Hey lovelies! I hope you’re staying safe and cosy in this blustery weather! Today’s wedding is the perfect distraction from the wind and rain – Mimi and Jacob married on the 5th of January and incorporated so many cool ideas into their totally gorgeous and unique DIY wedding. The boys are all rocking a tux and dickie bow (and loving the James Bond look!); Mimi is absolutely stunning in a beautiful lace dress and veil. The details though… and the care and creativity these guys put into making their wedding a true reflection of their personalities is amazing!

Dodmoor house is beautiful without any extra decoration, but there’s also so much room to make it your own and add your own personality to the place. I always wanted a barn-style wedding and Dodmoor house ticked that box. But Jacob and I also enjoy lots of quirky things and different hobbies, which we were able to show in our table decorations. Each table fitted a different theme – games and superheroes (for Jacob), animals & crafts (for me) and a lego top table with matching wedding cake, as we both enjoy building lego together. This was all the handiwork of my very talented sister (and maid of honor), who handmade all the decorations including a differently themed tree centerpiece for each table, lego figurines of each member of the wedding party, placemats, and bunting.

My sister handmade all of the decorations and I handmade the wedding stationery, which took me a long time and caused me a lot of stress, but they turned out beautifully. In terms of keeping me calm pre-wedding, not worth it but in terms of money saving, so so so worth it! My bridesmaid and I handmade the wedding favours – I found a photo on pinterest of jars of hot chocolate with marshmallows, and thought that would be a fantastic idea. I knew buying 50 jars would end up costing a lot, so my head bridesmaid suggested we collect them from home to save money. From then onwards, all of my family and hers were collecting jars until we had over 100 of them. We spent a whole day selecting the 50 or so we were going to use, washing them, removing the labels, filling them with hot chocolate powder, adding marshmallows and then decorating the jars with a hessian square at the top, ribbon, and printed labels which matched the wedding invites. I was so happy with them, and you could tell they were home made as each jar was a slightly different shape.

 

Venue:

Dodmoor House, Weedon, Northampton. Beautiful barn-style venue with separate ceremony and reception rooms, and scenic grounds for great photo opportunities!

Wedding photographer’s website:

https://www.ayellephoto.com

I knew Liz for many years at school, however we had lost touch for several years before we found each other on Facebook again. I saw that she had started up a new photography business with her partner Adam, and was completely blown away by how good her photos were. When Jacob and I got engaged, I did look around for recommended photographers, but none of them even came close to how good Ayelle’s photos were. Liz was the first person I contacted to find out her availability, as I could not imagine anyone else capturing our day as well as they could

Both Jacob and I are completely thrilled with our wedding photos – and that’s saying something as he never wanted a photographer! We were really nervous about being photographed, as both of us are quite camera shy and do our best to avoid photos. Adam and Liz made us both feel so comfortable – Jacob and I spent most of the time throughout our private shoot just talking and laughing with each other, rather than actually being aware that we were posing for photos. A lot of the time I didn’t even notice them taking photos, and other times they really got involved in the fun. All of our guests commented on how friendly and professional Adam and Liz were. I truly thought of them as part of our wedding party rather than just the photographers, and I’m so happy they were there to share the day with us!
A few weeks after the wedding, it was actually Jacob (the one who insisted he didn’t want photos) who was tap dancing about wanting to see the video and photos because the few previews we’d been sent looked fantastic. Words cannot describe how much we love them – almost a year later and I still cry when I look through them. They perfectly show how fun our wedding was, how happy we were, how beautiful the venue is. The photos are just stunning .

What’s your top tip for saving money?

Go off peak! We saved so much money by having our wedding on a Friday in January. Of course my dream was to have it on a Saturday in July, but for our budget we wouldn’t even be able to afford a venue which fit my idea of a perfect wedding, let alone everything else. Comparing prices of venues Summer tariffs in some places cost three times as much during the summer compared to a Winter Wedding! We also saved even more money by leaving it a little last minute – quite often when venues have a few days left over within the year they will dramatically reduce the price. I visited Dodmoor house and fell in love – I knew that was where I wanted to get married. They had a date within the year which had been reduced to within our budget, and it was an “it’s meant to be” sort of moment.

… and which elements of your wedding are you glad you spent more on?

We weren’t sure if we could afford to have a videographer as well as a photographer, but we are so glad we stretched the budget to have Ayelle do both for us. The memories of our day will last forever, and were captured so perfectly by Adam and Liz.

Did you fall in love with your wedding dress?

Not at first sight. I had put off wedding dress shopping until very late (only 3 months until the wedding day) as I had been trying to lose weight and gain confidence. I had visited 3 different bridal shops with no luck whatsoever, when we decided to go to Confetti & Curves in Barton-le-Clay. My mum burst into tears when she saw me in the dress that turned out to be “the one”, but by that time I was so overwhelmed and exhausted I just wanted to say yes so I could finally tick it off the list. However, when I went back a few weeks later for my fitting I completely fell in love with my choice. Even now, I think my wedding dress is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen and I cannot thank the lovely ladies at Confetti and Curves enough for keeping me calm and finding me my perfect dress.

Tell us about the suits for the guys – what did the groom and ushers wear?

Jacob had very few jobs for the wedding, one of which was to find the suits. This he did about 3 weeks before the wedding day – and I thought I left my dress last minute! We had 4 groomsmen, all of which wore Navy suits from Moss, and Jacob wore a Navy tuxedo although he found the the trousers and jacket in separate shops and miraculously they matched perfectly! He looked very dapper! I surprised him with the finishing touch on our wedding day by giving him an engraved pocket watch to complete the look.

The wedding cake: what kind of cake did you choose and why?

The cake was very much an attempt to please everyone, which I think we did very well. We wanted something a bit unusual that fitted in with our theme, so had a 3 tiered lego style cake. The bottom tier was vanilla sponge, the middle tier chocolate cake, and the top tier a traditional fruit cake (a special request from my nan). When our cake arrived we were so shocked with the quality of it – it looked incredible! It tasted amazing too – we were still eating the fruit cake a month after our wedding, and it was the most delicious out of the 3.

Words of wisdom: share your best piece of advice for other couples:

Trust your gut, and don’t go with the first thing you see, or the first thing you can afford. I may not have got the “this is the one” feeling with my wedding dress, but both Jacob and I got the feeling with so many other things – the venue, the wedding rings, our first dance song, the music I walked down the aisle too. Also the lead up is stressful, but when the big day finally came I felt so happy and relaxed and had a wonderful time. All the stress of the previous week melts away, and you become so absorbed in your wedding and the people around you and the love for the person you married. It all becomes so worth it. Finally, do whatever makes you happy! So many elements of our decoration were unconventional but I can honestly say that the day summed up Jacob and I as a couple which made it all the more special.

Favourite supplier web links for other brides and grooms:

Photographer: https://www.ayellephoto.com

Venue: https://www.dodmoorhouse.co.uk

Dress designer & boutique: https://www.confettiandcurvesbridal.co.uk

Cake designer: http://www.katescelebrationcakes.co.uk

Wedding & engagement rings: https://www.ingleandrhode.co.uk/ (Can’t recommend them highly enough, they custom-made my engagement and wedding ring with excellent service at a great price)

Videographer: https://www.ayellephoto.com

Catering: https://www.thecrosskeys.co.uk/