Real Marquee & Bunting Wedding: Claire & Tim - Part 2

Brides planning a marquee wedding will want to save all the pictures from this fabulous Manchester wedding. It's Part 2 time for Claire and Tim's wedding {Part 1 here}, and you're going to love the reception pictures. With a bunting theme and purple as a theme colour, every wedding detail is perfectly thought out, with tonnes of DIY wedding details. The wedding cake, the cake topper, the wedding stationery - everything was bunting themed, and handmade by friends and family. I love how Tim's dad organised the orchid table displays and the buttonholes - as a member of the British Orchid Society he was best placed to choose the perfect blooms. Remember to draw on the talent of all your friends for your wedding - we had a fantastic DIY session the week before our wedding day, and put together tonnes of the decorations and wedding stationery. Claire did the same thing - don't miss her answers to the Before the Big Day Bride's Questionaire for more helpful wedding tips. Huge thanks to Kayleigh Pope Photography for her beautiful pictures.

I took a long time to decide what marquee theme I wanted – toying between shabby chic, morrocan tent or classy event, but I kept coming back to clean white, with purple {my favourite colour} accents. I also love bunting as it seems so celebratory, so eventually we decided to go with purple ditsy-print and gingham bunting, with white broderie anglaise. This then set the tone for my wedding theme and all the other wedding details - including the wedding invitations and stationery!

I loved every second! My advice for other brides? Don’t stress out and worry about things because everything will be fine - people can't do enough for you on your wedding day! Suddenly the little details don't matter so much anymore - having everyone you love in one room is just amazing!

For our wedding flowers, I knew we wanted orchids on the tables as Tim's dad is in The Orchid Society of Great Britain. He sorted these table flowers out for us, along with the buttonholes for the ushers.

The whole of our wedding seemed like a giant DIY project – from cutting out thousands of triangles for bunting, to digging drainage holes in the field before the marquee was put up! We also handmade our bunting wedding invitations - printing the details onto material. My sister-in-law spent lots of time researching how we could print onto material without ink running, or having to buy industrial fabric.

The best man's mum made our wedding fruit cake as many years ago her mum {our best man's grandma} had promised to make Tim's wedding cake. Sadly she died a year before the wedding so Carolyn made the cake for us instead –upholding her mum's promise. Our very close friend Gill decorated the wedding cake, again with a bunting theme! To make it even more personal, the cake couple were sat on a tortoise – our first pet together!

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Real Marquee & Bunting Wedding: Claire & Tim

Any bride planning her wedding on a realistic budget is going to love this beautiful, detail-filled big day. It's packed with wedding inspiration and ideas, including fantastic high-street finds for bridesmaids, and in-the-know websites for reasonable handmade suits for your groom and ushers. Claire and Tim chose a traditional church and marquee wedding, with a British bunting and purple wedding theme. You'll have to wait for Part 2 tomorrow for the incredible reception details, but first take a look at the stunning portrait pictures - all by Kayleigh Pope Photography. Claire's Mori Lee wedding gown is beautiful and she teamed it with dainty {and reasonable} shoes from M&S. Meanwhile the flower girls' pretty dresses came from Next, and all the wedding party suits were handmade in Thailand for much less than they would have cost in the UK. They were even embroidered on the inside with their names! I love the ushers' floral shirts - I'm a big fan of men making fashion choices at weddings, it gives the groom an opportunity to let his personality shine through. Don't miss Claire's answers to the Before the Big Day Bride's Questionaire - there's tonnes of helpful wedding tips there to steal. Huge thanks to Kayleigh Pope Photography for her beautiful pictures.

For our wedding flowers I used a local florist called Magpies in Longton near Preston for my bouquet, and the Mums' 'Thank you' bouquets. Natalie was superb – I emailed her the week before the wedding to add top table flowers to the order, and she produced the most amazing goldfish bowls which matched perfectly with the flowers on the other tables.

I found my wedding dress in a small bridal boutique in Woburn in Buckinghamshire. I wore a Mori Lee wedding gown, and a veil dotted with Swarovski crystals. Many of my accessories were my 'Something Borrowed'. I had two pairs of shoes – my main ones from M&S and some sandals for dancing later. I didn't want to spend lots on shoes when I knew I would never last all day in heels!

I had three bridesmaids all under the age of six. Their dresses and shoes were from Next – I wanted ivory to match my wedding gown. They had purple headbands from Monsoon Occasion.

My husband had his suit tailor made in Thailand, via a website called iTailor. We purchased the man of honour {instead of best man}, and the ushers' suits from there as well, because we wanted them to be able to keep their wedding suits rather than hire.

We celebrated our big day at St Gregorys Chapel in Chorley, and our wedding reception in my parents-in-law's field! We wanted a personal day and it always seemed like the best option. We knew we wanted a big marquee wedding!

The suits were monogrammed on the inside pocket with the date of our wedding and their job {usher / best man / man of honour}.

I chose my gorgeous childhood friend, Kayleigh Pope Photography for our wedding photographer. It was one of the first things I booked - in fact on the day we got engaged I rang and booked her! Kayleigh has such an eye for detail and makes even the most mundane things looks amazing. I would recommend her to anyone without hesitation!

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Pretty Shabby Chic English Wedding: Claire & Simon

Is there anything better than a traditional English wedding? Here in the UK, we do weddings in serious style, and there's nothing I like more than a shabby-chic themed wedding, packed with pretty details. Just take a look at Claire and Simon's beautiful wedding at South Lodge Hotel in Horsham, Sussex. I'm loving Claire's delicate pink and soft green colour theme, her beautiful rose bouquet and stunning lace wedding gown. Other wedding details to steal included the pretty floral name tags - which are super easy to DIY, the mirrored table flower arrangements - ditto, and the fun photo props - more on those here. Gorgeous pictures published with thanks to Hannah MacGregor at Funky Photographers.

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Real Pretty Marquee Wedding: Lottie & Jake - Part 2

With a little bit of vintage and a lot of charm, stand by for Part 2 of Lottie and Jake's gorgeous shabby-chic marquee wedding. There's tonnes of wedding ideas you'll want to steal for your own wedding day, from the elegantly lined marquee, to the gorgeous hedgerow-style table flowers from The Real Cut Flower Garden. I'm loving the dark blue accent details; the napkins, the pottery vases and the table stationery. Nearly every wedding detail was DIY'd - including the music, most of which was arranged by Lottie's father and performed by members of her family. As you scroll through the pictures, do take a look at Lottie's answers to the Before the Big Day Bride's Questionnaire to find out more. Beautiful pictures published with thanks to Fiona Kelly from Fiona's Wedding Photography and FO Photography, with a helping hand from Lisa at County Marquees. Don't miss Part 1 here.

Music was an incredibly important part of our day. We didn't want to go with standard ceremony music, we wanted it to really be about us. We walked in to 'Absolute Beginners' by David Bowie {brilliant lyrics for a wedding!}, during the ceremony Jake's sister sang 'Stay With You' by John Legend, and we walked out to Jackie Wilson's 'Higher and Higher'.

We really enjoyed planning our wedding, although it did get a little stressful at times, particularly with concerns about a venue for the ceremony. It was very difficult to find a registry office big enough for all our guests, and for a while it looked like we would have to cut down our guest list, which would have been very difficult. I really wanted to married in front of everyone.

In the end we came up with a fantastic compromise. We partitioned off part of the marquee and had our ceremony in there, officiated by one of our close friends. Afterwards, we hopped in a taxi with both sets of parents and drove two minutes up the road for a five minute legal ceremony, and got back before any of our guests noticed we were gone!

My grandmother’s house is basically the hub of my family. My mum grew up there, my parents had their wedding reception there, and various bits of the extended family go there for lunch on a weekly basis. I have always known that I wanted to have my wedding there in the garden.

A marquee {from County Marquees} was a no-brainer as August is pretty unreliable in terms of weather. The decorations just came together by themselves – I really liked the idea of having bunting, and I wasn’t keen on having everything perfectly colour-coordinated.

We initially wanted to have a great big chocolate wedding cake, but we were concerned that in August it might melt and/or not be eaten on a hot day. Instead we decided to have five flavours of cupcakes from Primrose Bakery which went down very well. Lots of guests took them home with them as wedding favours.

Our photographer was the wonderful Fiona Kelly. We looked online at lots of photographers and we really liked Fiona's pictures, as well as her easygoing and friendly personality, which was really clear from her website.

Our good friend Jenny Shayler designed our wedding stationery. During the design process she emailed asking for photographs of us both in profile, as she wanted to try out an idea using our silhouettes. We were both sceptical, but we really liked the final result, and ended up using them for our orders of service as well.

My advice to other brides is, don't feel like you have to do things in any particular way, than how you want them. We didn’t really have a wedding theme colour {other than touches of navy blue} or a wedding theme. For us the most important thing was celebrating with our family and friends.

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