Real Rustic DIY Barn Wedding: Vanessa & Aaron

There's nothing I like more than hearing about a bride for whom her wedding day was the start of a whole new life. Obviously marriage is a fresh start for every couple, but sometimes, while planning a wedding a bride {or groom} discovers a whole new creative side to her personality, and that leads to a whole new business. My wedding led me to start Before the Big Day, and it's the best thing I've ever done! Vanessa's love was stationery, and after designing her own, she started a company called Beautiful Ink, which makes beautiful, fairly priced wedding stationery. But that wasn't her only wedding DIY project - between them, Vanessa and Aaron created most of their rustic wedding details, including the table numbers, table plan and table decorations. Wedding favours were mini pots of honey made by Vanessa's father's bees {wow!}, and Vanessa's mother arranged the venue flowers. Add in the prettiest pair of sunshine yellow shoes, Vanessa's gorgeous vintage-style wedding dress, and handmade headdress by What Katy Did Next, and you've got a wedding that couldn't be more up my street! Huge thanks to Pete and Laura Lawson from Lawson Photography for their stunning pictures - don't miss the reception shots later today.

We got married this summer on 14th July 2012 at Rivington Hall Barn in Lancashire near where my parents live and where I’ve grown up.

I found my dress in the first bridal shop I visited. It’s by Augusta Jones from Limelight Occasions, and it's beautiful. I loved the lace, the tulle, everything about it just worked, yet looked effortless. The tulle draped behind me from my waist like a veil but cleverly was in two parts so it could be scooped over my arms to create a shawl.

As my dress had its own veil of sorts I decided I wanted a headpiece instead. I really struggled to find something that suited my vintage-style dress until I stumbled across Katy from What Katy Did Next. Her work is gorgeous - she really understood what I was looking for, and together we designed a headpiece, which she handmade for me. It was stunning and looked perfect with my dress. She also made my bracelet, and small flower accessories for my hair. She was great! I also added a pearl necklace and earrings from my late Grandfather, which was really special.

Aaron chose a grey lounge suit from Carl Stewart Menswear near our home in Yorkshire, and co-ordinated it with a cream waistcoat and yellow cravat. His ushers wore the same suits, but with sage green cravats to match the bridesmaids dresses.

Aaron's always worn odd socks and didn’t want his wedding to be different so scoured the internet in search of yellow and green striped socks. Once he found them, he kitted out all his groomsmen in them as well! In the evening Aaron and I both swapped into comfortable Toms espadrilles for dancing in the evening.

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.

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.

We currently live in a small village in Yorkshire and have both embraced country living so were keen to have our wedding theme be rural and country. The barn was a perfect venue and this encouraged our ideas over our wedding theme to develop.

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 flowers arranged by my mum. It all just felt very natural and personal which was what we wanted.

As a child we used to have school discos and barn dances at Rivington Hall Barn, but I’d never thought of it as a wedding venue until my mum mentioned it. We both wanted a relaxed wedding and felt the barn really made this possible; it’s stunning inside and has lovely grounds.

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 also live just round the corner from Rivington Hall Barn, so it was meant to be!