{Me & Him}

Now that wedding season is over for me I'd like to share a few images from my own wedding back in August. Shot by a friend and photographer Duncan Payne and edited by me, I swapped a hand painted oil portrait of his children for Duncans services on the day

Our wedding was the ultimate DIY budget wedding but that didn't mean a quick registry office do and a pint down the pub... It meant calling in favors, utterly exploiting all my talented friends and skill swapping for pretty much everything beside the church (there ain't no haggling with the God apparently...)

This is how we spent less than 4 grand and had a weekend long wedding party for over 120 people...

Our wedding was in Terrington, the village where I grew up in North Yorkshire.

Our service was in the village church and then we hired a circus tent (much cheaper than a pricey wedding marquee) which we popped up on the school playing field next to the church; for an even cheaper alternative to wedding marquee hire try contacting scout groups, lots of them have marquees and they rent them out for just a few hundred pounds!

I made signs from scrap wood so guests would know where to go and instead of booking out pricey hotels we had permission for people to camp at the village hall.

A friend did my hair and make up and helped my bridesmaids with theirs...

I sourced all of my bridesmaids dresses from ebay or sales with the most expensive one coming in at a whopping £5, some were even free samples from my chief bridesmaids work...

I made my own wedding dress sourcing fabric at wholesale prices it came in at around £50 and I picked up my headpiece for a massive £7.50 from Accessorize...

We made our own wedding rings with the help of a silversmith friend who offers it as a workshop for around £250, helping you to create your own rings in around 4 hours. I also made charm bracelets for each of my bridesmaids.

 Our catering was done by our friend Kenny who is an awesome cook and he was supported by a team of helpers made up of 4 friends and the school cook. For waiters we hired student (will work for beer) We skill swapped here again with my other half designing a website for Kennys new catering business and me doing the photography for content...

 

For desert we had a cake competition, we asked our guests to enter a cake if they like baking and we had loads of cake, there's still loads of cake in my freezer...

I made all the decorations (tassel garlands), favors (wildflower seeds), table plan (old surfboard painted with chalkboard paint) and details with a little help from some lovely friends. I did splash out on a few ReVintaged Paper PomPoms which are ace and really affordable at around £2.50 each. We didn't hire expensive furniture we just used what the school had and borrowed some plain chair covers from a friend who bought them all for her wedding to cover up the ugly plastic seating!

Flowers came from a friends garden with a few extras from the supermarket to pad them out and we made our own bouquets and then the family helped arrange them into pretty vases and jars that we nabbed from peoples houses. I made button holes for the boys using some flowers but also some other bits and bobs that I'd made

I made fruit liqueurs for the toasts and bottled them up with pretty labels, we bough shot and sherry glasses from charity shops for around 10p each so everyone had a different glass (not sure what to do with 120 shot glasses now though)

The cake was made by a friend of the grooms mum and was absolutely awesome, it looked and tasted beautiful...

The music came courtesy of our friends band, The Wild Sons of Gentlemen, followed by another DJ friend who played deep into the following morning accompanied by copious amounts of neon face paint, glow sticks and local ale and a pop up cocktail bar 'Blouseys Bar' run by friends Grace & Hugh...

All in all it was a bloody good do...

It is more than possible to have a big wedding on a shoe string budget and not cut corners or miss out on things that are important to you, just engage your family & friends, you'll be surprised what they can do! Skill swapping doesn't need to be limited to friends either, there are professionals out there (myself included) that will work this way, you don't know until you ask!