Modern Rustic Green & Coral Malt House Barn Wedding

What a day Hailey and Josh had! Their Malt House Barn wedding in Shropshire looked like a dream. And just you wait until you hear all about their fantastic approach to planning their day too.

From their budget-saving ingenious ideas such as arranging their own flowers and renting their bridesmaid dresses, to tweaking their wedding day timeline to make it more entertaining to guests – they were incredibly savvy. I also adore their stylish outfit choices, the focus on live music and all the smiles throughout. So beautiful.

Thanks ever so much to Daniel McClane Photography for sharing with us these tremendous shots of what looked and sounded like an epic day.

Malt House Barn Wedding

The Proposal

We were still pretty much in the depths of the 2020 lockdown, so Josh had prepared Hailey’s favourite home-cooked meal to eat out on the balcony which overlooked London and faced West, so we always had amazing sunsets.

After we’d finished the main course, the timing was perfect with the sun setting beautifully – Josh got down on one knee and the rest is history! We popped our favourite bottle of champagne, then spent the rest of the night celebrating via Zoom calls with our family and friends.

The Vision

Modern rustic was our theme but we didn’t want it to look too ‘country’ so edged more towards the modern side. We used lots of festoon lighting and candles and even made our own giant, light-up ‘MR & MRS HUGHES’ sign as the MC stage backdrop. This took hours but we both agree it was worth it.

We also made all of our venue stationery ourselves and did all of our own flowers. This took quite a lot of time on setup day but we were all so proud of ourselves (wedding party included) and all appreciated the way things looked on the day. Using more of the candles to decorate the venue rather than flowers also saved money and limited wastage as we could sell the pillar candles on afterwards.

We wanted our wedding to be really fun and interesting so we broke up the main events such as speeches, cake cutting, bouquet/garter toss, music performances etc into separate events throughout the evening to keep things entertaining for guests.

We also really focused on spending more time with our guests and family, rather than having lots of time away having photos – we only allocated 15 minutes for formal photos as we wanted to maximize our time having fun with our guests instead. We keep saying that this was one of our best decisions as the photos we received from that 15 minutes were absolutely perfect! Dan Mclane, our photographer, understood our vision perfectly and he worked so hard to ensure excellent photos were captured without the need for any awkward posing.

We also made sure that the break between band sets was quite long (40 minutes each break) which meant guests could get a drink, take a break from dancing and have a chat throughout the party. We are so glad we organised it in this way!

Budget

We had a budget of £25,000 for 100 guests. We achieved this by making careful decisions about where we spent our money and focused the spending on things we really care about. We opted for DIY for the things that weren’t as important to us. Holding the wedding in Shropshire also meant our vendors were much more affordable than in London.

Here are the ways we saved money:

DIY bar – We purchased all the alcohol and bar supplies ourselves from supermarkets. We ordered our bulk wine through a local supplier which meant we had excellent quality wine for a fraction of venue and supermarket prices.
DIY flowers – We ordered the flowers from a wholesale website and made our own bouquets, boutonnieres and table centrepieces. There are plenty of Youtube tutorials to teach you how to do this – just make sure you have a lot of help on setup day (we had about 10 people dedicated to flowers)!
Dry hire venue – Yes this meant we needed to rent glassware and furniture but helped us save so much in other costs.
Second hand décor – We bought all of our flower vases on Facebook Marketplace for a fraction of the cost.
Sell décor and wedding items immediately after the wedding – We sold our candles, candle vases, festoon lights and even Hailey’s wedding dress immediately after the wedding. Top tip – List the items even before you’ve had the big day to secure a buyer to ship to immediately after the wedding.
Rent bridesmaid’s dresses – We rented from HURR.
Groomsmen wear their own suit – Everyone has a blue suit so we just needed to buy matching ties for the groomsmen.
Use candles and string lights as décor – This covers a wider area and means you need less of the expensive things (like vases and flowers). It also looks stunning in the evening and lights your face beautifully.

The Venue

First, we had to decide which country to have the wedding in – Josh’s parents are a little older, so we made the decision that it should be in the UK. Josh grew up in a tiny village in Shropshire with a 900-year-old church on a hill, which was beautiful. It was really important to Josh to have the wedding there but we had to then find a reception venue nearby.

We wanted to have an open bar and do this in an affordable way so we were hunting for a dry-hire venue and found the brand-new Malt House Barn, which was actually still being built at the time. It had everything we were looking for – a rustic vibe with beautiful English countryside surrounding it. Janet, the owner, was also so lovely and we felt very special as we were one of the first couples to book the venue.

The Ceremony & Music

We are lucky to have very fun, energetic, positive friends so we really wanted our wedding to have that same vibe. The church ceremony was beautiful and emotional but our song and hymn choices were upbeat and positive – rather than formal and serious. The songs we chose to walk down the aisle, sign the registry and leave the church were either Australian or British indie/electro artists and reflected our taste in music perfectly. Similarly, the reception background music and the band were chosen in this way.

Josh’s family are really musical so we asked his sister Sara and brother David to perform a song together for us at the reception. They decided to sing and play piano and surprised us by arranging Josh’s cousin Nick to play violin with them. It was such an amazing cover of Clean Bandit’s ‘Rather Be’ and they even changed some of the lyrics to say our names in the song! It was one of the highlights of the day.

The band we chose are called the Dance Floor Fillers and can be found on Entertainment Nation. We love folk pop so seeing them play some Mumford and Sons in their videos really won us over. We also loved that they are a 4 piece band with high energy and having that extra instrument of a 4 piece band really added to the sound and vibe on the day.

The songs the Dance Floor Fillers played and the order they chose to play them in were excellent. We really wanted a mix of folk style popular songs and everyone loved it!! They did this incredible medley of 00s pop punk and our guests couldn’t stop saying how great that was. The Dance Floor Fillers also really listened to the songs we requested them not to play. Personally, we do not enjoy Bruno Mars, the Village People or those types of wedding songs so we asked them not to play those and of course they happily obliged.

Processional: Vance Joy – Georgia (sung by our friend)
Signing the register: Tom Odell – Grow Old with Me
Recessional: Empire of the Sun – Walking on a Dream
Introduction of the newlyweds: Flume – You and Me
First Dance: Savage Garden – Truly Madly Deeply (upbeat cover)
Final Song: Queen – Bohemian Rapsody

Your Outfits

Finding a wedding dress was much more difficult than Hailey had anticipated! After seeing so many of our friends finding ‘the perfect dress’ and knowing exactly once they had found it, Hailey was expecting to feel the same way but never really had that ‘this is the one’ moment.

She narrowed it down to two dresses but couldn’t choose between them so decided to flip a book (landing front cover up for dress A, back cover for dress B) and of course the book landed upright! In the end, she sent both dress options to the best man and he selected the Grace Loves Lace Clo Crepe for her. The bridesmaids wore a dress with a similar silhouette with a thigh slit in sage green.

Josh’s suit was much easier to arrange. He knew he wanted a blue suit and opted for a checked pattern to stand out from the groomsmen. The groomsmen all wore their own blue suits to save on costs and we bought them a matching pale pink tie and boutonniere.

Your Photographer & Filmmaker

We found Dan Mcclane after a quick Google search of Shropshire photographers. We loved his candid style and his beautiful editing. It was important to us to feel special to our vendors and not ‘just another wedding’ and Dan really looked after us. Every conversation we had with Dan Mcclane was so positive and we felt really comfortable talking to him right from the start. Dan was super efficient with communication and remembered all the details we discussed. We had a few extra events in our wedding, such as a garter toss (which is an Australian tradition) and he was happy to work this into his schedule perfectly!!

On the day, Dan was such a respectful, calm photographer and made us feel perfectly at ease. He gave polite direction and recommended some photos we didn’t initially think of (such as a quick, 10-minute twilight photo session later in the evening). We sat Dan next to our friends during the wedding breakfast and they all got along with him really well – they’ve even booked him to photograph their wedding next year!

The turnaround time on the photos was incredible. He is the world’s most efficient photographer in our opinion. He sent us a preview gallery the next day so we could send some photos to our extended family in Australia. We then had access to our complete, edited photo gallery within one week of the wedding! This quick turnaround really sets Dan apart from the rest.

Our video was created by Trick of the Light Media. Jonny Magowan is incredible. He is so much fun on the day and is really skilled in capturing perfect shots. He uses two camera people to film multiple angles of the big moments so the final product is beautiful. The editing really reflects the energy of the day.

The Honeymoon

Barut Hamera in Antalya Turkey. Our wedding was on the Saturday and we flew Monday morning – it was such a great decision!! We really needed some proper R& R after the big day. The resort was all-inclusive and meant we could really enjoy consuming all those delicious meals (and cocktails!) without worrying about spending.

There were multiple outdoor pools so it didn’t feel too busy and there was daily entertainment in the evenings. We felt really looked after and have no regrets about the honeymoon location and resort.

Memorable Moments

The family performance of ‘Rather Be’, Josh’s speech and all of the dancing were our favourite moments. We also loved the bus ride from the church to the reception without wedding party and their partners because there was no pressure for any formalities and we could relax together and catch up before the big party.

Advice For Other Couples

Plan the things for your wedding that you think are important and then take time to observe this at other weddings you attend. We had planned certain types of decor, wedding favours etc and then realised that no one actually noticed or used these things at other weddings we went to!! So we decided to save money and time and not do them in the end.

Give out the wedding cake as gifts to your guests instead of wedding favours. We noticed that at most weddings, people don’t actually eat the cake because they are too busy dancing or too full from the meal. We bought individual cupcake boxes online and asked the caterers to portion the wedding cake into these instead. It meant that the delicious cake got eaten and we were able to give a little goodbye gift to guests at the end.

Watch YouTube videos from wedding planners to get advice. We started following Jamie Wolfer who gives excellent advice on wedding planning. We watched some of her videos to learn how to plan our own wedding. One of Hailey’s favourite wedding YouTube videos to watch was ‘Top 10 things I regretted about my own wedding’.

Spend money on the things that you care about. We really care about live music so we splashed out on a good band. We don’t care about flowers so that’s why we did our own and saved significant costs there.

Rent your bridesmaid’s dresses. We used HURR to rent the Shona Joy bridesmaid’s dresses and they were perfect.

Ask your groomsmen if they have similar suits already – Josh wore a navy three-piece patterned suit and wanted his best man and groomsmen to wear plain navy three-piece suits with brown shoes. Everyone already had one from previous weddings/events, so we just bought everyone the same tie, made our own boutonnières and it looked perfect. The slight variance in suits and brown shoes actually looked great in the photos – the ties and boutonnières tied everyone together (pun intended) and it saved us a significant amount of money

Choose vendors that are relatively new to the industry but skilled (we did a lot of research and reading of reviews). Most of our vendors were quite new and we felt so special to them. We didn’t feel like ‘just another wedding’ to them at all and we loved this.

Break up the speeches so they aren’t all given in one block. Most people tune out after hearing the second speech so we broke ours up so that the parents’ speeches were right at the beginning of the meal, groom’s speech during dessert and then the best man and maid of honour speeches were later in the evening when we cut the cake. It meant everyone paid attention and they weren’t bored, which everyone commented to us afterwards too.

If you have family or friends that can sing or play an instrument, ask them to perform something live for you at your wedding or reception. Our friend Felix sang live as Hailey walked down the aisle and it was really special. Josh’s brother, sister and cousin also performed a song at the reception which all of the guests said was a highlight of the evening!

Try to provide drinks for guests immediately after your ceremony. Most guests will have had a pre-drink when getting ready for your wedding and they’re probably keen for another right after the ceremony (we always are!). If your guests need to be transported to the reception, try to give them a drink to have on the way. We arranged a cool box of beers and seltzers on ice to give to guests as they left the church and boarded the coach to the reception and they loved it.

Start your wedding breakfast early. We started our first course at 5pm. Guests are hungry by that point and it means your party can start earlier so the day doesn’t feel rushed at the end. We noticed at other weddings when the meal was served later, there wasn’t enough time to enjoy the party and celebrate.

Really think about realistically which romantic photos you need and will use after your wedding. We found we only needed 15 minutes to get some really nice shots which we will always treasure. This gave us so much more time to enjoy the canapés and cocktail hour with our guests after the ceremony, which we and everyone else loved!

Plan a decent amount of time between band sets and (if you can) have three shorter band sets rather than two long ones. We chose to have 40 minute breaks between each band set which felt like the perfect amount of time to take a break, chat to people and get excited for the next set. Having three sets also made it feel like we actually had more time with the band!

Try to plan your wedding together as much as possible. It might seem like a lot of work and sometimes you’ll need to carve out specific times in your weekend (or sometimes the whole weekend itself!), but having both of you involved in all the decisions will mean you both appreciate every moment and element of the big day. We know of other couples where one person has done most of the planning, which also meant that one person felt more stressed and overworked vs the other. It’s really important that you both take on the work of delivering a wedding.

Don’t take tradition too seriously. For example, it was really important to Hailey that her mum walked her down the aisle and her maid of honour (her sister) did a speech, so they did. Similarly, it was really important to Josh that his dad said some words before dinner too, so he did. Do whatever you want to do on the day and you’ll have a better time!