Today’s bride and groom should be awarded some kind of medal for the amount of time and effort that they put into the preparations for their beautiful homemade festival wedding.
Taking place in a lambing shed on the family farm, Becky and Jim roped in lots of family and friends to help transform the space from a sparse barn into a chic rustic backdrop for their big day celebrations.
We just love all the thoughtful and fitting touches that added to their unique day; from a tractor ride to the reception and all the personal décor and entertainment choices, to the fabulous hay bale bride and groom. Seriously guys, nice work!
With images by Lois Photography.
becky says:
We got engaged in Reykjavik on New Year’s Eve 2013. Jim had arranged a trip there as a Christmas present – even corresponding with my boss so that I could have the time off work. He proposed at midnight whilst we were standing watching the fireworks outside Hallgrimskirkja Cathedral.Our wedding date was 18th July 2015. We held our reception at Jim’s parents’ farm (in the lambing shed) so we had to choose a date when lambing time would be over, and which gave us a good couple of weeks to get the place ready!
We had the ceremony at Heaton House Farm in Cheshire, which I’d highly recommend to others. It was perfect for us as we knew we didn’t want a church as neither of us are religious, and we didn’t want a registry office either. Finding somewhere that we could just turn up, get married and go again did prove to be quite difficult as a lot of places expect you to have the whole day there. We initially spoke to Mick from Heaton House at a wedding fair and knew pretty much straight away that the venue was right for us. It’s a working farm as well as a wedding venue, so it made perfect sense!
As Jim and I huge music fans and have been to countless gigs and festivals during the ten years that we’ve been together, the wedding was always going to be very music focussed. I work at a creative agency, so luckily had a team of excellent graphic designers on hand to design the wedding stationery exactly as I wanted it. Our save the date cards were designed to look like gig tickets, and the music theme just rolled from there.
We borrowed two huge speakers from a friend, and spent months compiling different Spotify playlists to play throughout the day. For example, the music playing whilst everyone arrived at the farm for the reception was a selection of different bands that we’ve seen together, so it was pretty diverse! It went from Fleetwood Mac to Wild Beasts to Bon Iver, so whilst it wasn’t ‘traditional wedding music’ it had a very special significance to us – and it did get a little bit more mainstream for the evening to make sure the dancefloor was full!
Because we had so much space to play with, we decided to use one of the fields for people to camp in, which then led us onto a festival theme. I think there was around 30 tents in all – including one for us!
I was never really bothered about a set colour scheme. People kept asking me about it and telling me I should have one, but it didn’t ever seem like something that was necessary to our plans. I suppose the colour palette was more pastel shades than anything, but really, as long as the colours complemented each other, I wasn’t that fussy!
As white (and all the many, many variations of it) just don’t suit me at all, I’d said from day one that I wanted a grey wedding dress. When shopping for the dress (which seeing as I’m not a girly girl, I found quite hard work), I just couldn’t find a shade that was ‘me’, so I spoke to a friend of my mum’s – Wendy who has a wedding dress shop, Tie the Knot, in Blackburn – and we went through different swatches and shades of grey materials until I found one that I loved. I sent her images of different dress styles that I liked, and she designed the perfect dress for me.
Jim wore a white shirt, with a brown/tweed effect waistcoat and trousers from Slaters. The best men, dads and ushers wore exactly the same, and they all looked amazing. We even bought an extra suit and had a dress maker make a matching waistcoat and trousers for Jim’s nephew William (who was four at the time) so that he was wearing exactly the same as the ‘bigger boys’. They each had a yellow tie with matching buttonholes, which we made from yellow shotgun cartridges that the florist filled with lavender and wild flowers. We even found matching yellow bow ties too – one for William and one for our Border Terrier, Busker!
The three grown up bridesmaids wore dresses from ASOS, and my cousin Rebecca’s dress was from Next.
As our wedding transport we hired a VW split screen camper van from Connahs Cars, which took me, my mum and dad, and the three grown up bridesmaids from my house to Heaton House, which took just over an hour. Jim and I then travelled back from Heaton House in the camper van. However, because the lane up to the farm is pretty steep, and we didn’t want to try getting the camper van up there, it dropped us off at the village pub (The Navigation Inn, Buxworth) where we had photos taken inside the camper – with Busker too, which are some of my favourite pictures from the whole day.
Jim’s brother-in-law, Dan, then picked us up on his tractor, which was decorated with hay bales and we made the five minute journey from the pub to the farm on the back of that, along with William and Busker too! When we arrived at the farm, our families had made a guard of honour with pitch forks which was hilarious – and very fitting!
Lois Rowlands captured our day. I’d met Lois at different events through my work as an Account Executive for Fig Creative in Glossop, and had always got on with her really well, so she was my first choice when it came to a photographer. We met up before the wedding at the farm (whilst the barn was full of sheep) and she was quite sceptical about how we were going to pull it off! On the day, she was super organised, funny as hell, put everyone at ease and managed to take every single one of the shots that we wanted – even one of myself and the bridesmaids holding shotguns on the back of a pick-up truck!
Zara Reid did all of our flowers, and I can honestly say they made a massive difference. They absolutely transformed the barn and were one of the best things we spent money on throughout the whole wedding, without a doubt.
For mine and the bridesmaids’ bouquets, we had a mixture of peonies, lavender, daisies and wild raspberries and they were absolutely stunning!
We decorated the barn ourselves and with a lot of help from friends and family. Once lambing time was over, Dan scraped the majority of the bedding out using his tractor, and then I brushed and jet washed it solidly for five days! It was absolutely pristine by the time I’d finished.
We covered the walls with hessian, put up paper lanterns, bunting and festoon lights, and had a feature wall made up of antique mirrors behind the top table (which had been built by a friend of the family’s from the village).
I’d spent months collecting old pictures, which I painted with blackboard paint and decorated with song lyrics and references to our favourite bands – there was a Bowie one (we’re huge Bowie fans), a Richard Hawley one as one of his songs (The Streets Are Ours) was our first dance, and there was one with the full lyrics to Pulp’s ‘Something Changed’ which is very special to us too.
Our table plan was designed to look like a festival poster, the tables were named after different Glastonbury stages, and we had an empty guitar case for people to put the wedding cards in, plus an old turntable set up with a Lego bride and groom spinning round all night, so the music theme was quite evident throughout.
We also made shelves out of old palettes which we filled with jam jars to be filled with flowers. Upon the rustic wooden tables that we hired we had slices of pine (provided by my father-in-law) on which we placed more jam jars filled with more flowers. The centrepieces looked so beautiful – I remember coming back from having my nails done on the day before the wedding, and when I returned to the farm, Zara was already there and had started filling them up and it was such a transformation. It looked so beautiful and was better than I ever imagined it would be – I couldn’t have been happier with how it turned out.
Our favours were marshmallows and toasting forks, as we had planned to have a big bonfire once it had gone dark. However, we were having such a good time on the night that we forgot all about it!
Instead of a traditional wedding cake, we opted for three giant pork pies on a cake stand, which we got from Mettricks, an award-winning butcher’s in Glossop, which is well known for its pies. We also had a ‘wedding cheese cake’ from Bradburys and two donut towers!
When it came to organising the drink for the wedding we considered hiring in a bar and staff, but with having the wedding at the farm, we had no curfew so decided instead just to provide a decent amount of free booze, and said in the invitations that people should bring their own. We figured this meant nobody would waste precious time queuing at the bar, and that everyone could bring exactly what they wanted to drink…and it seemed to work out quite well.
We had prosecco on arrival and for the toasts, plus a bottle of red and white on each table. We also had ten barrels of real ale and cider which we put on stillages in the corner and just let people help themselves. We also fixed some optics to the wall with bottles of spirits in. There was also had a tea urn, with tea and coffee for the non-drinkers!
For the food we hired Cooking for Events, who were fantastic. We had canapes on arrival, and for the meal we asked Kurt to make our favourite food – Gumbo (which was delicious). Later, he did burgers and hot dogs, which went down a treat, and we also had a lamb on a spit, which was done by J Kemp.
In addition to having our homemade playlists as entertainment, we hired a band called Mr Wilson’s Second Liners, who are impossible to describe! Basically they play 90’s dance songs (the soundtrack to our school years) on brass instruments. It sounds like it shouldn’t work but it really does, and I think out of everything, the band were the best thing we could have spent our money on! Every single guest commented on how amazing they were, and quite a few of them have gone to see them play at other festivals since. Because they play brass instruments, they didn’t require any electricity (which was a big plus), and meant that they could play anywhere on the farm. Because it was such a lovely day, they led the whole wedding party out of the barn and into the field into the glorious sunshine and had everyone singing and dancing along – even my mum!
In order to get the farm ready in time for the big day, we had numerous work parties with our friends who would spend all weekend helping us transform the farm in return for food and beer! It was very much a collaborative effort from friends and family – and we definitely couldn’t have done it without them!
Jim and I spent pretty much every night after work and every weekend, up at the farm for around three to four months beforehand, doing all sorts of random tasks; from cleaning out the pond, putting fairy lights in trees, making pathways, planting flowers, building walls – you name it, we probably renovated it somewhere along the line. I also made a sign to go in the field with directions to places that were special to us: our birthplaces, Toronto (where we met), Reykjavik (where we got engaged), where I went to uni, our football teams’ home grounds etc. We also made a bride and groom out of hay bales at the entrance to the field so it was the first thing the guests saw when they drove in. We even mowed and rolled a cricket wicket, as on the following day, all guests were invited back to the farm for a celebratory cricket match!
It seemed such a shame once the wedding was over to pack everything away and move the sheep back in, just because it looked so beautiful! People still keep telling Jim’s parents that they should pack the farming in and become a wedding venue…but somehow I don’t think his dad is convinced!
Looking back on the day there were so many highlights! Getting ready in the morning with my parents and bridesmaids was great fun. The lady who came to do our make-up (Andrea Horton) was so lovely and we had a great laugh with her. The journey to Heaton House was also great fun as was the ceremony itself – despite the fact that I giggled all the way through it. It was just so nice to have all our favourite people in one place, especially as they all seemed to be enjoying themselves so much!
The tractor ride to the farm was so much fun, and the speeches were hilarious. My dad did a lovely speech and had even smuggled my childhood teddy bear – Freddy Teddy – in to demonstrate to everyone who my first love was! Jim’s speech was made up of different song lyrics which couldn’t have been more perfect – and very fitting too.
The best men’s’ speech was absolutely brilliant too! Jim had his two best friends, Pete and Sam, who donned judges’ wigs and put on a court case for and against Jim, with large photographic evidence of him committing various ‘crimes’.
Overall, I’d say the band just topped everything off, simply because they played a great set which got everyone on their feet, and for the sheer sense of joy that they created amongst the guests.
We went on our honeymoon around ten months after the wedding and enjoyed two weeks split between Vancouver, Seattle and New York. As we met in Canada we definitely wanted to go back there, and we decided to also take in Seattle and New York so we could go and nerd out at different music venues around the cities! We went to the KEXP radio station in Seattle and ended up in an audience of 30 people watching John Grant do a small gig. We also went to the waterfall where Twin Peaks was set which was really exciting for us as we’re big fans. In fact, we had a song from the show as background music whilst the guests were arriving at Heaton House. And fittingly, whilst we were there, a wedding was on, so it all tied in very nicely!
My top tip to other Brides Up North is – try and have fun during all the planning, as that’s a major part of the wedding too. Also, don’t feel that you have to buy everything from scratch – we got loads of things via online wedding forums or over Freecycle. We also made a lot of things ourselves, such as the centrepieces and decorations, which not only cut costs, but was great fun along the way. I’d also say not to let people talk you out of your decisions. We had so many people give us funny looks when they heard that we were getting married in a lambing shed – and I think we surprised a lot of people (ourselves included) with just how beautiful and professional it looked. So just believe in your decisions – providing the two of you are happy with them, everyone else will fall in line. Oh and if possible, have your dog at your wedding – they’re great guests!
Finally I must give a big mention must go to our jeweller, Andy Howard, who is a friend of ours. We gave him our budget, and I gave him a picture of an Asscher cut Tiffany ring and pretty much said “please make that”. And he did! He was incredible and even now, I still find myself just sitting and admiring it. I think because that was made and not just bought, it’s a great representation of the whole wedding!
