Fun Rustic & Outdoorsy Farm Wedding

Oh I do love nothing more than a country farm wedding filled with beaming smiles and love.

WWW readers Helen and Gareth chose to marry on Saturday 1^st August 2015 at Huntstile Organic Farm in Somerset. They hired the venue for the weekend which enabled them to spend oodles of time with their guests whilst being able to set up their rustic décor.

Blousy pink Peonies were used alongside pretty roses in the floral arrangements. Then there was a welshcake tower, a cake bake off and tea towel wedding invitations too, amaze.

Helen looked incredible in her pretty flowing gown and delicate headpiece while Gareth chose a light wool navy suit and waistcoat. Gorgeous.

Thanks so much to Sam Gibson for sharing these wonderful shots today.

THE PROPOSAL | After nine years together, Gareth took me away for the weekend to a hideaway wooden yurt called Big Sky Retreat in Devon. He planned an outdoor Easter egg hunt where the eggs led me up a grassy slope to a heart shape made of chocolate eggs. In the centre was a ring box holding a beautiful antique gold diamond ring.

THE VISION | A personal, fun and outdoorsy wedding filled with love, laughter and our favourite people in the world.

THE PLANNING PROCESS | The first thing we did was sit down together to work out our key requirements. We wanted a venue that was beautiful with scenic views; relaxed not austere; somewhere we could be based for the day with minimal transportation between ceremony and reception. We wanted a venue that had at least some accommodation on site for guests; where everyone could enjoy tasty food and dance to the wee hours. The hardest part was finding a venue that met those requirements. After looking at many wonderful wedding venues in Bristol where we live, we realised we were going to need to extend our search to get everything we wanted. As soon as we visited Huntstile Organic farm, we knew it was the perfect venue for us and booked it there and then!

We decided on the important details together: the venue, food, photographer, videographer and band. Then I was left to go wild on the personal details for the day: the flowers, favours, marquee decorations, seating plan, games etc. I genuinely loved every part of the planning process. I enjoyed being creative – imagining things then seeing them develop into reality.

INVITATIONS | To invite guests, we forwent the traditional card invites and ordered wedding tea towel invitations in a Rob Ryan style from The Original Wedding Tea Towel company. Our guests loved them!

BUDGET | My advice to couples would be to spend money on the things most important to you. The majority of our budget was spent on venue and food, photographer, videographer and celebrant as these were the elements that were most important to us. We don’t regret a penny we spent!

THE VENUE | Huntstile Organic Farm is a very special venue. We chose it for its rustic charm, tasty organic food and range of quirky accommodation (including a shepherd’s hut and gypsy carvan!)

We hired the farm from midday Friday to midday Sunday, which allowed us plenty of time to decorate the marquee on the Friday (with a little help from our friends!). On the Friday night, after our legal ceremony in Taunton registry office, we gathered with friends and family staying at the farm and nearby for a salad and pizza stone-baked in their pizza oven. Staying at the farm also meant guests could enjoy a ‘feed the animals’ session on the morning of our wedding.

We held our ceremony on the Saturday at the farm’s stone circle, just a short tractor ride up the hill from the farm. The beautiful scenic views looking towards Wales (our home country) made the ceremony spot even more special for us. Seeing the guests riding the tractor was a great sight too!

After brief kite flying and cider drinking there was a light shower as the guests headed back the farm in the tractor. Thankfully they arrived to a lit fire in the farm room where they could enjoy drinks and canapés in the dry. Outside we set up an egg hunt for the children and a coconut shy, piñata and balloon modelling for the grown ups which were a big bit! Being handed a balloon ‘love octopus’ that a group of friends had made me was a highlight of my day!

In the evening we hired an awesome band from Bristol called The Soulstrutters who played a funk and soul set and got everyone dancing. Percussion instruments, inflatable instruments and glow sticks helped everyone get in the mood too!

THE DRESS & ACCESSORIES | My dress was bespoke, made by Ali Rouse, based in Bristol.

My headpiece was also bespoke, made by Hermione Harbutt.

My shoes were from Monsoon.

FINDING THE DRESS | If I’m being honest, I didn’t really enjoy the whole wedding dress shopping experience as much as I thought I would. I knew I wanted a relaxed, comfortable and light dress – one with pretty lace and buttons but I found it difficult to find the right one. Eventually I did manage to find one I liked and ordered it six months before my wedding. However the wedding shop rang me a week later to say they wouldn’t be able to get it in in time and do alterations so I was taken down the route of having a bespoke made dress. Thankfully I found Ali Rouse, a lovely local dressmaker who agreed to make my dress. The fittings were fun and it was nice to see the dress take shape over time. I think it was perfect for our farm wedding.

GROOM’S ATTIRE | Gareth wore a light wool navy suit and waistcoat from Next. We weren’t worried about groomsmen matching so asked them to buy navy suits they liked and would wear again. All ties were slightly different navy polka dot styles from TM Lewin. One of my nicknames is ‘Bad Panda’ so as a gift I bought Gareth panda cufflinks from Simon Carter to complete his outfit.

CEREMONY AND READINGS | We had an outdoor humanist ceremony, written and conducted by the frankly brilliant Zena Birch. Individually she asked us to share with her the story of our relationship and then she skilfully interwove our quotes and anecdotes to produce a personal and meaningful ceremony. It was truly beautiful and one of my favourite parts of the day.

Zena suggested we ask our readers to choose a reading of their choice, to keep an element of surprise for us on the day. My sister innovated Dr Seus’s story ‘Wherever you go’ to make it about us which was a lovely surprise! And our best man read an extract from ‘Dr. Zhivago’ by Boris Pasternak.

MUSIC | We are both big music fans and so it was important to us that our favourite songs were playing throughout the day. Our friend and groomsman Mark did a fantastic job creating playlists which really added to the atmosphere. I walked down the aisle to Build a home by Cinematic Orchestra and during the ceremony we all sang Beatles – All you need is love and Elvis – I can’t help falling in love with you. We then walked back down the aisle to Stevie Wonder – Signed, sealed, delivered which we enjoyed so much we ended up walking up and down three times! Our first dance was played by the Soulstrutters – Jackie Wilson’s Lifting me higher.

BEAUTIFUL BRIDESMAIDS | My sister wore a twobirds bridesmaid dress in olive – such a beautiful and versatile dress that you can wear in lots of different styles. It took thirty seconds for my sister to change the style of her dress for the dancing. The great thing about the dress is that it can be worn again and adapted for lots more occasions, rather than a traditional bridesmaid dress that you typically never wear again. The same dress fits a range of sizes too.

My flowergirls wore pretty loose and floaty lace dresses from Monsoon with ballet pumps. We did have pink wellies ready but thankfully didn’t need them.

THE FLOWERS | I wanted pretty, white, pink and rustic style flowers. We chose Lisa from Dotty Daisy’s, local to the farm, to do our flower arrangements. We had flowers in jam jars on wooden logs in the marquee and flowers put into our stone circle ceremony arch. As well as the traditional bouquets and button holes for groomsmen and family, I ordered flower headbands and wands for the flower girls which they loved – although it took about three minutes before my niece untied the twine on hers!

THE CAKE | I absolutely loved our wedding cake, or should I say wedding welshcake tower!! We originally asked Gareth’s mum to make welshcakes for favours, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised what a good idea it would be to use them to build a cake! In total Maureen made 267 welshcakes! I bought her a chef’s hat and an apron saying ‘Mother of the Welshcakes’ for Gareth to give her during the speeches to say thank you. I am so thankful for my lovely friend Sophie too who arranged the welshcake tower on the day too, scattering flowers on top. She even made little fimo Helen and Gareth characters to stand on it!

As well as the welshcakes, we also asked guests to bring their home made cakes and sweet treats. They certainly didn’t disappoint! We hadn’t told them it was a bake off but on the day we decided to do surprise prizes and gave out bottles of bubbly during the speeches for 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd place.

YOUR PHOTOGRAPHER | Sam Gibson is a talented photographer and lovely human being. He was fun to be around and throughout our engagement shoot and wedding day he made us feel natural and relaxed. He just got ‘us’ and captured all of the right moments. He exceeded our expectations and we are so grateful for his photography of our day.

YOUR VIDEOGRAPHER | Alex Haynes from Wedding Memories was recommended to us by our photographer as they work in a similar style, documenting the day as it unfolds rather than directing. His gentle nature made us feel relaxed and the results of his work are superb. He’s made us a highlights video of our day which we absolutely love and we can’t wait to see the longer edit!

THE DETAILS & DÉCOR | I’m very sentimental and love personal details so making things was lots of fun for me. Photos of us throughout our eleven years together hung on string around the marquee as bunting. For our seating plan, I used our personalised world map of our travels and added brown luggage tags with table names of countries we have been to. Each table had a personalised sign using photos of us and our passport stamps from each country. I had a wedding ‘crafternoon’ with friends to make heart shaped fimo name tags for all of the guests. We tied these around white napkins with different coloured pink, green and white ribbons as people’s place names. My sister painted polka dot pebbles for the top table too. For favours we made little bags of love themed sweets which were fun to put together.

THE HONEYMOON | We had a week in the Maldives followed by a few days in Dubai. We set up a wedding gift fund with Kuoni so guests could contribute towards our honeymoon if they so wished.

MEMORABLE MOMENTS | Having all of our favourite people in the world in one place was the best feeling ever. I took many opportunities throughout the day to stop, look around and smile at the love and laughter surrounding me. It really was a wonderful wedding!

ADVICE FOR OTHER COUPLES | Plan the wedding you want and is personal to you but do consider your guests. As bride and groom you’re bound to enjoy your day, but you’ll enjoy it all the more if your lovely guests are having fun too. Don’t force activities, but make sure you create opportunities for people to have fun throughout the day. The animal feeding and egg hunt for the kids, tractor ride, coconut shy, balloon modelling, piñata, percussion and inflatable instruments and glow sticks definitely added to guest’s enjoyment during the day. Make sure your guests are well fed and watered too!

Over prepare then go with the flow! We planned the run of the day thoroughly and created a spreadsheet of what was happening and when and to share with key people beforehand, particularly groomsmen. This then allowed us to relax and go with the flow on the day knowing everything was they had everything under control.

Smile and enjoy it!

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE |

Venue | Huntstile Organic Farm

Photographer | Sam Gibson Photography

Videographer | Alex Haynes from Wedding Memories

Humanist celebrant | Zena Birch

Flowers | Dotty Daisy’s Flowers

Invites | The Original Wedding Tea Towel

Band | Soul Strutters

Wedding dress | Made by Ali Rouse

Hair piece | Hermione Harbutt

Bridesmaid dress | twobirds

Flower girl dresses and bridal shoes | Monsoon

Honey moon | Booked through Kuoni. Maldives – Contstance Mofushi Resort and Dubai – Atlantis Palm

Proposal | Big Sky Retreat

Super gorgeous.

Thanks so very much to Helen and Gareth for sharing their wonderful nuptials with us xo Lou