Kelly and Thom wanted their wedding to be inspired by their love of travel, but with fun little unexpected touches. They weren’t constrained by a particular theme, they just picked things they liked, such as having a ‘Herbie’ Beetle as their transport! The ceremony was held at Old Wardour Castle and the reception at Spitfire House Farm, private farming estate owned by family friends.
“We looked for every opportunity to pour ourselves into the décor”, said Kelly. “Most of the decorations were handmade by us or things we already had. As part of the invitations we sent postcards of Wiltshire and Boise for RSVP, using the returned cards as bunting decoration. The flower bunting flags were handmade by a family friend and surrounded the entire marquee. We had small frames all around with quotes from some of our favourite books and every table had a small tower of books from our own collection. Thom designed the table numbers, each featuring a different lyric from The Beatles. Thom also has a collection of vintage cameras we placed around the tables. The trains were all from the Brio set that Thom and his brothers grew up with. And I designed the little iSpy cards. For fun we got a whole bunch of the foam flying gliders for every place setting. Thom’s dad also made the large sized Jenga!”
“Travel was of course a huge inspiration in our decorating”, she continued. “We sourced everything as locally and independently as we could. Most of our providers were family run businesses. We had two couch areas with piles of board games and card games, plus lawn games and the bouncy castle. We know it can get boring at wedding for guests just sat watching the newly-weds doing all the newly wed things, we wanted to provide lots of fun. Thinking of all the fun things to hide around and entertain our guests was such a fun part of wedding planning and a highlight on the day was definitely having our guests tell us how much fun they had and how beautiful the setting was.”
The couple saved money by simply ditching the things they didn’t care about. “Flowers are so, so expensive and it wasn’t a cost I could wrap my head around spending so we got them from Thom’s Nan’s and parents’ gardens. Every single flower was home grown and they were all so beautiful! We also didn’t worry about programs or menus, we just didn’t see the point.”
“If you don’t want to do a certain tradition, then DON’T!” Kelly concluded. “Nowhere is it written in stone that you must wear the white dress or throw a bouquet or toss the garter. We didn’t do any of that and it definitely didn’t make the day any less special.”
