Elizabeth & Thomas’ Beautiful Barn Wedding. By Laura Babb

So, are you ready for round two? Today’s wedding follows nicely on from yesterday’s post, which featured the lovely Liz and Tom on their engagement shoot. It’s so nice to be able to see them then, shy in front of the camera, getting used to the limelight. And, as you will see in today’s post, now, as they take this whole married thing completely in their stride. Liz is beautifully confident, Tom is handsome and emotional and obviously they are completely in love. The wedding was unpretentious and bags of fun, made all the more special by the involvement of family and friends who were very hands on in helping the couple organise their big day. Laura Babb never disappoints and has truly captured the light-hearted, informal essence to the celebrations.

“Our day was one to be remembered frequently and cherished always. The ceremony was simple, touching and tearful and followed by a big honest party where we ate like kings and danced like animals!”

Elizabeth and Thomas were married on 17th April at Wasing Park in Aldermaston. It took eighteen months to plan and they celebrated with just over 100 friends and family. “We loved the idea of getting married somewhere pretty and rural and were looking for a beautiful barn venue which we found in Wasing Park, but what really sold it for us was the food! Tom and I are big foodies and the head chef at Wasing Park was a protégé of Heston Blumenthal and had a menu of tasty meals with a few unique twists (popping candy truffles, yum!).”

How did you allocate your budget?
Aside from the big venue costs, we identified – from the offset – a couple of expenditures for which quality and skills were really important and therefore budget became less of an issue. These were the photographer and the band. Aside from that I was a really hands on bride, and roped in various family and friends to help where I could. I am not sure, in the long run whether DIY saves you a lot of money but we wanted our wedding day to be unpretentious and fun and not to leave us starting married life in debt.

Why did you choose your photographer?
I love photography, and knew without a shadow of a doubt, that after the wedding I would spend hours poring over the photos. With this in mind, getting the right person to capture not only the big moments but also the quirks and idiosyncrasies of the day was really important. We met with Laura after seeing her work on blogs like Boho Bride and noticing her incredible eye for beautiful images. The bonus when we met her was that she was also just a really lovely person – unpretentious and fun, we were immediately smitten. She remained professional and approachable throughout, and on the day was unobtrusive; mingling with the guests with ease. In fact, other than the beautiful images she produced, we have found on a guest’s camera some rather amusing selfies (for which undoubtedly she was coerced) of one of my bridesmaids and Laura herself!

The dress and accessories
My dress was a gift from my Mum and it was ‘Laberne’ by Pronovias, purchased from Windsor and Eton brides – it was love at first sight. My shoes were ‘Mimosa’ by Rachel Simpson and I wore some beautiful pearl drop earrings from notonthehighstreet.com; these were a birthday present from Tom which fell four days before the wedding. My choice of hair accessory had been an ongoing saga for which I was driving everyone around me bonkers (first world problems!) as I couldn’t decide between a Jenny Packham Acacia ii headpiece and an Emmy Maya fan comb. After obsessing over this for literally months I ended up with both, wearing the Emmy comb during the day and busting out the glitzy Jenny Packham head-piece for the evening festivities.

The suit and bridesmaids
Tom purchased his and his best mans grey herringbone 3-piece suits from Reiss. He wanted something fitted and smart without being overly stuffy and formal. The bridesmaid’s grecian dresses were purchase online from Oasis.

The theme
We tried to avoid having a ‘theme’ as such as we didn’t want the wedding to become too gimmicky, but I would say there were nods to lots of different styles and hobbies – Tom and I love – food, travel and vintage styling. In terms of colour we took inspiration from the flowers we wanted. Peach was the main colour with lots of green foliage and hints of gold stripe. This carried through from the favours and stationary to the cake and the fudge table.

The flowers
I was incredibly lucky with my flowers. My talented Mum was a florist in a previous life and took on the mammoth job of putting together all the reception flowers, bouquets and buttonholes. I knew I wanted quite a relaxed, unstructured arrangement with salmon Rananculas, white Peonies, peach avalanche Roses and lots of foliage and we decided to buy the flowers from New Covent Garden Flower Market. Contrary to the relaxed style of the bouquet, getting hold of the flowers was an insight into why florists charge what they do. Five am and three days before the wedding we found ourselves running around the market in a fluster trying to get together enough flowers after being let down by our trusty south London market tradesman from whom we had ordered, in the panic also managing to ‘lose’ £150 worth of Roses. Despite all of this my Mum managed to produce the most beautiful arrangements, far surpassing my expectations. The fact that my Mum had made my bouquet was all the more special as I held it walking down the aisle.

The decoration
In keeping with the barn venue our decoration was rustic, country style but had a touch of 1920’s in the gold geometric prints. There were lots of little personal touches like hand drawn chalkboards and flower filled jam jars with gold ribbon. We really wanted the decoration to represent ‘us’ as a couple and incorporated the things we loved into the day such as a vintage map as our table plan and graphic designer Rob Ryan into gifts and stationary.

The food and wedding cake
A lot! We had a selection of canapés during the drinks reception including mini cones of fish and chips which went down particularly well. Alongside this we had pimms and a keg of Moondance ale from local Marlow brewery – FFF. For the sit down meal we had a starter of crispy duck with mouli salad and star anise vinaigrette, followed by fillet of beef with potato dauphinoise and for pudding we put in a special request for white chocolate and raspberry Crème Brulee which was utterly delicious.
possibly foolishly) to take on the wedding cake myself. The cake was three layers – traditional fruit cake for the base, with a moist carrot cake in the middle and chocolate beetroot cake on top. The decoration was handmade peach sugar flowers and hand painted gold striped icing and I sourced a cake.
I am a keen baker and decided (possibly foolishly) to take on the wedding cake myself. The cake was three layers – traditional fruit cake for the base, with a moist carrot cake in the middle and chocolate beetroot cake on top. The decoration was handmade peach sugar flowers and hand painted gold striped icing and I sourced a cake topper from Etsy ‘It’s a nice day for a White Wedding’ – apt as we became Mr & Mrs White. The biggest problem I had with baking my own wedding cake was the number of unnecessary practise bakes I managed to justify (whilst simultaneously trying to lose weight for a wedding dress!). Let’s just say, I became extremely popular at work while I tested every chocolate cake recipe to find ‘the one’.

The entertainment
As Tom and I are not religious we decided to have a civil ceremony in keeping with our own beliefs. I was very aware of maintaining the sense of occasion whilst doing this and so hired a string quartet. As a violinist myself I have emotional connections and memories attached to classical pieces and so walking down the aisle to Pachelbels Canon really set both me and my Dad off. The string quartet continued playing during the drinks reception but we had them playing various covers of indie songs we like and theme tunes like the ‘Game of Thrones’.

Buy or DIY your Stationery?
A bit of both – Tom and I love Rob Ryan laser cut designs but he doesn’t do invitations. We ended up using ‘When this bell rings…’ designed blank cards and creating our own inserts. We also bought ‘When this bell rings’ ceramic presents for the wedding party.

Personal or handmade touches
Lots, but a couple in particular that I haven’t mentioned –
Tom, as most his friends know, is a bit of a geek and absolutely full of useless facts. As a child, before dinner every day, he used to present a ‘fact of the day’ to his family. In honour of this we attached luggage labels to the favours, each with ‘Tom’s fact of the day’ written on it. Enlightening our guests with silly facts such as ‘Kangaroos can’t hop backwards’ – fact.
In keeping with our relationship with food, we also had ‘Liz’s fudge pantry’ in the evening. I collected old fashioned storage jars and concocted (and tested!) recipe’s for different types of fudge. A few weeks before the wedding I then spent a day making 10 different flavours, packaging them in the jars, and then covering them in parcel tape to stop me eating it all in the run up to the wedding. We came up with some wedding puns for the flavours like ‘Maple and Wal-nuptuals’ and ‘Vow-nilla’. Predictably a lot of people spent time loitering around the fudge table in the evening.

Special moments
For me (Liz), the absolute highlight was the ceremony itself. In the organisation and planning, the little touches, the baking and decorating and the hours of poring over dresses it could become easy to lose the meaning and purpose of the day. When I stood at the end of the aisle with a tearful Dad by my side and Tom gazing at me down the room, it completely took my breath away.

Advice to other couples
– Don’t underestimate the power of the list. Without lists we would have forgotten or rushed so many of the things that turned out to make our day so special. They also keep you on track, stop you both doing the same thing twice and make the whole scariness of organising a wedding slightly less daunting by cutting it up into smaller slices.
– Play to your family’s strengths, Liz’s mum’s flowers is a great example of this but all our family got roped in at some point. Don’t be scared to delegate.
– And finally spend time to get your quirks and individualities into your wedding. It is these things that will make your wedding unique, individual and personal to you.

Biggest surprise
Tom – Apart from some of the stella dad dancing and general shapes that got thrown on the dance floor my biggest surprise was a pocket watch which Liz gave me on the big day. Not only was it a cool watch that went well with my suit it was also a touching gift with the inscription ‘don’t be late’ on the back.

Supplier Shout Outs:

• Laura Babb – babbphoto.com
• The Smooth Criminals- www.thesmoothcriminals.co.uk  – particularly great, professional, talented and really had everyone up on the dance floor. They even adapted and learnt our favourite song for us to play for the first dance (a ballad version of The Coral’s ’Dreaming of You’)
• Wasing Park – www.wasing-weddings.co.uk
• Cherubs – www.cherubsfloraldesign.com  (2x reception pedestals)
• Beauty by Jenny- Jenny White
• Gilded Hair- FACEBOOK
• Dichi String Quartet – www.dichistringquartet.co.uk

For more information on Laura’s work please go to:

www.babbphoto.com
www.babbphoto.com/blog
FACEBOOK
@BabbPhoto