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. :)

Yippee! New Prints are now up in my Etsy Shop :)

Irish Terrier Art PrintLittle Donkey Art Print

 Sleeping Badgers Art Print

 Border Terrier Art Print

Land Rover Art Print

All these Art Prints are A4 sized and printed on archival matte paper using archival inks. They are all £17 plus p+p and currently listed in my ETSY shop :)

Find them here...

New Terrier Art Prints

Introducing the Boarder Terrier and the Irish Terrier..These cuties will soon be for sale as A4 prints in my online shops :)

DIY Wedding, post 2

So when planning your DIY wedding what is the first thing you need to do? Hunt for inspiration!  We are so lucky to have the ideas of so many at our finger tips via the internet that it is easy to read blogs and websites to get inspiration.
The best by far source of inspiration for my wedding was Pinterest.If you are not a member then you should be! You can check out my boards by searching for 'Rebekah Marshall' once you have logged in. Or clicking on the link at the top right of my blog page :)

I have a board titled 'Weddings' where I collected all my favorite wedding images. I knew from the beginning that I wanted our wedding to have a festival feel to it. Lots of bright colours and fun to be found everywhere. I think we managed that, watching our wedding video certainly proves it! The venue also helped with getting that feel across but I will talk more about the venue we chose in my next blog post.

If I had been more organized and had more time (most of my wedding prep happened in the month before the wedding, I don't advise this!) then I would of done far more with the ideas that I had. Some of the wedding decor ideas I had that came directly from Pinterest were these..




Painted beach pebbles in bright colours with hearts, these looked fab dotted around the venue and they were nice for people to take home too!

Plastic animals painted in bright colours as table decorations. This fun touch also proved a great hit with the kids on the day.As the evening went on I kept finding children playing with them,creating collections of different types and generally having lots of fun! Yes it ruined the 'look' but the fun feel was definitely there and thats what we wanted most of all.

 My amazing dad made these light bulb decorations.He sourced some massive light bulbs and spent ages removing the center of them and attaching wire so they could be hung up as cool little flower 'pots'.They made a great feature and so many people commented on how pretty they were :)

One of my favorite things about my wedding outfit was the cowboy boots I bought to wear with my dress in the evening. THE BEST IDEA EVER. Seriously, I am not a girl who wears heels and after the ceremony I was ready to ditch my lovely sparkly gold heels and put some fun cowboy boots on! They looked great with my dress and were comfy to dance the night away in!

So if you are planning a wedding head over to Pinterest for some inspiration! You won't be disappointed!

In the next DIY Wedding post we will talk venues!

x

Photos from my studio

Today we (husband and I) have been busy taking photos of my studio for a little artists interview I have coming up. We also took lots of head shots of me but so far they all make me cringe!! So we will have another go at that over the next few days! I hope you are all well and have had a good valentines (or just saturday)!

I will post the link to the interview when it's up online.
x

Our DIY Wedding

There are so many things that happened that I didn't share in 2014. Mainly due to me being rushed off my feet! One of the great things that happened was that I got married to my wonderful boyfriend of 7 years. We got married in August and had a fantastic and very DIY Wedding.

I thought I would share how we did it over the next few weeks on this blog.I know I spent many hours scouring the web for ideas and inspiration and hopefully I can inspire some other people with how we did it.

For now here is a photo from our big day.Still during the 'serious' part of the day! ;)

Speak soon xx

NEW A2 Vintage Road Bike print soon available

I had this printed specially for a new shop opening next week in Bristol. It's so nice to see my work in a larger size! I had it printed at Niche in Stokes Croft Bristol and they did a fab job (As always!) I love it :)
PS: Meet the husband, poor chap!