An English Country Bumpkin Themed Wedding

I'm spoiling you today ~ two weddings in one day! Did you see this morning's beautiful red and gold Sikh wedding featuring The Unreal Bride's guide to Indian weddings?

Well, this afternoon, I have a bright, colourful and fun English country wedding to share with you. Nicole and Elliot's wedding ceremony was performed outdoors {hurrah!} which, due to some very outdated laws and our unpredictable weather, is rare in England.Their wedding was held at Neadon Farm, Dartmoor, Devon and their photographer was the fantastic, Jamie Bott. They went for a ‘country bumpkin' them and even used hale bays as ceremony seating! Genius.

Over to Nicole…

We had an outdoor humanist ceremony. As Elliot is from Dartmoor we went for a real country bumkin theme. Hay bales, pies (with the meat from the farm), lots of strong country cider and barn dancing – oh and a bit of rain! Our colour palette was a real mish of colour, bright pinks and purples – anything goes. The flowers in the bouquets were roses, veronica, wax flower, alstromeria and foliage.

Décor & Details: Most of the wedding was DIY and we had to draft in a lot of help from all our lovely family and friends. My mum bought jugs from charity shops and we filled with daisies (picked from the farmers garden) and then we bought some extra flowers to pad it out. The favours were little jars of ginger marmalade which two friends and my mum helped me make. A guy at work helped with the labels. Myself and another friend made the pink gingham table runners and the bunting and Elliot’s mums friend (Anne Middleton) did an amazing job of decorating the tree outside (which we got married under) and the inside of the barn. The barn was filled with candles and it took 6 ushers about an hour to light them all.

The Wedding Music & Entertainment: I came into ‘Fields of Gold', Eva Cassidy and we left to ‘Is this Love', Bob Marley. First dance was played by the band (The Honest John band) which was ‘I Wanna Be Like You' (King of the Swingers) from the Jungle Book. Not too slow or smoochy!

The Refreshments: For the wedding breakie we had steak and ale pies (with pastry hearts on top!), minted new potatoes and steamed veg. For dessert we had strawberries, west country clotted cream and heart shaped shortbread biscuits. We had a cheese cake from the Cheese Shed, with Elliot’s dads homemade apple chutney. All the guests grazed on this for the rest of the night.

Advice for other brides/couples: All the little bits add up!

Thanks so much to Nicole and Elliot for sharing your beautiful wedding day ~ it looks like you all had a blast! Surely that's the first time ever that a couple had their first dance to ‘I wanna be like you-oo' from The Jungle Book?!

Thanks also to Jamie Bott for sharing more of his fantastic documentary wedding photography on Bridal Musings. See his previous features here ~ bridesmaids in mismatched floral prints & here ~ retro fabulous 1950s red & white wedding.