Jen & Alisdair’s Humanist Barn Wedding. By Matt Parry

Today’s wedding is in two parts, although it’s told in one lovely story below, filled with beautiful photography by Matt Parry. Jen & Alisdair became husband and wife in a private registry office ceremony, in the company of their two friends. They then went to dinner to celebrate. That alone looked beautiful and poignant and perfect. Another date was set to have a humanist ceremony in front of all their favourite people, together with quite a number of cockerels! Both ceremonies were simply about two becoming one, in the company (no matter how great or small) of loved ones. And when you take away all the bells and whistles that’s got to be what it’s all about, hasn’t it?

‘A glorious mish-mash of our favourite people and favourite things all in the same place at the same time. Surrounded by a surprisingly large number of semi-feral chickens.’

Jen and Alisdair tied the knot with, not one, but two ceremonies on 3rd May. “We had a Humanist wedding ceremony at the Barrandov Opera in Needham Market, Suffolk (having got ‘legalled’ the previous week at Camden Town Hall with just 2 friends as witnesses). The venue itself is really beautiful, a bit unusual, had enough space to avoid any worries about the weather and happened to be in the village my granddad has lived in for 60 years. Jackie and John (manager and owner of the barn respectively) were happy for us to use the space as our own for 48 hours, while being on hand to keep everything running smoothly on the day, during set-up and the next morning.”

How they met
We met at Veterinary School in London, specifically on the return bus trip from a cattle-handling class at the College farm. While we generally tell people we’ve been together a couple of weeks (long-running joke based on my original predictions), it’s actually been over 12 years.

The proposal
It’s the old classic tale: Boy meets Girl. Years of romance ensue during which Girl introduces Boy to snowboarding. Boy suddenly presents Girl with massive, ski-glove sized plastic solitaire ring while halfway down a black run in Courcheval. Champagne is popped and plans made to tell friends and family upon return to the UK. Boy then proceeds to have a nasty stack, bumps head and loses memory of all events from the last few months. Ring is quietly replaced in his luggage based on the logic that this is currently the least of his worries. Under doctors’ orders Girl is tasked with waking Boy every hour or so to check for signs of coma over the next 48 hours. Eventually, despite sleep deprivation and general confusion, Boy asks Girl if he had got round to asking her a question a few days previously…..
And (so far!) they have lived happily ever after!

How did you allocate your budget?
Having decided to ask so many people to travel sometimes considerable distances it was important to us to look after them properly, and we wanted to make things child-friendly for those keen to bring their little people along. So we initially decided to prioritise spending on the venue and catering. The band and photographer were joint third priorities and both absolutely worth it!

Why did you choose your photographer?
We met our photographer Matt Parry really early on in planning through a mutual friend working in the wedding industry. His photos grabbed us straight away, and we assumed he’d be completely booked up. So when we met over Skype, found out he was also a great bloke, fellow Border terrier owner and that he had a few dates free in 2014 we pretty much finalized the date of the wedding around him. He was also up for joining us on the day of our registry office ceremony to take a few fun shots of us with our witnesses (Tim and Lucy) enjoying a ‘Little Day’ in London. The afternoon itself was hilarious, the photos are beautiful and it also meant we’d had a chance to get the hang of ignoring him for the ‘Big Day’ in Suffolk! The man’s a genius and we couldn’t be more pleased with the way he captured everyone and everything that really mattered on our two very different Days.

The dress and accessories
After my Grandma pointed out a very similar dress unprompted I took the plunge and bought my Jenny Packham Saskia as an ex-sample from White Mischief Bridal in Henfield. Everyone there was so professional, and the service was fantastic. I had a plain veil made at the last minute by a lovely lady I found online, bought sparkly shoes from Jones the Bootmaker, and wore the pearl earrings Alisdair gave me on my 30th birthday a few years ago.

The suit and bridesmaids
Alisdair completely surprised me when he came to pick me up for the ceremony -it turned out he’d got a new suit from Charles Tyrwhitt. Very dapper indeed!
We asked Alisdair’s Henchmen (Best Men and Ushers) and my 2 male Bridesmates to wear a suit of their own so they’d feel comfortable, and gave them similar ties as a thank-you. My female Bridesmates were given free choice of apparel, but all opted for the first dress they spotted on day 1 of the search! They (and their 2 lovely baby bumps) completely rocked their full length, grey Biba numbers on the day.

The theme
Not really, we just went down the path of choosing things we both like and hoping for the best.

The flowers
My bridesmaid Louise’s mum used her legendary floristry skills to translate our vague suggestions into awesome buttonholes and wrist corsages for the wedding party, using white tulips (because I like them), white spray roses (for Alisdair’s proud Yorkshire heritage) and purple thistles (because we were about to move to Scotland!). She also made me an absolutely beautiful bouquet, based on my rather less sophisticated request for ‘a fist-full of purple tulips please’.

The decoration
We didn’t worry about decorating the barn too much, as we both liked the beamed architecture and Suffolk brickwork in itself. Our intrepid family and friends helped us out by stringing dried hops and fairy lights along the main balcony, filling the fireplace where we stood for the ceremony with candles in glass storm lanterns and exhaustively tying up bunches of dried lavender to place around the venue and on the tables in small glass bowls. The hops were supplied mail order from Kent, and the lavender from a farm near our Hertfordshire village, who kindly helped us out by opening up their seasonal shop a weekend earlier than usual when we called with 10 days to go!
Table-decorations were large glass vases (sourced from a previous bride via the Preloved website) filled with skeins of wool in various shades of cream, grey and purple. This was largely an excuse to buy plenty of lovely wool for the bedspread I’m knitting for us since our move north of the Border, and we were pleased that a few guests asked to take some away to make keepsakes.
As a nod to our habit of buying each other Lego-mini figures as tokens of affection Alisdair used the wonder of E-Bay to source over 100 appropriate (or sometimes pretty inappropriate!) figures and added name flags to make place-markers for each guest.

The food and wedding cake
The caterers did an amazing job all day. We opted for an extended drinks reception with extra canapés and a two-course sit down meal because
a) This would give everyone more time to chat to different people and let the kids run off some energy outside, and b) everyone loves miniature food! The food was fantastic, and Justin and his team were completely unfazed when asked to delay dinner by 40 minutes so we could enjoy more of the afternoon musical entertainment our friends had prepared! We had pork with rosti and green cabbage followed by a glorious apple and pear crumble tart with ginger crème anglaise. The Welsh rarebit they served in the evening went down a storm with the guests and band!
I. Love. Cake. But it turns out I love live music more, so we decided to divert any cake budget towards a band for the evening. In the end we ordered 2 massive round lemon sponges from Nude Cakes (a mail order company that supply the cake decorating industry), then baked the smaller tiers and put it all together with a mountain of vanilla butter cream the day before the wedding.

The entertainment
We booked a live band called The Bears after seeing them play a pub gig on my birthday. They were incredibly professional, kept everyone on the dance floor all night and dealt admirably with crowd surfers (mainly Jen’s dad).
Many of our family members and friends are musical types or ex-band mates of Alisdair’s, who are now spread geographically far and wide. It seemed a shame to miss an opportunity to showcase their talents, so we asked Alisdair’s brother and my dad to coordinate an acoustic open mic session between the ceremony and sitting down for dinner. It went so well that they started up again after pudding and carried on until The Bears were ready to kick off the evening party.

Buy or DIY your stationery?
Our dog-walking buddy and stationary supremo Claire Spake designed and letter-pressed our armadillo invitations as a wedding present, despite technically being on maternity leave! I think she was genuinely concerned about what we might produce if left to come up with something ourselves…

Personal or handmade touches
The most personal part of our wedding was definitely the ceremony, written by our Humanist celebrant Julia A’ Court. She did a wonderful job of understanding what we wanted to express to each other in front of our guests having visited us at our house several times to chat over coffee and get to know us a bit better. We wrote our own vows (finalized during an afternoon of serial hot-chocolate drinking in our favourite café) and really enjoyed choosing readings from beloved books and authors. Julia’s explanation of the principles of Humanism during the ceremony really put the nature of our commitment to each other and the important people in our lives into context for those unfamiliar with Humanist thinking.

Special moments
The ceremony itself was very special. In particular, it was wonderful that everyone respected our request for an ‘unplugged’ ceremony; we loved seeing everyone’s faces when we walked in instead of a sea of arms and photographic devices. After that part cameras were strongly encouraged and it’s been great seeing so many guests’ photos of people and events that we missed on the day.
Another highlight was our surprise first dance during the open mic session. Alisdair and I gleefully admit that, if we have to have one, ‘our song’ is the beautiful (but pretty angry-sounding) Slipknot track ‘Wait and Bleed’. We’d reluctantly dismissed the idea of opening the dancing with this particular song for obvious reasons, and picked something else. However, unbeknownst to us 3 of our mates had specifically learnt an acoustic version, so we got to have our ‘first mosh’ in the sunshine after all. We were very lucky to then have a second unofficial first dance when we discovered another of Alisdair’s ex-band mates had learned “Walking to Hawaii” by Tom McCrae, another firm favourite of ours which we danced to during the coffee after the wedding breakfast.

Advice to other couples
Neither of us really like being on show, so the prospect of having a wedding was pretty daunting. When deciding on the structure of both days we aimed to minimize the potential for stage fright and side step any wedding traditions that made either of us uncomfortable. This approach also helped when aspects of planning seemed too overwhelming; I was dreading looking for a dress, so to keep things as low pressure as possible I took small combinations of brave helpers to a few bridal shop appointments over time – and I surprised myself (and everyone else I think) by really enjoying the experience! My advice to brides and/or grooms with a tendency to get wound up under pressure is to accept this about yourself, and approach both the planning process and the day itself with this in mind. If there are certain wedding traditions that terrify you or don’t make sense in your situation then quietly leave them out. Equally, if you’re really looking forward to cutting your cake with an enormous audience or lobbing the bouquet into deep field after dinner (and it won’t cause anyone reasonable offence) then that’s exactly what you should arrange to do!

Biggest surprise
Just how much I enjoyed it! Also, how well people from completely different parts of both our lives got on over the weekend – there are some fantastic shots of intense conversations and amazing dance moves featuring some pretty unlikely combinations of guests, which is exactly what we’d hoped for!

Supplier Shout Outs:

• Venue: The Barrandov Opera (www.barrandov.co.uk)
• Catering: The Movable Feast (hwww.themovablefeast.co.uk)
• Photographer: Matt Parry (www.mattparryphotography.co.uk/)
• Band: The Bears (www.thebears.uk.com)
• Celebrant: Julia A ‘Court (humanist.org.uk/juliaacourt/)
• Groom’s suit: Charles Tyrwitt
• Wedding dress: White Mischief Bridal (www.whitemischiefbridal.co.uk)
• Veil: Jacqueline (www.facebook.com/loveyoubride)
• Stationary: Clair Spake Designs (www.clairespake.com)
• Florist: Sally Marchant
• Hops: Essentially Hops (www.essentiallyhops.co.uk)
• Lavender: Hitchin Lavender Farm (www.hitchinlavender.com)
• Cake: Nude Cakes (www.nudecakes.co.uk)

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