Environmentally Friendly Hardcastle Crags Wedding & £5K Bud

What’s this? A beautifully small and sweet wedding, with pretty blooms, gorgeous decor and stylish attire for just £5K!? Yes, that’s right.

We are joined by Charley and Ellie whose Hardcastle Crags wedding in Yorkshire was an utter delight. It was important to them both that their day was environmentally friendly, with a natural feel. Think rustic decor, dried flowers and a scrumptious looking afternoon tea.

These beautiful images are courtesy of Maddie Farris Photography and I can’t thank Maddie enough for sharing them with us. Enjoy…

Hardcastle Crags Wedding

The Proposal

It was very casual and somewhat spontaneous.

Charley had ordered a ring and planned to do it on Ellie’s birthday but once the ring arrived was too excited to wait. It was during lockdown and our apartment at the time was like a greenhouse, so we went for a picnic to cool down and spend some time reading our books in the shade. Except I had other plans and we never actually got round to reading!

The Vision

We wanted to get married outdoors but as this isn’t legal in England, we wanted to bring the outdoor inside – lots of rustic, natural décor, foliage and wildflowers.

Budget

£5,000 (excluding dress).

Your Outfits

Ellie’s dress is from Rolling in Roses in York. It was the second atelier we visited. Ellie tried on around 6 dresses of different styles to make sure she’d covered all bases. She essentially wanted to look like a woodland nymph or something with a Tolkien vibe and found the perfect dress on the first visit (which her mum and Charley both attended).

Charley to’d and fro’d between wanting a dress, a jumpsuit and a suit, wanting something a bit different and not typically “wedding”y. She bought a brilliant ivory coloured tuxedo jumpsuit from Reiss but struggled to find shoes other than sandals to match.

They then found a bright blue suit in Zara which felt perfect, combined with white loafers from ASOS and a collarless shirt from & Other Stories. She was still very much undecided on which to wear right up until the night before, particularly as the weather was uncertain too. But she went with the suit option in the end and is so glad they did!

The Venue

Hardcastle Crags

We love the National Trust, we love nature, and we love that Gibson Mill (the ceremony venue) is completely off the grid and environmentally friendly.

The mill is a blank canvas and it is a wonderful venue in itself. But looks stunning when dressed and suits a variety of tastes, but we chose to go with a natural, rustic theme, in keeping with the surrounding woodland.

It was the first and only venue we viewed and we knew before even viewing that we wanted to get married there.

The Ceremony & Music

We created a Spotify playlist of string/piano versions of all our favourite songs, and both walked down the aisle with both sets of parents and bridesmaids (we had one each) to an instrumental version of Enchanted by Taylor Swift.

Your Photographer

We knew we wanted Maddie as our photographer before we’d even decided anything else. In fact, it was her photos of Hardcastle Crags weddings that made us want to have our wedding there.

The Styling & Decor

We were ghosted by our original stylist 2 months before the wedding date! But Flora the events manager at Hardcastle Crags gave us a list of other trusted suppliers and Styled with Grace came through and exceeded all our expectations.

She was so professional, had brilliant communication and an incredible eye. She really understood our vision and we trusted her to ‘do her thing’ based on our limited brief and budget, and she really pulled it out the bag. She also did the flowers for the venue.

Our cake was a giant Connie the Caterpillar from M&S – our favourite cake only bigger!

The flowers for our bouquets, hair accessories, buttonholes etc. were by the Artisan Dried Flower Co which we originally found on Etsy, but ordered direct from their website. They were dried wild meadow flowers and absolutely perfect for our theme.

All our stationery was DIY. In keeping with the environmentally friendly theme, we sent out save the dates and invites by email. Place names were tags tied to pine ones, with Charley’s attempts at calligraphy.

We knew from the start that we wanted afternoon tea but couldn’t find anyone that offered it in the style that we wanted. We eventually found Laura Fox who hadn’t supplied the venue before but was so enthusiastic and accommodating. And the food of course was incredible and all veggie!

The Honeymoon

We hadn’t long moved house, so we both had a week off work and just spent time together in our new home, with our new fancy coffee machine and rescue cat Albie (from Yorkshire Cat Rescue), both of which we acquired with money and vouchers generously given to us as wedding presents.

Memorable Moments

All of it, but especially:

Seeing a frog (perks of the surroundings!)
Going for a walk through the woodland with friends (who we hadn’t seen since before COVID) and finding a waterfall
Playing the Mrs & Mrs ‘shoe game’ which people still talk about even now (we tend to keep ourselves to ourselves so everyone enjoyed finding out more about us as a couple)
The food!

Advice For Other Couples

Do exactly what you want.

We were adamant from the outset that we wouldn’t get stressed, that we would do everything our own way, and it worked out perfectly. We usually both hate social events, but inviting smaller numbers and planning the day for us, rather than our guests, meant that we actually enjoyed ourselves and, in turn, so did our guests.