Our tiny handmade wedding! - Do What You Love

I have been wanting to share a peek into our wedding for a while, and ‘Love to create’ month seemed like the perfect time, as it was a tiny handmade wedding. It really was a very special day, which began with a beautiful storybook complete with diamond necklace gift, and ended with rings on our fingers, smiles on our faces and big love in our hearts. I have never had so much fun in one day…

We got engaged in a beautiful secluded Japanese garden in Kyoto on my 35^th birthday last May. It was perfect for us. We were at the beginning of a six month sabbatical in Japan’s ancient capital, and felt like a whole new adventure was just beginning.

In the years we have been together, Mr K and I have travelled far and wide, often doing fun and slightly crazy things along the way – from mountain biking in stormy Wales to camping in the Sahara Desert. Adventure is at the heart of our relationship, so that was the starting point for our wedding too.

Our wedding invitation was a message in a bottle, which felt very appropriate to two wanderers like ourselves. I commissioned Libby McMullin to illustrate one of our favourite quotes, “In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities” – Janos Arany. We printed this onto vellum paper and stitched that onto paper I had made myself by hand in Japan. The ribbon-bound invitation was rolled up and tied with thread I had dyed at the Kawashima Textile School, using leaves I had picked from the school garden. A tiny medieval style key was attached to the end of the thread as a weight, and hung out of the top of the bottle. The key design was a nod to the medieval hall where we were planning to get married. Around the bottle was wrapped a tiny book of notes about the wedding, printed onto beautiful paper from Calligrane, my favourite paper shop in Paris, stitched together by hand. Our guests loved the invitations, and my parents even sent back their acceptance inside a wire bird cage!

We knew we wanted to reflect our Japan experience in the wedding in some way, and I wanted to make everything by hand. Had we got married ten years ago we would probably have had a massive party with hundreds of people, but in the end we chose to go for a tiny, personal celebration with only 30 adults and a gaggle of gorgeous children. Initially it had been a hard decision not to invite all our friends, but several months down the line, surrounded by a mountain of paper and ribbon, I was grateful we had gone for a small guest list!

THE MORNING OF THE WEDDING

My soon-to-be husband Mr K had given me a gift in a small pale blue bag to open on the morning of our wedding. I found a quiet space on a swing in a wood and opened it.

Inside was a tiny book. Mr K is an incredible storyteller, and had written me an amazing story as my wedding present. At the end of the story, the characters found a beautiful diamond necklace in a pale blue bag – so you can imagine what else was in the bag I had been given.

I hadn’t actually found a necklace that went with my dress, so couldn’t believe it when he gifted me the perfect one, filled with meaning from the beautiful story.

THE DRESS

My dress was not what I had in mind when I set out to find one, but I fell in love with it the moment I tried it on. It was made of lace, which was perfect as the town where we got married (Honiton, in Devon) is famous for lace. It had covered buttons running all the way down the back, and was a mermaid style.

As part of my ‘something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue’ I sewed the borrowed words of John Lennon into the lining: “All you need is love.”

THE BRIDESMAIDS

I had a chief bridesmaid, Heather, and three little bridesmaids – my nieces Holly and Freya, and my goddaughter Emmie.

Heather wore a long chocolate satin dress and looked like a Greek goddess.

The little ones wore sweet ivory dresses from Monsoon, and each picked their own shoes with varying amounts of sparkle! They all had delicate tiaras and fluffy shoulder warmers to keep off the April chill.

The little bridesmaids finished getting ready quite early, and started bouncing on the bed in the bridal suite. I will never forget the peals of laughter as they bounced around and tickled each other.

THE BOYS

Mr K, his best man Dave and usher Ben were all in tails. What a dashing trio!

We had also asked my young nephew Will to be the ‘Little Best Man’. He did a fantastic job offering the rings during the service and giving a short speech at dinner. My Mum made a tiny (4”) suit of tails for his little mascot Sack Boy, and we even found a tiny silk flower for Sack Boy’s buttonhole.

THE FLOWERS

Clare at Haughty Culture did a beautiful job with our flowers. I had a hand tied bouquet of cream roses, white peonies, white freesias and white ranunculus, edged with rolled cream skeleton leaves to highlight the lace detail of my dress. The stems were bound with coffee satin ribbon and pearl pins.

My chief bridesmaid had cream roses and coffee/pink tone roses, white peonies and white freesias, and the bridesmaids had simple hand tied posies of freesias and ranunculus with satin binding. The buttonholes were single cream roses with leaf detail and coffee ribbon binding.

Clare created a ‘picked from the hedgerow’ look for our table arrangements, using cream and coffee/pink tone roses, eucalyptus, lisitanthus, astrantia and gypsophilia.

I was also sent a very special bunch of silk wedding flowers from Tanaka-san, the wonderful lady who had taught me ikebana flower arranging in Kyoto when I was 19 years old.

THE ARRIVAL

I travelled to the ceremony with my Dad in a vintage VW Beetle – my favourite car. It was dressed with ivy and delicate white flowers.

On the way it started to snow – the world seemed so peaceful for those few minutes before I stepped into the chapel, on my way to becoming a Mrs.

Outside the hall was a vintage-style wooden signpost showing the way to our wedding, which my Dad had got made for us, along with another for the party venue saying ‘Drinks, dancing & mischief’ – perfect for us!

THE VENUE & SERVICE

We got married at a beautiful tiny medieval hall in Honiton, Devon. It only had four pews either side, so was very cosy inside.

Time seemed to stop as I entered the tiny hall, and I tried to soak in every detail. What a precious moment.

I walked down the aisle to harp music, and our ceremony felt so personal, with friends reading our favourite poems and an adorable passage from Winnie The Pooh (which made the little bridesmaids giggle).

As we emerged from the service, it was a beautiful crisp day – chilly but bright. We were Mr & Mrs K!

After the service we drank bubbles and blew bubbles outside, then went to Deer Park, a small country hotel we had taken over for the wedding. Nearly all our guests stayed there, and they were wonderful hosts. We had the run of the house and they kept serving us delicious cocktails and Irish Coffee until the last person went to bed in the small hours.

THE TABLE PLAN

I painted a garden trellis as the backdrop for the table plan and hung the individual names on it with tiny pegs.

THE TABLES

In the centre of the tables we had beautiful lights commissioned from my friend lighting designer Hannah Nunn, with simple flowers in dressed glass jars.

Our friend Sho used hand-lettered calligraphy to write the Japanese names for each of our tables, which we named after our favourite places in Japan. I found some lovely turquoise and cream vintage-style table mats in Next Home and used these for each setting.

My Mum made more than 100 individual wire and ribbon decorations for the room where we ate our wedding breakfast. They were all different and absolutely beautiful. We put one on each guest’s plate, and hung the rest from the walls, along with miles of bunting I had made. The window overlooking the hotel’s Italian garden was draped with the words ‘Our greatest adventure begins today’ made from circular alphabet bunting by the Rifle Paper Co, which I had picked up at Papersource in Boston on my travels.

THE CAKE

I decorated the cake myself, with help from my Mum.

We also covered an old oak farmhouse table with sweet treats – all our favourites from childhood.

THE FUN STUFF

As we had so many children involved in our wedding we really wanted them to feel special, so we did a treasure hunt, egg-and-spoon race and all sorts of other fun stuff.

We wrapped up dinner with a song that had been recorded by my second family in Japan – who are jazz musicians. They couldn’t make it to the wedding so recorded ‘Fly me to the moon’ for us with their jazz band, and it was wonderful to have them part of our ceremony in this way.

After dinner Heather sang our first dance – ‘The first time I saw your face’ followed by ‘Fever’ (and some crazy dancing from us). Then the children took over the dance floor and we didn’t stop until the early hours.

FEEL THE LOVE

From the moment we announced our engagement, right through our wedding day, we felt swathed in a blanket of love by friends and family. So many people contributed details to our day, and we are grateful to every single one of them for making it such a happy occasion. Even the tiniest handmade wedding is a lot of work, but worth every moment.

But the biggest thank you goes to my husband, Mr K, who keeps reminding me that our special day was just the first of the rest of our adventure-filled lives together.

You can see a special feature about our tiny handmade wedding in the latest issue of MOYO Magazine (pages 42-47):