Vintage Glamour Wedding in Teal & Yellow in the Country

Welcome to WWW readers Emma and Adam’s vintage glamour wedding!

Emma and Adam were hitched at Lower Damgate Farm in Derbyshire in the Spring. Their day was effortlessly beautiful with a laid back outdoorsy feel.

Their cuisine was vegan, but there were also the cutest animals in attendance (hello dogs, alpacas and goats). The styling on the day was all vintage glamour with a fun teal and yellow colour scheme plus stunning vintage style outfits. The barns looked beautifully rustic with pampas grass and fairy lights galore.

I implore you to read their real wedding story below as so much of their day was very thoughtful but also handcrafted too!

Charly Richards Photography, thank you ever so much for sharing with us these absolutely beautiful images of a very special farm wedding.

Emma & Adam on WWW

We got engaged during lockdown so spent a lot of time looking for inspiration. I stumbled across WWW when googling ‘alpaca weddings’ as our venue was an animal sanctuary with alpacas and then got stuck into a rabbit hole of gorgeousness! We had a 2 year engagement, so lots of time for DIY so I enjoyed looking at what other couples had done for inspiration.

Vintage Glamour Wedding

The Proposal

We were supposed to be in Machu Picchu but Covid had other plans. Instead, we had a lockdown date night.

I spent the day cooking Peruvian vegan dishes, whilst Adam disappeared into the garage to ‘workout’. He was actually constructing a makeshift ring out of 2 hair grips (that I leave everywhere!) using a kettlebell to bash them into shape!

Adam proposed in the kitchen, got down on one knee and I took ages to say ‘yes’ because I was in complete shock. Just kept saying ‘are you sure?!’.

We’d made a make-shift tent with fairy lights in the lounge and spent the rest of the evening watching a documentary on Peru whilst sipping pisco sours before telling loved ones the next day.

The Vision

We wanted to include people we know as much as possible so friends helped a lot. We booked our friend’s band, friends catered the wedding breakfast, my dance teacher choreographed our first dance, one of my closest friends led our ceremony and produced the table artwork and our photographer was my godmother’s very talented daughter.

Everyone staying onsite arrived Friday and helped decorate the barn, which was lovely to see everything coming together. We wanted to keep it rustic with nods to Scotland as we’re relocating this year.

Budget

£24,000-ish.

The Venue

Lower Damgate Farm, near Dovedale in Derbyshire.

We found our venue on Bridebook a few days after getting engaged. When restrictions lifted, we went for a socially distanced wander around the farm and instantly fell in love. Our dogs were able to run around the fields and Carolyn made us feel like family. She was warm, welcoming and excited about our day.

The three things that sold it were the on-site cottages so family and friends could stay for the weekend, dogs were allowed and the venue was also an animal sanctuary so a proportion of the hire fee went towards all the beautiful alpacas, goats and other animals that live there.

We drove away and Adam said ‘what would another venue have to have to make it more perfect’ – we both couldn’t come up with an answer so we knew it was ‘the one’.

Your Outfits

Adam ended up going back to the very first suit he tried on over a year before! It was from Marc Darcy. He liked the contrast of the copper buttons with the navy, it had a ‘vintage’ feel which he knew I liked and the cut of the waistcoat made him feel really good.

I originally thought I’d go for an Eliza Jane Howell as I’d followed Gill Harvey’s designs on Instagram and loved them. I met my mum halfway in Worcestershire and tried on a few dresses but none stood out, but it was the first time I’d seen my mum since lockdown so was still a lovely, emotional day.

I ended up finding Along Came Eve in Chester as I searched for stockists of Eliza Jane Howell and booked an appointment. Kendal was really helpful leading up to the appointment, arranging for some dresses I liked to be sent up from London.

During my appointment, I saw another dress on the rails that caught my eye. This ended up being mine! It was ‘Khalani’ by Rosa Clara and was an absolute steal in the sample sale. Helena added a Miranda Templeton back necklace and I was in love. I loved the Gatsby-style beading and the feathers pleased my inner burlesque dancer!

The Ceremony & Music

We were so lucky the Peak District rain held off so we could get married outside! We had a beautiful arch put together by Perfect Day styling and a short legal ceremony followed by a more personal bit. One of my best friends Claire Selman, was our ‘Sel-abrant’ because the pun was too good not to! (We’ve called her Sel since school).

We had two friends do readings – ‘Love is like a dog’ which is very fitting for us as our lives revolve around our two dogs and ‘Maybe’. We also wrote our own vows that were a surprise to each other.

We had four dogs in the bridal party who walked down the aisle with bridesmaids! Our two, Edith and Ethel, were ‘flower girls’ with harnesses I’d sewn flowers onto.

• The bridesmaids walked down to ‘You’ by Black Stone Cherry – the first band we saw together.
• I walked down to ‘There she is’ by Frank Turner – I bought Adam Frank Turner tickets as a wedding gift and also managed to get Frank to send a surprise video message which Adam opened the morning before we married, you can see him crying watching this on our wedding film by Lou!
• The exit song was ‘Blame it on the boom boom’ by Black Stone Cherry, one of our favourites and an old routine from my dance troupe!

The Styling & Decor

I made most things, the house is still full of pampas seeds! I loved the feathery fluffy look of pampas and ended up making a huge pampas cloud which Adam suspended from the barn ceiling. I collected the pampas locally from people selling from their gardens.

I made the bouquets. We went to a flower warehouse and picked a mix of dried and silk flowers that we liked the look of. We wanted to include thistles as a nod to Scotland and sunflowers as they’re my favourite. The yellow popped against the teal and navy of the bridal party. I liked that they were reusable. We ended up selling them to a lady in Scotland to use at her wedding, fitting with our values of being less wasteful.

Our favourite styling was by Claire Selman Art. A close friend who put together our wedding sign, seating plan and table artwork. This was based on our camping trip around the Scottish North Coast 500, each table named after a place we stayed. The top table was ‘Inverness’ as we’re moving there soon after falling in love with it last year. We are going to put all of Claire’s art up in our new house.

We had a travel theme and used old vintage suitcases to put together a sweet cart. All vegan from The Vegan Candy Man. Our guests got through nearly 20kg so they went down a treat!

We were let down 6 weeks before the wedding with our cake but the lovely Hannah from Bee Vegan Bakery in Nottingham stepped in to help. We had four layers with different flavours, death by biscoff was my favourite (it had biscoff fudge!) and Adam loved the red velvet. She used teals and coppers to match our colours.

As the venue was DIY, we had to bring everything including a cake knife. Adam saw this as an opportunity to be silly, borrowing his best man’s Lord of the Rings sword to cut the cake!

We made an order of the day sign from a pallet Adam got from work. He sanded and painted it and I borrowed a Cricut machine from my bridesmaid to make all the lettering. We became a bit obsessed with this, also making 100 glasses which doubled up as place names and favours, again reducing waste!

We are both vegan so wanted a vegan wedding. We hired Polly’s Parlour a vintage VW camper van which served vegan ice cream after the ceremony. Our friends run a vegan café, Sin Carne Cantina, in Matlock, and offered to do our wedding breakfast. It was incredible! They did empanadas to start which we had the night we got engaged, and a Latin American feast for the main. We had vegan pizza in the evening.

Sticking with the travel theme, we had Birdie photobooth, a converted VW camper, in the evening which was lots of fun. We had the Daisy Belles, performing after the ceremony to keep guests entertained whilst we had photos, who fitted the vintage theme perfectly.

I booked Bethany, my hair and make-up artist, almost straight after we’d booked the venue. I became aware of her through burlesque and knew there was nobody else I wanted to get me bride-ready. She created beautiful finger waves which worked perfectly with my dress. She also has a gorgeous pug called Dita that I got to cuddle during my trial!

Your Photographer & Filmmaker

Lou from Rather Lovely Films was our videographer. A film was a must-have for me, I’d spent hours crying at strangers’ films that Lou had posted and knew she was the one for us! Adam initially thought it wasn’t a necessity but agreed that we ‘needed’ it when we got our beautiful film back!

Charly from Charly Richards photography was our photographer. She is my Godmother’s daughter and is fairly new to weddings but I loved her relaxed, natural style. She did an amazing job and worked great with Lou.

The Honeymoon

We had an incredible 10-day adventure around Norway. Hiking up Trolltunga where we stayed overnight in an ‘igloo’, trudging knee-deep in snow for the most spectacular view!

Memorable Moments

Leading up, on our ‘year to go’ date, we booked a ‘make your own wedding rings’ workshop at Rosalyn’s emporium. Roz melted down gold from my grandmother’s engagement ring to make the gold bar for Adam’s and turned the pendant into a necklace for me to wear as my ‘something old’.

It was so much fun learning to make our own rings. Shortly after this, I lost my engagement ring but it was found by a man on a canal boat very close to falling into the canal! After getting it back, I then broke it opening the freezer but Roz was able to fix it. There was a joke in Adam’s speech that my 110-year-old antique ring survived two world wars but barely survived a year of me!

One of our favourite moments was walking down with my mum and watching as the alpacas in the next field started to walk down to watch the ceremony and then my veil flying off in the wind. It turned nerves into belly laughs and Charly captured the moment perfectly.

Overall, being surrounded by everyone we love coming together to help us put on a fabulous party.

Advice For Other Couples

Hire a dog chaperone and have your dogs there. We could relax knowing they were in good hands and they loved getting all the attention!

Advice we had from a good friend was to book suppliers who are excited about your day. We followed this and it led us to meeting some wonderful people who made our day perfect.

Oh so beautiful!

Emma and Adam, I can’t thank you enough for sharing your vintage glamour wedding story with us.

Further Reading

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