Good morning to you! We have two lovely weddings to share with you today, starting with the bright and colourful nuptials of Lea and Dave, who tied the knot on 7th September last year at Shustoke Farm Barns in Coleshill.
Their day was full of charming rustic touches, including tree slices, vintage bottles and jars, and old tin cans which the couple used for their table centre-pieces. This is such a delightfully pretty wedding and Leah looks just beautiful in her ‘Eden’ gown by Jenny Packham. These photographs were sent in by Birmingham based photographer Steve Gerrard.
“The wedding venue inspired the style for the day. We wanted to follow the rustic feel of the barn with our table decorations.”
Photography Copyright (c) 2014, Steve Gerrard
“Dave and I met 10 years ago through a mutual friend. We were both in our final year at Aston University in Birmingham. In April 2012 we travelled around China for a few weeks. We booked a two-day trip trekking and staying on the Great Wall and on day two Dave woke me up at 5am to watch the sun rise on the wall. I was not very happy about being woken up so early, but soon forgave him when I saw him on one knee. We were engaged for nearly 18 months before we got married.”
“Dave and I now live in London but decided to get married near to where we first met. We had been searching for barns in or around Birmingham for a few months when we noticed an advert for a new venue for 2013, Shustoke Farm Barns. Within a few hours of their advert going live we had already booked to view. When we visited the barns were being restored so we were pretty much looking at a building site, but we fell in love with the buildings and knew they would turn out to be perfect so we took the risk and booked there and then. It was the only venue we looked at and we never regretted this decision. The finished venue was better than we imagined and the staff were amazing both before and during the day.
We didn’t use an event planner exactly, but our friend Jane Steel from Let’s Toast gave us lots of advice on all the things we needed for the day to run smoothly. It is certainly handy having a friend in the business.”
“Neither of us are religious so we decided to have a humanist ceremony. We liked the idea of personalising the service. We chose our own wedding vows and also had a traditional hand-fasting ceremony with family and friends tying ribbons around our hand as we said our vows. Our colourful ribbons are beautiful reminders of the promises we made to each other on the day. My very talented family members, Scot and Millie also performed an acoustic version of Fleetwood Mac’s Everywhere during the service.”
“I wore the Eden gown by Jenny Packham. I was feeling disheartened after trying about 50 dresses on and hating them all, and then I found Jenny Packham’s Eden. I fell in love with it instantly and despite it being a lot more than we had budgeted I had to have it. It is true what they say – you do just know when you have found ‘the dress’.”
“After doing some research and looking at various tutorials on Love My Dress and You Tube, we decided to do our own flowers to save some money. We ordered the flowers online from Triangle Nursery and they were delivered a couple of days before the wedding in perfect condition.
It was a bit stressful as we could not move in our house for buckets of flowers… but with the help of ‘flower club’ (family and friends bribed into becoming makeshift florists)… 6 bouquets and 12 table centrepieces were born. We wanted a mix of different flowers and bright colours, and we used hessian to tie them together.
We were initially apprehensive about doing the flowers, but were really pleased with how they turned out.”
“Dave wore a tweed suit from Topman and the other boys had suits from Next. We mixed it up with ties, bow ties and braces from Next. Dave and I wanted a more relaxed feel for the groomsmen, so we chose not to have typical morning suits.”
“Our photographer was the amazing Steve Gerrard. We had been looking at his work months before we had even booked our venue, so we were very happy when he was available on our wedding date (but we probably would have moved the date just to have him). I am really interested in photography so it was important that we had the right person for our special day – and I knew Steve’s style of photography was just what we were looking for.
Steve is a very talented photographer who captured every aspect of our day perfectly. We loved having him around on the day, as he put everyone at ease and was a lot of fun. We met up with Steve shortly after the wedding and he had created a slide show of our photos with music we had played on the day. We were blown away with the final pictures.”
“After buying my dress I fell in love with all things Jenny Packham so I couldn’t resist getting a headdress and bracelet to match.”
“My Dad is no longer with us so I asked my cousin Joe to give me away. He came all the way from Toronto and it meant so much to me that he was a special part of our day. I walked down the aisle to an instrumental version of Sigur Ros’s ‘Hoppipolla’.
Walking down the aisle and seeing all my family and friends was amazing. I also really enjoyed the ceremony due to how personal it was to us both.”
“We hired a band called Plastic Pantomime for our evening’s entertainment. They were so much fun, and the singer even wore a pink cape with ‘showtime’ on the back (what more would you want?)”
Words of Wedded Wisdom…
“The day will sadly be over in a flash so try and take a step back at some point, look around at your guests enjoying themselves and take it all in.
If you are working to a tight budget, decide early what the priorities are for the budget… but most importantly, don’t scrimp on your photographer. Your photographs tell the story of your wedding.
Due to a bit of a traffic jam I arrived 20 minutes late for the wedding (oops)…. I wish I had been on time to capture every last second of the day.
Finally, I was a big fan of Love My Dress whilst planning our wedding and it was my favourite of all the blogs. It is great for inspiration and advice, and also has great tips for any DIY element you want to bring to your wedding. Thank you Love My Dress!”
I do love how photographer Steve Gerrard has documented this wedding on camera, the images are so crisp and clean.
Since starting Love My Dress back in 2009, I think Jenny Packham has been the most popular bridal wear designer to feature. Will you be wearing one of Jenny’s divine gowns?
Love Annabel
Photographer – Steve Gerrard
Venue + Catering – Shustoke Farm Barns in Coleshill
Brides Dress – Eden by Jenny Packham
Headpiece – Jenny Packham
Grooms Suit – Topman
Bridesmaids + Flowergirl Dresses – Monsoon
Flower – self styled + sourced from Triangle Nursery
Cake – Sue’s cakes of Solihull
Entertainment – Plastic Pantomime
Rings – Mitchel and Co.
Hair Stylist – Leanne Prewett
Make-up Artist- Roseanna Velin
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Annabel View all Annabel's articles
Founder of Love My Dress. Passionate Podcaster and Editor. Annabel lives in rural North Yorkshire with her husband and business partner Philip, their two daughters and menagerie of furry hounds. She loves photography, meditation, walking, being outdoors and star gazing. She is fierce when it comes to championing talent within the wedding industry and when she's not working on Love My Dress, she supports her husband Philip in the running of the family's sustainable flower farm and floral design business, Moonwind Flowers. In 2013, she became a published author.
