffee and immediately knew we would love to work with them. They are a very chilled out couple but are also hugely accommodating and professional. They took time to make sure that they had the correct understanding of what we wanted and the complimentary pre-shoot helped us become comfortable with how they worked before the big day. John managed to capture the story of our wedding day perfectly and gave us all of our hundreds of pictures to keep – we were so pleased with the service!

THE DETAILS & DÉCOR | We made all of our own stationery: save the dates, invitations, orders of service, table plan and menus. I made about 75m of bunting (I gave up at that!) to hang across the courtyard and decorated around 90 jam/coffee/sauce jars with hessian and lace to use as our flower vases. I also made some hessian and lace table runners and our amazing friend chopped up a tree so we could have some beautiful ash stumps for the tables as well. We made direction signs using scraps of wood, chalk paint and pens and a sign to welcome our guests to the wedding made out of pallets. We had several photo frame chalkboard signs throughout the venue explaining our photobooth instructions and seating arrangements or just for other general decoration. We also used a pallet to make “a plan” or timetable of events for the day and an old frame to hold our wallpaper confetti cones for guests to grab after the ceremony. Finally we made some giant light-up initials to decorate our photobooth area. We used papier-mâché and some fairy lights to make these for a fraction of the price of hiring.

After our ceremony we had a small afternoon tea as our service was at 2 o’clock and we knew many of our guests would have missed lunch. I spent a few weeks before the wedding baking (freezeable) tray bakes and my wonderful family spent time the night before making up a variety of finger sandwiches. Besides keeping everyone happy and fed, this also gave us the perfect opportunity to spend some time with our guests before photographs.

As mentioned, a huge part of our aim for the wedding was to make sure that everyone was kept entertained, especially when we were getting our portrait photographs taken. We set up a games room and brought all of our board games from home – it was a huge hit! Paul also made a treasure hunt for our guests to complete and we put small prizes like sweets and bubbles at each clue location. We also had a home-made photobooth (with our own camera on a timer) that doubled as a guestbook. People were able to write us a message on chalkboards and take a picture, or simply use it as a normal photobooth with lots of DIY and borrowed props – we have some great photos as a result! We also made wedding activity books for the children who attended our wedding and placed these on the dinner table in case they got bored.

To begin the evening portion of the day we also had a fire pit where guests were able to build and toast their “Smore” wedding favours. These were great as they doubled up as an extra dessert and were also a great source of entertainment for some messy eaters. We kept the fire going until the very end of the night so that we got to enjoy it ourselves.

THE HONEYMOON | We had one week off after the wedding. We decided that we would “mini-moon” on the Isle of Arran for a few days and not go on our proper honeymoon until summer. We are set to go to Cuba in July for 10 days and can’t wait – it’s been nice to keep the wedding experience going for a little bit longer!

MEMORABLE MOMENTS | To be honest, neither of us can choose a memorable moment from the day. Our ceremony was so special to us, with so many of our friends and family getting involved. It was so wonderful to spend the day looking around and seeing all of our loved ones enjoying themselves. Our time together getting photographs as a couple was lovely and meant we had some “us” time. The band were amazing and helped us have a proper party in the evening… we loved every second and only wish it could have lasted longer!

ADVICE FOR OTHER COUPLES | Lots of people say that it’s your wedding so you should do what you want and I think that is true, to an extent. We certainly did some things that our family and friends weren’t entirely sure of and we wanted to make the wedding our own with all of our DIY projects. However, we also wanted to make sure that our guests were happy and comfortable because they were all people we care about. I think it’s important to think about how you would feel as a guest at your wedding because inevitably happy guests make the bride and groom’s day better!

It’s also very important, in my opinion, to have a plan for everything. Perhaps not as detailed as mine, but certainly enough to take away any potential stresses on the day.

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE |

Photographer | John Elphinstone Stirling

Venue | The Barn at Dalduff Farm

Catering | Dalduff Farm

Bride’s Dress | Berketex Bride

Bridesmaid’s Dresses | Creative Ideas Bridal

Groom’s suit and Groomsmens waistcoats | Custom made by Buck and Hare

Flowers | Sparrow and Rose

Hair and Makeup | AMM Hair and Makeup Team

Evening entertainment | Jiggered Ceilidh Band

Guest Transport |  Shuttle Buses

Ahh so special.

Carolyn and Paul, thank you both so much for sharing your gorgeous nuptials with us xo Lou