Emily & Chris

My heart is literally bursting with love for this at home wedding. Captured beautifully by Maryanne Weddings Photography, I genuinely feel like I was there having the time of my life along with our gorgeous couple. There is so much emotion and happiness in each and every image not to mention rustic pretty you're are going to want to view time and time again. Every detail is truly divine, all styled, DIY-ed and put together by Emily & Chris's more than willing family and friends. From the bar, to the floral arch and fabulous hanging display in the tipi reception, to the naked wedding cake, borrowed vintage wedding car and home of Emily's parents. If all this wasn't enough, it also comes with an adorable tale of how they got together, the sweetest proposal and some wonderful advice.

Story

Emily the Bride: Chris and I met online in 2013 and it was (as cheesy as it sounds) love at first sight. After cancelling on each other 4 times we finally managed to meet up at a pub near where we both lived (had we known we’d end up marrying we may have chosen somewhere a bit nicer but oh well!) and hit it off. I remember driving away at the end of the night with the biggest smile on my face and a tummy full of butterflies. From that moment on, we’ve been inseparable. 

Proposal

One weekend in July 2015, we went to my parents in Wiltshire for the weekend as my sister was back from France. It was like any normal weekend back in the countryside and on the Sunday morning Chris jumped out of bed, had a shower and announced we were going for a walk. I got out of bed, chucked a cardigan on over my pjs and put on a pair of flip flops – I looked a total mess! We left the house and dad weirdly followed us pretending he was taking photos of the dog, little did I know what was going to happen! We walked down to the river and to a little clearing, I was chatting away and when I looked round, Chris was on one knee with the most beautiful ring I’ve ever seen. I don’t think I said yes straight away, I was too excited I just burst into tears. 

Bridal Style

I am quite a casual dresser and from the start knew I wanted a simple dress. I wanted to be comfortable and wanted something I could move in. I booked an appointment at Something Old, Somthing New and my dress was the second I tried on. It instantly felt like me.   I wanted to wear a cover up for the day so decided to get a jacket made, choosing the right fabric was really tricky and I went through lots of different options until I found a lovely soft linen fabric in a light green from Loose Ends Fabrics. The jacket was made by one of their seamstresses and it was absolutely perfect. In the evening I changed into the comfiest Hush denim jacket, which everyone loved and commented on.  I also found it tricky to find the right pair of shoes but in the end I went with a simple ivory shoe from the Rainbow Club at John Lewis. In the evening I changed into a pair of gold Saltwater sandals. 

Grooms Attire

Chris tried on a few different suits and in the end chose a 3 piece blue suit from Marks and Spencer. He wore it with a white shirt from T.M Lewin, a blue and white spotty tie and brown brogues.  He was given a pocket watch by his parents on the morning of the wedding so wore that. He wore cuff links which I had brought him for Christmas a few years ago. 

The Venue

There was no question over the venue, I had always known I wanted to hold it at my parents gorgeous house in Wiltshire. Luckily Chris agreed.  There’s a derelict farm cottage that sits amongst the apple trees, it’s my favourite part of their house and I am so glad we made it work.  We hired 3 tipis from Buffalo Tipis and decided to create an enclosed area, using the cottage as the backdrop to a large homemade bar. We were lucky the weather held out and we were able to have two tips for dining and one separate for the dance floor.  It was totally perfect and exactly what I had imagined. 

Colour Scheme/Décor

When we started planning we didn’t decide on a colour scheme, we just went with what we liked and slowly one seemed to come to life. We wanted muted tones to tie in with the tipis and the location of the wedding reception.  I love eucalyptus so knew I wanted that alongside Café au Lait dahlias my mum grew. Making sure we had lots of flowers was key; my mum and her friend decorated a large wooden arch with foliage and pretty hydrangeas and dahlias. They also hung flowers from the main beam in the tipi along side tea lights. It looked absolutely amazing    I collected lots of vases, which we used for the flowers on the tables. We got bunches and bunches of flowers from our florist and spent Friday afternoon making up individual posies.    We used galvanised pots, a vintage wooden ladder and apple creates to create different levels and display flowers, candles and prints, which I had brought from Etsy.    My amazing husband made our light up bar letters, which were used in the bar he built with his dad, brother and one of the ushers.    We made and painted wooden signs that we used all over the place.    For the table numbers we got white Ikea photo frames and spray painted them gold. These with the inserts from our designer looked lovely    We had a couple of fire pits that we put straw bales round, on top of the bales we popped sheep skin rugs so people could sit down and relax.     Florist Flowers, flower crown, bouquets and button holes supplied by Ted Martin Flowers, Tisbury. Flower decoration designed by bride and brides mum, put together with help of lots of wonderful friends.

Wedding Party Fashion

My sister lives in France so one Saturday she flew over to join me and the other bridesmaids at my house. I had brought a big selection of dresses for them all to try (my spare room was full). They all decided on the same dress – a pretty soft pink, full-length dress from Hobbs. It was gorgeous and they all looked great. The girls then each chose what shoes they wanted and in the evening chucked on leather and denim jackets to keep warm.  But as you’ll see from the photos they’re not all in the same dress, my sister announced she was pregnant and would be 8 months pregnant on the day so she changed her dress and got something from France. It was such a pretty dress and worked so well with the rest of the girls.  The guys wore the same suit, tie, shirt and shoes as Chris but without the waistcoat for the ushers. Chris brought them all matching socks to wear. 

Ceremony

We got married in the church over the fields from my parents house. For the readings we asked two of my best friends to read ‘I promise you’ a poem I had found on Pinterest and totally loved. For the religious reading we asked my 91 year old grandma to read Corinthians 13. They all read perfectly and it was so special to have them part of our day. 

Entertainment

We knew we wanted a band and we knew what sort of style we’d want but it took us a while to find our band. We felt that it was such a big part of the day we just didn’t want to get it wrong. Luckily we chose right and Festival Nights who played for us were totally amazing. They had everyone on the dance floor. Utterly brilliant and so much fun. 

Food

We didn’t want a formal affair when it came to the food so we opted for a more casual menu. We also decided that instead of starters, we’d just do lots of canapés and for pudding we had a whole table of puddings to chose from. My sister is a brilliant cook and very kindly offered to make our cake for us. It was perfect and the fact that she had made it was even better.  We had to stock the bar ourselves so decided to use a tiny wine shop in the village in France where my sister lives. We did a taste testing and it was then all sent over. It was really great to be able to chose something quite unique and it meant we could have my favourite bubbly. We opted for no spirits behind the bar but we did make our sloe gin and blackberry vodka, these were given to each table at the end of the meal in decanters alongside tiny little glasses, which we had collected. 

Photographer

We chose the amazing Mary-Anne and I am so pleased we did. She totally understood what we wanted and her photos of our day are beautiful. 

Final thoughts

My tips for planning brides would be to just enjoy it, don’t get yourselves worked up over the details, it will all turn out wonderful and you’ll be marrying the love of your life so that’s all that matters. Use blogs, Instagram and Pintrest for inspiration and ask friends and family to help, they really do want to!  Everyone always asks what was my fave moment and I think it was probably just after we’d got married, we jumped into the vintage Jaguar we had borrowed from a family friend and drove the long way round to my parents. We couldn’t stop talking and smiling. It also gave us a much needed opportunity to remove all the flower petals we had been covered in coming out of the church. That moment and also when we went down to the river where Chris proposed to have a couple of photos. It was such an amazing day. It went by so fast though so do try to stop and step back.