I didn’t really ever consider anywhere else for our wedding venue except Rosedew Farm. I’d been to a party there in 2017 and said to my Mum' “I’d love to get married here'“ and I pretty much knew we would from the moment we got engaged. I researched all the other local options, let Jos discount them one by one and ended up with the barn we really knew I wanted anyway.

The main appeal of the venue was the on site accommodation and the ability to hire it for the whole weekend was a bonus but what turned out to be the best bit was how flexible the team are. You’re given a blank canvas of a restored barn to do what you want with and they will help with as little or as much as possible, giving this control freak exactly what she wanted.

The barn has fairy lights cascading from all the walls that just come as part of the barn and I’d have been more than happy with that as a background but in December one of the team mentioned as we were the first wedding of the year (and the decade, pretty cool) it would be easier for them to just leave the drapes up, so we got them chucked in too and it made for a pretty ace backdrop to get started with.

The barn is made up of a huge main space with steps two thirds of the way down which normally acts as the dance floor, plus a bar big enough for 80 guests on one side and a huge cloakroom area and the loos out the back so we had plenty of space to get creative when it came to decorating.

I had three objectives when it came to choosing how I wanted to decorate the barn;

As cheap as possible
As much DIY as possible
As much we could reuse as possible

As a creative person it was a no brainer that I’d be doing as much as I could myself. From illustrating, creating and printing the invitations to making RSVP cards, meet the top table introductions for the tables, organising personalised kids bags for the babies and children, hand decorating all the signage and making the guest book myself, turning my hand to a bit of crafty business was a welcome change.

I had all the ideas when it came to decorating and I wanted to add as many small personal touches as possible and I managed to pull 99% of them off. I got most of my bits and bobs from Hobbycraft, The Works and mainly Ebay which was a godsend when it came to wanting to save a few bucks.

So let’s talk through the decor…….

I’m going to talk specifically about our centrepieces and our table decor in tomorrow’s post as I feel like there were enough elements to that to write a novel on. Today I am sticking firmly to the venue decor, and you can skip ahead to the bottom where you’ll find links to everything we bought (or similar) so you can save yourselves a few quid too.

I kept the outside of the barns pretty simple, knowing that the weather wouldn’t be on our side in February. The stonework of the barn and the staircase up to the bar door is plenty pretty enough, plus the milk churns and old bike that are left out by the venue all year round added a bit of rustic charm so I just added a few bits to guide people the right way. There are two ways into the farm from the local town so I bought some chalkboard arrows from Hobbycraft (link below) and wrote on them to direct people. These actually flew off in the wind within about half an hour of putting them up so we had a lot of lost guests and I wish I’d gone and found one of the arrows in the hedgerow to bring home as a momento but alas, they are lost in the wild now. We have huge steel A boards (link to similar below) that we use for the cider company so I was able to use two of those, one as a welcome to the wedding sign outside and one as the scoreboard for the quiz. I got some inspiration off Pinterest for some lettering and then used my trusty chalkboard pens to set to work and actually, they lasted really well even with the horrible rain and wind that battered us overnight on the Saturday. All that was left was to add some fairy lights to the bannisters to people could find their way up the steps and job’ a goodun. My Mum actually had two sets of these battery powered, waterproof twinkling lights for Christmas (link below) so we just borrowed those and bought ourselves a third set to finish the bannisters and we’ll be able to use them now all year round in the garden.

The bar is the first place you enter when you walk into the barns and this was transformed hastily from the area to watch the rugby to a quiet area with comfortable sofas to chill out of the way of the music in the party. For the rugby, I laid on a load of snacks and then adorned the place with Vale Cider bottle openers and business cards, along with Welsh and Irish flags (links below) and some plastic flower pots I got on Ebay, magically turned into the perfect holder for all the paper straws (link below). Having the cider business proved a godsend when it came to decorating as we were able to use our fold up tables (link below) for all the puddings and bits and bobs instead of hiring them and used all our chalkboard signs we normally use on stalls. I topped up our selection with some cheap chalkboard easels from the Works (link below) and now we will use them in markets and at events now the wedding is over.

We had a few tables set up in the bar with a variety of green and white table cloths me and my Mum had collected over the years (links to similar below). One table was based at the door and had our sparklers on ready for the photographs in the evening. I bought our sparklers online (surprisingly hard to find in shops after November) and we chose a 90 second burn/extra long type so we had the maximum time to get the shots and long enough nobody would burn their hands. These actually took ages to be able to light and the wind didn’t help so I’d recommend trying some out at home beforehand. We popped the sparklers in a plastic pink vase from Ebay (link below) and had a steel bucket filled with sand waiting outside for all the burnt out ones that ended up being a makeshift ashtray too. I made little sparkler tags with the wedding date on and printed them myself onto card, Jos hole punched them and we attached them to the sparklers on one rainy February evening.

Our entrance table next to Sarah’s fabulous floral display (more on that to come in future blog posts) was one borrowed from the venue and housed our guest book and card box. The first decorations I bought for the wedding not long after we’d got engaged were two alpaca ornaments from Dunelm (check out their latest offering below) and I bought a dolls veil and a dolls top hat on Ebay for them and they live in our house now in their gladrags (link below). We were very kindly given a Ginger Ray card box (below) and a cards and gifts wooden sign (similar below) from my friends who I was bridesmaid for last year and we put them on the entrance table along with the guest book. We had been given little while easels from Jos’ brother and sister in law from their wedding last year so I printed instructions on how to use the guest book, grabbed a couple of pens from the house and popped up some Instagram hashtag signs too (link to similar below). The guest book was a scrapbook from Hobbycraft that I have since bought again to be our wedding album (link below) and I stuck in kraft envelopes to every page and printed little advice cards where our guests had to draw a little doodle of themselves and write us a message.

Inside the bar is a huge old original dresser which can be decorated by the venue for you or you’re given free rein over it. I piled ours with bits and bobs including a wellies print my friend had bought me for our engagement (similar below), tealights which we bought in bulk from Hobbycraft (link below), cacti and succulents from our house (Ikea imo are the cheapest and best quality on the highstreet, link below) and some photos we normally have up in our bedroom (similar linked below). I bought some pom pom garlands from a seller on ebay (link below) who I often buy from for decor and added a ‘just married’ sign from Hema (link below). We topped it off with a photo of each of our parents weddings, combined with a print of us from the day before when we’d legally wed.

The table plan I wish I’d considered where it would go a bit more as I ran out of space and I think it was slightly lost in translation but you live and you learn. I bought some terracotta pots from Hobbycraft which my Mum is now using in her garden (link below) and our very kind builder and friend sealed them for us and filled them with sand which I topped off with some decorative stones leftover from my Mum’s 60th birthday last year. I bought some lollypop sticks on Ebay (link below) and wrote everyone’s names on them in permanent marker and then each table had a representative pot and all the sticks went in there. I topped them off with a table number flag from Hobbycraft (link below) and aside from one falling over and spilling it’s stones everywhere when I was rushing to finish, it looked quite cute.

The main barn decor was mainly the tables themselves which we’ll come on to tomorrow but I did have a few touches in there. My Mum adorned the bannisters with foliage she’d collected from her garden and we laid on a big cake and puddings table at the back of the barn, along with a kids table with juice and cups on. We had disposable cutlery, plates, bowls and napkins leftover from my Mum’s 60th in February 2019 so we used those to allow guests to help themselves to the cake, strawberries and brownies we’d laid on for pudding. I bought a 3 tiered cascading cake stand from Amazon (link below) as we weren’t having a traditional cake and we popped the biggest cake on a wooden slice Jos had chopped down from log stumps in the garden (link to Hobbycrafts version below). We collected pine cones in the forest next to our house with my niece and I topped the collection up with a bag from a seller on Ebay (link below) and we used the leftover foliage to decorate the cake boards. Jos’ brother and sister in law had given us all their leftover kraft cake slice boxes for anyone who wanted to take a bite home (similar linked below) and we topped the very smallest tier with a bunting style cake topper from Hobbycraft (linked below).

All that was left then was to add the ‘to have and to hold in case you get cold’ installation at the back of the barns which was all recycled from home. We used Vale Cider’s apple crates on end to display the sign, a hamper we have as storage in our hall and Jos’ Mum and crafty extraordinaire made us 5 wooly blankets which we then gave out to a few special guests on the Sunday after breakfast.

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