Rustic Woodland Autumnal Athelington Hall Wedding

What better way to enjoy the woodland in the autumn than with Tom and Phebe’s Athelington Hall wedding in Suffolk? I mean it was just stunning 😍.

First up, I must mention how amazing it is that their day was created for a budget-friendly £6000, not to mention how their loved ones all rallied around to create their wedding of dreams.

There is so much I adore about their celebrations. There was a woodland ceremony complete with twinkling lights, a sunflower bridal bouquet, as well as pumpkins. Then there were the gorgeous outfits, hello gold gown and tweed suit. Wow

I can’t thank Lily Sawyer Photography enough for sharing these dreamy images with us. Enjoy the full story below.

Athelington Hall Wedding

The Proposal

Tom proposed on November 25th 2018 and surprised me when we hosted Thanksgiving dinner for 16 of our friends (who were all in on the plan!).

We all walked to the river and went on the Emirates cable car, where everyone managed to fit into one pod apart from us! Tom had music, fairy lights and pulled out my dream ring, a raw pear-shaped diamond with a view of Canary Wharf which holds so many memories for us.

When we got to the other side all of our friends had party poppers and a ‘she said yes’ sign (the person working on the cable car had been updating them on the tannoy in their pod because he could see us on the video!). We popped the fizz and had pumpkin pie to celebrate with all our favourite people.

The Vision

We knew that we wanted our wedding to have an intimate feel with close family and friends and we wanted as many people as possible to be involved in the day.

We never wanted the traditional ‘white’ wedding but wanted something that reflected us and was a joyful celebration with our close family and friends.

I love autumn and always knew we would create something as rustic and autumnal as possible. We wanted the celebrations to continue all weekend and wanted all guests to be invited to everything so all were invited to stay.

We kicked the weekend off on the Friday evening with our outdoor woodland ceremony, followed by a hog roast and barn dance, and guests came back on the Saturday morning for breakfast and speeches and an afternoon walk around the farm.

Budget

£6,000

We didn’t have a huge budget for what we wanted to pull off, however, we were so blessed to be able to use friends, family and connections to help us out with as many things as possible.

This really added to the community feel of our weekend, with everyone pitching in and keeping the costs down.

The Venue

Athelington Hall Farm. Our dear friend Peter, owns the farm and this was the perfect venue for us.

We transformed the woods for our outdoor ceremony, used the marquee for our evening reception and the breakfast the following morning, and many of our guests stayed in the gorgeous log cabins on the farm.

I was able to stay on site the week before to get the venue prepared, and it’s a pig farm which does an amazing hog roast!

Your Outfits

Tom – Harris green tweed suit from ASOS with a bow tie found online and Doc Marten shoes already owned.

We wanted our outfits to reflect the woodland theme and thought tweed had a rustic country feel. We stumbled across exactly what we were looking for on ASOS for a bargain price!

Phebe – I wanted something unique to reflect the woodland theme and was so happy a family friend agreed to help make my vision a reality.

It was such a sweet moment as she had made me a tutu for my fourth birthday, 20 years before! I had a vision of leaves falling down the dress and together we designed something which she was able to make which captured my vision. I never wanted a white dress, so the gold satin was perfect.

I managed to get gold sparkly Doc Martens on eBay to dance the night away comfortably! One of my splurges was the beautiful leaf tiara, which made me feel like a true woodland princess. I also wore this again on the Saturday morning breakfast with jeans and wellies. I got a green cape (again from eBay) to wear on the walk into the woods, instead of a veil.

We both got green Hunter wellies (eBay again…) for the ceremony, where we had asked all guests to wear wellies in the woods.

The Ceremony & Music

We had already officially got married in a registry office earlier in the week, so our ceremony on Friday was about making our vows in front of God, family and friends.

Our two pastors led the ceremony where we said our vows which we had written ourselves. Another close friend played acoustic guitar to ‘Yes & Amen – Housefires’ which was the song Tom played when he proposed!

Your Photographer & Filmmaker

We had the incredible Lily Sawyer Photography capture our day. She was amazing, we barely knew she was there but she directed us so well whenever needed. Her professionalism and experience are evident in the final photos, which we are so pleased with. We decided to do our ‘first look’ photos before the ceremony, so that we could be with guests after to enjoy the reception.

Another wonderful friend offered his services to make our wedding film as we couldn’t afford a professional videographer. Again, we were blown away by what we created for us, capturing the feel of the day so well for us.

The Styling & Decor

Most of the decorations were DIY.

In the woods we had an arch (made by Tom’s Dad) covered in sunflowers from our florist. The hay bales were from the farm, creating seating and a friend of a friend did our lighting, with festoons covering the woods and fairy lights in the marquee.

We used shepherds’ crooks to line the path into the woods and the aisle, with jars of gypsophila. We used pumpkins and sunflowers to decorate. I hand-painted wooden pallets for our signs with some help from my sister and a friend. We borrowed some autumnal bunting for the entrance to the marquee and created a polaroid station, where we moved the sunflower arch to after the ceremony.

Our flowers were done by Blooming Blooms. She took the photos I sent her and created the most gorgeous sunflower bouquet and buttonholes, as well as for the tables, arch and cake.

Our incredible cake was made by our friends at Your Treats Bakery. They created something that looked rustic and simple, with gold leaf and sunflowers, and tasted delicious!

The Honeymoon

We stayed in one of the log cabins on the farm (complete with four-poster bed, sauna and hot tub!) for the wedding weekend so we could make the most of time with guests who were staying.

On Monday we flew to Bali for our dream 2-week honeymoon. We found some amazing deals on private villas on Airbnb. We spent one week in Canggu, watching sunsets on the beaches and eating the best food and riding around on a scooter and then spent the second week in Ubud where we got to see waterfalls, rice fields and monkeys. We are hoping to go back on our 10-year anniversary…

Memorable Moments

Too many to write down, just remember to take it all in because it goes by so fast!

Advice For Other Couples

Honestly, I would recommend getting as many people as you can involved. This saved us stress and money, created an amazing personal and intimate vibe for the whole weekend and gave us so many memories with friends and family that we will remember for so long.

I would also say don’t feel you have to do ‘wedding’ things just because they are tradition. We decided to do speeches the next day, to take photos before the ceremony, not to have bridesmaids and groomsmen or a white dress.

I don’t regret any of these decisions, we created something that was perfect for us and included all those we love and there is no better feeling than that!