DIY Wedding series - Part 4 - Decorations

By far my favorite part of planning a wedding was being able to plan the decoration side of things. Actually creating a million *slight exaggeration* of whatever was slightly less fun, thank god for friends and family is all I can say on that!!

However yes the decorating part was my fave part, it would be great to one day do it all again (not getting married obviously!) but on a smaller scale but in a just as fab location with a great band and great decor!

The photos above are from our wedding, the light bulb flower holder idea was taken from some images I saw on Pintrest. My dad took all the filaments out and attached wire to the tops for hanging (super dad)! We dotted these around the barns and stable yard and they looked great :)

On the tables we had round circles of wood provided by a tree surgeon friend, said friend and his wife (one of my best friends Gemma Ritchie of Autumn Jitters) also made all the signage for us which was created to on rough pieces of wood with arrows showing people were things were. My mum painted lots of plastic animals gold and silver and other bright colours and we had them with the flower vases and dotted around.These were so much fun and a great hit with the kids! Later on in the eve I kept seeing little collections of animals in corners where children had created farm yards or zoos!

The 'vases' were tin water cans bought from a very cheap well known high street shop (pound land)! The flowers were grown and arranged by a dear friend Kate Sharp. They really were amazing and I couldn't believe it when I saw them for the first time. Kate really is a wonder woman!

I wanted a loose colour scheme of purple, turquoise, peach, gold and silver with a festival vibe. We made A LOT of bunting and I also made a huge garland in these colours. I bought all the fabric from a local fabric store and got busy making bunting in the weeks leading up to the wedding.

At my hen do we also had a craft afternoon where everyone helped to cut triangles and start the sewing for the bunting, this was a great help and I thoroughly recommend this plan if you are planning to do all the decor yourself.

There is no denying that whatever venue you choose can also help with the feel of your wedding. In the barn area at the farm was this huge mural depicting badgers.It fit right in with the festival theme and I love how it looked in the photos with family and friends :)

There is so much more I could say about Wedding decor, and it is by far the most exciting part (alongside marrying your sweetheart of course)!  I recommend choosing a venue that fits in with your style, begging and borrowing friend, family and friends of friends to help and scouring Pintrest for inspiration!

It's beautiful seeing it all come together.

I will be back shortly with more DIY Wedding posts, there is still more to share with you! I would also love to hear from you if you have a DIY Wedding story that you would be interested in me featuring on my blog.

Speak soon x

Adventure Awaits you! A4 Art print featuring a Norwegian Fjord Horse.

My new 'Adventure Awaits' A4 Art Print is now available in my NOTHS & ETSY shops.

I just love this print and I am definitely framing one for myself to keep! Suitable for pony and non pony geeks alike ;)

Happy Friday all!

Pet Portrait of a cat that is no longer with us

Meet beautiful Otto

Shots from my studio

I have been doing some studio reorganizing these past few weeks. I got a new desk from Ikea which has helped hugely as now most on the important things are in one place.I love my new work space! It's so nice having somewhere to work that is there all the time and isn't also the dinner table! 

*Faran wanted to get in on the photos ;)

Pet Portraits

The wonderful Waki Cat was a recent pet portrait commission of mine. Isn't he lovely?
I've also been fortunate to complete a portrait of a collie dog this week. I will share that too but it was a mothers day gift so I must wait a few days :)

Happy Sunday all!

DIY Weddings - Venues! Post 3 in this series

 So when you are looking for a wedding venue what is important? Location? Cost ? Having it fit in with the style you are dreaming of? How many people it will accommodate?

We knew we wanted a fun festival theme for our wedding and so we were looking at farms/barns that offered weddings.

We also wanted to get married in Devon as thats where we are both from. However we live in Bristol and that caused some worries, for example we knew that lots of our guests would need to travel down for the wedding. Also having the venue so far away and myself and my now husband being extremly busy we knew getting to the venue to talk to the organizers and to sort out the decor etc wouldn't be so easy.

I scoured the internet for suitable venues.There were many....That I loved.... However Wedding venues are pricey (some are super duper pricey)! We thought about hiring a field, marquee and some posh loos etc but in fact that added up to the same as some of the cheaper venues we looked at anyway.

Two places caught our eye as they seemed to tick the majority of the boxes..

One was close to home 'Manor farm' at Upton Cheyney near Bristol.
You can visit their Facebook Page here.

They are also the home of 'Upton Cheyney Chilli Farm' and run Glamping in their fields throughout the spring and summer. Ben and I stumbled across the farm shop and farm as it was all set up for an event one day and it did look stunning.However the Stone barn is very small and hiring a marquee as an extra room would be a must, unless you really were having a tiny wedding!

For us adding on the extra marquee costs just made the whole place too expensive, plus the location would have been tricky for all of our family and friends in Devon.

The other place and the location we decided to go with was 'West town Farm' in Ide, Devon.
Visit the Facebook page here

Website here

I already knew this place well having completed a number of community art projects here as a university student (fresco on the barn wall and some environmental art bits and bobs!) I also have a good friend living on site.

West Town is very well set up for offering weddings, they have a lot of indoor and outdoor space and a variety of options available for weddings. You can let them do it all and choose from a variety of packages.Or you can hire the venue and then organise everything else yourself as we did. Harriet the then events planner at the farm was very helpful and put us in touch with Sound Events who hire out tables/chairs/cutlery/ table clothes/sound systems etc etc...!

(Above photos from West Town Farm's website)

We really enjoyed putting our own stamp on the farm for our big day. It was really exciting to see the whole place transformed! I made miles of bunting and garlands and had help from family and friends to make the most amazing decorative items. More about the decor later though....

I'll be back soon for 'DIY Weddings part 4' where we will talk decorations. :)