OUR WEDDING // THE VENUE, FLOWERS & OUR HANDMADE DECOR

Welcome to the second post in my very own wedding series. Lots of you said lovely things about my last post which made me so happy, thinking that all that planning and hard work could influence someone else's big day! I really hope I am able to give advice, ideas and supplier information, so that the happiness of our perfect English country wedding day can be shared! As you can see this post is all about the little details of the day- from pretty bouquets to floral bunting. From the very beginning we both knew we wanted to have a very personal wedding, with homemade touches that were unique to us and our day. We tried to be as creative as possible, and used our families and friends to help us along the way. To make the decoration personal, meaningful and cheaper, Jason and I started preparing and making things far in advance. We cut, stuck, painted and sewed- this saved so much money, and made the day that much more special.

 Tip: Go for a venue that you can hire for 48 hours. This was essential to us as we wanted to set up the previous day, and not have to clear up on the night! We chose Marks Hall, partly because of its gorgeous garden for an outdoor ceremony, but also as it included a 48 hour hire!

The Venue: It has been my childhood dream to get married in an old fashioned English barn, full of flowers, bunting and fairy lights; and this shaped our search for the venue. I started by trawling through Essex and Suffolk venues online, and eventually found Marks Hall. What initially made us both fall in love with Marks Hall was the beautiful gardens and its facility to have an outside ceremony. We then saw it had an old converted stable barn for the reception and had our hearts set on it immediately.

The Barn decorations: Straight away, after booking the venue, I went to a fabric shop with my mum and selected metres and metres of pretty patterns for our bunting. We chose 3 floral prints and 3 plain colours to do a repeat pattern. My clever mum made about 150 metres!! It looked absolutely amazing and made the barn look unique to us. We also used warm golden fairy lights to wrap around the pillars and enhance the magic of the room. I hired pretty chair pad covers from Lovely Wedding Touches, which were perfect because neither of us liked the big white chair covers with the bows; they didn't go with our theme and weren't unique (or pretty) enough. Lovely Wedding Touches provided the solution of seat pad covers made from pretty floral patterns.

Don't panic about the little details on the day. No one will notice if there is no ribbon on their name tag, if there isn't lace around their table's jam jars or even if your hair piece has some gems missing! People are there to celebrate the day with you, regardless of the details.

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The flowers: I always knew that I wanted to arrange all the flowers with my mum, mother in law, grandma and bridesmaids the day before, partly to save money and also to provide a lovely memory. And it really was- we all agree that making the flower arrangements the day before and setting up the venue was some of the most precious memories on the lead up. First of all, we worked out what look we wanted to go for and which flowers we needed to do so. In our case we wanted meadowy, hand-picked looking bunches with pink roses, gypsphila wax flowers, daisies and lavender. We ordered them from a local wholesalers and picked them up two days before. We wanted the table arrangements to look as though we had walked into a meadow, picked a bunch of flowers and put them into a jam jar! The lace rimmed jam jars, milk bottles, and hessian bows complimented the flowers perfectly.

Although we made the table arrangements, pew ends and jam jars ourselves, we ordered the buttonholes and bouquets from a wonderful florist (Claire Weeks), who incorporated all our ideas into gorgeous bundles of prettiness! I asked her to create loose meadow looking bouquets with lace wrapped around the stem. When these arrived on the morning we couldn't have been happier with them!

Pew ends: Lavender// Corn// Rosmery// Pink Heather - Tied in hessian

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The table plan: Naturally, I saw this idea on pinterest and fell in love with it immediately! Table plans are quite the centre piece so I knew that we needed an original idea, and this was perfect. We sourced an old step ladder, pinned string across each step and used pretty pink pegs to attach each table plan. We used the same theme for these as our invitations.

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The tables: When looking through pinterest, I saw people using wooden slabs as table centres, and this fitted in with the rustic theme. A friend cut up the wood for me, and I used these as sort of placemats for the centre decorations. I used two jam jars filled with meadow flowers, and one tall milk bottle (I got these from boot sales). Jason painted table numbers on luggage tags to hang from the bottles. I loved this idea! It didn't make the tables look too busy. The name tags were another creation of my husbands- he spent many many evenings copying a font that he found off the internet, and then colouring it in with black marker. These were clipped to each guests individual vintage sweet bags, as the wedding favour was a giant pick & mix table! I will show you this on the food blog post which I am doing next!

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The order of service: We got some gold frames from a car boot, painted card with blackboard paint and...voila! Jason drew it on with chalk pens using the same font from the name tags. I loved this little touch! We also had other blackboards with the wedding hashtag on, and cute little messages. 

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Tip: Wade through pinterest as soon as you can to discover a theme you love. Once you have found one (we went for rustic) try and steer every idea towards it. Every table idea, stationary idea and venue choice! Stick to one theme and everything will be made easy, and your day will look beautiful. Too many clashing ideas look messy. 

Make sure you keep posted on @morganalicebeauty to see the next series of my wedding posts: the drink, food, rustic cake and beautiful stationary!