Writing about a wedding I'd love to have been a guest at is always an utter pleasure. Great food, a charity bar plus plenty of fun and games and you are onto a winner.

Adam and Sarah tied the knot on the 21 June 2014 hosting their reception on a campsite, with a gorgeous marquee filled with pretty décor and camping for themselves and their guests.

Their whole day was about the relaxed atmosphere with so many lovely home made touches.

Sarah wore an original vintage 1950s dress while Adam went for a waistcoat and chinos with fun lego buttonholes. Eeekkk.

Thanks so very much to the wonderful Lifeline Photography for providing the photographs today.

THE PROPOSAL | Adam once said a couple of years after we had been going out that 7 years of dating was the perfect time period for a proposal. I thought he was joking... he was however a man of his word! On our 7 year anniversary we were sat on the sofa and had just exchanged anniversary cards when he said 'marry me?'. I said yes of course.

THE VISION | We are both very informal people and really wanted family and friends to come and celebrate our day in a relaxed way. The venue was a campsite and so this helped set the tone for the day, you can't really do formal whilst camping!

We have a little boy who is 2 and a half, so the day also needed to be laid back so that he would enjoy the day as much as us. Food was also a major consideration for us, I always get hungry at weddings so I wanted a constant supply of food at ours!

THE PLANNING PROCESS | My brother and his family live in America so the wedding date was really set around them and my nieces school holidays. Once this was set we decided on the Church and found the venue. I spent a lot of my time on the internet looking at wedding blogs and Pinterest getting ideas which I would then run by Adam. The planning and researching was more time consuming than I thought it would be!

BUDGET | Ideally we wanted to keep the budget as low as possible but still achieve the look and day that we had dreamed about. We haven't been brave enough to add it all up exactly but it cost approximately £10,000. It was crazy how it all adds up!! We were very lucky to have financial help from my parents and Aunty, without this we wouldn't have had the day we did. We were sensible in what we spent and never broke our budget, we have had the wedding of our dreams but don't have any debt from the day.

THE VENUE | We first found the Church which was my Mum's suggestion. My Aunty had recently researched our family tree and had found a church that was linked to my maternal grandparents and their family. My great great grandparents were involved with the church and had paid for one of the stained glass windows, many of the family had tombs in the grounds. With this family link it seemed the perfect place to get married. And randomly enough it was about 10 miles away from where Adam grew up, he had actually attended a wedding there when he was younger.

We really wanted an outside reception, with a marquee. I one day thought 'where has flat areas of grass?' and I thought of campsites! I googled campsites in the area and a few options came up, I then saw the perfect place. It was a campsite in a wood, so beautiful a setting. It is owned by the girl guides and used for their camps. I rang the lady who runs the site and discussed if we could use it. It was a random request and not one that they would normally do but after some discussion with their committee (and some anxious few weeks waiting) they very kindly said yes! We then actually visited the site and saw it in person and it was more gorgeous than we could imagine. We knew it was perfect for our wedding day.

THE DRESS & ACCESSORIES | My dress was vintage, we think from 1958. It was bought from Abigail's vintage bridal, the most amazing place if you love vintage. Abigail tailored the dress to me and we made it a different length from the original. The veil was made by my Mum. My jewellery was loaned to me by my Mum too, the earrings were hers and the necklace was my Granny's. My shoes were from Debenhams and were a bargain in their sale. I wanted shoes that I wouldn't have to worry about ruining in the field! Later in the evening I changed to flip-flops so that I could dance in comfort.

FINDING THE DRESS | I had obsessively been 'pinning' dress ideas on Pinterest for a few months so had a good idea of the styles I liked. I always imagined myself in a vintage dress as I love to wear vintage usually when I dress up for occasions. I googled vintage bridal wear and found the wonderful Abigail's vintage bridal. It was only an hour away from where I live and so I planned a trip with my Mum to see what there was.

I was in heaven going there and wanted to try on everything! Abigail was amazing at picking out dresses, I love the 50′s silhouette and so this was the look we tried. I think I tried on about 8 dresses and it came down to two dresses that caught our eye. Abigail was fab and let us take photo's of me in the dresses. We couldn't decide in the appointment and so went home to think about it. However, 10 minutes later once we were sat down for lunch we looked at the photo's and knew that my dress was my dress! I phoned Abigail straight away and reserved it.

GROOM'S ATTIRE | Being that our wedding was going to be very informal once the Church service was completed Adam didn't want a traditional suit but he still had to look smart. He had always said that he wanted to get married wearing converse trainers and so his look started there. His other obsession is Chino trousers from Gap so these were also incorporated. The look then just developed. Shirt and waistcoat's were chosen. Adam found the waistcoats whilst on a work trip to Scotland, they were from the Edinburgh Wool Company. Ties were from ASOS and belts from H&M.

Adam wanted all his boys to be dressed the same. He had three best-men so they were all matching, same clothes as him but different colours. The two ushers were also dressed in the same but again a different colour.

People doubted our choice when we showed them pictures of what we were planning, but we stuck to ours guns and knew it would look good. We think people agreed with us on the day!! We were both really happy with the look we achieved and Adam felt smart but relaxed at the same time.

The boys button holes were mini Lego characters that we chose to match their personality or interests.

THE READINGS & MUSIC | I walked down the aisle to 'These arms of mine' by Otis Reading. One of my favourite songs of all time. Definitely not traditional and the vicar had never heard of it before!

We had two readings, one read by a close friend which was Apache Wedding Blessing, and one by Adam's dad, which was a Psalm about love.

Again we choose a non traditional song to leave the church to, it was from one of our favourite movies, 500 days of summer. 'You make my dreams come true' by Hall and Oates.

BEAUTIFUL BRIDESMAIDS | My bridesmaids were my best friend from school Kate and my niece Chloe. My lovely Mum used her talents here again and made their dresses. We went to Liberty for the fabric which was so pretty, they had the same print but each in a different colour. My Mum had a challenge as Kate lives 3 hours from her so they had one fitting before the dress was made, and Chloe's fitting happened via skype as she lives in America! Luckily the dresses both fit perfectly, phew!!

THE FLOWERS | I had no idea where to start with flowers, so again Pinterest was my saviour. I looked for flowers that I liked and had a relaxed feel to them. The look that I wanted was that someone had picked them during a countryside walk, daisy's were the main flower for this look. I ordered them from a local florist and some were also picked from the hedgerow the day before the wedding. We had a fun few hours arranging all the flowers ourselves into the bouquets and also the church and table flowers. We used tin cans with the labels removed for the vases, some lovely friends ate a lot of bean and tinned peaches for us to gather so many!

THE CAKE | Neither myself or Adam like traditional wedding fruit cake and our favourite cake is Victoria sponge, so this is how we chose the type of cake to eat. A local café catered for our afternoon tea and they made the most gorgeous Victoria sponge ever! We decided on a 'naked' cake, simply decorating with some little edible daisy's I found whilst in Lakeland plastics.

We had a few people at the wedding that can't eat dairy so my Mum and her friend made a dairy free smaller cake for the top so that everyone could enjoy the cake.

My lovely friend Lisa-Marie made our wedding toppers. She makes them out of little wooden pegs and was the only person I showed photo's of my dress to so that she could make them to look just like us. She also used off cuts from my dress so that my mini-me really was dressed the same! They are now such a lovely memento of the day.

YOUR PHOTOGRAPHER | Ah, the wonderful Hannah from Lifeline Photography and her fab assistant Jen.

Initially we weren't going to have a photographer, and it wasn't until we were at a friends wedding 2 months before ours that I changed my mind. We were watching our friends having their photo's taken and I whispered to Adam that I thought we should have one too!

I didn't know where to start to look for a photographer. I tried googling people but no one seemed to be right. I was then reading a wedding blog and saw some gorgeous photo's. I emailed this photographer to ask if she as available. She was already booked but she kindly sent us some names of people she knew were free. Hannah was the person she recommended. I checked out Hannah's website and knew she was the one! She had such an amazing style to her photo's and said that she loves a quirky wedding (which we knew ours would be!). We then had a skype chat with her and arranged a date for a pre wedding shoot.

Hannah instantly made us both feel relaxed having our photo's taken and we had such a laugh on the practise shoot we couldn't wait to see her again for the big day.

On the day Hannah came to photo me getting ready and her assistant Jen photographed Adam and the boys. It was lovely to capture this side of the day too. They worked so hard the whole day and well into the night, and so many of our guests have told us how lovely they were.

I can't describe how happy we are with the photo's that they took, they captured the feeling of the day so well and we are now able to re-live the day again and again by looking at the photo's.

THE DETAILS & DÉCOR | The wedding really just formed it's self with one plan leading to another until it all came together. We kept the day relaxed by inviting everyone to every part of the day, having no seating plan or formal sit down dinner and making the first dance one which everyone had to dance which got the party atmosphere started.

The church service was the most traditional part of the day, we had a slightly eccentric vicar, but this has added to the fun of the day and it was although it was definitely not like any wedding service we had attended before we wouldn't change a thing!

We had a fabulous 'capri marquee' from a local company. Adam had always talked of having a separate dance floor and with this type of marquee we were able to achieve this dream. Adam did a fab job of decorating the dance tent with our collection of Christmas fairy lights, who knew we had so many!

We had no proper colour scheme initially but over time this developed into pale pink, blue, green and yellow's. My Mum had some bunting that she had made for a friends daughters wedding so we used this. I then became obsessed with a pom-pom maker and for the couple of weeks leading up to the wedding this is how I spent my evenings. I wasn't really too sure how I was going to use them until I got into the marquee and we suspended them between the poles on fishing line, they looked amazing. We also found some paper honeycomb decoration from Sainsbury's, I learnt you have to keep your eyes open everywhere for ideas and buy things when you see them. I hired some festoon lights which were so pretty and these were strung between the trees.

We didn't do wedding favours but on each table there were dishes containing dolly mix, marshmallows and flying saucers. Flowers were in tin cans and we also had tea lights in smaller tins cans drilled with holes.

Being that we have a little boy and there were lots of children coming to the day we had various garden games set up, a football net and bubble machine to keep the little ones happy. They also had the bouncy castle to keep them entertained, this was one of the best decisions we made, it kept the kids entertained as well as the adults. I forgot how tiring they are!

On arrival we had bubbles and afternoon tea, yummy sandwiches and scones. As there was no seating plan and people chose where to sit down, most people sat at the tables, but some sat on the grass or with the children as it was such a sunny day. We had 1940′s music in the background, and also my favourite Amelie soundtrack. We served tea and coffee in old china my Mum had collected from charity shops.

Afternoon tea led to the evening dinner which was a hog roast. This was delicious and there was so much that everyone could have seconds. We had some bottles of wine on the tables for people to help themselves to and we also had a charity bar. We had bought all the alcohol and sold it super-cheap with all the money going to a charity that our friends work for in Uganda. We over bought on alcohol but had a sale or return with Majestic wine, so could just take back what we didn't use and get our money back.

We changed the background music to more upbeat tunes. Pudding was the arrival of the fabulous Betsy - a vintage ice-cream van. There was all you can eat ice cream and sweeties (a big hit with the kiddies).

We then had our first dance - 'You never can tell' by Chuck Berry from Pulp Fiction. We made everyone dance with us as we really didn't want to do a first dance. It was so much fun and really got the party started. We then had made a playlist, covering all time periods and music styles, so everyone came onto the dance floor for at least a song. This disco went late into the night.

Later in the evening we cut the cake and also served cheese and biscuits. Not much of this got eaten as people had really filled up earlier in the day. I think that we did over order on the food but I really didn't want to run out and have hungry guest, plus we had great leftovers for the next day to feed the hangovers!

Lots of friends camped on the site so when the night ended we could all roll into bed. We also had a fire-pit which we sat around chatting until the early hours. Adam and I stayed in our wonderful bell-tent on site, along with my niece as she had never camped before!

The next morning we all woke with birds and made cups of tea and ate cold hog roast rolls and left over cake. Mid morning my family arrived and cooked up a million bacon sarnies.. again the sun shone and it was a lovely start to married life. Friend and family were also so much help with the clear up process.

THE HONEYMOON | We are currently in the process of moving house and so to us this is the honeymoon.. moving to our new family home as a married couple is the best honeymoon I could wish for.

MEMORABLE MOMENTS | There are so many. Our wedding day was truly the best day ever and we both loved every minute of it. I really wish I could go back in time and do it all again. Only I would eat and drink more, I didn't seem to do much of either!

Looking around and seeing the day we created and knowing it was exactly what we wanted was perfect, and seeing all our family and friends laughing and smiling made it even more wonderful.

I think my most favourite moment was on the dance floor late into the night, crazy dancing with friends and my cheeks hurting from smiling so much.

ADVICE FOR OTHER COUPLES | Stick to your ideas and have the day that you dreamed of. Don't worry if people think your idea's are a little strange or unusual, trust in your instincts.

Don't worry about the weather. We had a rain plan but were very lucky not to have to use it. But I actually didn't get stressed by the weather as it really is the one thing that you have no control over and worrying is not going to change it.

If you haven't already, create a Pinterest account!!

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE |

Dress | Abigail's Vintage Bridal

Photographer | Hannah at Lifeline Photography

Hair and Makeup | Liv Free

Cake and afternoon team | 28ploughhill

Hog roast | Saxby Rare Breeds

Ice cream van | Betsy Bedford (search for Betsy Bedford on Facebook).

Marquee | Undercover Agents

Stunning.

Huge thanks to Adam and Sarah for sharing their brilliant wedding with us today XOXO Lou