Happy Monday Lovely People!

We hope you all had a great weekend and not suffering too much from the Monday blues.

We have a gorgeous wedding to share with you today. Think giant tipis, some amazing sparkly shoes, a bouncy castle and dodgems. Yes you read that right!! Jade and Mike brought the funfair to their festival wedding by hiring dodgems for their guests to enjoy which we think is AWESOME! Pretty much every festival I have been too (apart from the smaller ones) always has some sort of funfair entertainment whether it be old fashioned games or rides so kudos to Jade and Mike for thinking outside the box.

Jade and Mike married on 9th June 2012 at Clewer St Stephens church in Windsor followed by a festival style reception at the stunning Wellington Country Park in Reading. They wanted their wedding to be relaxed and informal and for their friends and family to have fun. They did away with traditional elements such as a seating plan and table names/numbers and instead encouraged their guests to sit where they pleased and to also mingle with each other.

Jade tells us all about it......

My dress was called Denver by La Sposa. I brought it from Bridal Rogue Gallery in London. They were absolutely fantastic in the shop and made me feel really at ease. The dress I chose was absolutely nothing like how I imagined it would be. I thought I would see myself in a lace (Kate Moss style) vintage chic sort of a number. It turns out I am in no way vintage chic so I started trying on anything and everything in hope that I wasn't going to get married in my usual jeans and t - shirt. I knew my dress was 'the one' when I found myself dancing around in front of the mirror in it like my former five year old self playing dress up.

I chose to wear a beautiful veil and at the last minute a little bit of sparkle in the form of a head band which was also purchased from Bridal Rogue Gallery. I tried to keep accessories to a minimum as I wanted it to be all about my dress.

I hear a lot about brides getting dress wobbles, but I suffered with huge shoe wobbles and couldn't find any I liked for a long time. But then I fell in love with some sparkly gold Christian Louboutins. I loved them so much that i didn't want to take them off and brought them about six months before the wedding. Only as the wedding drew closer I started to panic that I was going to not so gracefully go arse over... (I'm sure you can imagine.) I did manage to get safely down the aisle on stiletto heel but they were very quickly replaced by flip flops shortly after arriving at the reception.

My hairdresser was the fantastic Severin Hubert from the Hepburn Collection, and he was simply perfect. I am so fussy about my hair and make-up and I rarely let anyone do it. I knew I wanted to look like me (which is why I did my own make up) but i didn't want my hair to be the same boring day to day style that I wear. Sev was incredibly patient with me, to begin with I had no idea what I wanted. We decided it was best to the side as I often wear it down, so it still felt down to me but in a style. Sev also did my mum and bridesmaids hair. He was lovely to be around and was great fun to have around on the morning of the wedding.

Mike and I got married on the 9th June in windsor. We were living in windsor before moving quite a way up north to Newcastle so it seemed only right to get married where all our family were.

Every time I read about weddings I seemed drawn to the ones that were in gardens and marquees. A bit risky when your dealing with the great British weather but I had my heart set on a festival wedding rather than a more traditional (and dryer) manor house. We then stumbled across some giant tipis on the internet. Wow! They looked incredible and they meant that we could have a festival wedding in the great outdoors. We love a festival, and couldn't think of a more perfect way to enjoy our special day than to create our very own one.

Our ceremony was held at Clewer St Stephens church in windsor followed by our reception at Wellington Country Park in Reading. we decided to hold the reception at Wellington country park because the Stunning tents company (where we hired our tipis from) were very familiar with this venue. The venue was also local for all our family and friends, handy when you know alcohol is going to be consumed. We hired the waterloo meadow field at the country park because the setting was beautiful, the field was full of wild rd antler deer which made a spectacular backdrop for the reception.

We are currently living up north in Newcastle so decorating the venue was proving a bit of a challenge. With work and family commitments it was hard to keep traveling back and forth, so we decided that we needed some expert help. Through Stunning Tents contacts we were able to find someone who was also very familiar with the tents. Her name was Henrietta from Snook Events. We took a trip down to her offices in London and gave her an idea of what we imagined our day would look like. We wanted to create a relaxed approach to the wedding where all our guests could just have fun. This meant no table settings or seating arrangement, which worked out well as everyone got to know each other by moving around throughout the evening. We had a hog roast in the day and a fish and chip van for the evening so there was no need for table settings, we wanted it to be informal.

The benches were dressed with lace table cloths and huge candelabras covered in flowers to create a rustic look. With this we had huge rustic hanging balls of flowers suspended from the apex in two out of the three tents accompanied with twigs and roses wrapped round the beams. The look was finished with strings of fairy lights cascading from the top of each tent. The tents were breathtakingly beautiful and it was so nice to see the reaction of our guests when they walked in.

I wanted all of the bouquets to look handpicked, in keeping with the rustic, vintage theme. I created a mood board of flowers that I liked and took it to the flower shop called Flowerz in Windsor and they did all the rest. They were brilliant, the girls and I were so pleased with out bouquets. We had a selection of pale pinks and reams as well as the deeper purple colours I used for my bridesmaids and the button holes.

We had some extra special touches at our reception.My very talented friend jenny made us some collaged of friends and family who were at the wedding. They were displayed next to our cake as you entered the tipis, so everyone immediately stopped to have a look and laugh about the pictures. It was a lovely ice breaker, and it's so nice to have something that you can take away with you to keep. We had some bunting made reading 'Love is Sweet' which hung over our sweet table.

Mikes mum also put her creative skills to work. when i first started compiling a scrap book of things I would like for our wedding I had cut out a picture of huge cushion letters that hung on a string creating a saying. Jill had seen this picture and made us "And They Lived Happily Ever After" out of cushions. It really was incredible and looked stunning hanging near the entrance of the tents.

Our cake was made up of cupcakes with a fruit cake as the top tier for us to cut and keep. Neither of us got a look in with the cakes so they must have been tasty! We had some little peg people made as our cake toppers from What Katy Did Next and they looked lovely on the day.

We have three children of our own so it was important to us that the kids enjoyed the wedding as much as the adults. We incorporated a bouncy castle which we hired from Reading party hire and dodgems from Irvin Amusements. I didn't see much of the bouncy castle, the kids dominated that area. I did however get stuck in with the dodgems, which proved to be a real hit with the adults as well as the children. Fitting in the car with my dress proved a slight challenge but I managed to cram myself in there!

Photos of the day meant everything to us as we knew the day would be over so quickly and there would be so much we didn't see for ourselves. Our photographer Andy Rapkins was fantastic in capturing family and friends in the moment. We wanted the majority of our photos to be natural shots so that we could see the day from our guest's point of view and to capture everyone enjoying themselves.

To add another touch of fun we hired a white cab photo booth from Mega Booth so people could dress up and have some photo fun! It was great fun and so funny to look through all the pictures afterwards.

When planning the wedding I read so many times that people regretted not having the day captured on film. Mikes friend had started up his own videography company and offered to film our day for us, which was a huge bonus.

As Mike and I wanted to create a festival atmosphere we decided to book live music acts rather than a DJ. We went for an Irish singer for the earlier part of the reception called Rich McMahon who we booked through Stepping Out Entertainment. He created the exact day time atmosphere we were after, with a mixture of irish and mainstream music, he had a real gift for getting everyone up on the dance floor.

Following Rich we had a band we had found on the internet. We had booked them as soon as we set a date as we loved the sound of them so much.They were called 4 Beats 2 the Bar and they were even better than we had ever expected. They played a variety of different tunes from Stevie Wonder to the Killers so everyone had a song to sing along to. Everyone at the wedding had mentioned how fantastic both acts were and they really did create a fantastic party atmosphere and had everyone on their feet.

With booking the country park we came across a little dilemma. There was a slight hitch with a noise curfew at 11pm.We quickly combated this with a silent disco. We used Marvellous Festivals. We thought that the silent disco might have gone down like a lead balloon, the two live acts were hard to follow and you can never tell what people think of putting on headphones and dancing around like idiots. Luckily our friends and family absolutely loved it. It was a huge it and everyone was up and dancing.

Mike and I both had the most incredible day ( even the great British weather held out for us!) Everything for us was perfect and neither of us would have changed a thing. My advice to other brides would be the same as what I read when planning the wedding over and over again. And that's to enjoy it from start to finish, including the planning, the enjoyment of a wedding starts the minute you say "yes".

Photographer: Andy Rapkins

Ceremony Venue: Clewer St Stephens Church , Windsor

Reception Venue: Wellington Country Park

Bride's Dress: Denver by La Sposa from Bridal Rogue Gallery

Bride's Shoes: Christian Louboutin

Bride's Hair: Severin Hubert from the Hepburn Collection

Giant Tipis: Stunning Tents

Flowers: Flowerz

Decor & Styling: Snook Events

Cake Toppers: What Katy Did Next

Hog Roast: Outside Catering

Bouncy Castle & Dodgems: Irvin Amusements

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