Morning! I hope you are all well and have had a good weekend. We have a very special wedding to share with you all today for two reasons…
Number 1 – it was captured at our stunning woodland and glamping wedding venue in Essex, a gorgeous space that comes with a bluebell woodland ceremony area, a wildflower meadow, quirky onsite accommodation, a cool Victorian railway bar and two giant hat tipis. We adore this venue. We have been promoting it now for over 4 years and have witnessed so many incredible weddings there with even more planned for 2020 and 2021.
Number 2 – It features the owners of the venue! Ben and Laura manage the space with Ben’s Dad and sister and so much of their relationship has been spent exploring the woodland together and helping build the family business. As soon as they got engaged they knew there was only one place they wanted to celebrate and that was on the farm.
Inspired by the bluebells in the wood, their wedding had a beautiful colour scheme of blue with a wild, rustic, organic and green vibe…
We took our colour scheme from the bluebells and we knew we wanted to be outdoors so that informed a lot of our decisions. I used pinterest a lot for ideas and often found myself trying to make things wild, rustic and with a green vibe.
Pretty much all of what you see was put together by themselves, from the flowers, stationery and table decor to the amazing Croque-Em-Bouche which was made by Laura’s god mother. Greenery and willow played a big part in their decor as well as Laura’s desire to be as sustainable as possible.
Laura and Ben share with us the story of their day and how it all started.
Look out for the section at the end about rain on your wedding day! This is something every couple planning an outdoor wedding fears but Laura and Ben embraced the rain and as they explain, it didn’t ruin their day one little bit…
Teenage Sweethearts…
Ben and I have been together since we were teenagers, after we got engaged we spent about a year planning the wedding and picked a Saturday as close to our original anniversary as possible. We got married the same week as our 12 year anniversary.
A Silk Dress, Ballet Shoes and Wellies…
My dress was a bit of a mixture. The main dress was a silk Charlie Brear a-line dress with a train, spaghetti straps and a sweetheart neckline. Over this I wore a big tulle skirt and a Charlie Brear silk sash around my waist. I also had a bespoke handmade lace top made by Jurgita Bridal covered in embroidered leaves, beading and little 3d flowers.
I had bought a pair of ivory lace ballet flats that I customised with some shoe clips and ribbons that my bridesmaid Hallie had embroidered with the date, our initials and beautiful little bluebells. Because it was so wet I had to change out of them pretty quickly but luckily I had planned ahead and instead I wore a pair of silver glittery wellies that I had attached ivory ribbons to. They had flashing light up soles!
In my hair I wore some hair pins decorated with gold and crystal leaves. I had a simple soft full length veil.
Opal, Diamonds & Gold…
My engagement ring is an opal with diamonds around the edge and my parents bought me a pair of earrings to match it for my birthday. I wore a vintage dress watch I bought years ago, my grandmother’s brooch as my something borrowed and a simple opal and gold necklace that Ben sent me as a surprise on the morning of the wedding. My wedding ring is a simple gold and diamond wishbone that fits around my engagement ring.
A Bluebell Wood and Wildflower Meadow…
Our theme was woodland, bluebells, fun, quirky, wild, green, eco, rustic, nature, diy, creative. Our colours were navy, bluebell blue, dark green and gold.
Our outdoor wedding ceremony was held in a bluebell wood and our reception in a canvas marquee in a wildflower meadow.
We chose to get married on Ben’s Dad farm. We had always wanted to get married in the bluebells on the farm, they held so many special memories for us.
Ben took me to see them when we were very first together, all those years ago. Now that we run a wedding venue from the farm it seemed the perfect place for the reception too. We were so lucky to have such a beautiful setting on our doorstep.
We set up all our glamping bell tents for guests and also hired out all three holiday lets we have here on the farm.
A Winding Path Through the Woods…
Our ceremony was held in the middle of the bluebells accessed by a short walk from the meadow. The walk included a winding path through the woods, a willow tunnel , blue willow hearts as path markers and of course hundreds of bluebells. We got married under a pergola that Ben and I made out of branches.
My Dad helped us make benches for our guests out of wooden boards and log stumps. We also had a real piano in the clearing and an arrangement of log stumps and ferns as a feature next to the piano.
On the actual day it rained, a lot! But luckily we had prepared, and suspended a huge white tarp in the trees as a roof to our woodland clearing.
Ben’s cousin played the clarinet for my walk down the aisle, accompanied by Ben’s mum who played the piano.
We had my cousin as our celebrant, and a couple of short readings by a close family friend. We said all the traditional vows to each other and my cousin gave a touching welcome speech on the wisdom of love. The readings were a short poem by Tolkien describing two lovers as trees in a wood and a little poem I had written to Ben.
A Small and Simple Legal Ceremony…
After the ceremony, Ben and I took our two witnesses and went to the church in the village, on the edge of the meadow, to have a small official ceremony and do the paperwork. Margaret the vicar was so welcoming and laid back and completely embraced our vision of a small and simple ceremony. We had one reading in the church read by the verger – the song of Solomon chapter two which is all about nature and the earth. When we had finished in the church we drove across the meadow in a vintage Landrover and were greeted by a confetti line of all our guests.
Two Tipis and A Marquee…
We used the wedding tipis that belong to the farm as well as adding a marquee for the wedding breakfast. We had such a large wedding (twice the seating capacity of the tipis) it made sense to have the extra space and to be able to set up the tipis purely for partying purposes!
Willow, Greenery, Toy Animals and Brandy Glasses…
We had a lot of flowers to decorate the venue, there were lots of vintage galvanised buckets full of arrangements, large wooden lanterns filled with fairy lights and greenery, a large greenery arch at the entrance to the marquee and two large bespoke willow and greenery chandeliers hanging in the apexes of the tipis that we made from scratch. The food marquee had long trestle tables dressed with swags of greenery running the length of the tables and an assortment of large brandy glasses filled with floating candles and flowers, hurricane vases with pillar candles, gold spray painted toy animals and galvanised metal champagne buckets. We made/ designed everything ourselves from the flowers (my mum is a florist) to the little stickers we stuck on the champagne bottles with our names on. Above the tables we had strings with the tables names suspended from them, as well as light bulbs with LED fairy lights in and white lace parasols filled with fairy lights hung from the central marquee poles.
In the tipis we had lots of lanterns and candles in jars, willow stars with fairy lights wrapped around them and a wall of logs at the entrance decorated with golden speckled candle lanterns and alcohol bottles filled with wild flowers. We had an indoor firepit with wooden benches around it and a large wooden dance floor. We bought a vintage cream post box for cards.
Fire Pits, Festoon Lighting and A Giraffe Sculpture…
Outside there were fairy lights everywhere and festoon lighting strung on shepherds crooks. We had two fire pits surrounded by straw bales, a giant cable reel my cousin had converted into a table and a huge wooden giraffe sculpture loaned to us by our brother-in-law Stu from his furniture shop, Marshbeck Interiors. He also lent us some mini wooden mushrooms and a rustic wooden milk churn that we used as an umbrella stand.
One of the main features of our outside area was our converted Victorian railway carriage bar, which we had been working on for weeks running up to the wedding. We also had two old cast iron bath tubs either side of the carriage filled with cans of beer.
DIY Stationery & Handmade Signs…
I designed all the invites myself using illustrations and tones of blue. For the seating plan my mum drew the most amazing map based on the hundred acre wood. It was drawn to include the venue and important places to Ben and I like our home and our childhood houses and the church where we got married. It was amazing. Our table names were all fictional forests and woodlands and I wrote them out on bluebell blue coloured pieces of card in white calligraphy. I also hand painted all the signs telling people where to go in the same font.
Homemade Croque-Em-Bouche…
Instead of a cake my god mum made us a croque-em-bouche tower which my mum made a floral topper for. My god mum had made the most incredible chocolate sauce to accompany them. The tower was about two and a half feet tall! We didn’t have a formal cutting of the cake instead we stole a profiterole each of the croque-em-bouche whilst everyone was queuing for puddings and very few people were watching.
A Bouncy Castle, Space Hoppers & Live Music…
We had a Bouncy Castle, loads of lawn games, space hoppers, a full size table tennis table for ping pong and later on beer pong. We also had bubble swords. There was a table in the tipis with a polaroid camera for guests to take pictures. My sister and her music teacher played an acoustic duo after the ceremony and then for the evening reception we had a live band with brass and electric instruments and an amazing singer. They had a pretty rock n roll vibe.
Candid Style Photography…
We used D & A Photography for our photos. Dan is an old friend of ours and being a photographer myself I was particularly picky about who/ how my photos were taken. Dan nailed the candid style I was after and even made sure that his editing style fitted with our colour palette. He was laid back and really subtle which was perfect. We had the minimum amount of group shots because we felt it was more important to enjoy time with our guests than spend hours posing for photos and Dan was great at helping us wrap them up quickly. We’re really pleased with our pictures, Dan did a great job of capturing the feel of the day and everyone looks so happy!
Organic and Relaxed…
A close family friend joined the band to sing our first dance which was Sway by Bic Runga. It’s always been our song, Ben played it to me when we were first together. We didn’t announce a first dance, our song came on a few songs into the bands set and we snuck onto the dance floor without the majority of our guests even noticing. It was really organic and relaxed and felt like when it comes on in our kitchen and we have a little moment.
Favourite Moment…
The best bit for me was when we’d returned from the church and walked down the confetti line. Everyone was together outside the tipis, laughing and chatting and there was such a buzz. We got to greet all our friends and family and it was so magic to have everyone in the same place.
Any Advice?
Get a wedding planner. Even if its just for the actual day and not any of the planning before hand. We tried to do everything ourselves, which took some serious delegating, and a lot of time and energy. In hindsight it would have been great having someone there who knew exactly what we wanted and was making sure everything ran smoothly. On the actual day we were having too much fun to be worrying about the way things were being run and there was a few things that didn’t go exactly to plan. For example I turned up too early to the venue and somebody told us we were not allowed to drive down the field so we were waiting for ages for a lift that wasn’t actually coming. Silly things like that could have been so easily solved if there was somebody overseeing everything that wasn’t personally involved in the day.
Rain, Rain Go Away…
On the day it rained from almost start to finish which if you’d asked me before hand, would have been my worst nightmare. But we were prepared for the event of bad weather and when it actually came to it, it didn’t matter at all. Thankfully we had warned everyone to bring wellies, we had plenty of brollies and provided plenty of shelter with the tipis. It would have been nice to be outside in the sunshine all day but for the most part it didn’t change anything. The rain stopped as we left the church and stayed away long enough to be outside with our guests until we went to sit down for food. From then on the rain was pretty much torrential and nobody cared. The kids all had a brilliant time on the bouncy castle in the rain and it sort of pushed everyone together in the tipis which made for the most amazing atmosphere for our evening reception. Everybody got a bit (or very) muddy and a bit (or very) drunk and it truly felt like being at a festival.
The Line Up…
Photography: D & A Photography; Venue: Festival Brides – Flower Meadow, Woodland & Tipis; Bride’s Dress: Charlie Brear via MiliMili Boutique Colchester; Bride’s Lace Top: Jurgita Bridal; Bride’s Make Up: Maddy Jerome Ball; Suit Hire: Anthony Formal Wear, Colchester; Victorian Railway Carriage Bar: Off The Rails; Decor & Styling: Coppins Props Shop; Giraffe Sculpture: Marshbeck Interiors; Flowers: Sarah Burgess Floristry; Food: Oli’s Hoggs; Band: Disraeli Band
