Real Rustic Barn Wedding: Vanessa & Aaron - Part 2

With more fabulous wedding details than you can shake a stick at, plus lots of wonderful DIY ideas, this wedding is a keeper! I'm completely in love with Vanessa and Aaron's quirky vintage style, from Aaron's mismatching socks, Vanessa's happy yellow bridal shoes {from Clark's}, and the bridesmaids elegant sage green gowns. But it's the DIY details you're going to love the most, because they're going to inspire you to create your own. Vanessa designed her own wedding stationery, but she didn't stop there - scroll down for the stunning rustic details, including 'words of wisdom cards' by way of a guestbook, homemade honey, pompoms, striped straws and tonnes of burlap accessories. Don't miss the quintessentially English lawn games, including giant chess and Connect 4, plus a classic old-skool ice-cream van. Vanessa also created fun packs for children, to keep them busy during the wedding reception. Huge thanks to Lawson Photography for their beautiful pictures - don't miss Part 1, and be sure to check out Vanessa's stationery company, Beautiful Ink.

The bridesmaid’s dresses were from Celebration Bridal near my home in Yorkshire and were long chiffon dresses in sage green, which suited my blonde bridesmaids perfectly. They also had flowers in their hair and their bouquets had long trailing yellow ribbons trailing.

My mum loves flowers, so she took the helm in finding the florist, and fell in love with Blossom Flowers in Chorlton, who create really natural and seasonal wedding flowers. Becky from Blossom created all the bouquets and buttonholes using yellow, cream and green flowers and foliage, that looked stunning. My bouquet was tied with tulle to match my dress, and the buttonholes had a hessian bow around them. 

Aaron and I met at University in Huddersfield over 6 years ago. We took a small weekend break to Edinburgh in October 2010 and unbeknownst to me, Aaron had already asked my Dad for permission to marry me. We did lots of sightseeing while in Edinburgh and took a ghost tour late one night. After this we went back to our hotel, where Aaron got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. It was such a lovely surprise, that it didn’t actually sink in until the next morning when the excitement really set in!

Our photographers were Lawson Photography and we just fell in love with their photography style - and how everyone is happy and smiling in such a natural way in all their photos!

Pete and Laura Lawson work as a team and captured every moment and tiny detail of our wedding; they are also lovely, friendly people who really put Aaron and I at ease in all the photos. They live just round the corner from Rivington Hall Barn, so it was meant to be!

Our venue was Rivington Hall Barn in Lancashire near where my parents live and where I’ve grown up.

We chose yellows and greens for our colours, to represent the country garden elements we were trying to achieve. We kept our colours running throughout, from the striped straws to the wedding stationery I designed. It all just felt very natural and personal which was what we wanted.

I really struggled to find personal and unique stationery that could reflect our day, so being creative I designed our own! I got the main invitations letterpressed by the wonderful Ashley Print & Design in Leeds. I enjoyed creating our stationery so much that set up a small business designing stationery called Beautiful Ink. This year, Country Homes & Interiors Magazine awarded us Runner Up in the Country Business of The Year competition, which is really exciting!

We had tonnes of DIY wedding projects! Aaron was very good at putting up with my requests to spend our Saturday’s decoupage or printing. We made so many elements. We made our table plan using a cheap frame, and tying string across it, and pegging tags to it. 

Instead of a guestbook we made 'words of wisdom cards' with sentences leaving spaces for guests to fill in the words/adjectives. It gave our guests an opportunity to pass on their advice to us as a couple - reading them back the next day was very entertaining.

My dad keeps bees in a field near his house so we decided to give mini honey jars as favours. My dad painstakingly retrieved all the honey and jarred it for us so we created labels and nametags so they could double up as place settings. Everyone seemed to love them!

The table flowers were all arranged by my mum and had a very natural 'handpicked' feel to them in vintage looking sweet jars with Hessian wrapped around them. Our table numbers were bought from eBay, and we decoupaged wallpaper samples onto them, and stuck them on tiles so they'd stand up. We also sourced wood cross-sections to act as bases for the flowers. 

I loved planning our wedding, and on the day I felt such an immense sense of achievement that everything looked and went as I’d envisaged. I don’t think I’ve ever taken on anything so demanding and time consuming, yet so much fun. I loved researching ideas, contacting suppliers and coming up with handmade touches and extra details to make our day special. And it was perfect. The sun even shone, if you can believe it!

Aaron and I stumbled across Claire from Just Darling Cakes when walking through Huddersfield one weekend. We went in for a chat and came out with a wedding cake order! She was so lovely and helpful and completely understood our wedding theme.

Our cake was a white-tiered cake in vanilla sponge, lemon cake and carrot cake. It had daisies, roses and other garden flowers cascading down the tiers, with hints of yellow and green. It looked stunning and tasted great!

My wedding shoes were a sneaky bargain. I’d dreamed of having designer wedding shoes but this wasn’t very realistic and then I stumbled across a pair of yellow suede heels in Clarks that were gorgeous and super comfy! In the evening Tom and I swapped our shoes for a pair of comfy Toms so we could dance the night away!

My advice would be to be prepared for different scenarios such as bad weather, so on the day you can relax, knowing everything has been organised, and if it rains you have a back up plan so won’t be disappointed. Everyone does say this but the day flies by, and it's not often you get all your friends and family in one place so enjoy every conversation, special moment and wedding detail, as it will be over so quickly. The other option is to hire good photographers who will capture it all for you!

♥ Want more DIY wedding ideas? ♥ Or how about more barn weddings? ♥

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