Our Wedding - homemade signs, the flowers & floral bunting

Wedding photography by Katherine Ashdown

So the next instalment in my wedding series is all about bouquets and bunting! From the very beginning we knew we wanted to create a very personal, homemade wedding and try and do as much of the creative graft as possible between ourselves and our amazingly helpful family. When my mum and I started discussing the flowers for the day we didn't think twice about doing them ourselves - I wanted to be able to look around on the day and see all our own little touches and details. The day before our wedding I headed to our local flower market where I had pre-ordered what felt like a field of gypsophila and stocks to pick up a car-full of country flowers. For my bridesmaids I made a simple bouquet of gypsophila tied together with a cream lace ribbon and for my own bouquet I grouped together three purple and pink hydrangea heads interspersed with a few sprigs of gypsophila for a pretty country feel.

For our church decorations we filled large, pastel-coloured enamel jugs with handfuls of stocks, wild daisies, gypsophila and gladioli to add height and fill the large stain glass window arches. We had a lovely friend in the village who offered to grow us practically a meadow of sweet peas which we picked the day before and placed in jam jars to line the aisle pews and dot around the church and marquee. We left them in the church the day before so during the service the church smelt beautiful and the scent of sweet peas will now forever remind me of our wedding. I wanted a feature for outside the church so my mum offered to make a heart to hang over the arched doorway which would be a lovely touch for the we're-just-married photos as we exited the church. I was blown away by her lavender heart that she seemingly just 'whipped' up the few days before and it was a beautiful focal point for all the guests as they arrived. For the flowers in our marquee we filled mismatched jugs, which we collected over the past year from antique stores, with stocks, gypsophila, lysantheum, nigella and daisies for a freshly picked look. I never wanted a colour scheme for our wedding but much preferred a floral country theme, light pastels and pretty hues set against a clean fresh palette. Rob's dad grew and nurtured apple boxes of country flowers which we dotted around the marquee to frame our venue and add a splash of colour.

For our confetti we bought dried natural petals from Shropshire Petals Confetti and used it to fill some musical sheet confetti cones we found on eBay. We loved the idea of having lots of chalkboard signs dotted around our church and marquee reception to convey little messages and menus to our guests. We bought a host of shabby chic looking frames from The Range and then painted them in a rainbow of pastel shades before painting the board inside with chalkboard paint. Over the few months leading up to the wedding I laboured over our signs whilst Rob's dad constructed some amazing signposts for our field which made a really fun feature for our guests as they arrived. As our church service and wedding reception was literally 30 seconds walk away from each other we decided to have a procession from the church to the marquee down the lane led my our two favourite little boys bearing some homemade signs which Rob constructed and painted and I wrote a few days before. I loved this photo of us all walking down and it was such a joyous moment right after becoming husband and wife.

I had always had a vision in my head of how I wished our marquee to look and I think we definitely achieved my Pinterest dream. We hired our traditional marquee from Cambridge Marquees and then we dressed and decorated it all ourselves. Our mums were absolute angels and made over 100 metres of gorgeous floral and gingham bunting which we proudly hung in the marquee and outside the church. It was really so beautiful and it was the best wedding gift they could have ever given us and will be something we will use again and cherish forever. The paper lanterns came from eBay and we bought some helium tassel tail giant balloons from Bubblegum Balloons which looked so sweet swaying in the breeze and were the perfect prop for one of our couple shoots later in the afternoon, as were our LOVE and R&M light up letters which we hired from Doris Loves. So dreamy against the pink sunset at the end of a truly perfect day.

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