Hay Bales in the Sun — a Rustic Cotswolds Wedding

The fam­ily vicar offi­ci­ated in the after­noon; Rachel and Sean did their own read­ings and made speeches. They had a high tea for guests in the morn­ing, and the after­noon recep­tion car­ried on until the early hours!

I love this. The styling of the day is won­der­fully relaxed, colour­ful and rus­tic. The way Sean and Rachel planned their day is inspir­ing. Their story of the wed­ding day explains it all — read, enjoy and get inspired by this won­der­ful Cotswolds wedding.

With thanks also to Ruth from Finesse Plan­ning for telling me about the wed­ding, and to wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher Dafydd Hughes for the beau­ti­ful photos.

Rachel and Sean’s rus­tic Cotswolds wedding

Who pro­posed, and how?

Sean pro­posed in the gar­dens just below the Piazza de Michelan­gelo in Flo­rence, whilst on hol­i­day. Down on one knee, sun set­ting. It was breath-taking and totally unex­pected!

How would you describe your wed­ding style?

Colour­ful and fun rus­tic charm — we wanted to cre­ate a really relaxed and fun rus­tic look and had some ideas of what we wanted to achieve, but with time slip­ping away, we were strug­gling to get any­thing sorted, let alone how it was going to look.

We decided to call in the expert and this came in the form of the amaz­ing Ruth Hunter from Finesse Plan­ning. Not only did she under­stand what we wanted to cre­ate but she designed and pro­duced it so per­fectly and much bet­ter than we would have been able to do with loads of indi­vid­ual ideas that made it fun, unique and totally rep­re­sented the two of us, plus it was (mostly) stress free, which is exactly how we wanted every­thing to be!

Wed­ding venue

We rented a pri­vate coun­try manor house in the Cotswolds. It was not a reg­is­tered wed­ding venue but it was a beau­ti­ful house, in stun­ning sur­round­ings and slept 26 peo­ple which was just the size we were after. We hired it for 4 days, Fri­day – Mon­day, and had our close fam­ily and friends stay there with us. On the Sat­ur­day we had a wed­ding cer­e­mony and recep­tion with 120 guests which was held entirely out­side in the grounds of the house.

Reli­gious or civil wedding?

A bit of both! The venue we hired was not a reg­is­tered wed­ding venue so we had a ‘legal’, civil cer­e­mony in the nearby Wit­ney Reg­istry Offices. The Reg­istry Office cer­e­mony was very basic, just imme­di­ate fam­ily; no music or read­ings; we wore casual clothes and had none of the frills such as ‘you may now kiss the bride’.

The next day, when all our guests were present, we had an out­side cer­e­mony as part of the day’s pro­ceed­ings led by our fam­ily Vicar. This cer­e­mony was very sim­i­lar to a church cer­e­mony and had reli­gious con­text to it. We used the tra­di­tional reli­gious vows and had a cou­ple of hymns within the ser­vice (led by the awe­some Birm­ing­ham Com­mu­nity Gospel Choir). This cer­e­mony, whilst not legally bind­ing, was to us was the ‘real deal’… it was our dec­la­ra­tion of love to each other in front of every­one we know and God.

The cer­e­mony was held out­doors with the seat­ing con­structed out of stun­ning bales of hay with lace cov­ers with large per­son­alised wooden crates over­flow­ing with bright coloured flow­ers sat on hay bales at the front. The aisle was marked out with jars of vibrant flow­ers hung on shepherd’s hooks and a hes­s­ian run­ner on the floor. Guests arrived to music played by a friend on his vio­lin and a few songs sung by the Birm­ing­ham Com­mu­nity Gospel Choir. The bridal entry was to Pachelbel’s canon. The ser­vice was led by a Pas­tor from the Bride’s fam­ily church.

Which read­ings did you choose?

Kahlil Gibran ‘On Mar­riage’ – Read by the Bride. ‘Love is the Great­est’ 1 Corinthi­ans 13: 1–13 – Read by the Groom.

What did you wear?

Bride: Sec­ond hand Augusta Jones ‘Cor­sica’ Dress in Ivory (£400) from www.almostnewweddingdresses.co.uk. Shoes – Sil­ver L.K. Ben­nett Paola Wedge San­dal. Antique Brooch Tiara by ‘Bespoke’ from Sarah Roberts.

Groom: Grey suits from Ted Baker. Brown shoes from Next.

The wed­ding reception

We split our day into two parts as we wanted to have a later cer­e­mony due to the reg­istry office. We wanted to enjoy our friends’ com­pany for longer than a few hours and held a High Tea in the morn­ing for guests to come and say hi before head­ing back to get ready. Straight after the cer­e­mony Pros­ecco was served and guests were offered canapés from the wood-fired BBQ cater­ing firm. A few pho­tos were taken and then the weather started to turn! We headed into the mar­quee for the rest of the canapés and drinks before din­ner was served. After din­ner there was live acoustic music from the duo Jubilee, fronted by Flynn from Duke (Xfac­tor), the cut­ting of the cheese­cake; a whiskey table and a great knees up that went on into the early hours!

What were your wed­ding highlights?

Look­ing around to all our friends and fam­ily sat on bales of hay in the sun, with swal­lows dart­ing around the sky around them, the smell of the BBQ waft­ing over await­ing our arrival and the gospel choir fin­ish­ing off a song with us new­ly­wed– couldn’t have been more per­fect, com­pletely overwhelming!

Wed­ding venue styling and details:

We knew that we had to have a mar­quee on the lawn and we thought we knew what we wanted. How­ever, using Ruth not only for the design aspect but for the whole plan­ning process meant that she was able to pro­pose dif­fer­ent ideas that not only worked with the theme but also meant we didn’t go over bud­get. We chose a Capri style mar­quee which allowed us to have clear views through the mar­quee and give it a real sense of being ‘open’ which is what we wanted.

We knew that we didn’t want the tra­di­tional look­ing wed­ding and wanted long tables to cre­ate a more relaxed feel. Ruth sug­gested using pine tables and wooden chairs which worked bril­liantly. Ruth designed hes­s­ian canopies sus­pended from the poles in the roof space that had fairy lights shin­ing through, then there were hes­s­ian wrapped test tubes that held sin­gle flower heads, hang­ing from the hes­s­ian with twine and then mul­ti­coloured flo­ral bunting con­nect­ing the sides of the mar­quee and the hes­s­ian canopies. The tables were then laid with match­ing hes­s­ian run­ners and due to the food being served to the tables, it meant we were restricted on the table dec­o­ra­tions and had a few jars of bright coun­try flow­ers dot­ted along the run­ner with tea lights in between.

There were so many amaz­ing ele­ments that were cre­ated from a fan­tas­tic dis­play on the front lawn that was used to direct guests to the dif­fer­ent areas, using lad­ders, hay bales, chalk boards, laven­der and vin­tage gar­den equip­ment, escort cards that were manilla paper flags stuck into a hay bale, a buf­fet sweet table using hes­s­ian sacks and my own cheese table that was used to dis­play and serve the rounds of cheese we had used for our ‘wed­ding cheese cake’. Every­thing worked together and the whole feel and look of the wed­ding was bet­ter than we had ever imagined.

Wed­ding music and entertainment:

Cer­e­mony: A friend play­ing his elec­tric vio­lin and Birm­ing­ham Com­mu­nity Gospel Choir. Recep­tion – iPod play lists and live music from Flynn of Duke!

Mem­o­rable wed­ding day moments:

Our friend Monique get­ting up and singing ‘Save Tonight’ by Eagle Eye Cherry with the musi­cian. Cheese Mon­ger­ing my own wed­ding cake, I work for a cheese com­pany, so cheese is very impor­tant to me! We both thought the Gospel Choir were the icing on the cake — they added such atmos­phere and as they sung O Happy Days all our hairs stood on end!

Wed­ding day advice:

Plan, plan and plan in advance, and if like us you’re not nail­ing the plan­ning – get a wed­ding plan­ner! Ruth at Finesse Plan­ning was invalu­able to us and ensured every even­tu­al­ity was thought of. It meant we could do exactly what was needed on the day – to relax and enjoy it all!

Rec­om­mended wed­ding suppliers:

• Wed­ding Plan­ner and Mar­quee Man­ager — Finesse Plan­ning — www.finesseplanning.co.uk — 07580 075558
• Florist — Sally Gill Florist — www.sallygillflowers.co.uk — 01451 830 117
• Mar­quee — GP Mar­quees — www.gpmarquees.co.uk 01295 722269
• Cater­ing — Blis­ter­ing Cater­ing — www.blistering.co.uk — 01825 714712
• Band — Flynn from Duke — booked via Finesse Planning