Glittery, wild, hilarious, full of love, laughter and lots of booze!
Another wonderful wedding up on the blog today. I'm going to hand over to the Fantastic Mr and Mrs Fox, AKA Zoe and Max to tell you all about their fabulous barn wedding at Sullington Manor Farm.
THE SOUNDTRACK
OUR WEDDING PLANNING PROCESS
Oh my god. So long.
Pretty much as soon as we got engaged we were plotting and planning - both of us had lots of creative ideas, so more and more things kept getting added to the list and it just grew and grew! We got engaged in March 2016 - so it was just over a year of planning and crafting! Max is a big Wes Anderson fan, so from early on I think we knew that we wanted to have some nods to Wes in there - also, my nickname for Max is Foxie - so it felt right that our top table should be called Fantastic Mr and Mrs Fox! I originally really wanted an outdoor wedding - but after speaking to a good friend about her meticulously planned outdoor wedding which was a complete washout - she persuaded me that somewhere with a good indoor option was a better plan! So instead, once we found our incredible venue - I really wanted to create an "outdoors indoors" feel - with lots of foliage on the tables and hanging from the beams, so it would feel like an enchanted woodland inside - but with pops of colour and sparkle.
Our biggest challenge? Probably just the volume of stuff we gave ourselves to do. It got ridiculous towards the end - we were spending every spare minute we had making things for the wedding - which is no mean feat when you have a 20 month chaotic ball of toddler in tow. I was doing crazy things like making moss chandeliers with a glue gun whilst Fin was having a nap, and Max would be there at the kitchen table at midnight making furry fox ears on the sewing machine....madness. But we wouldn't have had it any other way! We are both very creative people anyway - Max is a motion graphic designer, so gets to be creative every day, and I'm a GP by trade - but in my spare time I usually have some creative project ongoing from making my own silver jewellery, up-cycling random bits of furniture I find on the street and making my own perfumes. We love being creative together - so actually the best bit was also all the creating we did together! From hand-tying ribbon bunting, designing, lino-cutting and hand printing 150 napkins to sewing furry animal ears, making lobby boy hats - every bit of it was so much fun!
OUR WEDDING EXPERIENCE
The day itself went quickly! We both keep saying that we felt like it all went by in the blink of an eye - and we hardly got to spend much time together atall as there were so many people to say hello to and so much going on - Max described it as being trapped in a glittery pin-ball machine - and we'd occasionally bounce of eachother for a quick chat and a kiss, then bounce off in another direction to talk to someone new....
A DIY wedding is amazing, especially if you are someone who really likes to put their own stamp on things and want your personalities to shine through on the day - but there is a REASON that people pay other people to do this shit - and that's because it can be unbelievably stressful at times, trying to keep track of what you have/haven't done, what there is still to do, who you've paid, how much money you've got left.....and its the tiny details that can really weigh you down - like suddenly realising you have to buy corkscrews for all the wine you've bought because the venue is essentially just a bit barn with nothing in it....and if you'd forgotten to buy corkscrews, then no-one would've been able to drink all the lovely wine you bought! But I think most of all, on the day - I would say really make sure you do give yourselves some time out together, as if you don't, it can be very easy to spend the whole day talking to everyone else apart from your wonderful new husband or wife!
OUR FAVOURITE PHOTO
There are too many to pic from! They are all amazing for different reasons. My favourite photos is the kiss in front of the projector screen... Because it was a lovely moment, just after I had given a spontaneous speech, which sort of signified the end of all the "formal" wedding bits, and max just grabbed me and gave me a big snog, and I think we both palpably relaxed a bit more.
kind words
Hannah! You were just awesome. We truly couldn't have wished for anyone more perfect to photograph our day. You made us both feel so relaxed, and you have a unique knack of managing to take photos without anyone realising you've snapped them (which, by the way, has finally got my mum back for years of taking photos of me in compromising positions when you managed to snap her dancing to techno with my dad and my uncle, and its hilarious - she totally thought noone had seen her do that. Ha!) We loved that you took us both away at various points in the day to do some solo shots, because actually - if you hadn't done that, I think we would've barely spent any time together as the whole day was just a whirlwind! Our favourite bit of the day was frolicking in the field together with a bottle of prosecco! Your photos are just wonderful - they really capture the mood of the whole day - which was just a day filled with warmth, love, friendship, family, the forming of new friendships, the re-kindling of old friendships - and not forgetting, lots of booze and LOTS of glitter!
