Bouncing and rolling down a hill (wedding blog!)

Under­stand­ably, this wed­ding day had me intrigued from the moment I first heard about it! Bouncy cas­tles, inflat­a­bles and a gor­geous vil­lage hall? Yes please! Louisa and Dan were mar­ried in Lan­cashire on the 4th of June and chose Neil Red­fern as their wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher. Louisa is orig­i­nally from New Zealand, although now lives with Dan in Cum­bria (spooky coin­ci­dence: my Gareth is half kiwi, and I’m from Cum­bria! How could I not fea­ture this wedding?!)

Neil told me how the wed­ding day unfolded: Louisa got ready in a lit­tle pub in Ark­holme called the Bay Horse, the wed­ding cer­e­mony was at Lan­caster Town Hall and the recep­tion at Ark­holme Vil­lage Hall. The shots of Louisa & Dan in between the cer­e­mony and the recep­tion were taken on a bridge in Lan­caster. The day had a really nice vil­lage fete feel to it and was extremely relaxed with lots of fun ele­ments: a BBQ, bouncy cas­tle, hula-hoops and an inflat­able thing which guests could roll down a hill in!

And that was this wed­ding blog­ger Sold! Inflat­able fun on my wed­ding blog? Yes please!

I wore an Alfred Angelo strap­less dress, style 1614 with long lace train, bought from www.dreamweddingdress.co.uk sec­ond­hand but in per­fect con­di­tion! I then changed into a Vivien of Hol­loway rock­a­billy style dress for the evening – much bet­ter for danc­ing and bounc­ing on the bouncy castle!

I love an anti-bride! If you don’t have this book it’s avail­able on Ama­zon: Anti-bride Wed­ding Planner

I wore white strap­less cork wedges (£3 from eBay) under my long for­mal dress – no one can see them so it was com­fort­able for run­ning around and pho­tos. My chief brides­maid made neck­laces for myself and the brides­maids as their gifts and I wore a sim­ple fin­ger­tip veil (also from eBay, £7!). My bou­quet was a hand tied infor­mal style with red chill­ies in.

For the evening, I wore a belt from New Look and a multi layer pet­ti­coat from eBay plus navy retro style plat­form shoes (also from New Look). The dress was amaz­ing –I did for­ward flips on the bouncy cas­tle and was able to really rock it out on the dance floor!

I bought dresses for the brides­maids in a vari­ety of places (mostly eBay!) after con­sult­ing with them to find out what style and colour suited them the best – with a 40s style crossed with Girls Aloud as my style inspi­ra­tion! The colour theme was Paua shell colours (blue, green, pur­ple) which is a Kiwi iconic mate­r­ial. As the dresses were all dif­fer­ent, I had iden­ti­cal wrist cor­sages (with green chillis in) and cream Ger­bera hair clips made so that they would all tie in together for the day – there are impor­tant girls to me so needed to be obvi­ous to every­one that this was so!

Dan wore a navy Prince Edward style suit hired from Deben­hams – by far the most rea­son­able place to hire from and we were able to hire for all the grooms­men and fathers due to the price. The but­ton­holes all had chillis in (red for Dan, green for every­one else) as Dan is pas­sion­ate about them! Also, Dan wore win­klepicker type shoes pur­chased from eBay.

Our most mem­o­rable wed­ding day moments

• See­ing each other at the end of the aisle and strug­gling to say the vows clearly because I was smil­ing too much!
• Get­ting dri­ven to the venue by my mum and dad in a VW camper­van with all my girls.
• Our first dance – we prac­tised, we were rub­bish, but it didn’t matter!
• Bounc­ing on the cas­tle as a mar­ried cou­ple, then the fam­ily joined in!
• Hav­ing a kick ass chief brides­maid in the form of Ras, who took hold of the day and removed any stress from us!
• See­ing every­one using the home­made photo booth which Dan and his father had made from scratch – silly props are a must..

The NZ style Bbq went down very well and added to the relaxed style

One of Louisa’s brides­maids couldn’t make it over from New Zealand for the wed­ding, so Louisa had a cut-out of her face on a stick so she could still be included in the photographs!

The bouncy cas­tle and inflat­able roll tubes were loved by chil­dren and adults alike

I had a team of won­der­ful friends and fam­ily who helped me put up dec­o­ra­tions bought from eBay, includ­ing organza lengths of mate­r­ial, chi­nese style dif­fer­ent coloured paper lanterns and metres of bunting made by my mother in law and bridesmaid!

Your advice for Eng­lish Wed­ding blog readers?

Make it your own – just choose any bits of tra­di­tion­al­ity that suit you!

Don’t over­look vil­lage halls as venues – if you spend some time dec­o­rat­ing them then they look awe­some and you don’t have to pay corkage!

Rec­om­mended wed­ding suppliers:

eBay! (Louisa bought shoes, brides­maid dresses, Dan’s shoes, her veil, organza fab­rics and paper lanterns from eBay — just to recap because she did so well!)

Also, shop around for what you need.. New­fields cater­ing were very good. And Neil Red­fern did an amaz­ing job on the pho­tog­ra­phy front – he’s very skilled at mak­ing peo­ple look good!”

Find out more about blog spon­sor Neil on his Eng­lish Wed­ding Show­case Page, or visit his offi­cial wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phy blog which  you’ll find at www.neilredfern.com/blog

Thank you!

Louisa, Dan — con­grat­u­la­tions and much love from me — your wed­ding looks and sounds amaz­ing and I take my hat off to your cre­ativ­ity! My very best wishes for a long and happy future together guys.

Neil — thank you for the sub­mis­sion. You’ve def­i­nitely raised a smile or two today.

Stick around for tomor­row — see the magic of those dec­o­ra­tions pur­chased on eBay trans­form Ark­holme vil­lage hall into a gor­geous wed­ding venue on my lat­est wed­ding inspi­ra­tion board!