Katy and Thomas tied the knot in May with a Church ceremony, followed by a reception in a Big Top in a field in Nottinghamshire. Ermmmm wow!

They wanted their day to be happy with quirky festival style surroundings. So much of their day was thoughtfully home made, such as the bunting, graffiti bar and table plan.

The boys looked super cool in blazers and chinos by Moss Bros with Thomas wearing customised hi tops. Katy looked beautiful in lace with her hair in an elegant up do. The bridesmaids looked lovely in red and the little ones looked adorable! There is just sooo much to love about their wedding.

Thanks so much to the brilliant CG Weddings for sharing their photographs with us today.

 

The Proposal… Pre stone roses gig on the 30th of June 2012…. Was supposed to be at the gig but Tom bottled it incase he lost the ring or got searched on the way in!

The Vision for the Day… Happy Smiley people in quirky, festival style surroundings.

The Planning Process… Found a big top and a field…..booked a Barbershop quartet. Found a spit roast BBQ caterer. Booked tables, chairs and toilets…. A friend designed the circus style invitations. Groom, best men and ushers found suits. Found my dress! Tom built a bar, we paid for a graffiti artist to come and teach how to graffiti the ‘LOVEBAR’! Rented second hand furniture for the chill out tent. Collected vintage crockery from second hand shops. Sorted bridemaid’s dresses. Bought second hand cake stands for the cupcake flower arrangements to sit on. Booked ice cream van for dessert. Booked a band. Roped friend in to be DJ. Made cravats for the wedding party. Adapted flower girl dresses and made the sashes. Ordered tutu underskirts from Angel Faces. Booked second lot of caterers for evening guests. Ordered alcohol and glasses. Ordered a bouncy castle. Sorted out table names on driftwood collected from our beach/surf visits. Order of services printed. Veil sorted. Jewellery, bags and shoes sorted for bride and bridesmaids…. Phew… makes me tired typing all of this out and thinking about everything we did in the 11 months from getting engaged! We also move house in this time – wow!

Budget… £15,000

The Venue… A farmers field in Blyth, Nottinghamshire

The Dress + Accessories… The dress was from a local independent dress shop – Melanie James Bridal in Chorlton, Manchester. Great place to go!!! Plus only 5 mins down the road from our house – bonus! Accessories, I wore my grandmas necklace, combined with mismatching earrings/bracelet from Accessorize…. My shoes were gorgeous gold T-Bars by bertie…

Finding the Dress… Went to several shops around the Manchester area to try and get an idea of what I wanted… had always visualised having lace since I was a little girl so this was very important to me. I did several trips to different shops on my own at first and narrowed it down to just 3 different shops. The I arranged for all my best friend girls to come with me one day to all 3 shops… it ended up being the last dress that I tried on that day being the winner (which coincidentally was one of the very first ones that I tried on on my own and loved!) I knew it was the one when all of my friends started welling up!

Groom’s Attire… Tom had a very clear vision of the look that he wanted. He wanted a very much country gentleman look and went around vintage shops to try and put a look together… unfortunately, this proved a bit difficult and time consuming so he ended up popping in to Moss Bros on the off chance and they happened to have a tweed range of blazers which he loved! They came with elbow patches too – just what he wanted! Tom was the only one to have his colour blazer, the best men had green and the rest of the wedding party had the dark brown tweed colour. All wore chino style trousers in beige, apart from the best men who wore burgundy. Tom ordered a pair of customised hi-tops from the adidas website which matched his outfit. They have our wedding date embroidered onto them and he’s only going to wear them on our anniversaries from now on!!!

I made the green check jacket for the pageboy Billy as it was really difficult to find anything to match the best men in the shops! I think that he looked so cute and I managed to get him some burgundy trousers/tie and some green converse to finish off the look. He looked gorgeous!

Also, the master of ceremony (a good friend of ours) got into the theme fully by being dressed as a circus ringmaster – he looked amazing!

The Readings + Music… The reading was nothing too religious, it was ‘What is Love?’ anon. We’d asked one of my best friends to do a reading and she researched it and gave us several options to choose from and this was the one that we felt reflected us the best…

The music that we chose for the church was traditional wedding march on the way in. Then whilst we were signing the register  we had ‘Angels’ by The XX, Paloma Faiths live lounge version of Rudimentals ‘feel the love’ and Oasis ‘Wonderwall’.

Beautiful Bridesmaids… I had 2 grown up bridesmaids…. They were dressed in beautiful pinky red to tie in with the happy, colourful circus theme that we wanted. We found the dresses on the dessy website. They were 50s style in shape with a lovely full skirt. We found a stockist in Stockport called Allison Burgess couture so ordered them through her. The gold shoes we found on asos and then we finished the look with little gold heart earrings and bracelets from accessorise.

The 2 younger bridesmaids dresses I found in BHS! They were cheap and cheerful! I shortened them and removed the sash that they came with. I then bought some fabric which matched the colour of the grown up bridesmaids dresses and made new sashes for them. I bought them both tutu underskirts to give the dresses more shape and finished off the look with some lace baseball style trainers from Zara….. perfect!

The Flowers… The flowers were a beautiful and based on the theme ‘woodlands bouquet’. We knew the florist and trusted him with choosing the exact flowers for us… we wanted natural looking flowers with some dark pinky red colours and some yellow so he put this together perfectly! The buttonholes for the wedding party were great! They had pieces of wheat in them and were tied together with raffia.

The Cake… My very talented mother made the cake for us… we wanted cream, blush and gold colours to feature… and with it being in a circus tent I decided that I really wanted 2 gold elephants on the top instead of the traditional bride and groom figurines. So my mum made the elephants and then painted them gold for us.  One of the tiers had daisy flowers on it…. It was a beautiful cake and couldn’t have wished for anything more perfect!

Your Photographer… We had Liam Crawley do our photos from CG weddings and we knew from our first meeting with Liam that we had the same vision for our wedding pics! He was as excited as us about our big day and realised that we were pretty much up for anything so all of the photos that we did were really fun and exactly what we wanted! Capturing lots of smiles and laughter! Very, very pleased with the results and everybody that we’ve shown the pictures to have loved them…

The Details + Decor… Hay bales in the field… Homemade bunting…. Mismatching vintage crockery…. cupcake flower arrangements… homemade table plan board… homemade graffitied bar with hand pull ales on tap….. Red and white heart shaped foil balloons in the hedges…. Homemade table names on driftwood…. DJ in a shed….. Pallet stage…. Name tags on wine glasses…. Camping in the same field as reception…. Bride and bridesmaids taken to the church in campervans as a surprise!!

The Honeymoon… We had a minimoon for 5 days, camping up on the north coast of Scotland in Durness – absolutely beautiful! My mum and dad had bought us an amazing beast of a tent for our wedding present so we went off up there in that. It was stunning and by all accounts it was raining all over the rest of the country but we had beautiful weather! Glorious!

Memorable Moments… All of it! Getting to church in a camper van… Seeing Tom at the altar….. Laughing and smiling most of the way through the ceremony with our fabulous reverend! Arriving at the field as man & wife…. All of the amazing photo sessions…. Having a dance as man and wife to the Barbershop Quartet….. The great food…. The smiley, happy people! The kids running excitedly for the ice cream van when it arrived! People on the bouncy castle….  Everybody dancing like nobody was watching for the entire evening…. Tom crowd surfing while the awesome band were playing! The speeches starting as the evening guests arrived! The great sunshine and blue skies. The setting off of the sky lanterns and the surprise fire work display that was put on! Amazing amazingness!

Advice for Other Couples… Don’t have a long engagement, life’s too short to spend aaages on planning your wedding! You’ve got the rest of your life to enjoy after your big day. If you’re thinking of having your wedding in a field/outdoors then be aware that basic amenities that you take for granted all need organising and definitely invest in a spare generator for power! It’s fab having a camping option for guests too…. Cheap! Also we had BYO for drinks and everybody loved it as it was so cheap for them!

Credit Where Credit is Due…

Photography: http://www.cgweddings.co.uk/

Big Top: http://bigtopmania.co.uk/

Hog Roast: http://www.bouncinghogsnbars.co.uk/

Barbershop: http://www.rockaholix.co.uk/

Ice Cream: http://www.sweetscoops.co.uk/

Flowers: http://www.lockwoodsflowers.co.uk/

Dress: http://www.melaniejamesbridal.co.uk/

Bridesmaids: http://www.alisonburgesscouture.co.uk/

Petticoats: http://www.angels-face.co.uk/

 

Amazing! Such a colourful, fun and relaxed day. Thanks so much to Katy and Thomas for sharing their gorgeous wedding with us today XOXO Lou