Louise has written a brilliant wedding story which you’ll find about halfway down the page. All of the images are by Jenna Carpenter, a wedding photographer from Broughton in Furness, Cumbria. This is a wonderfully creative wedding in a village hall — inspiring for couples on a budget and very personal and special.
Enjoy! Claire xxx
The wedding venue
We got married at St John the Evangelist church at Woodland (Near Broughton In Furness) then we had our reception at the Woodland Village Hall where we had a hog roast. There was no bar but my old friend from primary school, Martin, who runs a local pub, ran a bar for us and did a great job
Wedding photographer:
Local photographer, Jenna Carpenter who did an amazing job!
Our wedding style
Laid back and fun! With only 11 months from proposal to wedding we had to get planning pretty quickly! Luckily my bridesmaid helped out LOTS!
We wanted a country wedding with a Scottish twist! I am a farmer’s daughter from Woodland and Colin is Scottish so both featured heavily in the wedding planning. My method of transport was the talking point of the day as I arrived on a trailer on the back of an old vintage tractor.
One of my dad’s friends drove us to the church while we sat on straw bales on the trailer. Col and I then left on the tractor after the service! We tried to keep everything home made too, this included the wedding invites, orders of service, candle holders, bunting, favours and vases.
Wedding Ceremony
We had a lovely, relaxed service that seemed to be over really quickly. I was so worried that the hymns would be rubbish as I have been to weddings where people don’t sing but our friends didn’t disappoint. Some even had a competition at the back, who could sing the loudest!
Two of our friends did readings that they chose themselves. Katie, my friend from university wrote her own reading and Kat, our friend from Germany, where we both live at the moment, chose ‘On Marriage.’ I was particularly proud of our Order of Service which all of the children from my class (I’m a Primary school teacher) had contributed to! There were around 20 different designs and they were all drawn by the children I taught.
Wedding venue styling and details
We wanted a country wedding where people could enjoy themselves and relax. We knew we wanted to get married at Woodland Church and then wondered where we could have our reception as Woodland is such a trek from most places. We decided that the village hall would be perfect for our wedding style and at £60 for the venue we couldn’t complain!
The room itself is bright green outside but once we set to work on the inside we transformed it to be fit for a wedding! We hung homemade bunting outside and then set to work inside. This included taking the curtains down, hanging pastel coloured voile and fairylights across the ceiling, setting out trestle tables and decorating them and covering the chairs.
The decoration on the tables was fairly simple: jars that had been wrapped with ribbon and buttons for the vases, Ikea glass jars that my bridesmaid had coloured for tealights, fortune tellers and bubbles and everyone’s place names were fastened to our favours, homemade Scottish tablet, that my good friends from work had helped with. One made the tablet and it was delicious while my other friend who has gorgeous handwriting wrote the place names. We then bagged the tablet and fastened the place names 2 nights before the wedding!
We didn’t have a separate day and night do as it all just flowed into one and all of our guests were there for the whole day and night! We also had our pictures taken in the garden of one of Mum and Dad’s neighbours. That was incredibly kind of him as we weren’t entirely sure where we were going to have our family pictures done!
Invitations and reception stationery
My bridesmaid, Col and I made the wedding invites. We had the text printed through pureinvitation online and then made them ourselves. They featured ribbon and buttons which we also included in our reception decoration! The order of service were designed by the children in my class and put together by me. The place names were made by my bridesmaid and a good friend wrote everyone’s names on for us. These also featured buttons and ribbon.
The seating plan was made by me, twice, as the first time I got it wrong! Planning it all from Germany was tricky and I got my seating plan wrong the first time! We had to squeeze a few more chairs in the room as we were a table short so we borrowed them from another Village Hall. Again it used buttons and ribbon!
Wedding music and entertainment
We chose traditional music to walk down the aisle and it was played by our family friend, Vera, on the organ.
We had a disco in the evening and I have never been to a wedding where the dance floor was so full all night! We also had fireworks in the evening at about 9pm. This was my mum’s surprise to us, but I did find out!
Wedding dress and outfits
I wore a wedding dress by Amanda Wyatt. It was the first dress I tried on and I didn’t visit any more shops! Although I did try a couple more dresses on after! It was nothing like what I thought I wanted but I was sold straight away and it was in the sale. I also wore a veil and a tiara and an amazing pair of shoes from Irregular Choice on the high street!
Col wore Jacobite dress, Mackenzie tartan along with the 2 ushers, best man, pageboy, Col’s dad and father of the bride – who isn’t Scottish but couldn’t wait to wear a kilt like everyone else! They wore thistles as button holes.
The bridesmaids’ dresses came from Queen of Holloway. I knew I wanted something slightly different and these were perfect. They needed a little bit of altering when they arrived but they were an absolute bargain and we adored them!
Wedding day highlights
The speeches were amazing! My dad had been kidding me on that he hadn’t written one but what he delivered was beautiful as well as funny! The best man also had everyone in fits of giggles. When we looked back at the pictures of the speeches we could see how wonderful they were as Jenna had captured every moment perfectly. I think I kept every picture in the album from the speeches as the smiles on our faces summed up the whole day!
We also loved watching all of our friends and family enjoying themselves and having everyone who is important to us all in one room enjoying our special day!
The smell of the hogroast cooking and enjoying the pimms!
An amazing atmosphere all day and night. Everyone just wanted to have fun and get drunk!
Seeing our nephew in his kilt – cute!
Wedding day advice
- Keep calm!
- Plan but remember you can’t plan for everything and don’t stress if things don’t go quite as planned!
- Enjoy your day
- Have a wedding videogrpher, I love watching the speeches back
- Do everything how YOU want!
Wedding suppliers
Wedding photographer – Jenna Carpenter, Broughton In Furness, she did a wonderful job and we loved all of our photos
Cake – Cake Crusader, Barrow In Furness – We loved our cake and the flavours were amazing – Gingerbread, vanilla and chocolate orange
Flowers – Efflorescence, Barrow In Furness – I wanted to do my own flowers but realised that coming over from Germany days before this wasn’t going to be possible. Our bouquets were lovely and exactly as we wanted but the best bit for me was how wonderful they made our jam jar vases look. They were stunning!
Catering Company – http://www.spittingpignorthernuk.co.uk/ – They were more than just a catering company. Their service was amazing from the moment we booked them and on the day they were faultless. Nothing was too much trouble and Andy and Fiona, along with their staff, delivered a faultless service
Dress – Eternity by Nina http://eternitybynina.co.uk/
Hair by Steph and Make up by Jenny Green – Barrow In Furness – Both transformed me!