Wedding Planning - Our Initial Ideas

Rikki and I will have been engaged for over two years now and never planned on having such a long engagement, but with the arrival of our little Archie bear, all wedding plans went on hold. Now we're parents to a 14 month old and both agree that nows the time to get the ball rolling and tie the knot.

I've been happily pinning away on my Pinterest board for a while now, and am quite enjoying disappearing into a world of lace, peonies and starlit dance floors before i'm snapped back to reality to change a bum or wipe sick off the floor. It's nice while it lasts though! So, before any plans are set in stone, and whilst i'm still deciding what kind of colours/dresses/flowers/food (the list goes on) is right for our special day, I thought it would be a nice time to create a post on my dream wedding.

I know I'm not going to be able to have everything on my wish list, in fact a friend of mine who's also getting married next year, sent me a quote of Facebook that said 'I discovered i'm actually planning two weddings - the one inspired by Pinterest and the one I can actually afford'. Which really made me laugh because it's so true!

I'm going to keep you updated as all of our plans start to fall into place (she hopes), and i'll be doing another one of these once certain things have been decided on, but I thought it would be lovely to have this to look back on to remember what my original wedding ideas looked like and how they change along the way.

So if you're reading this along with watching the video right now, I hope you enjoy it and agree that it's much better to see my inspiration install of me just trying to describe what I mean! And if you haven;t seen the video yet then i'll link it here and below for you.

I will just say now that none of the photos in this post are of the actual locations as it's something we want to keep private for obvious reasons. But of course once the wedding has happened I'll be sharing with you all the photos, venues and suppliers we used for the day! Also, lots of people have been asking the date of the wedding. Again, it's not something I want to make public on the internet, but the wedding will take place next Summer.

The Venue
We booked our venue a couple of months ago. After going back and forth between a marquee wedding and a barn wedding, we finally settled on the barn. It's absolutely beautiful and I think we've made the right choice. It's not a brick barn like the one pictured, but I just love the decor and the cosy, rustic vibe it gives. At the moment, I'm still a bit worried that it's going to be quite dark, but hopefully different types of lighting will help with this. It also has beautiful gardens so if it is a nice day (touch wood) then people will be able to enjoy being outside.

This is the beautiful Almonry Barn if you're lucky enough to live in Somerset. It's just stunning.

Decoration
Even though the barn lends itself perfectly to a rustic, vintage style country wedding, It really is a blank canvas, so it's going to take a lot of work to create the look we're going for. My vision is a mix of English country garden vintage, but we a few elegant, sophisticated touches and I plan to achieve this with a beautiful fairy light chandelier, and strings of lights covering the barn. White chiavari chairs finished of with tulle bows, linen table cloths and elegant floral centre pieces on each table, and  lace lanterns hanging from the beams above, although it's only just crossed my mind that lanterns and a fairy light chandelier won't work together! We also want candlelight, so with strict instructions that we cannot light any candles in the barn, we'll be opting for LED tea lights and pillar candles to achieve the same look and feel. All of the small details have yet to be decided on but hopefully these pictures give you an idea.

Colour Scheme & Bridesmaids dresses
I feel like the colour scheme of the wedding is crucial. If you have a beautiful colour that ties in with the bridesmaid's dresses, and decor then everything looks very put together and stylish. The colour that I'm currently edging towards is a dusty, vintage pink. I also like the muted greyish blue as well and think there's something really beautiful about it, but I don't want to look back and wish I'd gone with my favourite colour. I'm even looking into vintage, floral bridesmaid's dresses at the moment, so I could go for something completely different to my original plans! I think Whatever I choose, my bridesmaid's will hate my by the end of it, as I'll definitely find it harder to decide on them than I did my actual wedding dress.

Groomsmen
This is one part of the wedding I really want to Rikki to be in charge of! We've discussed it and I think we're still deciding between navy/grey suits which will compliment the pale pink bridesmaids dresses perfectly. Or, sticking more with our 'theme' and going for the slightly more casual look with waistcoats and either ties, or bow ties and maybe braces for the little boys. I actually love the groomsmen attire in the first photo, but Rikki drew the line at wearing skinny jeans to our wedding! and wants to opt for something a little smarter!

The Dress
I couldn't wait to share my dress with you, and then I realised, I couldn't because Rikki can't see it before the big day! What I can say it that It's already purchased! So that's one thing definitely ticked off. I'm so pleased with it and it has everything I wanted. It's a Pronovias dress and I'm just so excited that I'm getting to wear it, even if it is only for one day. Until you finally get to see it, I thought I'd show you some of the dresses I liked when I still wasn't set on a certain style. Which one do you think I went for?

Flowers
You may be aware that I absolutely adore flowers. I've always loved wearing floral dresses, designing floral crowns and always try to have fresh flowers in the house. So it isn't much of a surprise that we'll be having lots of flowers at our wedding. I'd like them to be everywhere! Beautiful floral centrepieces on the tables, around some of the beams in between foliage and my dream is to have a stunning floral bouquet above the church entrance. Maybe even a half arch of flowers, although I hate to think what that would cost! I think they looks incredible. For mine and my bridesmaids bouquets, I'd like them to have a natural, feels as a posed to a neat posy. With wild flowers, peonies and lots of leafy foliage, maybe in pale pinks and greens, or go for something with more of a pop with bright pinks, whites and oranges.

Catering
We've found our caterers and they're fantastic. We're 90% set on an afternoon tea for our wedding breakfast. But are still to decide on the canapés and the food for the evening. I think an afternoon tea will go really well with our wedding's style and then our guests can enjoy a hot meal in the evening so it's the best of both worlds. It's quite hard to show you any inspiration for the catering and we're still not completely sure ourselves.  But I've had some lovely afternoon tea's over the years to draw inspiration from!

Photographer & Videographer

We've booked our videographer, and i'm already bursting to see what our wedding video turns out like. They are absolutely amazing. We've also nearly booked our photographer, so here are a few wedding photos in the style we like

Cars
We've decided on a vintage VW Beetle as the wedding car and a vintage VW Campervan for the Bridesmaid's. I've just seen so many beautiful photos of the them covered in flowers and I love the way they look in photos. I know it isn;t the most classic option, but I think it'll be really fun and a little bit different.

There are so many other little bits I want to share with you as we get further into planning the wedding. The invitations, place setting, table decorations, the list is endless! I'm really excited to see how our ideas change over the next few months, and if the wedding turns out like this or we end up going with something completely different! I'd love to know what you think of our ideas so far, and any tips or advice you have when it comes to planning a wedding would be SO appreciated!

Lots of love

Kate x

Click here to find all of the pictures in this post and their original links