Wedding Photos - Alpaca's, Ice Cream and Dancing the Night Away!

It's finally time for my last wedding photographs post! :(

This time we are leaving off from the meal and speeches, after which we took our portrait photos with the photographer.  We decided this would be a good time to do it because people wouldn't have to wait around for us and could continue the party!

As I may have mentioned earlier, the field our marquee was in was next to an Alpaca farm! My Mum had spoken to the owners and they kindly brought one of the Alpacas over to see us, which was rather a surprise for me! And the other guests who were mostly still in the marquee!

The Alpaca's were very interested in us when we approached their field, I think they were wondering what on earth was going on!

Just as we finished our photos,  'Fat Sam's' ice cream van arrived! And I managed to spill some on my dress, whoops!

We had decided in advance that we wanted to have an 'open mic' session before the band in the evening started playing.  We have so many talented friends and family, and it was amazing to watch them all perform!

Then it was time to cut the cake! I'd bought and made up the cake boxes, which were 'Mendl's' from the film 'The Grand Budapest Hotel'.

Next it was time for the first dance.  We had the boys play 'You Make My Dreams' by Hall and Oats. They played the first verse slowly and then sped it up so that everyone could join in! We didn't want to do a slow dance for a full 3 minutes! And it turned out to be a great choice.

Our wedding day was also my Mum and Dad's wedding anniversary! So I had asked the band to play 'their song' which is 'When Will I See You Again' by the Three Degrees. They did a fantastic job!

After that we pretty much just partied the night away!

Once most of the guests had left, those that were camping over the night had a bit of an acoustic sing along in one of the tea tents, sat on bales of hay.  By this point I had traded my wedding dress for a ski jacket (it was cold!), and this was actually one of my favourite parts of the night. All of us picking songs to play, and trying to drunkenly work out the words!

The next day the sun came out for us!  The boys played football, we ate food from the BBQ and had lots of tea and juice! This was another of my favourite parts, as we actually got to chat to everyone properly, and it was so relaxing compared to the day before, which was wonderful, but slightly hectic!

Now we are preparing for the next family wedding on the 27th of December, which is for Chris's sister. Not long to go now!

Laura xXx

All photos were taken by our wonderful photographers Peach and Jo Photography!

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Wedding Photos- The Wedding Breakfast and Speeches

Hi guys, I'm back to today to fill you in on the section of my wedding day which included something very important.. THE FOOD!… I mean THE SPEECHES!

First up I want to tell you a little about our table decor.  I knew early on that I wanted to have lots of wildflower style flower arrangements on the tables. Luckily we had one of my Mum's friends to put these together, and they turned out perfect! Each one was different which I really loved. My Dad was kind enough to gorge himself on baked beans so that we would have enough tins to go around.

I made little round emblems to decorate the front of the tins using homemade clay, which was a mixture of flour, water, salt and green food colouring. Once I had rolled them into balls I stamped them using our monogrammed wax seal stamp which I had used originally for the invites.  You can bake them at a low heat in the oven so they become hard!

Each table was given a fictional place name, they were all chosen from our favourite TV programs and Movies. Above you can see Rivendell, and you may be able to spot some others further down the page too.

I think my favourite part of the day was the speeches, Chris and his best man Ollie both nailed it. But in particular I loved my Dads speech, which included mention of a game we used to play when I was little called "Pretty Pretty Princess"The aim of the game was to be the first to collect and wear all of the princess jewellery, and the winner was given a crown and named "Pretty Pretty Princess". My Dad explained that however hard he tried to loose this game, he always seemed to win, and even when he would try to cheat to loose I would always notice and make sure he put his new piece of jewellery on. To demonstrate how the game worked, he had re-aquired the game for his speech, and both my Dad and Chris, as well as myself and my sister-in-law all ended up wearing the ridiculous jewellery for the entirety of the speeches. (I never expected to see my husband reading his wedding speech wearing a necklace, 2 clip on earrings, a bracelet, a ring and a very effeminate crown!)  At the end of the speech, he said that it was time to hand over his crown, as it was now Chris's turn to be my Pretty Pretty Princess. It was very funny and our guests were all talking about it for the rest of the night.

Instead of a traditional wedding breakfast, we opted for a picnic style lunch, with all the goodies being brought out in a crate for each table. It was a really good way to get people talking as they all had to get involved to dish out all the food. It was also a hell of a lot cheaper than than it would have been had we paid for caterers to cook a proper meal!

Here are some more pictures of the flowers on the table because I loved them so much!

Laura xXx

All photos were taken by my wonderful photographers Peach and Jo Photography!

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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

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