Colourful Creative & Fun Lancashire Country House Wedding

What’s not to love about WWW followers Jess and Garry’s Lancashire country house wedding? I mean there were rainbow colours, ribbons galore and so many lovely personal touches, that it’s hard not to feel inspired by their nuptials.

I also love their words of advice, especially their budget-saving wedding tips! They are well worth a read. From their stylish outfits to Jess’ stunning wildflower bridal bouquet and that multicolour confetti moment, their day was chock full of pure joy.

I mean, hello ice cream, doughnuts, meaningful music and sparklers 👋😍

Thanks ever so much to the incredible Wyldbee Photography for sharing with us these loved-up and vibrant images. Hooray.

Lancashire Country House Wedding

The Proposal

We got engaged in lockdown, May 2020 – when we were only allowed outside once a day..! We were in a field watching the sunset and Garry got down on one knee and popped the question.

Of course, I said yes! He had asked my parents for permission a few weeks beforehand. We had been together 12 years at this point so he didn’t have anything to worry about!

The Vision

I’ve seen a lot of weddings, from my time in the wedding industry. So over the years I’ve picked up tips and ideas until eventually, I knew what I wanted.

I was also able to plan a day based on what I thought was important and ditched the not-so-important aspects of the day. We decided on a late afternoon wedding leading straight into a party! We didn’t want anything formal or even traditional – just a relaxed, chilled, fun day.

We soon started planning and narrowing down what each of us wanted. My top tip is to write ‘to do’ lists with deadlines, create Pinterest boards and set up a good budget spreadsheet tracker of spends.

Budget

We didn’t want to spend thousands upon thousands on our wedding – obviously, weddings nowadays do cost a lot, so be prepared to fork out!

However, I would recommend sitting down and really getting to grips with what you can afford, and asking yourself the questions: ‘Do we really need it? Can we find it second-hand? Or can we hire it rather than buy? Can we make it ourselves? Ask a local business rather than a big company.

Always chat with your chosen venue about any deals or discounts – they don’t want to lose your booking, so they should create a package based on your budget. Ask about cheaper menu options or think do you really need that extra glass of prosecco for your speeches? Or can you cut back on canapes?

There are definitely ways around keeping the costs down and sticking to budget – set up good excel spreadsheet to keep track of your spends. Any money you save is a bonus for the honeymoon!

The Venue

Ashfield House, in Wigan. The venue is warm and welcoming with the perfect layout to host your day from ceremony to party! It has a large white room filled with beautiful natural light, as well as chandeliers giving it a grand elegant feel.

Your Outfits

It took me a while to find the style of dress that suited me and the vibe of the wedding. I didn’t want anything too over the top. I wanted a comfortable, floaty yet flattering dress with sleeves.

I chose a romantic, boho-style dress to go with the flower crown I had ordered. Right up till the morning of the wedding I still hadn’t decided how to have my hair… and in the end, I just trusted my hairdresser. It was perfect, having it in a loose up-do highlighted the neckline of the dress. I kept my jewellery really simple, with rose gold earrings to match my rose gold engagement ring and wedding band.

Garry had always wanted a tweet suit, when we went shopping he saw this usual sage green color. It really suited him, we then got it tailor-measured to fit and he was able to customise certain parts of it.

The Ceremony & Music

This was our favourite part! We chose to have a celebrant (we did the legal deed the day before) and it was perfect. So personal and told our story. Chris from DFC Celebrant worked with us to edit the script and help us create our vows. He was so patient and offered his advice at every stage.

For when guests were entering the ceremony room, we had a mixture of ABBA songs playing! This got everyone excited and feeling giddy, who doesn’t love singing along to ABBA!

Then as I walked down the aisle with my dad, we played James Morrison – Precious Love.

And lastly, for our walking out song we played the Friends theme tune, which just sums us up really! Plus everyone did the famous friends clap!

Your Photographer

We had the very talented Sophie at Wylebee Photography. I had been following Sophie’s work for a few years and I just love her style and the way she edits her images. She was wonderful to work with on the day – very chilled and made us feel instantly comfortable.

The Styling & Decor

I’m a creative person so I knew I was going to attempt to do all the décor myself… I had challenged myself and wanted to pull off my vision.

I had seen images online of ribbon bunting and loved how simple it was, yet really effective… also seemed super easy to make! Skip 3 months later, my house was filled with ribbons and twine. It was never-ending – each bunting strip was 30 metres long! And on top, I had decided to create a large backdrop to go behind the neon sign. Then I had the idea of adding ribbons to the all the chairs!

Suddenly, my ribbon idea wasn’t so simple – so many hours went into making it all at the evenings or at the weekends. But looking back, I don’t regret it at all!

Originally my idea was to have it all multi-coloured, however I decided to narrow this down to just 5 colours, then I could match it to other things like the flowers and confetti. I went for pink, orange, yellow, teal and white.

I started collecting all the old glass bottles and candle sticks about a year before, going in every charity shop I saw. I made trips to vintage secondhand warehouses finding bargains.

I decided not to have a traditional wedding cake. In my experience – it just goes to waste. Therefore we didn’t want to waste money on this. The cheaper option was doughnuts! Everyone loves a doughnut, and they all went by the end of the night. The top tier of our cake was a rainbow hundreds and thousands cake from M&S! This was a last-minute decision and I loved it!

For the flowers, I completely put my trust in my florist. I gave her the 5 colours and said I wanted a ‘wild flower’ style bouquet and flower crown. I also ordered 2 buckets of random wildflowers that I used to fill all my bottles for the tables, and I made the welcome sign myself from a folding wallpapering table (with the help of my Dad).

The Honeymoon

We originally booked to go to Florida back in 2018, but this got cancelled due to Thomas Cook going bust. We then rebooked it with Virgin… then COVID happened we rescheduled it 3 times. Finally 4th time lucky, we got to go for our honeymoon! It was amazing! Definitely the break we needed from all the wedding planning.

Memorable Moments

The ceremony was lovely – very emotional. I remember guests laughing and crying during the ceremony.
The confetti was really fun, the children loved playing with it.
I remember seeing everyone’s faces when the ice cream van pulled up.
My favourite part was when me and Garry went off and had our portraits taken. It was really good to have that time to ourselves and enjoy kissing/cuddling/laughing in front of the camera.

Advice For Other Couples

My advice would be to try and enjoy the planning and the build-up… If at any point you feel stressed or not in the mood for wedding stuff – just do something else instead that you enjoy.

Give yourself a break, it’s hard work and you deserve a wedding-free evening or a weekend. The last thing you want is to dread your ‘to-do’ list. So make sure you are in the right mindset before you tackle that list and make it fun! If it is an evening of Amazon ordering or emailing suppliers – grab a glass of wine and put a film on in the background. Take your girlfriends to any fairs or wedding events, make a day of it!

My other advice would be to think outside the box. Do something funny and memorable that your guests will remember! Express your personality and do what you want. Don’t be pressured into having the traditional/simpler styles. You don’t want to regret something or wish you had done things differently.