Lotte & Thomas

Lotte and Thomas' wedding is the sweetest thing. It's home spun, it's intimate and it is just filled with feel-good moments, which is exactly how a wedding should be as far as I'm concerned. Lotte and Thomas worked really hard to keep things on budget, but still have a really fun and memorable day, sourcing lots of decor online and crafting things themselves. Their biggest treat was flying out RMW recommended UK based photographer Neil Jackson to Holland to take their photographs, but as we always say - this is the place to spend the money - your photographs will provide a lifetime of memories, as you'll see from this beautiful set...

Our Wedding

Lotte The Bride: When Thomas and I first started arranging things for our wedding day we already knew we wanted a small, intimate outside wedding with only our closest family and friends, nothing too fancy. We also knew we wanted to do most of the preparations ourselves. The theme of our wedding was a mix between boho, vintage and hipster. Although we live in The Netherlands and our wedding also took place in NL most of the items used were ordered from the UK, we even got our photographer from England!

The Venue

De Ruige Weide, Oudewater NL. While we where looking at venues friends of ours got married at a small Bed & Breakfast in the town of Oudewater, NL. The venue ticked all the boxes of what we were looking for too! It offers a large garden with a pond, an old farmers shed, a hay barn, an orchard and as it is a Bed & Breakfast, the option to spend the night. Since the location is marked as an official wedding venue the official ceremony could also take place at the venue. We used every part of the location during the different parts of the day. The orchard was perfect for the ceremony. We had cake and champagne by the pond and during the day we set up different games and activities throughout the garden. The old farmers shed was great for having dinner. We also spent our wedding night in one of the two lovely rooms of the Bed & Breakfast. Thanks to the lovely owner Nicole we really felt welcome!

The Photography

At first we were planning on getting an acquaintance to take our wedding shots. We didn't want to spend too much on the entire day and we both did not like the standard posed wedding pictures. But the longer we thought about it the more we came to realise that in the end the pictures are the only thing, besides the memories, that will last. While looking online for Vintage wedding dress suppliers I visited the website of Glory Days dresses and took a look at the pictures of the brides. The pictures of one bride caught my eye, since they were exactly the style of photography we were looking for. I was happy to see that the photographers name was mentioned. Although our wedding date was coming up soon photographer Neil happened to be available on our day! Since we live in The Netherlands and our wedding also took place in The Netherlands it took some convincing to get Thomas to agree on getting a photographer from the UK to travel over here but we didn't regret our decision! Neil was great to work with, from the moment we met - which was at the morning of our wedding - it felt really natural and easy going. Nothing too posed, just like we wanted. During the day Neil suggested a couple of short moments to take some pictures. One of the moments was just before sunset and the pictures came out great!

The Bride

I always knew I wanted an original vintage wedding dress. A simple/sweet dress, nothing too revealing or extreme. Since I'm pretty tall most vintage dresses came up too short, in the end I was lucky to find a dress that was a bit shorter but was exactly to my taste. Since it was a vintage dress it did require a few minor alterations, which my mom helped me with. Since my dress was shorter the shoes were pretty important. Because our wedding took place outside on grass and gravel narrow/high heels weren't my first choice. But after trying a lot of options I fell in love with these mint shoes from Rachel Simpson. They really complemented my dress and were super comfortable. I specifically did not want to wear a veil but preferred something a bit less traditional. My headpiece and Thomas's matching buttonhole were ordered on Etsy. They are made out of real dried flowers so they added to the rustic feel we wanted to create for our wedding.

The Groom

Different local stores and bowtie and breast-pocket handkerchief from Belfast Bow Company – via Etsy. Because we didn’t want our wedding to be too fancy a three-piece-suit would be a bit too much for Thomas, especially with my vintage ‘simple’ dress. So to match our theme and my dress we decided to go for a vintage style jacket with separate pants. The bowtie and the breast-pocket handkerchief completed the vintage look. Thomas's shoes are from Clarks, we really liked the type of leather and the colour matched his outfit perfectly. Our dog Sigmund was our ring bearer so he also needed to look his best! I ordered a bowtie collar with a matching lead with cute dots. We attached the rings to a slice of wood and attached the entire thing to his collar just before the ceremony.

The Jewellery

One of our favourite cities is York, which is why it seemed like a great idea to both of us to get our wedding rings from a York jeweller. We were looking for simple gold wedding bands. I wanted to be able to wear mine together with my engagement ring. We tried on a couple of rings that matched our criteria, but needed some time to think about it and went back home. A couple of months later we decided that we really wanted the rings, so we contacted the store – they even remembered our ringsizes! - and ordered them, everything worked out great. All the other jewellery worn – my earrings, engagement ring and the ‘something borrowed’; a brooch family piece - are vintage pieces.

The Flowers

The flowers on the tables were arranged by the location and the caterer. For the wedding bouquet we liked the hand-picked flower style. The bouquet was made by a local florist. All the flowers were specifically chosen by my mother and me.

The Decor

Since signs and stuff can be a bit pricey and I liked to personalise it a bit more I decided to create the signs myself, inspired by items seen online. By creating them myself I was able to use the same font as used in our invitations - which I also created myself. We used a blackbird on our save the date cards and throughout designing the blackbird sort of became a part of our theme as well. Other decoration such as photo booth props and pompoms are from Ginger Ray. The wooden cake stands were made by someone in our neighbourhood and were designed as plant stands for a garden. We thought they would be great as cake stands instead! I made the cake topper of our cats myself, to have them be a part of our wedding day as well, since they obviously couldn’t join us :) Our master of ceremony Petra and her husband Mark arrived the evening before the wedding to start decorating the venue early in the morning on our wedding day.

The Food

Instead of going for a typical wedding cake we decided to get a cake table with different sorts of pies from our favorite vegetarian restaurant, that offers some delicious homemade pies. Since weddings aren’t their core business it was nice to see the owners as excited as they were to be asked for this. After an afternoon of tasting some delicious pies we decided to go for 3 varieties. Our all time favourite – Raspberry/white chocolate/pistachio/mascarpone - was the ‘main cake/pie’. Since we didn’t plan a party with dancing at the end of the day, dinner was going to be an important part of our day. So we really wanted to make this part as intimate and enjoyable as possible. The old farmers shed was perfect for dining at the long tables on old wooden chairs. Combined with the vintage tableware and a complete vegetarian meal it was exactly as planned. The theme of the dinner was Italian, which always works good vegetarian and works well with the shared dining idea. During dinner there was room for a couple of toasts and one of the guest even sang a funny song he wrote for us.

The Music

We both really liked the idea of walking down the aisle to our favourite classical piece by Pachelbel, Canon in D. At first we were planning on setting up a playlist, but about two weeks before the wedding we decided that it would be way better to get a violinist and a cellist. Luckily we were still able to find two ladies that were available on our wedding day! Upon arrival of the guests the duo was playing in the background. During the ceremony they provided music while walking down the aisle and during the official parts of the ceremony. And after that they played during the cake/toast moment. From the moment the classical duo left we put on a playlist to play till dinner. On my bachelorette party a busker was playing in the streets of Amsterdam. He sounded really good so we asked him if he could play a Johnny Cash song to see how that would sound :) He nailed it, so we decided to ask him to play guitar & sing on our wedding during the evening. We gave him a couple of suggestions for artists we like and let him decide what he wanted to play. He played acoustic during the second part of dinner into the evening near a bonfire. As a surprise our brother in law Yerry, who is a singer himself, sang us a song while the busker accompanied him on guitar.

The Entertainment

During the afternoon we laid out a couple of games across the garden, such as kubs, croquet, jeu de boules, skippyballs, shuffleboard and two diabolos. Our guests were free to wander around the garden and participate in games. We got a bride and groom pinata, but forgot to smash them :D We also rented a photo booth for our guests to take some fun pictures as a remembrance of the day.

The Transport

I used to own a vintage beetle, and I’m still crazy about those cars, so the choice for our wedding car was easy :) We chose the mint colour because that matched our theme and wasn't as standard as the white/cream beetle’s you usually see. We found a rental company that offered a VW beetle convertible for rent and booked it at the last moment - one week before the wedding. On the morning of our wedding day Thomas picked me up from our home in the car, together we drove to the venue, where we parked the car. It was a great eye catcher for the arriving guests. Thomas loved driving it so there might be another vintage beetle in our future ;)

Final Thoughts

All the clichés of getting married are true, it is hard work and preparing comes with many stressful moments. In the end there’s not much that we would do differently if we had to plan it all over again. Except maybe enjoy it more while it lasts. It was a great day and totally worth it!