Small Easygoing Fun & Colourful Goodlake Barns Wedding

What a treat I have in store for you today! We are being joined by Chris and Zoe, with their darling Goodlake Barns wedding in Oxfordshire.

There is so much to love about their day; the DIY decorations (with clever hacks such as Ikea curtains turned into stylish napkins and collected glass jars), colourful styling, wildflowers and, of course, the loveliest outfits.

One of the most brilliant ideas I’ve seen for a while has to be the mobile escape room entertainment they hired – ingenious! I can’t believe their weekend wedding complete with an open bar came to £14k too, that’s just amazing.

Do look out for a gorgeous vintage iced cake, portraits in the fields and sparklers to finish the night. Wow. Thanks ever so much to Becky Weir Photography for sharing with us these absolutely gorgeous captures.

Goodlake Barns Wedding

The Proposal

Chris made a promise to get engaged in our 5th year together (5 is Zoe’s lucky number). He proposed on a picnic in Sophia Gardens, Cardiff, one of their favourite date spots.

The Vision

We wanted to have a fun weekend getaway with our closest friends and family where we would create a relaxed environment where guests didn’t have to worry about anything.

A colourful fun environment filled with lots of story swopping and laughter.

Budget

Planned to spend £10k – spent £14k. This did include accommodation for 30 people for 3 nights and an open bar!

The Venue

Goodlake Barns (Airbnb!)

The Ceremony & Music

We chose to have a celebrant-led wedding and got ‘officially’ married at the registry office a couple of days before with just our two witnesses.

On the wedding day, we chose to have a private first look followed by walking down the aisle together. We walked down the aisle hand and hand to Baby It’s You by London Grammar.

Our celebrant, Beth, was amazing and created us the perfect ceremony including a sand blending and personalised vows we had written for each other and kept as a surprise.

Your Outfits

Zoe’s dress was a bargain from Monsoon. Chris’ suit was from Skopes. Our outfits were not that important to us for the day, as long as we felt comfortable and confident!

Chris had personalised cufflinks engraved with a photo of our Labrador Kiki.

Zoe wore her mother’s pearl and gold earrings which she wore on her wedding day.

The Styling & Decor

Zoe loves a craft project so the majority of our décor was handmade, even down to the 30 macrame placemats which we did need to rope in a few friends to help finish off in time for the wedding!

The tables were decorated with repurposed jars with supermarket flowers and table runners and napkins were made from Ikea curtains!

Your Photographer

Becky documented the story/timeline of our wedding perfectly. As two people who hate having their photo taken, Becky made us feel completely at ease, so much so we were dancing round fields of flowers at golden hour together.

The Honeymoon

We are set to go on our honeymoon in just a few weeks over our 1 year wedding anniversary (how can it be almost a year ago!!).

We will be going to Greece where we will be island hopping and soaking up all the sun and exploring the islands.

Memorable Moments

Aside from our personalised vows and dancing around a field at golden hour, we really cherished having a smaller wedding, so we had time to speak to everyone and not feel rushed through the day.

We hired a mobile escape room for our evening entertainment which went down really well and was great to get everyone to take part and get competitive, especially after a few free cocktails from our bar!

Advice For Other Couples

Remember a wedding can be anything you want it to be, you don’t have to stick to what other people think you should do.

The most important people on the day are you so don’t compromise on the things that are important to you. Make sure that you spare time for you and your partner to discuss this while planning.