The Wedding
But this compact type of occasion is no longer the ‘fashion’!
The planning for this wedding took months and months, mostly because the bride had very definite ideas regarding what she wanted and wished to do, practically all of it herself! Several venues were visited, well over a year before the event was to take place. The idea was to have a rural wedding, to be held outside in a country setting. A big ‘posh’ hotel wasn’t on the agenda at all. A suitable place was found, booked and the deposit was paid. It was a farm surrounded by fields with cows and sheep, along a bumpy track. The venue was hired from Friday to Sunday.
This was very much a DIY wedding! The bride is mad about the colour green and had a green ribbon fastened around her waist in a bow, over her knee length wedding dress. The groom and his best man wore green ties which were so closely matched to the ribbon it was incredible. The groom's favourite colour is orange, so this was the general theme, green, with yellow to link the colours, then orange.
The bride made her bridesmaids' green and white dresses, but after some gentle persuasion she agreed not to make own dress. Thank goodness for that, as the bridesmaids’ dresses were only finished on the Friday morning!
A small team worked tirelessly on Friday, adding place names to the tables. Flowers in white pots and white lanterns, which did look really pretty with tealights inside. There was home made bunting, green, orange, yellow roses and a pale yellow draped around the room and near the duck pond, where the ceremony took place.
She bought all the flowers herself on the Thursday morning, left in water in their garage to be taken to the venue on Friday morning. As the venue doesn't have a license for performing the legal part of a marriage, the couple, along with my husband and I as their witnesses then went to the Registry Office. It was a beautiful place inside. This part didn't take too long but they made it a low key affair anyway, not specially dressing up for the occasion as they were adamant their Wedding Day was going to be on Saturday.
The field on the farm, where the wedding ceremony was due to take place on Saturday, was laid out in a circle with bales of straw for those young enough to sit on them and benches place behind the bales.
The weather on the Friday was pleasant enough, a little cloudy and overcast at times, with a breeze, after days and days of awful weather, not typical of June. Good for working, setting up the extra bits on the tables for instance. The caterers had laid the cutlery and the glasses on white table cloths. The bride and groom wanted each place to have a piece of hessian individually from one side of the table to the other. Place names were laid out, with names written on little leaf shaped taps, then put into soft oranges. white vases were put on each table, consisting of sun flowers, with a mixture of other flowers with the yellow orange and green theme.
We woke up to a beautiful June morning, on Saturday, the sort of lovely sunny day I remember, not too hot with a gently breeze. So grateful that this wasn’t last weekend, when temperature climbed into 30's and above, as it wouldn’t have been just the flowers wilting!
The wedding ceremony was at noon, it was lovely. They had written their own vows, which were the same. I was so glad I had read the content before the ceremony or I would have been crying like a baby. This was followed by loads of photographs, in various locations on the farm.
The main meal was held in the marquee. The groom made a brilliant speech, again having read the jist of it, I was glad, as this was another occasion, when I may have wept a little, as the bride did! Her father stood up and gave a speech, he did get some laughs but apparently he didn't say all he intended to!
A lot of mingling then happened. The couple didn’t have a traditional cake, but some of the groom’s family provided cupcakes, as a wedding present, which were delicious.
Eventually the 'entertainment' began, with a Ceilidh band, which was good fun, the more mistakes the better it seems. The bride and groom did a very energetic reel at one stage!
One of the dances was for groups of 8 people. One group consisted of the bride, her father's sister, his (favourite) niece and his niece's husband, her god parents, her father and me. In this dance you changed places with as silly as walk as possible. A really good laugh and she said she was pleased to be dancing with all her 'family'. We are not many of us now.
When the Ceilidh band finished they then had a disco. Being mid-summer it was light for most of the evening. We left about 11:15 and it was dark by then.
Park Farm also offers bed and breakfast, in a couple of rooms. One the bride and bridesmaids had, another 2 of her school friends shared on Friday night. The bride and groom spent their wedding night in the Gipsy type caravan, with all mod cons, on the farm!
All that was left was the clearing up on Sunday morning, then later in the day the newly married couple headed to their unusual mini-moon accommodation, not far away.
It was a brilliant day, although long, very well organized in every way. The bride said she had really enjoyed it all, but was glad it was over. We were so proud of her and that everything went according to her plan.