Wedding Photos - Arriving at the Venue

Here I am again for another instalment of our wedding! I can't believe how many photos I have!

We left the church in our VW camper Pip, with my Dad at the wheel.  We decided to stop off on the way to the venue and get some photos at one of my parents neighbours houses. (who just happened to also be very helpful wedding guests!)  I had spotted this perfectly shabby chic metal door on one of my earlier visits, and decided it would make a great background!

With the photos, I really wanted to make sure people weren't having to stand around being bored, hence why we only had a few at the church, and then at this point the guests were all arriving at the marquee getting their canapés and drinks. It was a tricky balance as the photos were very important to me, but I also didn't want to be away from our guests for too long. In the end I decided we would have a quick shoot here before we got the the venue, and then one later on after the meal. I think this worked really well and meant that the photos were much more natural and not rushed.

During this shoot chris decided to bite my head and blow a raspberry on my cheek (see below). Standard.

This beautiful cake was made by my Mum. I told her I wanted a simple cake with lots of flowers cascading down it (ok, not that simple, but she is really good at sugar flowers so I knew she wouldn't find it that difficult!)  I did also specify that I wanted it in 2 tall layers, which turned out to be a bit of a nightmare for her. Apparently it doesn't seem that people really make them like this, or at least there's no information on the internet about how to do it, so she had to work it out herself.  Perhaps we'll share how she did it on a later post in case any of you fancy a tall 2 tiered cake for your wedding!

My Mum and Dad had sourced loads of awesome vintage style props. We had this 'old bell' sign outside our beer tent, as well as a big signpost which you can see in the background. We also had a tipi and two vintage tea tents.  My dad had bought some old barrels which we used as tables in the beer tent, and he even put a chandelier in it!

I'm not a huge fan of champagne, but I do have a bit of a sweet tooth, so as our welcome drinks we created elderflower and sloe gin fizz.  The elderflower cordial and the sloe gin were both homemade the year before. In fact, I posted about making the elderflower cordial here.

We also bought some pretty drinks dispensers so that people could help themselves to some non-alcoholic drinks.

All of our canapés were wheat free for Chris. We got them from a local caterer.  I only had a couple since I was so busy, but they were tasty!

For our order of the day my Dad found an old bit of rotten door behind his shed.  He managed to clean it up, and then I painted the words on the day before.

I spent absolutely ages on our table plan.  Each table was named after a fictional place in films and TV series's that we like, so I decided to make it look like a map.  From left to right going downwards you can see; Fhloston Paradise (Fifth Element), Santa Carla (Lost Boys), Neverland (Hook/Peter Pan) , Rivendell (Lord Of The Rings), Nostromo (Alien), Zubrowka (The Grand Budapest Hotel), Winterfell (Game of Thrones), The Goon Docks (The Goonies), Raccoon City (Resident Evil), Woodbury (Walking Dead), Endor (Star Wars), Arrakis (Dune) and Hill Valley (Back to The Future).

I painted images on each one to give people a clue to which film each one was from.  I'll tell you about the actual table place cards in the next wedding post, which will be about the meal and the speeches! 

Something which got everyone talking was the Alpaca farm in the field next door! They were also very interested to see us! But more on that later too!

Laura xXx