Stephanie and Neil's Simple and Rustic West Sussex Barn Wedding by Murray Clarke

Happy Friday everyone, I do hope you have had a good week? I don’t know about you, but this week has sped by and now I am SO ready for the weekend. This weekend is all about catching up with friends. We are out at a farm tomorrow day with some friends from school, and then tomorrow night we actually have a night out planned. Our friends have invited us for an evening BBQ along with another couple, so just 6 of us at a socially distancing BBQ, while Dexter has his first sleepover at Nana’s house for months!! He is so excited and so are we!! Then Sunday we are meeting up with another family for a day out. All very exciting! Back to today and I have this super cute, simple rustic barn wedding to share with you. Stephanie and Neil held their beautiful barn wedding last spring and were so lucky with the weather, the sun shone and the colour scheme of pale blue and white looks gorgeous against the stone walls. Big thanks to Murray Clarke for the lovely images.

A perfect day in a beautiful place surrounded by all our favourite people.

Stephanie and Neil were married on 27^th April 2019 at Cissbury Barns in Worthing, West Sussex. ‘As soon as we saw the venue we loved it. The barns were so beautiful and it was surrounded by woodland. It also helped that it was very close to where we both grew up so made it ideal for family and friends, we had 110 guests. We booked the venue around 18 months in advance and then started the rest of the planning about 10 months before the big day.’

How they met
We met when we were 17 at college and have been together for 13 years now!

The proposal
Just the two of us at the top of a beautiful mountain in the lake district with stunning views and beautiful sunshine

How did you allocate your budget?
We decided what the most important things about the day were for us and allocated more of the budget to them. We also did a lot of research beforehand about how much everything would cost to make sure our budgeting was realistic!

Where did you splurge and where did you save?
Our biggest expenses were the venue and food and drinks. We were able to save by not going overboard with the flowers and by sourcing and making some of the decorative things ourselves.

How did you choose your photographer?
We actually left it quite late to book a photographer! We stumbled across some of Murray’s photos when we were browsing for other suppliers and loved how bright and happy all the pictures were. Luckily our date was the last one he had available for April so we booked him up right away!

The dress
The dress was from a small boutique in Arundel. It’s by Kenneth Winston. I wanted something quite fun and different for the shoes – they were from Irregular Choice in Brighton. I kept accessories simple with a flower headpiece and a simple pearl necklace pendant and earrings.

The suit and bridesmaids
Neil’s suit was custom made by a tailor in Brighton called Hugo Morris. He chose everything from the material and lining right down to having ‘Seagulls’ embroidered under the collar (for Brighton and Hove Albion!) The bridesmaid dresses were from Asos from the beautiful Maya collection.

Theme or colour scheme
We just wanted to keep everything quite rustic and simple. The colours we used were mostly whites, blues and greens.

Flowers
We used Wild Alice floral designs and she made some stunning arrangements with a selection of flowers including thistles, white roses and eucalyptus. We splurged on some floral towers for the ceremony barn which were really in keeping with the rustic feel of the venue.

Decoration
The venue is so beautiful that we really didn’t feel we needed to do much to decorate! We kept it simple with flowers and candles and some homemade displays and decorations

Food
We didn’t want any of our guests to go hungry so we did have a lot of food! The main course was roast beef with all the trimmings and it was delicious! We also had a hog roast in the evening.

Wedding cake
We used a local cake maker called Kelly’s Cakes and she made a wonderful semi naked cake with a different flavour for each tier.

Entertainment
We booked a band called ‘The Tricks’ – they played an acoustic set in the afternoon too. They were fantastic and did loads of great medleys.

Who supplied the stationery?
We downloaded the template for the stationary from Etsy and then used printed.com to get it all printed off then added some of our own finishing touches.

Where did you go on your honeymoon?
We left for honeymoon the day after our wedding and were lucky enough to spend a very relaxing two weeks in Thailand.

Personal touches
We made quite a few of the decorations ourselves including the order of the day board, card box and photoboard. We also had a display with pictures of our parents and grandparents on their wedding days! One of our favourite decorative items was a custom cake topper by Heartmade Cottage on Etsy which now has pride of place in the middle of our mantelpiece!

Special moments
The speeches were a highlight for us. They were all amazing and so personal and really brought the day together well.

Advice for other couples
The day really does go so quickly – make sure you don’t think about anything else and enjoy every single minute!!

Biggest surprise of the day
The weather! It was forecast to be windy, rainy and miserable but on the day the sunshine came out and it was just perfect.