Quirky Tweed & Pet Dogs Vintage Village Fete Home Made Wedding -...

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I think fete games always generate the most fun and entertaining of wedding photographs. So you are really going to enjoy Cris and Rich's nuptials, held on the 9 ^th May 2015. There day is full of quirky touches and their guests enjoying the village feel entertainment.

With a barn setting and a budget of £10 000 Cris and Rich crafted up a rustic storm, from the pretty cake to the twine wrapped bottles. Their sweet dogs made an appearance, there was live music and a really relaxed vibe throughout. Now for the attire, the boys donned tweed waistcoats and chinos, which looked awesome and Cris wore a lace House of Mooshki frock which looked gorgeous.

Many thanks today to Stott & Atkinson for sharing their brilliant photographs.

THE PROPOSAL | Rich will be upset by this, but I knew exactly when he was going to do it! What I didn't expect is all the work and effort he's put into planning it. We'd been together for 5 years and had planned to go out for a meal in the evening, but the day was full of surprises. The first surprise he had planned was a bunch of 20 or so pink roses which were delivered at lunch time. We went out as planned for tea and he didn't do it, I was gutted! So we went home and I felt a little down hearted. We'd not been home long and he presented me with a book. It was a book of 'Our Story So far ...' it contained photos and a narrative of the past 5 years, it must have taken him at least a month to put together! I was about to turn over the last page and I thought 'this must be it, this is how he's going to propose, it will be on the next page' and my heart skipped a few beats as I turned over on to the last page. It said '.... To be continued' .... My heart sank again! I hid it well and thanked him for the lovely present. He replied 'I have one more present' and he scurried off to get it. 'THIS MUST BE IT' I thought! He came back in the room with a large flat rectangular shaped thing ... not the shape of a ring box! But when I opened it I started to cry with joy. It was a wooden frame (oak - my favourite) and in it had the words 'MARRY ME' - but it was more special than that. He had cut all the letters out himself and behind them he had put memories from the past 6 years, including the email address I wrote in the back of his diary on the first day we met - 1 year before we started dating.

THE VISION | We wanted to make a day that that was different; the sort of wedding that we would really enjoy if we were guests. After looking online for ideas we quickly decided to go for a vintage wedding. It was something that hadn't been done yet amongst our friends. The venue we chose offered Afternoon Tea for the wedding breakfast - this was perfect! The theme was then decided; it would be a Vintage Village Fete. Following the ceremony and wedding breakfast we wanted to keep the momentum going through to the evening and make use of the outdoor space at the venue. We therefore decided to have some lawn games including a sack race, horseshoes, tincan alley and croquet. Rich even got to revive some of his juggling skills he learnt at Uni with his usher! The evening band was also an important choice for us. We don't particularly enjoy evening discos with cheesy music. We had been to two weddings with a Ceilidh band which we thoroughly enjoyed and we decided that's what we would do.

THE PLANNING PROCESS | The wedding was much easier to plan than we expected. I think it's because we made our minds up on what we wanted fairly early on. We planned the whole thing in about 6 months.

BUDGET | We probably spent something in the region of £10,000. The venue, the food, the photographs and my dress were a fair chunk of that coming to approximately £7500. We did do a lot of the other things ourselves to try and keep the costs down, including table centrepieces, some of the lawn games, the favours and of course; the cake! We did consider having a hog roast in the evening but these funds were transferred to the wedding dress budget!

THE VENUE | We were pretty keen to get married in a barn. As you can tell we're not the typical couple and we wanted to do something different. Northorpe Hall in Mirfield was perfect. They had the barn, the space for lawn games and we were able to get married within the time scales we wanted to.

THE DRESS & ACCESSORIES | I wanted a tea length lace dress that looked like it was from the 50s / 60s. As soon as I saw it I knew it was the one I wanted. I tried on a total of 3 dresses, all in the same shop, just to make sure it was the one for me! I bought the Sarah dress by House of Mooshki from a little boutique in Horbury called Lace and Co. It was one of our biggest costs at £1450. I bought a flower for my hair from Etsy and my lace umbrella was from Amazon.

GROOM'S ATTIRE | As we wanted the vintage look we decided very quickly that hiring from tailors wasn't going to cut it. We were however in luck. Tweed was very in fashion when we were shopping for the groom's attire. Buying the outfits worked out at a similar cost to hiring a formal suit. This also meant the groomsmen got to keep their outfits. We bought the tweed waistcoats, shirts, ties and the groom's boots from Next. The chinos were a little harder to find due to the sizes we needed from short and thin to tall and thin. We found that River Island had all the sizes that we needed.

THE READINGS & MUSIC | We were keen to have some live music both in the evening and during the ceremony and reception. My friend Dave played Cannon on the keyboard while I walked into the venue. To provide background music before and after the venue we hired a local singer and acoustic guitarist. This was someone I had heard play in a bar in Leeds, and after returning with Rich to hear him play we decided he'd be right for us. We chose three songs from the era while we signed the register and walked out of the venue; "In other words (fly me to the moon) - Kaye Ballard, "L-O-V-E" - Nat King Cole, and "Can't Take my Eyes Off You" - Frankie Valli. We had two beautiful readings by two of our friends. Lizzie read 'The One' and just after we were pronounced as husband and wife, Dave read 'The Owl and the Pussy Cat'; my favourite poem since I was a little girl. He read it with such enthusiasm and I couldn't stop smiling throughout.

BEAUTIFUL BRIDESMAIDS | My bridesmaids were my best friend, my sister and my step niece. I wanted all the bridesmaids to match and with a seven year old making up part of the bunch we decided to get their dresses made. The bridesmaids helped me choose the fabric which was an off-white covered in pink roses which suited everything else perfectly.

THE FLOWERS | We wanted to keep the flowers really simple so we opted for gypsophila bouquets. Mine also had a few pink roses. The groomsmen had gypsophila button holes wrapped in a vintage looking brown string. The flowers on the tables were a combination of roses, carnations and gypsophila.

THE CAKE | I have been decorating cakes in my spare time for about a year and half now and I was determined I was going to decorate my own wedding cake. I asked Rich what he wanted and he suggested a cupcake tower. I therefore decorated a two tier fruit cake to give us something to cut and then made 72 (5 different flavours!) cupcakes to go with it. We had friends around to help prepare for the wedding and several of them were roped in to helping with the cupcakes, I'd already made the toppers but we needed to core and fill the cupcakes. I even had my brother weighing icing sugar and mixing butter cream - he barely knows how to fry an egg!

YOUR PHOTOGRAPHER | Our photographers were AMAZING! Our requirements were two photographers that did a pre wedding shoot, focused on the natural shots and didn't provide the photos on a heart shaped USB. Paul and Tim fitted the bill perfectly!

THE DETAILS & DÉCOR | The details were a very important part of our day and we made as much of it as we could ourselves. We hired some timber centrepieces, I wrapped small wine bottles in string and glass jars in lace and one of our friends arranged the flowers while the rest of us decorated the cupcakes. Rich and his friends focused on the lawn games; and what an amazing job they did! We also did a name the teddy and guess the number of jelly beans in the jar which were a big hit. Our most favourite detail was hidden at the back of the wedding cake. Rich loves superheroes so I included a spiderman crawling out from the back of the cake.

THE HONEYMOON | We're not one's for sitting in the sun so a beach holiday didn't appeal to us. We like to be off exploring and we love our little city breaks. We therefore decided to go on a two week P&O cruise around the Mediterranean. We started at Genoa, cruising around Italy to Venice, and back to Genoa. We stopped off at 8 different destinations including Pisa, Naples and Rome.

MEMORABLE MOMENTS | Overall we wanted to get as many people involved as possible. As well as our bridesmaids, groomsmen and readers, we also got a friend to act as master of ceremonies and another to provide some music in between the band sets. They both embraced their roles and our 'DJ' even made a poster for his DJ services "Pay peanuts, get monkeys".

The food was excellent throughout the day. From the mountains of cake and sandwiches in the afternoon tea to the evening cheese tower that went down a storm.

ADVICE FOR OTHER COUPLES | Our best advice to other couples is to do exactly what you want to do. It's your big day and it should reflect your personalities! Don't get distracted by what's traditional or what you think others might want to do. Our day was different, and might not have been what a lot of our guests would have chosen, but many of them said it was the most enjoyable wedding they'd been to!

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE |

Venue | Northorpe Hall

Photographers | Stott & Atkinson

Acoustic guitar & singer | Matt Baxter

Ceilidh band | Northern Ceilidhs

Wedding dress | Lace and Co

Bridesmaid dresses | Cyanide Kiss

Accessories | Z B Accessories

Cake, cupcake and favours | Bride - Cris Bakes Cakes

Wooden stumps | Pink tree

Hay Bails | Local farmer

Flowers | Janet Foxton (D W Hunt)