30

Jan

2015

Emily and Ben’s DIY Somerset Wedding. By My Fabulous Life

Oh my, thank Crunchy it’s Friday. How are you all? My week started off great and then the snow hit! How many of you had plans cancelled because of our stupid English weather? Anyway onwards and upwards. I’m hoping today Dexter and I may be able to leave the house and get on with our day better than yesterday, fingers crossed! To end the week I have this bright, cheerful Summer wedding from Becky at My Fabulous Life. It’s a gorgeous Somerset wedding that features a lovely outdoor ceremony, (with an unplanned downpour!) Emily and Ben went to town with all of their DIY projects as well as filling their marquee with lots of wonderful decorations, from paper pom poms to fairy lights. Emily wanted her day to be super pretty and that is certainly what she accomplished.

‘Relaxed love filled vibes, full of flowers and laughter. Great food and fantastic music!’

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Emily and Ben were married on 2nd August 2014 at Cothelstone Manor, Somerset.  ‘The venue was perfect, the ideal mixture between stately home and relaxed field, the owners had an instantly likeable, relaxed vibe. The old walled garden and ruined stone wedding gazebo sealed the deal. We had 94 guests to the day and 130 in total for the night. The wedding took 10months to plan.’

Alternative wedding photography Devon

Alternative wedding photography Devon

How they met
We met living in the same time through friendship circles. We’ve been together for 3 years.

The Proposal
In a hidden away beach restaurant on the islands in Thailand. Incredible dinner, plenty of mojitos and a beautiful diamond. Was the biggest and best surprise I could have imagined.

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How did you allocate your budget
Ruthlessly, we had a budget and we wanted to stick to it!! We were careful to get the balance right and not to scrimp or miss out on what we wanted, spent hours searching and sourcing local providers and homemade goods, pulling in friends wherever needed!

How did you choose your photographer
Becky was flagged up as an alternative and relaxed photographer after nosing through her website and blogs we were already pretty sure she was the photographer for us as her photos were truly stunning, after a phone call where we gossiped more about the wedding then the photos she had me truly excited. She met with us for a relaxed local coffee and she was able create exactly what we wanted.
Becky and Tim also filmed our wedding which really told the whole story of our wedding day perfectly, it was full of details. We are really pleased that we can watch our day over and over again.

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The Dress
The dress was a Claire Pettibone number, which I had fallen in love with but didn’t dream of affording. I was lucky enough to find a boutique in Dunster who had a sample to sell at a considerably reduced price. My shoes were Jimmy Choos, ebay total bargain, cheaper than most bridal shoes I could find.

The Suit and Bridesmaids
Ben’s suit was Paul Smith and the Bridesmaids a Jarlo Fishtail.

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Theme or Colour Scheme
I liked the colours of sweet peas, mixed matched and natural. We had a lot of pinks, greens and ivories.

Flowers
I knew exactly what flowers I wanted, a mismatch of wild flowers, we went to the local WI in Taunton Market and met with Maggie who did us the most incredible home grown flowers, again for a ridiculously low price! Ben’s mum grew us hundreds of fragrant sweet peas and his sister in law masses of hydrangeas

Decoration
I went wild with decorations, for me more is definitely more! We had hundreds of fairy lights, bunting, paper pompoms, marquee intail lights, wicker hearts, hessian table runners, vintage cut glass and jam jars, vintage plates, cups and saucers, just to name some of it!

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Food
In the day we had massive gourmet canapés, followed by Pieminster Pies with mash and mushy peas, followed by a trio of desserts. We had an amazing cheese tiered cake, bacon butties salads and roast potatoes for evening food.

Wedding Cake
We had a very personal cake, I asked several of my friends and family to bake cakes/desserts for a cake table, we had a maple and syrup tiered cake topped with roses from my garden as our main wedding cake but the table was packed with naked sponges, chocolate cakes, cupcakes and macaroons

Entertainment
We had a mind blowing magician, a coconut shy and our best man is the drummer of the most incredible covers band Mr Cova Lova.

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Buy or DIY your Stationery
The invites were all homemade, simple classic feel! Printed by my school (I’m a teacher) repro department.

Personal or Handmade Touches
I don’t know where to start! We had so much DIY. One of my best friends and brideman on the day made us delicious homemade sloe gin, personally bottled for each table for which we collected vintage cut glass glasses from charity shops. Ben made our Marquee letters and signs. A close friend made all of the bunting. My girls spent hours fluffing homemade pompoms! We had hundreds of home-grown hydrangeas that we had everywhere including a stunning entrance arch. Ben made centre piece stands out of a felled tree. We did our own DIY photo booth using an app and our ipad on a tripod stand.

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Special Moments
There was a huge thunderstorm as we were saying our vows outside of the stone gazebo, the heavens were about to open so we all 94 of our guests piled into the small stone building as we said our vows. It felt truly special!

Advice to other couples
Even when it feels like you are getting too stressed or spending too much money on ‘just one day’ it really is the best day ever and you will love every second and it will all be worth it! Make sure you stay true to what you want, no matter if no one else agrees! It’s your day and what you both want is the only thing that matters, if you sacrifice too much for others you will regret it.

Biggest surprise
The Best Man’s Speech!

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Comments

    Hannah kennard

    Absolutely gorgeous photos of such a stunning wedding.
    I had the pleasure of making Emily and Bens wedding favours/ place settings.
    Feel free to check out some of my hand painted stones on my facebook page xx

    Reply

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