A DIY Wedding in North Yorkshire

The day turned out to be every­thing Emily and Joe had dreamed of: with a relaxed and cosy recep­tion venue (The Finch’s Arms) and plenty of home made details, it was per­fect for today’s gor­geous bride and groom to cel­e­brate their love in a very per­son­alised style. There are ideas here for all of you cre­ative brides and grooms — from hand-sewn tea bags as wed­ding favours to applique table num­bers and hand­made bunting.

All of the images used in this blog post have been kindly sub­mit­ted by wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher Geoff Kirby. www.geoffkirbyphotography.co.uk

Emily has very kindly writ­ten a wed­ding report to share with you, which you’ll find at the end of the blog post. And I’d be delighted to hear your com­ments on this glo­ri­ous wed­ding blog post — use the com­ments box at the end to con­grat­u­late Emily and Joe, or to share your thoughts on their fan­tas­tic DIY wed­ding style!

Beau­ti­ful bride Emily’s wed­ding report

When we started out on the long road of wed­ding plan­ning, we knew that we wanted the day to truly be ours and to be full of the things and peo­ple that we love. What bet­ter way to do this than to make most of it yourself?

Whilst Joe really isn’t the crafty type, one of my favorite parts of the plan­ning was sit­ting around out din­ing table the week before the big day with my brides­maids and my mom fill­ing home­made teabags, sewing tiny draw­string bags to put them in, hand-printing the labels, applique­ing the table num­bers, and arrang­ing flow­ers in the col­lec­tion of teacups and jugs that I had man­age to amass over the year. My maid of hon­our and I even iced the cake our­selves before Stu­art from Knighton Flow­ers dec­o­rated it with a beau­ti­ful cas­cade of roses.

The Dress & the Suit

Tabitha, by Char­lotte Bal­bier, was the sec­ond dress I tried on after my mom and I made a spon­ta­neous visit to Brides and Belles in Wigston. The cham­pagne coloured, vintage-inspired, lace dress was per­fect. Hav­ing been expect­ing to try on hun­dreds before I found ‘the one’, I was slightly appre­hen­sive about com­mit­ting to buy­ing it, but I took the plunge. Know­ing how inde­ci­sive I usu­ally am when it comes to shop­ping, to say that every­one was sur­prised with my impulse pur­chase would be an understatement!

Joe is not nor­mally a suit wearer so was a bit anx­ious about find­ing one. Unbe­liev­ably, it only took one trip to Next and less than an hour in the fit­ting rooms and he had a lovely slim fit char­coal gray suit and waist­coat. Quite a con­trast to his usual work clothes cov­ered in plaster!

The Shoes

Shoes were the one thing that I knew I would strug­gle to find. Despite hav­ing scoured the pages of many wed­ding mag­a­zines dur­ing the prepa­ra­tions, I had not found any inspi­ra­tion. So, after numer­ous shop­ping trips, and unwill­ing to com­pro­mise, I drove down to the south-west and headed to Swin­don out­let cen­tre with Char­lotte. The jour­ney paid off. In the first shop we entered sat a beau­ti­ful pair of turquoise silk heels, just the right height, unbe­liev­ably com­fort­able, and 75% off! I did take a lit­tle bit of con­vinc­ing (some­thing that Char­lotte is excel­lent at when it comes to shop­ping) as I was slightly con­cerned that they were a bit too ‘dif­fer­ent’. They cer­tainly proved to be a talk­ing point on the day.

Brides­maids

My four brides­maids were all for­mer house­mates from my time at uni­ver­sity, and I could not have cho­sen a more sup­port­ive, help­ful, and excitable group of girls! The only prob­lem was dis­tance. Two lived in Wilt­shire, one in South York­shire, and one in a min­ing town in the mid­dle of nowhere in West­ern Aus­tralia. This, together with work and other com­mit­ments, made get­ting together to go shop­ping rather problematic.

I knew from the begin­ning that they should all have dif­fer­ent dresses as we would never find a style that suited and pleased them all. So began the search that took them to Leices­ter, Sheffield, Bices­ter, and Lon­don. We had agreed to look for neu­tral colours in dif­fer­ent tones to suit them. Fran was the first to find hers — a beau­ti­ful, sim­ple, silk Ted Baker num­ber in white. After some reas­sur­ing words from my mom that the color would be fine, I gave her the go-ahead. We finally had a color to stick to!

Char­lotte found a lovely fit­ted dress in Mon­soon and, after any emails back and forth, I bought a pretty sum­mery dress for Han­nah in the same shop. Kayleigh was slightly more awk­ward. After many fruit­less shop­ping trips she decided that, being a dab-hand with a sewing machine, she would make her own. The result was stunning.

Shoes for the girls were also a dif­fi­culty. To tie every­thing together we decided that they should all have the same footwear and so the hunt began. Again, Swin­don out­let cen­tre came to the res­cue. Whilst enjoy­ing the sun and the Olympic marathon swim­ming in the Ser­pan­tine in Hyde Park, I received a phone call from an excitable Char­lotte in the LK Ben­nett store.

Due to bad phone sig­nal, I couldn’t load the pic­ture she had sent me on my phone, but I trusted their judge­ment and the pur­chase was made. Due to alter­ations to Charlotte’s dress and fin­ish­ing touches being made to Kayleigh’s, I only saw them all together in their out­fits on the morn­ing of the wed­ding. They hon­estly could not have made bet­ter choices.

The Cer­e­mony

Nor­man­ton Church Museum was the only venue we looked at and we both instantly new it was the place for us. Jut­ting out into Rut­land Water, the for­mer church was beau­ti­ful, idyl­lic, and the per­fect size for our 50 guests. On the day, my dad, the girls, and I had to get there before Joe and hide in a back room in order to be able to walk down the aisle. Being fash­ion­ably late wasn’t an option!

My dad and I trav­elled in a 1971 Mor­ris Minor cabri­o­let which, despite not being built for speed, got us there before Joe who hap­pened to be run­ning a bit late. I walked down the aisle to an acoustic instru­men­tal ver­sion of the Bea­t­les’ ‘Here Comes the Sun’ and we chose W. H. Auden’s ‘Fox­trot for a Play’ for Char­lotte to read dur­ing the cer­e­mony, which she did bril­liantly, despite her teary eyes.

The DIY wed­ding reception

We were equally as lucky with the recep­tion venue. The Finch’s Arms in Ham­ble­ton was just what we were look­ing for — relaxed, infor­mal, and cosy. Luck­ily, the sun shone on the day so were able to take full advan­tage of the large ter­race over­look­ing the reser­voir. Want­ing to keep things infor­mal, we opted for a hog roast which went down espe­cially well with our two young nephews, espe­cially when the chef gave them some ribs and ver­te­brae to play with!

We went for a wan­der into the vil­lage with Geoff and the build­ings pro­vided a beau­ti­ful back­drop to some of the pho­tographs. For the rest of the day, Geoff stayed in the back­ground and cap­tured so many amaz­ing and spon­ta­neous shots that will help us to remem­ber our day forever.

As most of our guests aren’t the disco type, we kept the music low and every­one was able to chat late into the evening. Some peo­ple might be hor­ri­fied at the idea of a wed­ding recep­tion with no danc­ing, but it was the right deci­sion for us.

In Con­clu­sion…

So, over­all, despite being one of the most dis­or­gan­ised brides ever, every­thing came together on the day. The glossy wed­ding mag­a­zines may tell you that you need numer­ous things for the per­fect day — a color scheme, huge cen­tre­pieces, a for­mal three course wed­ding break­fast, a groom wear­ing a suit which matches those of the best man and the father of the bride, and whose tie is co-ordinated with the brides­maids’ dresses. We had none of these, but our day reflected us.

I loved being able to look around the room and see table dec­o­ra­tions, bunting, table num­bers, and favours that had been hand­made by myself and my brides­maids. We ended the day sat around the top table with our clos­est fam­ily and friends, chat­ting, look­ing through pho­tographs on cam­eras, and fight­ing to keep our eyes open after such a long day.

Emily and Joe’s rec­om­mended wed­ding suppliers

• Bride’s dress — Tabitha by Char­lotte Bal­bier from Brides and Belles, Wigston, Leices­ter (www.bridesandbelleswigston.co.uk)
• Bride’s shoes — Hobbs
• Groom’s suit — Next
• Brides­maids’ dresses — Mon­soon, Ted Baker, and hand­made by Kayleigh
• Brides­maids’ shoes — LK Ben­nett
• Cer­e­mony venue — Nor­man­ton Church Museum, Rut­land Water (www.facebook.com/pages/Weddings-on-the-Water/227242894015519)
• Recep­tion venue — The Finch’s Arms, Ham­ble­ton, Rut­land (www.finchsarms.co.uk)
• Flow­ers — Knighton Flow­ers, Leices­ter (www.knightonflowers.co.uk)
• Pho­tog­ra­phy — Geoff Kirby (www.geoffkirbyphotography.co.uk)
• Cake — Baked by fam­ily friend Lorna Wil­son, iced by Emily and Char­lotte, flow­ers by Knighton Flowers
• Trans­port — Mabel the Mor­ris Minor from Camper­van Wed­dinghire (www.campervan-weddinghire.co.uk)