Relaxed Countryside DIY Wedding with Goats & Alpacas

High fives to Rosie and Jim who pulled off their epic Lower Damgate Farm wedding in the Peak District perfectly!

Where to begin? First up, I love how they wanted animals to be a key part of their day and the cute goats and alpacas made for some really special moments, I’m looking at you popcorn confetti! Then there were the fun references to the kids’ TV show Rosie and Jim, the immense DIY wedding decor and the utterly beautiful outfits.

I also really love the dried flowers, as well as the reams of bunting and fairy lights, the barn looked just magic.

I can’t thank Anna Rose Heaton Photography enough for sharing with us these totally gorgeous shots.

Lower Damgate Farm Wedding

The Proposal

We met in 2016 and our relationship seemed to take a natural route to getting married. Everything we do is always in step with each other, but Jim took the devious, secretive, or some might say traditional journey to marriage.

Without Rosie knowing he asked her family for their permission to pop the question then set about organising everything in time for when we were going on holiday to a remote cottage in Scotland.

He had a custom engagement ring made by Adorn Jewellers of Chesterfield (a silver tree branch with a diamond set in it) and planned to ask Rosie to marry him at the halfway point of their 9-hour journey to Crovie. This was at Bamburgh Castle.

Unfortunately, the weather was awful. Bamburgh was grey and miserable and full of soggy tourists. So he decided to wait until we arrived at the cottage.

Crovie is a tiny fishing village with no road access. We had to relay all of our luggage from the car to the cottage along the village path, right next to the North Sea, in the pouring rain. This took about an hour, at which point we were drenched.

Rosie said, “we make a pretty good team, don’t we?“, Jim said “on the subject of teamwork…“, got down on one knee, and asked; “Rosie, will you marry me?” Rosie’s reply was meant to be “yes” but came out like a kind of strangled series of yelps. (She did confirm that this meant yes later).

The Vision

We wanted our wedding to be as unique as our relationship. We also wanted goats.

All of our holidays and a lot of our days out together have involved goats. So we typed “goats weddings Derbyshire” into Google and the first place on the list was Lower Damgate Farm.

The Venue

When we visited Lower Damgate we were made aware that it was very much a DIY venue. We would have to organise everything from cutlery to cake and beyond. This didn’t put us off, in fact it made more sense to us.

And there were goats. And bonus alpacas! The wedding barn is on an animal sanctuary near Ilam in the High Peak District. It’s remote and beautiful and we’ve been on walks in that area before.

Also, we wanted the wedding to be an event where our families could really get to know each other and the hire of the barn was in addition to the hire of wedding cottages for the whole weekend.

We would have to set the barn up, decorate it, and then pack it all away. With the both our families there they could all pitch in and we’d have time to spend a while relaxing together, which is not something that happens on “one day” weddings.

Your Outfits

Jim: Jim wanted a country/vintage look. The initial plan was to have a tailor-made suit measured up but when the Covid lockdown came along he had to change plans. Instead, he opted to have a custom suit made online.

We’re not going to mention the supplier because the process was not pleasant; Jim’s sister measured him up, the suit was ordered and we waited. And waited. And waited. We were ghosted by the company when we started to email enquiries and we had to make public complaints on Facebook before they finally responded.

The suit arrived the day before the wedding (about a month after the expected arrival) and was perfect, but due to the stress of the purchase, we don’t really want to give the company any credit.

Jim had had to rush to Chesterfield (local town) and buy a back-up in a rush from a local shop, Charles Hedley, and they were super helpful. He wore that suit on the Sunday of the wedding weekend so it wasn’t a waste of effort.

Rosie: Going into a bridal shop was out of the question because of the pandemic. Rosie knew what she didn’t want, but wasn’t sure what she did want. After a lot of Google searching Rosie had been drawn to vintage dresses but because of her height wasn’t able to find anything that would work for her.

Then she stumbled across a wedding dress on Etsy that was in a medieval style and something clicked. She had been thinking “vintage” but decided to go even further back in time! She didn’t want to look like an extra from Lord of the Rings but definitely wanted something timeless, elegant and with a hint of fairy princess.

After a bit of research Rosie found Frockfollies and had her dream dress made to order by the extremely talented Gill Linley.

The Ceremony & Music

We both love music (Rosie is a musician, see rosieabbott.co.uk) so this would play a big part in the day, however, we also wanted control over this so we curated our own Spotify playlists for each part of the day.

The ceremony was not religious, it was personal but quick! We wanted the legal bit done with so we could get on with having a great time with our guests, and all the animals.

Your Photographer

We met Anna Rose Heaton at a wedding fair in Nottingham and after chatting for five minutes knew we had found the right person to document our day. We had a package with her that included an engagement shoot which was a great way to get to know her and feel a little more comfortable about being photographed (neither of us are that keen being in front of a camera).

On the day she was an absolute star. She was an extra helping hand behind the scenes, friendly, like one of the guests but also totally on point getting all of the set piece shots organised. The best pictures were the candid ones that she nailed. The finished photo album tells the story of the day perfectly.

The Styling & Decor

Jim’s sister Lindsey gets the kudos for being star decorator. She machine sewed 150m of bunting to criss-cross the barn ceiling. She also made a length of bunting for the top table that featured unfinished embroidery work made by Lindsey and Jim’s mum.

Cathryn (their mum) had passed away the year before and was very sorely missed at the wedding, having this (and other) reminders of her was a very special part of the day.

The rest of the decorations were created or sourced by Rosie and Jim (and transported to the venue in a rented transit van by them). The loose colour theme was cornflower blue, lavender and yellows.

This tied in with the flowers and bouquet which were all dried flowers from Artisan Dried Flowers. Rosie had spent months hand-painting glass jars and bottles to be used as table decorations and wedding favours.

We named each table after an animal from our travels and Rosie’s brother-in-law, Danny, (who is a printer), printed out all of the signage. He also created three huge photo collage boards which went on display.

We’ve always got a kick out of our names. For those who don’t know, Rosie and Jim was a kids TV series from the 90s about two ragdolls who live on a canal boat. So we leaned into the Rosie and Jim merch quite heavily. We had Rosie and Jim cake toppers, a canal boat with an alpaca on it, Rosie and Jim books for the kids to read (gifted to us by Rosie’s sister, Caroline), Rosie and Jim dolls, etc. etc.

The Honeymoon

This was delayed until October half term (Jim works in education). We stayed in a remote wood cabin on the edge of the tiny hamlet of Rezare in the Tamar Valley (the border of Devon and Cornwall).

It was stunning, our neighbours were a field of sheep, we woke each day to glorious sunrises cutting through the misty valley and Jim managed to take photos of the Milky Way because the night sky was so clear. There were also goats on this holiday.

Memorable Moments

Instead of confetti we used popcorn so our guests could shower us and feed the goats at the same time. Hearing Anna Rose shout “Release the goats!” and then being surrounded by stampeding animals was as chaotic as it sounds.

Our first dance went pretty well; we opted for “God Only Knows” by The Beach Boys (the song that just happened to play on the car stereo as we drove away from our holiday in Crovie after the proposal) but Rosie edited in a record scratch and then the Rosie and Jim theme tune so we could get everyone involved and being daft.

The biggest moment for both of us was the moment we saw each other from either end of the aisle. There are a few photos of us both nearly losing it and crying our eyes out! It was absolutely magical and something that neither of us will ever forget.

Also we got pretty well mauled by goats, one tried to eat Rosie’s bouquet and one got its hoof stuck in Jim’s watch chain.

Advice For Other Couples

Take out wedding insurance. We paid a £1,000 deposit to our original caterer who promptly went out of business (even though they had opened another catering business up…) but John Lewis insurance covered the majority of the loss.

Be aware of the hard work required for a DIY event; Jim’s pedometer read 16 miles of walking on the Friday when we set the venue up. It was hardcore, and we had spent two years gradually planning for every foreseeable problem (and then the unforeseeable difficulties of Covid) so make sure you have the time and effort to expend.

The benefits of a DIY event are well worth it though: you have total control, everything on the day was how we wanted it to be within our budget limitations. We didn’t have to spend anything on things that we didn’t deem important, this meant we could spend our money on the things that mattered to us.