Outdoors

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When I grow up I want to be as cool as Britta & Oscar please. They not only  got married at their own home in Dunmanway, Ireland but they put the whole wedding together themselves including building their own marquee!

“We built the structure with ash poles and tied tarpaulin to the poles with zip ties and lots of rope,” Britta explained.” It would not have been possible without the help of our friends especially Will Dukes who pretty much did most of the hard work as Oscar had broken his leg a few weeks before the wedding…. convenient you might say!”

“Oscar wove some willow ‘chandeliers’ which we wrapped in fairy lights and hung to the structure,” she continued. “We were hoping to sew our own bunting but then we found some beautiful bunting at a stall in Waterford which were made from recycled saris. They were perfect. ”

“The food was made by us and our wonderful friends and family. Oscar’s Father gave us a present of a wild boar to cook for the wedding as we planed to have a pig on the spit. The pig was far to big for it to be done on the spit so our best man cooked it on the barbecue instead.”

The most important thing to the couple was that their wedding was fun for their guests and that there was no pressure to conform just because it was a wedding. ”Our inspiration came from many different sources. We were engaged for 2 years so had alot of time to search for ideas,” Britta said.

“We mostly just gathered bits and bobs together as we found things from shops and stalls, there was no real theme or color scheme we just wanted to have lots of colour and be surrounded by what we found beautiful. As we started to plan the wedding we found ourselves saying oh we MUST do this and we MUST do that until we asked ourselves why…why did we have to do all those things? There are so many rules one must follow when getting married and we decided to break them all.”

The bride wore a Novia d’Art dress which she bought from Oxfam Bridal, and her groom donned a Social Suicide jacket and a shirt from Brown Thomas. ”Our theme was just to have a relaxing, comfortable, non formal day. We had no colour scheme for our bridesmaids or groomsmen, nor did we have a dress code for our guests. Our number one priority was for everybody to feel comfortable and enjoy the day!”

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Without wanting to start off this blog post by sounding inappropriate…How smokin’ hot does Gwen look her her Fairy Goth Mother corset and skirt combo? VERY is the answer to that. Have you seen her teeny tiny little waist!?

Anyway, enough perving…let’s get along with the formalities shall we?

Gwen & Ali wanted a unique and personal wedding, and to achieve this they chose to hire tents from Beautiful World Tents which they erected on the grounds of Knepp Castle in West Grinstead. “After looking online at lots of venues and land hire this place looked perfect,” Gwen told me. “This was actually the only venue we went to see and the decision was made! Woodland, a lake, less than an hour from Brighton where we live, full kitchen facilities and more importantly stunning! The other added benefit was free roaming animal, pigs, deer and much more besides. It was incredibly beautiful and also very reasonable on costs. We found the location through the tent company and added bonus this being their headquarters which meant no delivery costs to get the tents to the venue. On the land we had 2 giant hat tents joined together facing down to the lake. You hire the land and facilities for the whole weekend, really handy for set-up and take down.”

“Also essential to the day was we wanted a very special friend of ours to marry us. Being so important to us we asked our friend Steve to perform the ceremony. OK it wouldn’t be legal but having someone you love perform the ceremony has to be better than a stranger, the words were personal to us and spoke directly to us as people rather than the one size fits all traditional ceremony. So we decided to get married at Brighton registry office in the week and then throw a big party with our friends at the weekend. Having the wedding this way did mean we had 2 weddings to plan as we had to legally get married at the registry office. At first we were apprehensive that the registry office wedding would detract from the big day, but actually when it was all over to quickly we were delighted at the prospect of doing it all over again! It did mean 2 weddings, 2 dresses (which is no bad thing), 2 dinners etc! Double the work but 10 times the enjoyment.”

“Before we even thought about where or when to get married thought about food!” the bride continued. “Being massive foodies there was no other choice than a hog roast, this helped shape the plan for an outdoor wedding, somewhere beautiful in the countryside that was relaxed and inspiring.”

“I’m also personally not a fan of cake (I also appreciate that makes me a total freak in the eyes of the world!). Ice cream on the other hand is my favourite desert. So instead of a wedding cake we had an old fashioned ice cream bike with loads of tasty flavours and toppings. Desert was provided by a Sideshow Snacks, the beautifully decorated bike and decadent ice creams were the perfect way to end the meal.”

“We wanted something unique and special to us, something that really epitomised our characters and relationship,” Gwen concluded. “Not being traditional or religious we were really seeking a day that was truly of our making. Having not been to many weddings personally a lot of the normal wedding traditions have passed me by, which in a lovely way left the vision free of constraint. The plan was to create something quirky and original and totally unique to us. Most important of all was for it to be fun, stress free and a wonderful way to spend the day celebrating with friends and family.”

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How utterly beautiful is today’s real wedding? This is the kind of wedding that makes my heart sing – no fuss, no details, no over-the-top-bridezilla-stresses – just the most important thing…love.

The bride, Daniela, told me all about their special day. “There were only the two of us at the ceremony, the lady who married us, the lady who owned the land and our photographer. The ceremony itself lasted about 1.5 hrs and consisted of several parts: lighting the fire, being cleansed with special leaves and incense, hearing the 20 nahuales of the Mayan Calendar being read out, telling each other our love and exchanging our rings, being wrapped in a green shawl which represented Gaia. We began and ended the ceremony with chocolate, a block of which was also burned in the fire. Chocolate is sacred in Mayan culture.”

“We chose to get married in Guatemala as we got engaged there last year and it’s our favourite country. Neither of us knew much about Mayan beliefs, but after doing some research we decided to tie the knot in a Mayan fire ceremony because we felt like we should honour the traditions of our chosen wedding location. Organising everything was extremely easy – we found our photographer via Tripadvisor and our shaman, the amazing Aum Rak , via a quick Google search. She then got us in touch with Terri, the owner of a local hotel in Lake Atitlan who offered us to get married on her land.”

“I knew that I wanted to wear a vintage (or vintage-looking) dress and briefly considered one by BHLDN, but it would have been almost criminal to shove such an expensive dress into my backpack for 3 weeks (we were travelling through Mexico and other locations in Guatemala before the wedding). So I chose a Gunne Sax dress instead, which I could just roll up and carry around with me without it getting creased. As for shoes, they had to be Swedish clogs!”

“Some might think we’re bonkers for getting married in this way,” she concluded, “but our parents fully understood, and for us it couldn’t have been more perfect or more emotional and meaningful (I was crying so much throughout the ceremony!). We had such a relaxed, blissful day as we didn’t have to worry about anything. No guests, no reception, no cake, no make-up or hair appointments… It was completely stress-free! Afterwards we had our honeymoon in the middle of the jungle in Honduras!”

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Hold the phones! This might be one of the cutest engagement shoots I’ve ever seen. Theo & Lisa are rockers at heart who love charity shop and vintage shopping, hip hop music and hanging out…and that’s exactly what they wanted for their engagement session – a simple shoot that shows the real them. I flippin’ love it.

I’ve also been informed that they’re trying to get Craig David to play at their August wedding (!) I’ll be sure to keep you guys in the loop on that one! Haha I love them already. I just know their wedding is going to be hella awesome.

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If you’re a long-time reader of this ‘lil wedding blog of mine, you’ll be well aware that I’m a huge fan of the rainbow wedding trend. I even modeled in an ‘Over the Rainbow’ themed shoot last October. So you can imagine my glee when Jennifer & Jon’s wedding landed on my desk.

The couple wanted a huge party, and with 200 guests and only a $10,000 budget they were determined to not spent a fortune to do so. “We honestly would never have been able to pull of any wedding without our friends and family,” Jennifer told me. “It was truly a DIY wedding with everyone helping out days beforehand by shoveling, raking and baking in the hot sun to make my friend’s ranch into a kick ass outdoor wedding venue. Caitlin & Michael Burns, owners of Rebar Ranch were gracious enough to make our vision come true (or turn our lack of vision into something amazing!)”

Everything from the ceremony to the after-party was personal to the couple. “Our inspiration was simply to have a wedding that represented ourselves completely in every aspect,” the bride continued. “I had to throw out the wedding books in order to stay sane. We just told each other no matter what it would be what we wanted and to not make things to serious. I walked down the aisle with my brothers –  two of the most important people in my life. One of the highlights of our wedding was we wrote our own vows as all the vows we found online didn’t really feel very ‘us’.  It took us awhile but after a few margaritas we incorporated some of our favorite song lyrics into every part of our vows”

“Our theme was simply ‘Party!’ All we wanted to do was celebrate with those closest and have as much fun as possible. Our guests said it was the best wedding they had ever been to. We danced all night! The band was able to play some Johnny Cash songs as well as their original songs.”

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