A Lovingly Handmade, Sunny, Sunflower and Aussie Inspired Wedding

So, as February continues to be a little (very) grey, I am delighted to bring you a major burst of sunshine on the blog today, courtesy of Lee Maxwell Photography. Helen, our beautiful blond bride,  married Sammy our gorgeous brunette bride, in an outdoor wedding ceremony in August.  It was a gloriously sunny Devon day, surrounded by their wonderful families and friends.

The couple were engaged in Australia, where they lived for 5 years and wanted to bring an Aussie feel to the day, as it was such an important backdrop to their love story. I love all the handmade touches, the surfboard seating plan, the bright sunflowers and floral details which the couple and friends all created themselves! Just stunning and all the thought and time that they have spent over every detail, with help from some very talented friends.

Helen and Sammy chose Lee Maxwell to capture their day. They really appreciated his unobtrusive style, documenting the day, recording the main event, along with all the little moments that make up memories. I love the images of the speeches which look like they were very entertaining and oh the dancing too!

So please enjoy this joyous splash of colour of a wedding, inspired by sunny Aussie shores;

We met in 2010, we are not dinner and drinks kind of girls so our first date was a day out at Go Ape adventure centre where we spent the day swinging through the trees on high ropes and zip lines! The adventure continued from day 1 and we moved to Sydney Australia in 2011 after traveling for a few months on the way. We got engaged in Port Stephens, a gorgeous coastal area on the East coast of Australia.

After 5 years in Australia we definitely felt influenced by the relaxed and coastal lifestyle we led overseas. So we introduced rustic wood and coastal blues with a pop of yellow to remind us of the beach and our adventures together.

The couple chose Beaconside House for their wedding celebrations;

We chose this venue as we wanted to have the venue for the whole weekend and it be more of a celebration combined with a holiday with our nearest and dearest rather than a single day where we would be rushing to speak to everyone (Sammy has a rather large family!). We could do and chose everything ourselves, from the caterers to the table décor. We also really wanted to do our own free bar for guests and Beaconside allowed the flexibility of having your own alcohol and bar staff at the venue.

Our venue offered enough accommodation in the main house, cottages and camping for 50 guests from the Friday to Monday. The venue had 2 pools, 2 hot tubs, a massive kitchen and beautiful grounds. It was amazing to have the whole weekend with so many loved ones in such a beautiful venue and surrounds.

The owner was great, around as much or as little as you wanted to assist with getting the venue ready. They also supplied the marquee for us.

Sammy and Helen chose the talented Lee Maxwell Photography;

We loved Lee’s photo style, it was so relaxed and non invasive. Pictures were relaxed and captured moments you didn’t even know had been taken. We don’t remember seeing him at all during the day yet managed to capture every moment, emotion and guest. He was also a really lovely guy.

We planned and styled our own wedding, we made all of our wood and floral centre pieces, signs and the surf board seating plan. We bought our flowers from a wholesaler and made everything from the pinholes to bouquets. Luckily Helen is rather crafty and Sammy takes direction well!

Helen found her dresses at Bellissima Weddings. The boutique was recommended by a friend. She chose a beautiful Mori Lee dress that she initially saw online in their shop and fell in love with it, it was the second dress she tried on and she bought it straight away!

On the day she wore gypsophila flowers in hair and pearl grips from Accessorize. Her shoes were from Rainbow Club.

Sammy found her Maggie Sottero dress in Pirouette the Collection in Exeter and chose a more vintage style dress to match her engagement ring. The dress fitted perfectly and Sammy fell in love with it; initially it was too long for her taste, however the seamstress was amazing and used the excess train to make bows for 4 dogs a headband for her niece and added flowers to the straps of her dress. Her teardop necklace was her something borrowed.

Sammy wore blue shoes to pick out the theme of the day and were from Kurt Geiger at Debenham’s Collection and with the aptly named design ‘Samantha’.

For us the day was pretty relaxed and we didn’t plan the first look, however Helen’s dad came in ready for his fatherly duties and couldn’t hold back the tears as he noticed her adding the final touches. Sammy and her dad had a beer together!

Both of our fathers gave us away, it was truly special and amazing, they both cried like babies! We walked down the ailse to song 6 George Ezra. The whole drive to our engagement weekend we had this on in the car, it reminded us of our 5 years in Australia and how we came to be engaged.

We had amazing friends with hairdressing and makeup prowess Sara and Kayleigh and Jamie and helped everyone get ready. The theme with our bridesmaids was to feel comfortable and natural so they all had what they felt was to their taste rather than anything we chose.The bridemaid’s dresses were from a collection at For Him and For Her We allowed our bridesmaids to chose their own individual dresses from the collection but in the same colour twilight blue. Interestingly they chose the same three dresses! Our ‘man maids’ wore their own charcoal grey and navy suits.

We bought and chose the flowers from a wholesale florist Peamore Flora. Helen then made ceremony displays and table centre pieces from sunflowers, gypsophila, chamomile and green fern. Bouquets for brides and bridesmaids with opposite ribbon (navy or navy and white striped) for bride and corresponding bridesmaids. We each had a meaningful charm draped around our own bouquets. We lined the aisle with bunches of gypsophila and slate hearts that we stenciled ourselves with our initials and wedding date.
We loved the bright sunflowers and how they reminded us of the sand and complimented the beautiful bridesmaid dresses. We also had yellow rose petal confetti as we walked back down the aisle and yellow rose button holes all from peamores.

Sammy and Helen’s wedding rings came from Brown and Newirth;

We chose this company as they allowed us to get the same bands in different carats (to correspond with our individual engagement rings) and offered a complimentary engraving service.

We collected jam jars and bought a combination of tea lights, holders, floating candles and pillar candles for the centre pieces. We had a sweets table filled with pick & mix in hessian sacks in a personalized stenciled crate. Our friend Claire designed a map (that matched our invitations) connecting Australia and the UK for guests to sign and we ordered a wedding book with our own photo on the front from not on the high street.

We kitted out our bar with rustic chopping boards, 8 litre mason jars for pimms and water and thatchers beer mats. We had a crate of flip flops on the dance floor for when people got sore dancing feet and needed to kick of the heels!

Our cake was made by Sammy’s mum and we chose a cupcake tower of vanilla cupcakes with chocolate centres and vanilla icing with a sponge cutting cake on the top, our colours were navy and white with a wood personalized cake topper from Etsy. We stained this to match the wood from the rest of our wedding customized items.

Our friend Claire designed the invitations and then we then printed them ourselves. Helen resurfaced an old surfboard, spray painted and stenciled it for our table plan. We had stickers with our initials and wedding date designed by our friend Laura and then had them dishwasher proof printed, we then put them onto mason jars as favours. We also had stubby holders made with our names/ wedding date for guests. Each guest had a wine clip with a personalized photo of themselves.

We decorated the marquee ourselves, we bought paper lanterns from The Hanging Lantern Company. We ordered the table runners from Etsy and the napkins from ebay. We then bought wood from Milverton Sawmill and created signs, centre pieces and table names using our own self made stencils. We also bought some old crates from gum tree and painted/stenciled them to hold ciders and beers. Our friend Kiara from Flossy Fleur made crate liners so they were able to hold ice and be waterproof but yet still match our colours.

We had lots of help on the day and are so grateful to all our family and friends who helped us with the wedding. Sara and Kayleigh for all their help making us look and feel beautiful, our bridemaids for being part of our special day and such an epic hen do making us dress up as kangaroos and take part in It’s a Knock Out in Bristol, where we beat every other team, including the boys..at football… where they actually almost cried!

We are so grateful to our friends Kiara, Claire and Laura for their design prowess and all of our friends and family who helped get the venue, marquee and ceremony ready and made our special day and weekend so amazing.

We danced to L-O-V-E by Nat King Cole, we didn’t plan a dance but just did what felt right and then everyone joined us after spinning each other around the dance floor!

In the evening we had Mr T BBQ Man for a more luxurious approach to an aussie barbie with salmon, steak and pulled pork. For the entertainment we had the band iRock. I can’t explain how amazing this band were at getting the party started, our guests were extremely complimentary and not one seat was occupied during their set-everyone was dancing!

Both of our favourite moments were seeing each other come down the aisle, as we had not seen or talked about what the other would be wearing. It was a really emotional moment with not a dry eye in the house! It was also amazing walking back down the aisle as newly weds with such beautiful rose petal confetti being thrown over us.

The readings were also a really special moment for us that were really appropriate to us as a couple and made us and everyone have a lovely giggle. We wouldn’t change a thing about our day, it was amazing and so was everyone that could share it with us.

Our advice would be doing a lot of it yourself can make it more personalized and save on costs but it can be stressful getting everything ready in time. Make sure if you do it yourself you have a whole day to get ready to set everything set up. Beaconside does not have a back up plan for larger wedding parties if it rains so make sure you have your own! We bought some gazebos as back up but luckily did not have to use them- we ended up needing sun screen!

Also as a couple know what you are both good at and divide and conquer but come together for final decisions. People love having jobs and helping on your special day, so don’t try and do everything, take the help!  

I think that Helen and Sammy’s wedding looked like an absolute blast, so much joy and laughter.  Huge thanks to the happy couple for sharing their amazing wedding with us and all it’s fantastic aussie and handmade touches. Wishing you both much love and joy for your future together.

Thanks goes to the talented Lee Maxwell too, who captured the day and all the wonderful emotions and moments perfectly,