Ruth and Ami's '4 Countries In One Wedding' Outdoor Colour and Culture Wedding by Andy Dane photography

Happy Monday everyone and how are you all? After 2 weeks off for the Easter Holidays normal blogging schedule has now resumed. I am in the office all week and raring to go! What about you? How was your weekend? how are you coping with the Easter break if you are off with children? and how are those wedding plans coming along? I’d love to hear from you! Don’t forget to join or ever growing Facebook group and pop by for a chat.
Today I am delighted to be sharing with you the amazing wedding of Ruth and Ami, these two beautiful brides created a colourful, crazy, culture filled wedding as they celebrated their four favourite counties and everything that makes them great. Elements of Mexico, South Africa, China and India all went together to make this one of the most eclectic and colourful, fun-filled weddings I have seen. I just love the brides personal style and how they really did create a wedding true to them. The day was captured brilliantly by the awesome Andy Dane photography. I just know you are going to love it.

A visual feast of colour and culture showing our love for travel and each other, surrounded by amazing people and lots of laughter

Ruth and Ami were married on 18th August 2018 at a Private horse paddock in Mettingham, Suffolk. ‘We really wanted to get married outside, so after our engagement Ami and I were discussing it at Ami’s work, when one of her work colleagues was like ‘you can do it at my place if you want’ and it all went from there. We legally got married in the morning at our local registry office then separated and got ready to do it all again in the horse paddock in front of all our friends and family. We had around 100 guest and it took between 1 year and 6 months to plan, at six month stage we started to do things.’

How they met
We actually met in a local nightclub at 6am, not wanting the night to end we continued back at a house party at Ami’s house along with a few friends, it was there we discovered our love for travel and drunkenly promised to travel the world together which we did some 8 months later. We married after our 10 year anniversary.

The proposal
We were at Brighton tattoo convention and it was our 8th year anniversary. Ruth had just had a gruelling tattoo and was feeling a little wounded when Ami took her to a private area within the convention hall and showed her a print (by the artist who had just completed the tattoo) on the back it read ‘will you marry me?’ With that Ami was on one knee with an amazing opal ring by tessa metcalfe leaving Ruth gob smacked and confused!!

How did you allocate your budget?
Most of the budget was spent on decorations and band, we were lucky enough to get the venue for free, and made all of our own food. Marquee and toilet hire was also quite costly. Decoration wise we really did go mental, erecting scaffolding and having 8ft safari animals made!

Where did you splurge and where did you save?
The safari animals were quite an elaborate splurge! We did make all our own food focusing on the 4 countries in our theme, then just hiring a donut truck to arrive in the evening

How did you choose your photographer?
We met Andy when we ran a coffee shop, he was a customer and we instantly bonded over our love of tattoo, coffee and food. Some years later when we decided to get married he was our natural choice, we loved his style of natural photography and loved the fact that he wasn’t a stranger and understood what we wanted out of our day.

The Outfits
Ruth: Dress from ASOS. Haori jacket was a vintage number then sent to America to be hand embroidered by Cory of Dirty Needle Embroidery. Gold Adidas superstar trainers, Earrings rock n rose, Hair by Kaylee rider, Make up by Kelly Mullender of perfection, Lowestoft.
Ami: Dress from Catrina bridal, Gorleston-on-Sea, Lace overcoat by Pauline foster, Ormesby, Necklace hired from Zelley, Norwich, Shoes from ASOS, Earrings by regal rose, Hair by Nicky, Make up by Demi Dallas

Bridesmaids
Martha (our staffy) was our only bridesmaid who wore a red silk Chinese outfit with a gold studded collar

Theme or colour scheme
No colour theme, neither of us had any idea what the other would be wearing.

Flowers
Ami had a bouquet, we had 2x display flowers at the end of aisle and a big centre piece in the food tent, both dads wore button holes. All flowers were made to fit in with the country’s we had picked; Mexico, South Africa, China and India. Flowers were by Charlotte Staff flowers

Decoration
Decoration was themed around the 4 countries:
Mexico, skulls, flowers, Frida kahlo massive print, sombreros etc
South Africa, we creating a safari area which included a vintage land rover, life sized animals, animal skins etc.
China, a full sized dragon costume, fans, lanterns, parasols, lots of bamboo furniture, stacks of lucky cats!
India, vintage rugs, low seating, buddhas, shisha pipe, shrines, floating candles and flowers.

Food
Meat chilli & vegan chilli , nachos along with all relevant condiments. Chicken tikka masala and vegan daal, South African Braai (bbq), Lots of fortune cookies.

Wedding cake
We didn’t have one! Donuts instead

Entertainment
The lovin handful, A nine piece skiffle-grass Americana party band

Who supplied the stationery?
We designed and made our own

Personal touches
Most of the decorations were handmade with the help of some amazing friends! The alter instead was made by ruth’s dad from bamboo, the curtains made by her mum then all the origami cranes were handmade by us and a dear friend. The dragon was completely handmade with help from friends. We designed and made unique holiday tattoos as mementos of the day. We had a tequila station. We had a local company erect scaffolding so we could create areas and hang lots of decorations.

Special moments
We had a pigeon race! 18 racing pigeons arrived and were hand released by us along with our hens do friends. Bets were placed and the winner took all. 3 winners meaning each took home £105 each!
We also hired a rickshaw to get Ruth to the other side of the field undercover so we could both make our entrance for different sides of the field. We got to take a ride together later on along with Martha and that was super magical.

Advice for other couples
Take all help offered! Be yourself and don’t feel you have to follow any rules! Get someone else to sort things out the next day so you can enjoy your first day being married, this is something we didn’t do and wish we had.

Biggest surprise
Just how quickly it all goes! Blink and you will miss it! Would love to do it all again.