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Good Afternoon Lovely People,

I hope you all had a fab weekend.

We are still on a bit of a high after becoming Highly Commended for Best Bridal Style and Fashion Blog in the Wedding Blog Awards last Thursday. I think I have pretty much spent every day since celebrating!!! Thank you so so much to everyone who voted for us. Festival Brides was up against some of the biggest names in the industry for this category so to become highly commended was a huge achievement for us so thank you if you voted. You rock!

Today’s real wedding is a brilliant mishmash of all the things the bride and groom love. Think sweets, pizza, BBQ’s, vintage style, superheroes, games and good music.

Sally and Andy wanted to keep their wedding as informal and relaxed as possible so they scrapped the sit down meal and speeches and instead focused on creating a fabulous party where their guests could chill out, have fun and make the most of all of the entertainment that was on offer. They also tried to save money where possible by designing and making the decor themselves and swapping traditional flowers with paper roses that Sally had learnt to make from a tutorial on Pinterest. She made her beautiful bouquet first using pastel paper and then made a further 30 white roses for the tables and 5 smaller bouquets for each of her bridesmaids. She also designed and made all of her save the dates and invitations by using a template she found on wedding chicks. This was a bride who was very hands on and saved a heap of money as a result!

Sally and Andy tell us why their day was unique, cool and full of fun….

A Wooden Cabin, A Fire and A Beautiful Engagement Ring….

The engagement wasn’t a huge surprise as we had already been looking at rings and I had chosen the one I wanted. Andy felt this was the best option as I had always wanted an unusual engagement and he didn’t want to get it wrong, so we picked one together and had it made by a guy on Etsy. Once this arrived I knew it was going to happen soon. We went away for the weekend to Leyburn, North Yorkshire and were staying in a beautiful wooden cabin with a wood burning stove and we were sat in front of the fire. He went off and came back with the ring and asked me if I would marry him! This was the first time I had seen the ring in the flesh and it was even more beautiful than I could have imagined. The proposal wasn’t too bad either, although I did give him a bit of stick for not getting down on one knee!

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A Quick Decision, Prairie Shoes and Vintage Hair….

I got my dress from British Home Stores. I was out shopping and came down the escalator and saw this dress across the room and I just thought that’s the one I want. I was with Andy at the time so had to get him to close his eyes and leave the shop. I tried it on and it was perfect so just bought it and then showed my mum once I got home. It was a quick decision but I was conscience about the cost of wedding dresses and didn’t really want to spend too much on this when I could use the money towards other things and the dress was perfect.

On my feet I wore turquoise scary prairie shoes from Iron Fist for my walk down the aisle but as I’m not very good in heels I had some red converse to change into after this.

For my jewellery I wore my mum’s vintage pearl necklace and earring set.

I have always loved the vintage pin up style hair and make up but I have never been very good at doing my own hair or make up, so decided that if I could have any style of hair and make up on my wedding day it was going to be vintage. I looked at few different people and then I found Sam Frost on Facebook and she had some photos of some vintage styles she had created and I knew that was what I wanted. I had my trial and the look that Sam created was perfect.

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No Speeches, No Sit Down Meal……..Just a Party that was a lot of fun….

We held both our ceremony and reception at Oakwell Hall Barn, Birstall, West Yorkshire. It’s a local venue about 5 minutes’ walk from our house that we have being going to since we were children and not only is it beautiful but it holds memories of our childhoods and gave us the freedom to do whatever we wanted in relation to decor and catering.

The first thing we agreed on about the wedding was that it had to be informal. We had been to a few weddings before and just felt the standard format of sit down meals and speeches was not us. As Andy put it, we wanted a party where we happened to also get married. So with that in mind we threw out the traditions and looked at what it was that was important to us, which was for everyone to have a good time. When we told people we weren’t doing speeches and that there was no seating plan, they were a little surprised but on the day it was nice not having to worry about any of those things or have to stick to a schedule and just have fun.

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1950s Bridesmaid Dresses and Foam Roses….

I love 1950s style dresses and with it being a summer wedding I thought that a tea length dress would be perfect for my bridesmaids. I looked through a few different designs and ran them by my bridesmaids and this was the one they all loved, so I bought these from Lindy Bop. My niece was a flower girl and I managed to find a dress on eBay for her that matched perfect with the bridesmaids.

I made the bridesmaid bouquets from foam roses that I had bought from ebay. The bridemaids chose their own shoes and jewellery.

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DIY Decor, Paper Flowers and Polka Dot Table Cloths…..

The majority of the décor for the wedding was handmade by Andy and I. We made all the flowers for the tables and I created a comic book style place mat for the centre of the tables on which sat a bottle of paper flowers and a couple of photo frames with comic book postcards either side and some lanterns either side of that.

When we started looked at decorating the venue I began to develop this aversion to white table clothes and seat covers. I felt that they were just too stark so we had to come up with an alternative. In the end we found some polka dot table clothes in blue and red on a party supply website. They were just plastic but they looked great and it made the clean up the following day so much easier.

We also had matching bunting hung round the room as well as big superhero canvas’ on the walls.

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BBQ and Mobile Pizzas…..

We knew from day one that we did not want a sit down meal at the wedding as it just wasn’t our thing but we weren’t sure what we wanted for the day time food, then we found Big D’s BBQ and their menu looked amazing! There was pulled pork, beef brisket, chicken drumsticks, burgers and sausages and a nice veggie option for Andy.

For our evening catering we always knew what we were going to have and we knew even before we got engaged who we wanted. We had been to a food event in Buxton about 4 years ago and met Maxine and her Mobile Pizzas and it was the best pizza we had ever had. We both agreed that if we were ever to get married we would hire her, so I was so pleased when she said she could come. We chose a menu of 5 pizzas, margarita, pepperoni, chicken and bacon, meat feast and veggie delight and they went down a treat.

We also had a nice sweet table for everyone to help themselves to for pudding.

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Table Football, Bouncy Balls and Wooden Shuffleboard…..

For entertainment during the day we had various games set up for people to play. We had a full sized table football that we bought from ebay for a tenner. We had a wooden shuffleboard and a dice game that were made by my granddad who unfortunately passed away before we got married, so it was nice to have something of his there on the day. Andy and I are also big darts fans so we couldn’t get married without having a dart board hung up somewhere on the day.

At one point I thought we had lost the footballs for the table football, so I ran over to the shop and bought some bouncy balls as replacements. However they never made it to the table, instead my friends spent ages just playing with the bouncy ball. All games proved really popular and people were out playing until late into the evening.

In the evening we had a DJ who was actually my Dad as he has recently started DJing part time and he really wanted to do the music for the day. I was confident that he would do a good job as he knows his music, although that didn’t stop me checking up on his playlist before the big day!

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Favourite Moment….

Other than the actual getting married part, the last dance of the night Andy and I had chosen Semisonic with closing time as the last song of the dance and when it was played all our guests surrounded us on the dance floor and everyone was singing. It was the perfect end to the day.

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Any Advice….

If you see anything you want for the wedding, such as decor, just buy it and find somewhere to keep it because things aren’t always there when you go back. And try and get some time together on the day as it flies by. Also just relax and enjoy it because all the little details that you worry about your guests don’t actually really notice if they are having fun.

The Line Up

Venue: Oakwell Hall, Birstall, West Yorkshire
Photographer: Shutter Go Click Photography
Bride’s Dress: BHS
Bride’s Shoes: Iron Fist Clothing
Groom’s Suit: Slaters, Leeds
Bridesmaid Dresses: Lindy Bop
Hair and Make-up: Sam Frost 
Food Daytime: Big D’s BBQ 
Food Evening: Maxine’s Mobile Pizza
Cake: The Pie Shed, Dewsbury
Disco: Sally’s Dad
Transport: Cherry Pie Autos 
Decor: DIY



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