Colourful & DIY Luckley Farm Holidays Wedding for £15K

Oh, how I love Jasmine and Harry’s Luckley Farm Holidays wedding in the Cotswolds. Their day truly was a reflection of them and their relationship, and all on a £15K budget, which is really incredible!

Jasmine and Harry planned a totally DIY wedding, I mean they made everything. They grew flowers and preserved them, they hand-printed their stationery and they collected decor items for 2 years. It really was a community effort and the results are marvellous.

I also think it’s fantastic that they opted for second-hand attire (Jasmine’s dress was £16!!), which they looked absolutely amazing in.

Thanks to Jade Touron Photography for sharing these totally wonderful images of their very happy day. Be sure to take in all the magic.

Luckley Farm Holidays Wedding

The Proposal

We were on holiday in Warsaw for Harry’s birthday in December.

We climbed up an old church tower to view the city with the Christmas lights and luckily had it all to ourselves. I was running around taking photos, completely ignoring Harry who was down on one knee waiting for me to notice! We had a lovely dinner afterwards and walk around the beautiful city of Warsaw in the winter at night.

The Vision

We really wanted a very relaxed and enjoyable day for everyone. Good food, an open bar and music were a must for us as well as trying to stick to our DIY thrifty and creative ways.

Budget

15K

The Venue

We choose Luckley Farm Holidays, Gloucestershire for our venue because of the versatile and relaxed space, the ability to totally customise everything and pick all of our own suppliers. It also helps that the Cotswold autumnal setting is stunning.

We rented the whole farm and function barn for a long weekend so that almost all of our guests could stay on site and really unwind.

We used the farmhouse courtyard as a beautiful backdrop for our outdoor wedding ceremony (and thankfully could not have asked for better weather!) and the function barn for our reception.

Your Outfits

We are both very keen second-hand fashion buyers so almost all of our outfits were brought from eBay/charity shops/vintage fairs/car boot sales etc!

Harry wanted to wear something a bit different and really liked the idea of a wool or tweed three-piece and loves navy, so he was quite easy.

Harry wore a navy wool suit from M&S with a beautiful dark grey vintage waistcoat and textured white shirt which was a great find from the charity shop. Topped off with a burgundy tie, tie pin and cufflinks all sourced second-hand over the course of the year.

I had not got a clue what type of dress I wanted and had tried on quite a few at appointments before I found the perfect dress. However, I really wanted to explore the idea of a second-hand dress so took to eBay to see what I could find!

My dress was an absolute bargain satin A-line ex-display from eBay for £16.70! I had the seamstress who was selling it put in a lace-up back to allow for an easy fit. I am an amateur seamstress myself, so I took off the original sleeves and added the band for the off-shoulder effect to make my perfect wedding dress for under £60.

I picked up some yellow shoes for £5 second-hand and added the little shoe clips (from eBay). My brother’s girlfriend (and bridesmaid) made me some lovely white sea glass earrings to top it off.

The groomsmen then followed suit with their M&S wool suits (and traditional kilt for my brother, handmade by our gran). And the bridesmaids picked out their own colour and style of dress online from JJ’s House.

The Ceremony & Music

As we had already officially married on our original wedding date 10/10/2020 at the registry office so we wanted to keep this ceremony light-hearted and fun. That’s why we decided to hire our officiant, Sarah-Jane to perform a wedding blessing with a handfasting instead of the traditional rings.

She made our blessing feel very personal and special, and my dad got to give me away as he had not been able to at the registry office due to Covid. I had made the rope for the handfasting and we wrote our own vows and my lovely bridesmaids made confetti out of fallen leaves.

The whole feel of the ceremony was beautiful with lots of laughs and a few happy tears.

Our music for the evening was probably the best part of the entire day, our band 29 Fingers were outstanding. Everyone was on the dance floor for every song, and we couldn’t have asked for a better send off to the reception.

They played a mix of everything and even learnt my favourite song Mr Blue Sky! We asked our guests for song requests in our invitations and put together a playlist for the rest of the day with my brother very kindly being our DJ.

Your Photographer & Filmmaker

We spent quite a lot of time looking for our wedding photographer as we really wanted them to fit with our vision of the day. When we came across Jade’s website, we knew she would be a great fit.

We absolutely love how the photos have come out and she did a really great job making us feel relaxed on the day and giving us some direction, as I hate getting my photo taken! She did an amazing job of documenting the day for us and we loved looking through afterwards seeing all the bits we couldn’t on the day.

The Styling & Decor

We did everything ourselves with the help of friends and family. Harry likes to say I have a passion for taking on projects that are far too big, but it came out better than I could have hoped for. We really wanted a colourful and eclectic feel to the reception that was inspired by lots of scrolling through Pinterest!

It started with hand printing/painting all of our save the dates and invitations. It took a really long time, but the results were worth it.
For the ceremony, we were lucky enough to use the beautiful macrame backdrop from The Green Gypsy Macrame and my dad chopped up some logs for us to use on the aisle.
The barn at Luckley was a blank canvas so me, Harry and my parents set to work Thursday evening decorating the ceiling with faux greenery and fairy lights, as well are the tissue paper streamer stage backdrop and colourful paper lanterns for over the dancefloor.
We hired in some beautiful rustic wooden tables and chairs from Chipping Norton Event Hire which my very talented mum made macrame chair backs for that looked stunning on the day.
I spent the best part of 2 years collecting cheap brass candlesticks, old stoneware bottles, and glass jars for the table decoration from car boot sales and antique fairs. We also used a mix of faux and real greenery in the centre of the table.
In 2020 I had taken on the task of growing most of the flowers needed for our wedding. It was really fun; however, I would not recommend it if you don’t LOVE gardening! Unfortunately, due to the postponement of our wedding in 2020 I thought all my beautiful flowers would go to waste, but then I discovered silica gel! So, in 2021 for our table decoration, all of the flowers we used were grown by me in 2020 and then preserved in many Tupperware boxes in silica gel.
I really liked the idea of making my own bouquet as well so for mine and the bridesmaid bouquets I went into a florist and picked out each element separately and then hand tied them with homemade ribbon the night before the big day.
For the men’s buttonholes, I used some dried flowers and pheasant feathers I had picked up on walks in the countryside.

The Honeymoon

With restrictions still in place, we decided to go on a minimoon to Wales with our Romanian rescue pupa Roxy and are planning a bigger European road trip when restrictions ease.

Memorable Moments

For both of us, the highlight of the day was seeing all of our friends and family together for the first time in a few years and watching them pull some questionable moves on the dancefloor!

Advice For Other Couples

We DIY’d everything, from the decorations down to stocking our own open bar, as much as we loved our wedding and how it turned out, it was a BIG project. We could not have done it without lots of help from friends and family.

My advice to anyone else who is considering a DIY wedding is to not underestimate the time that it will all take and to plan for a lot of work at the venue the day before. The results can be amazing, personal and lots of fun but there were defiantly a few stressful moments that could have been avoided.