Today's lovely couple are keen cyclists; they had a romantic post cycle ride proposal, a pretty bicycle dripping with flowers decorating their reception and a night time bike ride home at the end of their special day. WOW.

WWW readers Martin and Louise tied the knot on Saturday 12th July 2014 holding their reception on a farm in a gorgeous barn. They had such fun on their wedding day, with a bake off, no speeches and a lot of laughs.

They were super crafty and DIYed much of their day, from the pom poms to the signs and buttonholes. I just adore their stylish attire, fun games and sparkler exit.

Thanks so very much to the utterly fabulous Kari Bellamy for sharing these images today.

THE PROPOSAL | Martin and I has just completed a 5 day endurance cycle ride from the Swiss Alps (our home) to St Tropez, climbing the height of Everest over 600 km's before spending some time on the beach. On our last night (before he left me in the South of France for one month to complete a residential French course), we headed to the beautiful hill top town of Ramatuelle for a fancy supper overlooking the sea from the medieval village. It was there that during a break in the meal we had a little walk on their terrace and he got down on one knee.

THE VISION | We knew from the start that we wanted to officially be married in church in front of our nearest and dearest out, so this ruled Switzerland out, so the next logical place was where I spent much of my childhood and where my parents now live, on the picture perfect Mersea Island which has everything from farms to harbours.

Living in Switzerland for the past 6 years and not wanting all our friends there to travel to the UK for a simple wedding we decided that it was only fitting to have a secondary wedding the following weekend, at home in the mountains. So this was only Round 1!

We are outdoorsy, sporty types that wanted nothing more than a FUN country wedding without the pompff and any formalities. We strongly believe that weddings should be more about the love and the fun rather than what we called 'Wedding Machine' where money is simply thrown at everything. We both found this the rather vulgar side of weddings and agreed from the start that ours would be simple, but with great food, wine and entertainment. With most couples marrying later and having more long term requirements from their savings, like paying a deposit on a house, we weren't prepared to spend everything we had on one day. We are both extremely organised, crafty and were ready to do anything to make the right contacts to have the wedding of our dreams on a shoe-string.

When we first contacted Jenny & Ralph to check out their farm after hearing about it from another contact on the island, they thought that we were bonkers wanting to transform their outbuilding/barn that housed boats, furniture, cider presses and other farming machinery, into a wedding venue. We were really up for the challenge, armed with Jane and Jayne and just knew that it would be perfect for our dream wedding, albeit a lot of work!

THE PLANNING PROCESS | Planning the wedding from another country wasn't easy at all and we had some minor hiccups along the way. We both were unable to travel home in the 6 months prior to the wedding, apart from the last month. But we found some great help and now friends in the lovely Jane Ashmore and Jayne Eyers from the Little Beach Hut Company on Mersea Island who not only helped us with their great style, but to organise some of the local suppliers in the lead up to the day and my sister, Lindy Dowling who is helpfully one of the best wedding planners in London and the surrounding counties, came to the rescue!!

We tirelessly made everything from the e-invites, a website, buttonholes, bridesmaid head-dresses, place settings, signs, jars for tealights, 2 days of pom pom assembling and not to mention the 3 day set up pre the big day itself from putting up fairy lights to decorating the tractor!

BUDGET | £10,541.00 excluding my dress (because this is already up for sale!)

THE VENUE | Ivy Farm - Although this isn't really a Wedding venue per-se, it's a private farm, with the space and a great barn normally used for school and Girl Guide camps, that suited us down to the ground.

THE DRESS & ACCESSORIES | Ilysse by La Sposa. My dress is currently for sale on Still White, Preloved and Rock My Wedding.

FINDING THE DRESS | I always knew it would be tough, mainly because we live in Switzerland and cannot leave between November - May due to our jobs. Added with the bridal fashion here is a little out of date.....

So I got to work on this pretty much as soon as we were engaged!! Given that we had just finished the endurance cycle I was pretty slim and determined that was how I was going to stay for the wedding, so made sure that I searched for dresses that would suit my frame. I took a trip during my stay in the South of France to Nice and visited a couple of boutiques recommended by a friend. I was underwhelmed in the first shop. The shop owner was somewhat disappointed that I didn't have a 4000 Euro budget.... The second shop, however, was just amazing and I will never forget the little seamstress there who helped me into my dress. She reminded me so much of my grandmother and made me feel so welcome that I think that sealed the deal even more so!!

I had gone dress shopping alone, because all my best friends and family were miles away in Switzerland or the UK. In hindsight this was the best thing I did. It enabled me to try on 6 dresses that day and really understand in my own head what I wanted, without any other influences. I narrowed the dresses down to 2 and the following weekend I had two of my closest friends visit who I took to the shop to help me make the decision, without telling them which one I preferred..... we all went for the same one. That was it! There were no tears, it all was rather functional and I was surprised at how fast I had made the decision. But I'm not a huge shopper and kind of like to know what I want before I go, so I had made my French studies fun by making my homework being to read French bridal magazines whenever I could to get an idea of the shapes and designers that I liked. It was fantastic and I learnt a lot about French wedding etiquette in the process!

For my alterations, I found the most wonderful dress maker, Amanda, at Butterfly Vintage Bridal in Colchester, who I literally called and asked her to block 2 days to alter a dress that she had never even seen and wouldn't be able to do so until the last minute. She revelled in the challenge and made it such an enjoyable and relaxing experience.

GROOM'S ATTIRE | We loved a friends tweed suit and knew we wanted a vintage/country theme, so when we found out it was from the Heritage range at Topshop, we ordered it immediately online in time for our next trip home.

THE READINGS & MUSIC | Our amazing organist, Peter, played Coldplays Paradise over the pipe organ as I walked down the aisle to greet Martin and he also played Viva La Vida for our processional.

One of my best friends, Holly Freeman, read a beautiful reading to us, that she had written especially for us. Then one of our Ushers, Joseph, aged 8, read us a reading from Ecclisiastes.

BEAUTIFUL BRIDESMAIDS | Lindy Dowling - Chief Bridesmaid - My beautiful younger sister and wedding planner extroadinaire...... (you can probably work out why she got picked for the role)

Lily Beer, my 9 year old cousin. Madelaine Lewis, Martins 10 year old niece.

THE FLOWERS | We kept these minimal to keep the costs down, but I had the most amazing wild bouquet, bridesmaid bouquets and hair flowers made by the lovely Beverley at Jades Flowers. My sister had trained with Beverley as a wedding florist some years back and said that she was the best in the business. That was fine by us!!

THE CAKE | Well why buy a cake when you can have fun making them yourself?

We were inspired to make the wedding more of an interactive one for our guests so thought why not have a Great British Wedding Bake-Off. We were really worried the day before the wedding that not many guests would bring cakes, so went and bought a few (don't tell anyone!!) but we were blown away on the day at just how many people did make the and the quality!! They took it very seriously and I think the real Mary Berry would have been quite delighted with the competition!

We gave away GBBO and Mary Berry books as well as a wooden spoon to the winners who were chosen by our celebrity guests!

YOUR PHOTOGRAPHER | The wonderful Kari Bellamy. We found her online after searching for image style that we liked on Pinterest. We were delighted when we found out that she was free for our date and she was super flexible given that we were overseas, so we organised an initial Skype rendez-vous. We arranged a fun Engagement shoot in London last November and we kind of took it from there! On the day itself Kari brought along one of her interns who was also great fun. Our friends and family are pretty noisy and with Kari's 5ft1? We gave her a mega-phone to bust them into shape!!

THE DETAILS & DÉCOR | Country Style, we and the wonderful Jane & Jayne made everything that we possibly could and beg, borrowed and stole from everyone we knew to get the right props and styling for the wedding. It was incredible to look back on what we achieved.

THE HONEYMOON | We didn't fancy the 'honeymoon-off' with every other couple in the Maldives or the Seychelles, so took the Middle East in Ramadan where we couldn't hold hands outside of the hotel. It was an incredible experience. We spent one week on the beach in Oman and one week in the UAE desert at a Bedouin fort styled hotel, before heading to Abu Dhabi before our flight home.

MEMORABLE MOMENTS |My sister having her shoes cut out of her dress by Karis assistant before we even got into the wedding car to the church. The bumpy ride to the church in the Morris Minor and laughing all the way with my sister. The family sharing style meal that we had in the mini marquee with our nearest and dearest. No formalities and no speeches, just love, food and laughter between us all. Our tractor 'Entrance' into the field where the arrival drinks were held for our Reception guests. The Great British Bake Off and just how amazing our guests judges were! And our favourite by far: Being seen off by our sparkler wielding guests at the end of the night as we rode our pushbikes through the dark country lanes, with nothing but headtorches to guide us the 1 mile journey. We deconstructed how amazing the whole day was for us both and that was the best and most magical 'us' time of the day for the two of us. Just incredible. We will never forget that bike ride. We didn't tell anyone that we were going to do it, so they all thought that we were nuts! Feeling lucky enough that we were about to do it all again the following weekend at home in Swiss Alps.

ADVICE FOR OTHER COUPLES | Make sure that you're organised. People teased me that I had organised the whole wedding a month after being engaged - which of course wasn't true, but the church and band were booked and we had many ideas and a good structure for the rest. We knew that come winter we wouldn't have time to think about anything else but work, so wanted to make it as stress free as possible for the following year. We still had tons to do come May, but being organised made it a LOT easier. Don't leave it all to the last minute and assume that it will be OK!

Keep it simple. If you're doing a DIY wedding like us, don't overcomplicate it and clearly think through the logistics and costs of what you are asking for. Timelines, working backwards, assigning tasks whilst asking yourself 'how are they going to do it, get the things they need' etc, will help you to decide if its reasonable or not.

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE |

Church | St Peter & St Pauls West Mersea, Mersea Island

Venue | Ivy Farm

Styling | Jane & Jayne at The Little Beach Hut Company

Organising | Lindy Dowling Wedding Planners

Photographer | Kari Bellamy

Food | The Mixing Bowl

Music | Mowgli via Gigz Management

Flowers | Jades Flowers

Hair & Make-Up | Georgie Harris

Car | Martin Horsey, Ipswich

Dress Alterations | Butterfly Vintage Bridal

Ekkk love love love.

Thanks so so much to Martin and Louise for sharing all about their brilliant day with us XOXO Lou