Our wedding reception took place in the village I grew up called Great Totham. It worked out pretty well having the ceremony in the village Robin’s mum currently lives in, and then having the reception in the village I grew up in and my family still live in. I think I have spoken a little about the venue before, but in this post you will be able to see a lot more. I will be creating a separate post on all of the decorations and props I used to dress the venue in another post as there’s just so much to write about our wedding reception.
The venue is called Captains Wood Barn and I think you can tell from the name it’s a barn style setting. We were so lucky to have found it when we did last year. I think I stumbled upon it on Instagram or Google and once I did, I researched a little more and found it was very local to me and it was dry hire. We realised after doing a spot of venue searching that dry hire was going to be much more suited to us as it enabled you to have much more freedom with suppliers like caterers and staffing. We already knew from the get go what food we wanted and not your typical venue served it. We were so happy with choosing Captains Wood Barn, it really allowed us to create ‘our’ wedding. We were also so happy with our on the day wedding coordinator from ‘Rock The Day Styling‘ who made sure the whole day ran smoothly. I would highly recommend them for your wedding!
DRINKS RECEPTION
The wedding reception kick started with drinks and canapés from around 3pm – 4.30pm. We had supplied all of the alcohol and hire bar staff from Envisage Promotions; who were, if I might add, really great! They really got into the party vibe and many of our guests complimented them. We only served soft drinks, beer, pimms and prosecco during the drinks reception and we kept this to the outside of the barn. You probably have seen the reason why in the first photo. We’d transformed the inside of the venue and it had such a wow factor that I wanted it to have an impact on our guests when they went to take their seat for dinner.
We had one catering company for the whole wedding called The Lazy Pig, who served american style bbq food; our favourite! They served a range of canapés during the drinks reception which were all delicious and I think we estimated 6 per guest (we had 135 people there). We also had Sam Ryder who played during our ceremony, come down to the reception and play a selection of covers. I only managed to catch the end of him playing, but he was so so good! Our guests kept coming up to us asking where we found him!
Not only did we have drinks, canapés and live music, my focus for the outside area of the barn was activities. As you probably see, I go to a lot of blogger events and I’ve learnt what I like and dislike about events. I love it when there is stuff to do, something fun. So I organised a ball pit, ping pong and beer pong and it went down a treat! Everyone got involved and it really made our guests mingle. Something the barn offered were trailer rides and I just had to have this as part of the wedding reception. Bob, the owner of the barn attached his tractor to a beautiful wooden red trailer that fitted around 15-20 guests on, and gave our guests a little drive around the lovely woodland area. It was such a cool addition to our wedding reception and I was so surprised at how many of our guests had a ride. They all took a drink on and laughed and chatted whilst driving around.
THE WEDDING BREAKFAST
The doors were opened to the main part of the barn at 4.30pm and everyone was blown away, just like I had hoped they would be. Everyone took their seats and awaited the arrival of Robin and I. Right at the back of the barn where the top table was, was a large metal door that could be rolled up. It was extremely noisy, but I thought it would make a funny entrance, so Robin and I snuck off whilst everyone went to sit down and we entered through the metal doors to everyone cheering. The top table was just for Robin and I, and I was so glad I did this as it meant we were able to have some time just us two.
The bbq food was served on platters and handed out amongst the guests. We had pulled pork, burgers, skewers, mac and cheese, sweet potatoes and even more than that for everyone to eat. We hadn’t actually tried the food before this point, but thank god we got lucky! The food was insanely tasty and the staff were really professional as well. It took a little longer than expected for everyone to get food on their plates and eat, so we over ran on our timings a little bit. But next up were the speeches.
THE SPEECHES
We had speeches from Robin’s best man, his mum, my 3 closest friends and Robin himself. Robin’s best man had organised a projector as he had a slideshow to go alongside his speech. I can safely say he pretty much ruined Robin, it was very funny and I was so shocked that towards the end he turned things around and made it really emotional about him and Robin’s friendship over the years; it was so sweet. Robin’s mums speech was beautiful and Robin didn’t do too bad himself. He actually said some really nice things about me, probably won’t hear him say anything as nice ever again, but hey at least I’ve got that evidence on camera!
Then it came to my friends speech. There were glitter tits, glitter armpits and nose hairs on the big screen to start with! But then it ended with a video message from Craig David…. CRAIG DAVID!! I was in shock! I actually couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I remember getting them to start the video again as everyone was shouting and I missed the start! I had to hear every word! If you had been keeping up with my wedding planning over the last year, you would have seen I campaigned to get Craig to my wedding with the hashtag #GETCRAIGTOSOPHIESWEDDING along with funny Instagram stories and a Youtube video. I found out a few weeks before our wedding that he was playing a gig on the 9th June so didn’t think he would be able to make it, but I still had hope. I never heard anything from him so just sort of left it but then when I saw the video message I was like HOW! My friends had been messaging him for months to try and get him to my wedding too, but then a few days before the big day he said he couldn’t make it and sent the girls a video for them to play. It was insane! Best surprise ever!
AFTER THE SPEECHES
After the speeches we had about an hour and half until our first dance which was going to be at 8pm. For that funny bit in between we had planned a raffle (instead of giving wedding favours), an ice cream van, a glitter station and a photo corner. The raffle went down a treat and we had some great prizes on offer like a Primark and Selfridges voucher. I think everyone thought it was a cool addition.
We had Molly Moo’s ice cream truck parked up outside the barn. It was the cutest blue vintage van and they served unlimited ice cream for an hour and half! I think we chose around 7 flavours to be served, I was gutted though as I missed out! Because we over ran and we had our wedding photos shortly after the raffle, the ice cream van had left by the time I’d got back to the barn. It was hard to go off and do any of the activities as there was always someone to catch up with.
Not only did we have ice cream, but Luna Glitter Bar came down and glittered everyone up using my Sophie Hannah Beauty jewels and glitters. It was so cool seeing everyone in one place wearing my jewels. I was also shocked at how many people got glittered! Not just girls! Even the guys! We had someone who took his whole shirt and tie off and got his chest glittered! Someone with a glitter beard, glitter shoulders! We had it all! Right next to the glitter station was our polaroid guest book and photo booth featuring a glitter sit on moon from Vowed & Amazed – I know how insane! It was actually perfect as our dog is called Luna which means moon and then we had Luna glitter and a sit on moon! The most sparkliest corner of the wedding. I had to get a little glitter into the day somehow.
CUTTING THE CAKE & FIRST DANCE
We cut the cake just before the first dance and boy was this a memorable moment. I had purchased an acrylic knife from Not On The High Street before the wedding, a cute pink one that I thought we could keep. Well turns out you can’t actually cut a cake with it. Robin and I tried cutting the cake and it snapped… We tried again and it snapped… I tried one last time and IT SNAPPED! It was hilarious! All caught on camera! How it could snap 3 times is beyond me! Well I guess they do say things come in threes.
We had our first dance after the cake cutting. Rock The Day Styling had made sure the bottom 6 tables were all moved from the wedding breakfast to make room for the dance floor. Robin had actually chosen our first dance, it was a random choice but it worked so well for us. We didn’t really like the whole first dance thing. It’s not us to be romantic and slow dance, so we wanted to do something different. We chose the instrumental version of All Of The Lights by Kanye West and the upbeat version. On his album the upbeat version automatically follows the instrumental, so it meant we could slow dance a little and then get the party started. My favourite club event to go to is Elrow so our first dance was sort of inspired by it. I had chatted to my lighting supplier Dreamwave Events before the wedding and they organised me a spot light, disco lighting and two confetti canons!
The idea was that Robin and I would slow dance for about 40 seconds with a spotlight on us and then when the upbeat track opened with the lyrics ‘All of the lights’, the disco lights would start going and the confetti canons would blast and everyone would jump in and the party would start. It happened exactly how we envisioned it and it was UNREAL! Such an epic moment!
THE PARTY
Our first dance had kick started our wedding reception party! We had a G&T bar in the outside area of the barn and the main bar inside and all the drink was free for everyone. As you can imagine everyone got smashed, but it honestly made it so much more enjoyable the fact that people could just help themselves. It was actually cheaper buying the alcohol than hiring a bar to do it. We had always said from the start we didn’t want anyone to pay anything at our wedding. If you can afford to it, it’s worth it. The evening consisted of lots of glitter, lots of booze and jumping in the ball pit and it was honestly so so good. I didn’t want it to end! Bob even started a cute bonfire for us to keep us warm as well.
It was such a memorable day and the wedding reception went so smoothly thanks to Rock The Day Styling. I don’t know what we would have done without them. You didn’t even know they were there. They mingled in with the guests but were on hand if you needed anything doing. The best wedding coordination ever! And that was that! That was our wedding reception and the end of our big day. It makes me sad as I didn’t want it to end, but I am honestly so content with how it all went and I’m so glad our guests enjoyed themselves.
This isn’t the last of the wedding posts though! I’ve still got so much more to share.
Here’s a list of all the suppliers that I hired to create our special day:
Photography – Jess Soper
Wedding Coordinator – Rock The Day Styling
Venue – Captains Wood Barn
Tables & Chairs – Anthology Vintage
Lighting – Dreamwave Events
Vintage Furniture – Vintage Style Hire
Photo Backdrop – Vowed & Amazed
Ice Cream Van – Molly Moo’s
Glitter – Luna Glitter Bar
Bar Staff – Envisage Promotions
Catering – The Lazy Pig
Cake – Blondi’s Bakery
Live Music – Sam Ryder
See more wedding posts here.
Peace
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