RELAXED AUTUMNAL DIY WEDDING AT WALCOT HALL, SHROPSHIRE
One of the best things about running a wedding blog, is seeing all the creative ways couples endeavour to make their day truely unique. The thing is, most couples will have a lot of well-loved memories from their time already spent together, whether it be a mutual love for a particular season or band, perhaps memories of a favourite location? With the right mix of ‘favourite things’ it’s easy to make your wedding day totally and utterly YOU.
Emily and Pete were looking for a wedding venue that was unique, something vibrant, yet relaxed. Somewhere they could transform for their wedding day, when they came across Walcot Hall in Shropshire.
“We chose Walcot Hall for our wedding because we wanted something unique and somewhere that none of our guests would have been to before. The vibrant ballroom and the unusual accommodation was a big winner for us!” Emily began.
“Shropshire is absolutely beautiful and both Pete and I love the area so when we went to visit the venue we were blown away by the scenery that surrounded it. We loved how relaxed and laid back all the staff members seemed and knew that there wouldn’t be many restrictions on what we wanted to do during the day. We also really wanted to make a weekend of the wedding and having the option of all our guests being in the same place for 2 nights was something that really appealed to us.”
“Pete and I planned everything together and it took us around a year and a half to get everything sorted. This timeline was mainly due to us welcoming our little boy into the world 7 months before the big day. All the big stuff was organised/booked really early on but once Freddie arrived our planning and organising became somewhat sporadic. Both of our parents chipped in with helping where they could especially with making the origami leaves to hang on the banister of the stairs during the wedding ceremony.” Emily told us.
“We couldn’t decide on a specific theme, but we knew the kind of vibe we wanted and that was for it to be bright, bold, colourful and relaxed. We absolutely love Autumn and wanted to highlight the beautiful colours that pop out during the Autumn season,” she added.
“We decided on our table names based on significant places during our time together as a couple – this made it a lot more personal to us and we also had certain guests on tables significant to them as well. Our place names were also the wedding favours which were handmade fortune tellers. We wanted guests to be able to have a bit of a laugh so filled the fortune tellers with funny or meaningful quotes.”
“We are both pretty chilled people and had the mindset of what will be will be, if something doesn’t quite go to plan, we will role with it. The reality is, your wedding is such an eventful day, its’ unlikely that you will even be aware of any little hiccups, so why stress about it. Although is was ‘our big day’, we just wanted everyone to have an incredible time and everything that we planned and organised was done with this in mind but I guess the thought of seeing a guest not enjoying themselves was a fear!” she admitted.
“We wish we had given ourselves more time to set up the day before. We had all the origami leaves to hang on the staircase in the main hall, as well as several things to set up in the ball room. We also had the bright idea of putting a welcome note and a bottle of prosecco in every cottage/ apartment on site to welcome our guests on arrival. Well, after arriving later than we had planned (family life!) on the Friday morning, this required a lot of frantic running around to achieve before everyone arrived at their accommodation. We’d also arranged a party in one of the cottages the night before the wedding and because we were so late getting everything finished, we turned up several hours late to our own party feeling quite drained and stressed. We would not change anything we did, but we should definitely have allowed more time and roped in more pairs of hands for setting everything up. Don’t underestimate how much time things take.”
“But enjoy every minute! It goes by so quickly it’s hard to soak everything up. We left the guests after the meal and just went to our room and had a cup of tea together and spent 10 minutes just talking about what had happened so far during the day – it was nice to escape the madness for a few minutes.”
Venue: Walcot Hall I Caterers: Roslin Catering I Florist: Wild Bunch I Photographer: Florence Fox I Band: The Daddio’s I Suits: Dapper Dan I Wedding Dress: The Wedding House I Hair & Makeup: Rebecca Forshaw I Bride & Bridesmaids Jewellery: Wolf & Moon I Groomsmen Cufflinks: A New Form I Wedding bands: Temprell Jewellers I Guest Board: Viktorija Illustration I