Vintage Quirky & Eclectic Budget Village Hall DIY Wedding -...

Vintage Quirky & Eclectic Budget Village Hall DIY Wedding -...

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Where do I begin? This wedding is practically perfect in every way; super fun, full of colour and so much personality.

WWW readers Emma and Adam tied the knot on the 9th May 2015 in their local Church followed by a reception at the village hall. With a budget of £6000 they DIYed everything themselves, from the décor to the food and the setting up and tidying away afterwards. The hard work certainly paid off as the day was beautiful.

There was a real old fashioned vintage feel to their wedding. Adam wore a dashing check suit with bow tie while Emma chose a gorgeous House of Mooshki design with cute Rachel Simpson Shoes. My favourite elements from their day have to be the blooms, the quirky décor and of course the love.

Many thanks goes to My Fabulous Life for sharing so many joyful images with us today.

THE PROPOSAL | Moving into our new house, June 2013. We had just finished a very, very long day moving and unpacking. Adam called me frantically from the loft, pretending one of our cats had got stuck somewhere. Panicking, I rushed up, to find him on one knee, ring in hand, asking me to marry him. Completely unexpected - I think my initial reaction was 'are you joking?!'

THE VISION | Just a fun relaxed day with lots of good food, drink and dancing.

THE PLANNING PROCESS | We had a rough idea straight away that we wanted to get married locally, and do whatever we could ourselves. I (Emma) did most of the planning, but Adam was very good at carrying out the tasks he was allocated!

We couldn't have done it without the help of our wonderful friends and family. My bridesmaid Thea designed all of our stationery - she is a genius! Adam's very clever mum cross stitched all our table names and table plan, which looked great.

We loved the idea of a hog roast for the main food - this was one of the first things we booked. We decided to have a sit down meal, with allocated seats, but people went up a table at a time to help themselves to food. The hog roast was fantastic, and our best men made some delicious salads to accompany it. We made all the evening food ourselves during the week before the wedding.

The second big thing we booked was speaker and lighting hire. We knew we didn't want a DJ playing a load of music we have never heard of of, so spent months perfecting an all day playlist. We asked for people's song requests on their RSVP cards, and added them to the list. It worked really well and we didn't stop dancing!

One thing that really worried us about doing the whole thing ourselves, was the overall 'running' of the day. Who would clear the plates and wash up? Who would move all the tables ready for the dancing to start? Who would keep clean glasses on hand and clear away empties? Luckily my brother's friend runs his own catering business, and although they didn't do any of our food, we paid four staff helped to keep the day running smoothly. I can't recommend doing this enough!

We went over to France to buy all our beer and wine, and bought all our Prosecco in Aldi! We decided on just having vodka, beer and wine in the evening (as well as soft drinks of course!), as it would be a nightmare trying to think of all the different drinks people might want. We said on the invitations that people were welcome to bring a bottle if they liked to drink anything else.

BUDGET | The whole thing came to roughly £6000.

THE VENUE | We married in the beautiful church which is at the end of our road. We walk past this most days on our dog walks, and thought it would be lovely to see the place where we got married every day. Our reception was held in the village hall, which was about a 10 minute drive away.

We decided on a village hall reception, as we wanted a 'blank canvas' that we could decorate and organise ourselves. Also, we were very keen to provide drinks for everyone for the whole day and night, and knew this would be far too expensive in a wedding venue. We wanted to be able to do much of the food ourselves, and source our own suppliers, so again, a village hall was perfect for this.

THE DRESS & ACCESSORIES | My dress was 'Darla' by House of Mooshki, and my shoes were 'Lulu' by Rachel Simpson. I wore a pair of my mum's earrings, and a bumblebee hairpin under my veil. Adam wore bumblebee cufflinks too.

FINDING THE DRESS | I knew I wanted a knee length or tea length dress that wasn't too fussy. I left it really late to look for a dress, as dreaded the idea of visiting tons of dress shops. I found 'Rock the Frock' bridal which was local to me online, and luckily fell in love with the first dress I tried on!

GROOM'S ATTIRE | He had a suit made at King & Allen, and wore a pair of his brown brogues.

THE READINGS & MUSIC | We just had one reading, Corinthians 13 read by Thea. We sang Jerusalem and All Things Bright and Beautiful.

BEAUTIFUL BRIDESMAIDS | My maid of honour was my best friend Laura, and my bridesmaids were my lovely friend Thea, my cousin Hannah, and Adam's sister, Rachel.

I loved the idea of flowery dresses, and found the perfect dresses online at British Retro. We teamed them with ivory petticoats, and brown t-bar sandals by Agnes & Norman. I loved their outfits so much, I even bought one for myself!

THE FLOWERS | My awesome mum bought wholesale flowers and arranged them all for our venue, and our bouquets were by a family friend. I felt so lucky - all I said was 'I just want nice, bright spring flowers' - and they were perfect!

THE CAKE | I made the main wedding cakes (fruit cake, chocolate cake, Victoria sponge, carrot cake, coffee and walnut cake) with extra desserts by Adam's Nan (Best trifle ever!), Adam's Mum and Laura.

YOUR PHOTOGRAPHER | Becky & Tim Joiner from My Fabulous Life. All I can say is they were just fantastic. We were both so nervous about having our photos taken, and Adam in particular is so uncomfortable with it, but they made us feel SO at ease. We didn't even know they were there, and so many of our guests commented on how discreet they were. And the best bit is our photos are AWESOME!! They also made a beautiful short wedding film, which I watch at least twice a day! You can see it here.

THE DETAILS & DÉCOR | This was the best bit for us! Our house is full of old jars, books and general bric a brac, and we have always collected plates and tea sets, so we knew we wanted to use these bits and pieces. We used a mixture of old dinner plates, many of which we already had, but we had lots of fun charity shopping for more! We used our old jars and bottles for flowers, and my maid of honour and my nan spent many an hour making metres and metres of bunting!

Adam made some chalkboard menus and order of the day signs, which looked great, and we made our own polaroid guest book for people to take a picture of themselves, stick it in and leave us a message.

We used one of our vintage suitcases for our cards, and made a display of lots of photos of us through the years as a little backdrop, which was a good talking point and looked great. We also dotted paper pom poms throughout the hall, which our best men helped us make a couple of days before the wedding. For wedding favours, we designed a personalised stamp, which we used to decorate brown envelopes with wildflower seeds in. These also doubled up as place names.

We had the hall hired from 1pm the day before until 4pm the day after. We spent the day before with our best men, maid of honour and our families setting up and decorating - it was a lot of hard work, but a lot of fun! We all went back together to clear up the next day - even that was fun! Preparing the hall beforehand and clearing up the next day (albiet hungover and tired!) was actually one of the best bits for us - seeing everyone working together to make our day so wonderful was just lovely.

As we soon realised that we loved decorating and designing our wedding so much, we now hire out our crockery and props for weddings, as well as supplying cakes, and other décor.

THE HONEYMOON | A week in Porthleven, Cornwall with our dog.

MEMORABLE MOMENTS | Adam turning up at the house while we were getting ready as he kept forgetting things, walking down the aisle with my dad, nearly being late for the ceremony - my brother's fiancé is a beautician, and was doing all our make up for us, but she was also an usher - we were running so behind time that when people arrived at the church there were no ushers!

ADVICE FOR OTHER COUPLES | Do whatever you can yourself, if you are able. We had enormous fun planning, cooking, decorating and plate shopping, and it made our day all the more special. I would say start planning and making things early as you can -I made and froze whatever food I could in the 3 months before the wedding, which is lucky, as those last few days were just frantic.

Use a microphone for your speeches (my dad & Adam forgot - half the hall couldn't hear them!). Enlist the help of willing friends and family - there is no way we could have done everything without ours.

Oh, and leave yourselves plenty of time to get ready - we felt like we had ages, and spent so long laughing and drinking Prosecco that we didn't realise what what the time was!

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE |

Photographer | My Fabulous Life

Speakers, lighting and light up letters | Light Up Love

Dress | Rock the Frock Bridal

Bridesmaids' Dresses | British Retro

Groom's Attire | King and Allen

Hog Roast | Essex Hog Roasts

Decor | Our own - Lemon Confetti

Wow. And what a fun first dance. I love this happy day :-)

Thanks so much to Emma and Adam for sharing their wonderful story with us xo Lou

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