A Handmade Wedding in the English Countryside

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!