Magical & Enchanting DIY Autumn Kent Village Hall Wedding

Matt and Chloe’s autumn Kent village hall wedding is a total and utter dream! With a reception held at Penshurst Village Hall, complete with a church ceremony.

If you are DIYing your day, be ready to feel super inspired by the homemade sequin bridesmaid dresses, the crafted faux flower wedding arch and all the hand-arranged table flowers. Plus much much more.

From the forest portraits to the sensational outfits, magical fairy lighting and stunning florals, you will adore their day.

Holly Rose Weddings thank you ever so much for sharing with us these sensational images.

Kent Village Hall Wedding

The Proposal

We met on tinder in November 2017, got engaged within 10 months, and were married exactly 22 months later.

Matt proposed on 5th September 2018, we had a day trip planned to Brighton for his birthday to do all of our favourite things. Eat at our favourite pub, spend time on the pier and even play glow in the dark crazy golf. We don’t live too far from the city, and so we visit often and it’s become our special place.

On the day, we took a walk along the beach after lunch and Matt chose a secluded spot on the beach to get down on one knee. Even though Chloe tried her hardest to disrupt these well-laid plans by insisting on getting a bag of candy floss and having very sticky fingers. Matt had a speech all prepared and managed to get through nearly all of it without crying!

Matt had already chosen the ring all on his own, an emerald set between 2 diamonds and it was just perfect.

The Vision

Handmade, rustic. A traditional church service followed by a very non-traditional reception, including all of our favourite things such as pick a mix and crazy golf.

The Planning Process

We knew before we got engaged the date and the venues that we wanted, and as soon as that was secured, we set about planning the rest. We only had a year to plan, and so we made decisions quickly.

We visited a traditional wedding fair and quickly realised it wasn’t for us! In the early days, we booked the big things, Holly as our photographer, the MGB for our car, the cake from Debbie, and everything else we worked through as we thought of it. We didn’t consult lots of planning lists, and we thought of our own ideas and made them a reality.

We know we wanted a handmade wedding and decided to do a lot of the decorations ourselves. This meant that in the lead-up to our wedding, we spent a lot of time DIY-ing, making things such as a fake flower arch, which was 7 feet tall and had 840 fake flowers attached to it. The making was a real family affair with both Matt’s parents and Chloe’s parents getting involved and helping out.

Because we did so much ourselves and had a village hall reception, we spent the day before with both our families setting up and decorating the hall. A much bigger task than we anticipated.

Budget

Although we didn’t have a strict budget, we wanted to spend in certain areas on the things that were important to us and gave us those extra little details. We didn’t total up how much we spent in the end, but it was around £15k.

The Venue

We chose to get married at St Denys’ church, Rotherfield, as this is where Chloe’s parents had got married, and Chloe was christened.

We had our reception at Penshurst village hall, and chose this because Matt grew up near here, and it’s a beautiful Tudor hall.

The Readings & Music

We had 3 readings in church:

Colossians chapter 3 v12-17 read by Chloe’s brother
Union by Robert Fulghum ready by our bridesmaid Sophie
If I live to be a hundred by AA Milne read by one of the best men Bob

The processional was Canon in D Major by Pachebel. The recessional was Better together by Jack Johnson (I had these lyrics on my jacket and veil).

We sang:
I vow to thee my country
Jerusalem
One more step along the world I go

During the signing of the register we had Matt’s sister Rachel sing You got a friend in me by Randy Newman, and then had a recording of Happy together by The Turtles.

Our first dance was Can’t help falling in love by Elvis and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, which we did a choreographed dance to (we had had lessons for).

Our last song of the night was You make my dreams come true by Hall and Oates.

Your Outfits & Accessories

Chloe: My dress was a Mori Lee dress from Love Me Do bridal shop in Walton-on Thames. My cape veil, which I had chosen before I had got my dress was from Story Of My Dress Bridal. Cara was fab in helping to design the embroidery. I really wanted a long veil but felt that one coming from my hair just didn’t feel like me, and when I put on the cape veil for the first time in the boutique, I knew I had to have one.

My leather jacket was from John Lewis, painted by Lucy at letteredByLBP and my shoes were from New Look. I wore earrings that my dad had bought me years ago, a bracelet was left from my nanny and Matt bought me my diamond necklace as a wedding present from De Beers.

Matt had a bespoke suit made, by Tony Stein, who used to have a shop on Saville Row. The whole process was great, with Tony visiting us at home to measure Matt and allow him to choose the fabric and lining. Matt wore shoes by Ted Baker, and the ties were from DickieBowShop on Etsy. Chloe bought Matt a watch as a wedding gift which he wore on the day.

Beauty

Matt’s colleague recommended our makeup artist, Sophie and I had a trial about 3 months before. I chose to have my signature eyeliner flick on the day and wore a more natural lip for the service, and a bight red lip in the evening.

My hair was done by Millie at Matisse Hairdressers, I grew my short bob especially for the wedding. And was super pleased with how Millie managed to put my hair up on the day and make it look much longer than it really was. They also both did my bridesmaid’s hair and makeup as well as my mum’s.

Groomsmen

Matt chose to have 3 best men, Dan, Andy and Bob, who he has known since school. They all wore their own navy-blue suits, we wanted them to all feel comfortable and so let them choose their own suits. Unfortunately, one best man had an accident a week before the wedding and so accessorized his outfit with a broken leg, cast and crutches.

Bridesmaids

My lovely bridesmaids, Sophie, Nicola and Chloe all wore matching dresses which I had made. I make all of my own clothing and knew that I wanted to make their dresses as well. I made a trial dress for each bridesmaid and sent this off for them to try on.

As they all live up north, it wasn’t easy to fit the dresses myself. And so I had to do it from photos, trust each bridesmaid to take measurements, and when I did see them in the run-up do a few tweaks. The dresses were rose gold, with full-length sequin skirts.

The fabric was from Rainbow Fabrics in Kilburn and I used a By Hand London Anna dress as the pattern, which I knew would work well because lots of dressmakers had used this pattern for their own bridesmaids. I had our niece, Rani, as our flower girl. She wore a top from Next, a tutu style full-length skirt which I bought online and a sequin skirt over the top which I made.

Your Photographer & Filmmaker

Holly Rose Weddings did our photos. We choose her after seeing her portfolio online. We met for a drink as she was local and we really hit it off. We chose to have an engagement shoot in Brighton beforehand and I would really recommend this to anyone, as it helps to relax in front of the camera before the big day, and allows you to have some great shots in more casual wear.

Above Arcadia Productions. We weren’t planning on having a video, however at the last moment Chloe felt strongly that there were some parts of the day she wanted filmed. We were lucky enough that 2 of our guests are wedding videographers, and so they filmed the speeches and first dance as our wedding gift. We are so pleased with the film.

The Details & Décor

We chose to do a lot of the decoration and detail ourselves. We spent months bidding on items on eBay, collecting things people were selling after their own weddings, plus ordering craft stuff online.

We decorated the hall with fairy lights across the ceiling, and long tables laid out with hessian table runners, log slices running down the middle with flowers on. Behind the top table, we had some rustic love light-up love letters.

We also made 12 large hoops displaying photos of us. We bought children’s hula hoops, painted them rose gold and used hessian ribbon to display our photos which had printed.

We had a hog roast, plus we ordered a few trays of roast potatoes from the pub opposite the hall and made all our own deserts, plus Choe’s mum made a cake of cheese. We also went to a cash and carry to buy a lot of different sweets for our sweet bar.

We had a gin bar with different gins on available for our guests, alongside a choice of tonic waters and accompaniments. Mat and I also went on a booze cruise to buy the rest of our wine, Pimm’s and beer in Calais.

We had a crazy golf course set up for guests to use in the upstairs hall. In the room where we had all our food, we had all our engagement shoot photos printed out and on display. We had an MGB to take us from the church to the reception which Matt drove, whilst Chloe arrived at the church driven by her dad in her beloved soft top sports car with the roof down.

We also last minute decided to have Mr and Mrs Pearson sunglasses made up!

The Flowers

We had a combination of flowers for our wedding. The bouquets, buttonholes, flower crown and flowers for the cake were done by Sair at Lush Floristry.

The church flowers were a late decision, we originally weren’t going to have anything but decided to just a few weeks before. These were created by a family friend, Jane, from 2 PYO buckets we had from Sussex Cutting, plus a lot of supermarket flowers. We also used these flowers for our table decorations, which were small bud vases and milk bottles filled with just a couple of stems.

The Cake

Newington Cakes. Recommended by a colleague of Matt’s who had gotten married the previous year. We visited Debbie for a cake consultation and had a 3-tier cake, rough iced in buttercream, decorated with fresh flowers from our florist. Each tier was a different flavour, we had lemon, chocolate orange and salted caramel.

The Honeymoon

We went on honeymoon the day after our wedding. We went on a 7-day safari in Kenya visiting Treetops, Samburu Lake Nakuru and the Masai Mara. We then went on to Zanzibar and stayed at the Diamond La Gemma Dell’est for 3 nights.

Memorable Moments

Chloe chose to begin the speeches. I’d really recommend any bride doing their own speech as it was a lovely way for me to let our guests know how much I loved Matt and got to say lots of lovely things not only about him, but also my bridesmaids and others who helped make our wedding so special. Matt finished his speech with a poem that he had written himself.

We chose to have a sten rather than separate stag and hen dos, and so the girls and boys had a weekend away in the Peak District, doing separate activities on one day and a boy vs. girls’ sports day on the Sunday.

Advice for Other Couples

Think about what makes you as a couple and incorporate as much of this as you can.

There are a lot of decisions to make, make them and move on to the next one, don’t dither for too long.

Spend money on the things that matter most to you, and don’t feel you need to have something because most weddings do. We choose not to have a DJ or band and spent a lovely afternoon designing up our own Spotify playlist.

Think about who you really want at the wedding, we had only 60 guests, who were all invited to the whole day. We didn’t invite anyone we didn’t want to and didn’t feel obliged to invite plus ones we hadn’t met or family we don’t see very often. It’s lovely to spend your day with your favourite people.