Home Made Seasonal Cosy Wedding

This wedding was planned with a wonderful ethos.

Debz and Jono wanted to create a celebration of their journey with the people who had supported them. They chose to marry on Saturday 14^th February 2015 and hoped to create a wintry feel to the celebrations complete with seasonal touches.

Much of their wedding was hand crafted, with the flowers and décor DIYed perfectly. Their day felt cosy and welcoming with a hot chocolate station and blankets for warmth too. I really adore the use of daffodils and the bridesmaids wearing their own gorgeous frocks.

Many thanks today to Hannah Trott for sharing these lovely shots.

THE PROPOSAL | Jono and I grew up in the same area, and we met when I was 13 and Jono was 16. We started dating on Sunday 25^th January 2009 when I was 17 and Jono was 20. Jono proposed at Dinton Pastures Country Park on Saturday 1^st February 2014… ring, down on one knee, by the lake where we used to go with our families as children, walk together as teenagers and have been for dates ever since. We then went for a walk in the February sunshine and had tea and cake at the café before telling families and friends. It was great to have a few hours to adjust to the new feeling!

THE VISION | For us, the wedding itself was a celebration of the journey so far and especially the people who had supported us on it. It was important that all the guests knew exactly why they were there, and how much we treasure them. We had a huge photo wall with photos of everyone who attended. We asked friends and family to help us plan and prepare so that every aspect, cakes, flowers, bunting and everything else, not only looked lovely, but had it’s own significance to us and ‘our people’.

We wanted the wedding to feel seasonal, so we chose seasonal flowers and added wintry touches like seed heads and pine cones to the decorations… it was a sort of ‘Cornish Hedgerow’ look. There were also little hints of all the different things that make us ‘us’, like the seaside, guitars, Julie Andrews, Real Ale, Star Wars and Anne of Green Gables. Many of these were our table themes!

THE PLANNING PROCESS | I’ve always loved scrap-booking so putting together mood boards and ideas was really fun. We were determined to keep it as ‘low faff’ as possible when it came to the practical side, not to get bogged down in things that really didn’t matter in the long run, which in general I think we pulled off! Lots of friends and family threw ideas in which was lovely and it was really special to see them excited when they saw we’d included their thoughts in the day.

TOTAL SPENT | £7500

THE VENUE | Barkham Manor Farm

When I was little we spent a lot of time on my Uncle’s farm in Cornwall, which has created a lasting love of farms! So we knew we wanted a barn wedding. We wanted to do all our own decorating and details, so we needed a venue that was open to some creative ideas…! We wanted an area where we could pull in rented sofas to make a coffee house, as well as the main dining area containing our photo wall.

Barkham Manor Farm were amazing; really relaxed and they even let us have wedding photos on their tractor! They set aside one of their buildings for our café. We borrowed the sofas and coffee tables to furnish it from a charity in Uxbridge called Trinity. They brought the sofas from their second hand furniture store to the venue in vans, unpacked them all and took them back again for us. They were incredible, and Jono and I as well as two other couples bought sofas and armchairs there and then! When the sofas were all installed at the venue it was so cosy, exactly as we’d hoped it would feel. A bit like ‘Central Perk’ in ‘Friends’!

THE DRESS & ACCESSORIES | In the spirit of each item having significance, my veil was my mum’s from her wedding day, I bought my hair band from Duende Bridal, a seller on Etsy, earrings were my mum’s, originally a gift from my Grandma, my leaf necklace was from Francesca Castaldo at Spitalfield’s market. My sister, cousin and I went on a day out to find accessories and we came across this beautiful maple leaf dipped in silver. Perfect for our wintry, country feel.

Jono and I made our wedding rings at Rachel Jeffery’s Jewellery Making Studio. We’d heard about it through a friend, and the day was just as fun and hilarious as we’d hoped it would be! We would totally recommend it.

I wore heels (Dorothy Perkins) for the service, wellies (Seasalt) outside at the farm, and fluffy slippers inside (Moshulu, from Griggs farm shop in Cornwall). It’s always been comfort first for me!

FINDING THE DRESS | I wanted a dress that was comfortable enough to sit on a sofa in with a hot chocolate! When I found a beautiful navy maxi dress, I knew it was perfect… but the wrong colour. We have family links in Vietnam and it just happened that my Dad was visiting a few weeks after I’d found this dress. I sent the blue one with him, and he gave it to some girlfriends of mine to take to the tailors to have it copied in white. When it came back it was beautiful – they’d matched the fabric brilliantly. I then had alterations done at Needles and Pins in Wokingham. The seamstress made a sash for the middle as well, which finished it off beautifully.

GROOM’S ATTIRE | Jono wore jeans, Timberland Boots, a white shirt, green tie, brown waistcoat and tweed jacket. He looked a bit like a farmer. Or the owner of an estate. He just needed a rifle and a Labrador.

JONO SAYS: I also wore my wallet chain from being a 14 year old grunger.

THE READINGS & MUSIC | We asked friends and family to play the music during the service, pray for us, marry us and do the readings. We had two Emily Dickinson poems read by my brother, and two bible readings by one of Jono’s school friends; Psalm 121 and Luke 12v22-34. I walked down the aisle to Hans Zimmer’s ‘Cry’ from The Holiday Soundtrack. And we went out to ‘I Ain’t Drunk’ by Albert Collins… clearly this was Jono’s choice!!

BEAUTIFUL BRIDESMAIDS | I had 10 bridesmaids in total, my sister was the maid of honour. This seems like a massive amount I know(!), but each of them have supported me in a different phase of life and I wanted to honour all of my people. They all wore dresses of their choice from a palette of spring colours. I wanted them to look like ‘them’ – they are all different and I love them for who they are, so I wanted them to feel like themselves.

THE FLOWERS | We went seasonal and local as much as we could, so our flowers were snowdrops, daffodils, primroses and grape hyacinths, with foliage from my parents garden. We arranged all the flowers and potted up primroses and snow drops in planters for outside the barns at the reception. The cut flowers and primroses were sourced from Longacres Garden Centre.

We wanted the bouquets to look natural and ‘picked from a hedgerow’ and we arranged flowers, seed heads and foliage in ale bottles as decoration at the church and venue. We also had a few other mismatched bottles and baskets for a bit of variation.

THE CAKE | We had a hog roast for our wedding breakfast, and asked friends to make cakes for when people arrived at the venue and for the dessert table. The variation on our cake table was beautiful, and it was lovely to know that people put so much love into our special day with their amazing creations!

A family friend made ‘my’ Wedding Cake; a two tiered fruitcake with royal icing and marzipan, decorated with buttons made from icing. As a surprise, my mum made Jono’s cake; a giant chocolate Ewok from Star Wars. We had a DIY hot chocolate table with dessert too.

YOUR PHOTOGRAPHER | Our photographer was Hannah Trott, a friend I grew up with, who is now a professional photographer. It was really special having a photographer who knew us both so well as she knew exactly what little details we’d want pictures of, even if we hadn’t actually mentioned it beforehand! Her pictures were beautiful and natural.

THE DETAILS & DÉCOR | For me, this was the most exciting bit of the planning!

To decorate the church my friends and I made bunting to hang across the hall. Some of my girls crocheted flowers to decorate signs with too. In the main barn at the reception we decorated the table with hessian with our quirky table centres with a prop for each e.g. the Indiana Jones box set for the Harrison Ford table. For our favours we gave everyone a mug, from charity shops and car boot sales, chosen especially for them. We also gave home made jam, seeds collected from flowers in my parent’s garden and ‘Elastic Band Firing Kits’ for those not interested in jam or seeds. This led to a hilarious room fight before the meal began which got people talking and laughing early on!

Photos were a big part of our day, along with the photos of guests, my dad put together a slideshow that played on the wall of the café with photos of Jono and I growing up. The window-sills in the café were decorated with paper boats, fairy lights and flowers. We had board games and crafty things for people to do if they needed some ‘Introvert Time’.

We gave each table a long list of ideas for things to write in the guest book e.g. date night ideas, name of their dog etc. We also had a calendar to write birthdays in, change of address cards and a fingerprint tree.

THE HONEYMOON | So… we were supposed to go to Lanzarote for a week but Jono… misplaced… his passport and only discovered this the day before the wedding. So during lunch on ‘Wedding Eve’ we booked a cottage in Cornwall, my favourite place in the world. However, we arrived at our cottage the day after the wedding to find that it had been double booked. Either that or we were sharing it with a family of four in their pyjamas. Luckily the owner had another, bigger house down the street with an open fire, an open plan kitchen and a huge master bedroom which we moved into instead. So despite another surprise change, it all ended well in a four-bed house much lovelier than our first one!! Thankfully the week got a bit calmer after that.

The other good news is that we are FINALLY going to Lanzarote, for our anniversary this year (2016) … so we will still get Honeymood Plan A in the end!!

MEMORABLE MOMENTS | A selection of memorable moments…

Words of Wisdom from a friend: ‘God is good. Beer is great. People are Crazy.’

The friend we’d asked to DJ organizing a tunnel, made by all our guests, for us to leave through, to a soundtrack of ‘So long, farewell’ from The Sound of Music.

A family friend coming in a tailor made dress with Postman Pat all over it – GORGEOUS!!

ADVICE FOR OTHER COUPLES | JONO SAYS: Make time to be together. We had lunch (just us) the day before and went for a quiet pint between the service and the reception. It’s good to take time to enjoy the moments.

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE |

Photography | Hannah Trott Photography

Proposal setting | Dinton Pastures Country Park

Venue and catering | Barkham Manor Farm

Sofa Suppliers | Trinity

Necklace | Francesca Castaldo cardamine@hotmail.it

Hair band | Duende Bridal

Wedding bands | Rachel Jeffrey

Heels | Dorothy Perkins

Wellies | Seasalt

Slippers | Griggs

Slippers | Moshulu

Alterations | Needles and Pins

Wholesale cut flowers and pot plants | LongAcres Garden Centre

Just so full of love.

Thanks so very much to Debz and Jono for sharing their lovely story with us here at WWW xo Lou