Over Barn Country wedding, Q&A with bride Holly

How did you meet your now husband and how long have you been together?

This isn’t a very exciting or romantic story at all – we met 5 years ago online. We realised we shared a similar taste in music so decided to meet! We actually had our first date at the Swan pub where James and his groomsmen had their pre wedding drinks!

Tell me about the vision you had for your wedding day? And did that vision become a reality?

The vision we had was a relaxed country wedding with lots of personal touches. We wanted people to feel relaxed and just have a really nice time. We think our vision became a reality and hopefully everyone else felt the same!

Over Barn was the perfect venue for allowing us to create the countryside/farm theme we had in mind and allowed for some great photo opportunities.

My other vision was to incorporate my horses in some way! Luckily we found a photographer who was happy to do this. I am so pleased I decided to have some pictures with them (despite everyone being incredibly worried about my dress getting dirty!)

Were there any personal touchers you added to your wedding day?

Our whole wedding was full of personal touches. Only really possible because of our very talented and kind family and friends! We are so grateful to them all!

All the dried flower decorations for the barn were made by my mum and grown in her garden the year before (I think she missed her calling as a florist!) The fresh meadow flowers and oak that were the table centrepieces were picked from the fields the day before the wedding too.

It was important to me to somehow have my Dad involved in the day. He sadly passed away 10 years ago but I wore a locket with a picture of him in, and we had his old work boots next to the flower arch we had our ceremony under. We made a donation to cancer research in return for some of their forget-me-not seeds in memory of those that couldn’t be at our wedding. We had these in a bucket for guests to help themselves.

Our ceremony was performed by a friend of ours (we did the ‘legal bit’ a few days before at the registry office so Bex had free rein for this bit!). It was funny and very personal which is exactly what we wanted! I don’t think there are many pictures of us not laughing!

The delicious cakes and scones for our afternoon tea were all made by our family and friends. My mum made the little jam favours and my neighbour made our beautiful semi naked wedding cake. Afternoon tea was served by some family friends who very kindly volunteered to help!

Instead of a guest book we decided to have an old saddle to sign. We thought this would be a unique way of guests leaving us a message and was in keeping with our countryside/farm theme! We are really pleased with how it looks and it’s now proudly on display in our home!

What was your favourite part of your wedding?

It’s so hard to choose a favourite bit, we honestly loved the whole day and absolutely every bit of it! We both felt our ceremony in the courtyard was really special having all our nearest and dearest in one place… especially family and friends we hadn’t seen in a long time!

I think the ice cream was a close second though!

Any advice for future brides?

I think the best advice I was given was just to relax and enjoy the day. It sounds a bit cliche but the day really did go so quickly. I would have hated to spend any of that time stressing…

A friend told me that actually no one else knows your vision for the wedding, and other people probably won’t even notice if things don’t go exactly how you planned!

Where did you chose to spend your honeymoon?

We spent the week after the wedding in Cornwall relaxing… it’s one of our favourite places whatever the weather!

It rained quite a bit but I got to put my wedding wellies to good use! We spent the days out walking and exploring before going back to the cottage and eating left over wedding cake and cheese in the evenings!

Testimonial:

Thank you so so much for these amazing pictures… they’ve made us laugh and then cry (happy tears of course!!) – you’ve captured the feel of the day perfectly, watching the slideshow was just like reliving it all! We love them

We can’t thank you enough for documenting our special day including all the little details, and for making two people who are self admittedly very awkward in front of the camera feel at ease! It was a pleasure having you there with us! And thank you for the pictures of Razzie cat – it’s really appreciated…

We will definitely be getting in touch if we renew our vows… or for any more horse pictures! And we wouldn’t hesitate to recommend you to any of our friends or family… thank you again for everything, we are so glad we found you to capture our wedding day.

Holly & James xxx