Relaxed Handmade Wedding with lots of personal touches and full of love, with photosBy Robertamatis: Boho Weddings

Todays wedding comes from East Sussex and is a lovely relaxed and chilled out day, FULL of handmade details and decorations. The couple, Hollie and Tom set about creating a wedding that was full of character and personally by making lots of the elements themselves and in doing so managed to keep the costs down. Their day was full of love, laughter and dancing, a perfect combination for any wedding. Thanks to Roberta from Robertamatis for the images.

‘Full of love, fun, laughter and dancing. Relaxed and intimate’

Hollie and Tom were married on 4th May at Swallows Oast, Ticehurst, East Sussex. ‘We knew we wanted a barn or oast house and having looked at a few online, this was the first we visited and we fell in love with it immediately and booked it then and there. For the ceremony we had about 50ish guests and for the Reception there were about 120.’

How they met
We met in a nightclub in Brighton, East Sussex 8 years before our wedding. We don’t remember too many details due to both of us having a few too many drinks however the night ended with my bag randomly setting on fire and to this day we have no idea how it happened. The spark of love perhaps!??!

The Proposal
Tom used to live near Southampton and go to a place called Holly Hill Woodland Park when he was a young kid. He kept it a secret all those years until surprising me by taking me there. Having been convinced Tom was not into the idea of marriage as we walked around I said, “Hey, if you ever did propose this would be perfect” as I was would become Hollie Hill once we were married. Tom had packed a scrumptious picnic of all my favourite foods and I was stuffed by the end but he was very insistent that I have a chocolate. I kept saying no, I’m full so Tom decided to wait for a bit. While he was chowing down on his sandwich I decided that I wanted a chocolate after all, grabbed the box and found a ring inside. Unfortunately for Tom, he had a mouth full of food at this point so could say nothing until he finished chomping! Of course, I said yes and jumped for joy!

How did you allocate your budget
We didn’t really have any savings set aside for our wedding and knew we didn’t want to spend lots. Luckily for us, Tom is very creative and practical and my Mum is too so we knew we could do a lot ourselves. After finding our perfect venue, we decided music was the next most important thing so found our band next.

How did you choose your photographer
Having initially decided we couldn’t afford a wedding photographer, four months before our wedding we decided that maybe we should have a shot at finding a photographer within our price range. After looking on the internet for hours and hours we still were not happy with the quality of the photos within our price range and thought we would just get friends/family to take photos instead as they would be just as good. I had one last look on the net and found the most stunning wedding photos – just what we wanted, intimate, personal and natural. To our stunned surprise, Roberta Matis, the photographer, e-mailed back to say that she was just starting out as a wedding photographer and the photos we had seen were of her sister’s wedding. We booked her straight away and Roberta did an amazing job and captured the atmosphere of our day perfectly. We feel incredibly blessed to have found her.

The Dress
My dress was by a designer called Ugo Zaldi. I think they had already stopped making wedding dresses by the time I saw it online but I managed to track it down to a shop in Richmond. I went there and specifically said I just wanted that dress – people always say you never like the ones you thought you would when you try them on but I was the exact opposite. I fell in love straight away and knew it was ‘the one’. The shop assistants were very taken aback that I bought the first dress I tried on! However, I had done a lot of looking online prior and had a specific wish list – floaty but not too floaty, not strapless but not thin straps, not shiny, no bling, not tight… it went on! I had always wanted a pair of Irregular Choice heels but 1) I don’t do heels and 2) They wouldn’t go with any of my clothes so knew straight away that I would be getting a pair for my wedding. I found a gorgeous pair that matched my style perfectly. Accessories were a mixture – I got a beautiful, hand-made bangle from Etsy by a lady in Israel and my mum made my earrings – lace surrounding studs.

The Suit and Bridesmaids
Tom’s suit was a mismatch – he bought some dark brown corduroy trousers and teamed them with a checked cream and brown shirt and a tweed waistcoat – all from high street stores. He then bought some brown leather vans. It was great as it was his style – he wouldn’t have been comfortable in a formal wedding suit and it wouldn’t have suited our venue at all. In fact, very few men wore formal suits and even the old boys made their suits more ‘relaxed’ for the occasion!
Bridesmaids picked their own dresses as they very kindly paid for them themselves. They lived in 3 different places, my sister being in Australia, Tom’s sister, Claire, in Bournemouth and my cousin Steph, in Northampton, so I sent them paint samples of the colours I wanted their dresses to be, very neutral. I also told them I wanted the dresses at around knee level. We didn’t see the dresses altogether until my hen night, a few weeks before the wedding, which was scary but they looked great together! They wore the same shoes, accessories which were hand made by my mum and hair flowers.

Theme or Colour Scheme
We just wanted it to be very relaxed, pretty and as we both love nature and the outside to bring the outside in a way.

Flowers
Me, my mum, and sister went to my friend Gemma’s house. Her mum has a flower farm so we went and made all the flower arrangements here for our tables. My friends Nina and Peter were over from Belgium for my wedding and helped us too. We had a great time the day before my wedding arranging the flowers. We also made mine and the bridesmaids bouquets. The flowers were a concotion of what was in season at the time – roses, daisies, gypsophilia. At one point we just went round the garden snipping various stems that we liked. It was a great day.

Decoration
Very simple – seasonal flowers in jars on tables, wooden table numbers hand made by Tom, dried hops around the balcony inside, crochet blankets handmade by various family members on haybales outside. We wanted the venue to speak for itself and so added little touches to add to the beautiful oak beams and stone walls.

Food
We had a selection of canapés after the ceremony followed by a sit down meal in the afternoon. We had meat and seafood paellas with salad and bread. We wanted to keep it simple and we both looovveeee paella. In the evening, we had a BBQ and Hog Roast.

Wedding Cake
I couldn’t choose what cake I wanted so decided to get friends and family to make all of our favourites. All in all, we had 12 cakes – ranging from Malteaser cake, chocolate guiness cake, carrot cake, Victoria sandwich etc. We were having so much fun in the evening that both me and Tom forgot to eat cake so we hope everyone enjoyed them!

Entertainment
An old-school rock and blues band called The Big Blue. We had seen them in a pub a few years before, we loved the vibe they created and the covers that I did. They were fantastic! They got everyone up on their feet. They were local to the area so were happy to stay all night and perform for as long as we wanted so we interspersed their sets with our own hand picked music on the I pod – Tom and I spent many evenings hand crafting the perfect playlist and order. Whilst we share a love of many of the same artists, we differ wildy in some areas (i.e. – in my love for 90’s pop or hip hop is not something Tom shares!) Judging by the fact that people barely left the dance floor, we hope the selection spanned all genres and tastes so it was well worth the hours of preparation. Many people have said how much they enjoyed the music and dancing at our wedding and we certainly didn’t leave the dance floor the whole night. This was probably our favourite bit of our wedding- bar actually getting married of course!

Buy or DIY your Stationery
My mum helped us hand craft the perfect invites. Tom made the actual invite by hand drawing and writing it and then scanning onto the computer and my mum made the unique envelopes and fastenings for them.

Personal or Handmade Touches
As well as things previously mentioned: my mum hand making bride and bridesmaid jewellery, invites. Me, family and friends making flower arrangements, friends/family making cake, Tom making table numbers and drawing invites, crochet blankets for hay bales, we also had the following DIY/personal touches:
• Streamers for behind cake table made by my cousin’s girlfriend
• Table seatplans hand written by Tom and attached to wooden ladder
• Hand made wooden stand and sign for Honeymoon Pot fund by Tom
• Hand made wooden card stand hand made by Tom (also featured on his Etsy shop)
• Hand made wooden bowl made by Tom’s friend Tony to carry our wooden wedding rings
in (made by Simply Wood Rings)
• Hand made wooden circles featuring various words: love, laughter, happiness etc to hang on the backs of the chairs
• Terracotta pots whitewashed by me and my mum and planted with herbs as wedding favours
• A few wooden fanbirds (Tom’s speciality and featured on his Etsy shop) hanging about
• My cousin Steph (bridesmaid) and Auntie also did my hair and all the bridesmaid for the
day so they definitely deserve a shout out!
• Alternative guest book – hand cut log with nails in for guests to hang a vintage key and
share their ‘Keys to success’ for our marriage on a luggage tag attached to the key. The sign for this saying Keys to success was hand made by a friend… www.kittywaikiki.co.uk
• I arrived at the wedding in my Uncle’s vintage, open-top bright blue VW bug called Boo. I loved it!

Special Moments
Being husband and wife! Sharing such an amazing day with every single person we love and cherish, dancing solidly from 6pm until midnight, getting back to our lovely room at Old Court House B&B to balloons (courtesy of the owners) and champagne (courtesy of my sister) and reading all the lovely cards and messages in bed.

Advice to other couples
Don’t stress, there’s no need to spend lots of money to have your perfect day, don’t let others stress you out, make it personal and about you and if you wanna have a rocking reception choose your own music don’t leave it up to a DJ.

Biggest surprise
How smoothly everything went – there were no mishaps! How nice it was to be with all the people you love from every part of your life in one place! Amazing and will never happen again.