I have such a beautiful wedding for you here. I had the privilege of photographing Harry & Kate’s stunning wedding in October last year in the Brecon Beacons.

For me, it was one of my favourite weddings of the year! From all the DIY elements to the goose bumping music performed in the church to our epic shoot in the Beacons itself. The whole day was filled with incredible love that oozed out of this super cool couple.

Enjoy!

Maria Farrelly Photography x

What was your budget?

Not much! And we did lots on the cheap but still went over it!

How would you describe your wedding theme?

Eco-friendly, Fair Trade, Ethical, DIY, Mish mash, Midnight Blue and Rose Gold

Tell us about your wedding dress/suit

Kate – I found my dress on my second wedding dress shopping trip. I was quite relieved to have it sorted so early but do kind of wish I’d got to try on more as it was a special experience! I really wanted to try and find a fairly traded or vintage wedding dress and searched a lot online. I eventually found an award winning ethical designer called Sanyukta Shrestha who works with fairly traded and eco-friendly materials. I booked in for a sample sale appointment, otherwise I couldn’t have afforded her gorgeous gowns! I had already looked at her collections online and mentioned a few of my favourites to her. She happened to have my favourite (the ‘Alice’ Wedding Dress from her ‘Wallis In Love’ collection) included in the sale and it just happened to fit pretty much perfectly – very jammy! I’d tried a few on by then but this one felt like it was ‘the one’ as it was a bit different and could give me two different looks. I wore the beautiful and delicate lace overlay for the ceremony and day reception, then removed it for the evening, adding her ‘Opal’ belt to give me a bit of glitz for the evening party : )

I knew I wanted to wear a 2-tier veil and the first one I tried on just happened to be called ‘Katie’ so that settled it.

I got my heels from MissKG after a long search (start looking early!) They were sparkly gold with a hint of a rose tone.

Harry finally got his suit from Next after looking around lots of shops and trying loads on. His mum went on a very helpful waistcoat mission and ordered lots for him and the best men to try on.

What was your favourite part of your wedding?

This is SUCH a difficult question!!! We loved all of it. We both really enjoyed getting ready in the morning with our bridal party, friends and family.. Hearing the lovely words, prayers and music at the church, being surrounded by sheep on Llangynidr mountain whilst having our photoshoot(!), being welcomed so wonderfully by all our guests when we sat to dinner, wonderful speeches, dancing the Okey Cokey in the crazy Ceilidh, sparkler fun, forgetting our suitcase and having to borrow clothes and toothpaste etc. from some friends of ours who happened to also be staying at the lovely Ty Croeso B&B!

Who did you pick as your bridesmaids &/or best man and why?

My sister Beccy was my Maid of Honour, my bridesmaids were my sister-in-law Anna, my old secondary school friend Marianne and friend of over 10 years Rachel. Flower girls were my niece Isabella and Harry’s sister’s Emily and Hannah. Page Boys were my nephew Benjamin and my Bridesmaid Rachel’s boy Jonah.

Harry had 3 best men, his old school friend from Brit School Jose who is also in a band with us, and his friends and music production team Dave and Tom. and his ushers were his brothers Jack and George, my brother Rob, and his friends and bandmates Michael and Mehdi. Michael was also our Master of Ceremonies and sang us back down the aisle with ‘Happy’ backed up by my wonderful choir mates from London Contemporary Voices and best man Dave on keys

How did the proposal happen?

Harry proposed in early December 2014. He took me out on a surprise day trip in London where we live. We went ice-skating outside the Natural History Museum then went to an amazing Cantonese afternoon tea at the Grand Imperial Restaurant at the Grosvenor Hotel in Victoria. He popped the question while I had a mouthful of jasmine tea and with the shock and emotion, it took me a while to swallow it and give him my answer! We then called our families to share the news and went engagement ring shopping on King’s Road, Chelsea.

We wanted to get a certified, fairly sourced diamond for my engagement ring which was pretty hard to find. We eventually found an award winning fair trade specialist jewellery designer called Anna Loucah who from the the first moment I spoke to, I knew I wanted to use her services as she was so helpful, lovely, genuine and accommodating to our budget!

Anna also made our fair trade gold wedding rings, made me some stunning rose gold earrings. and the gifts for my bridesmaids (necklaces) and our mums brooches which were all fair trade rose gold and modelled on my engagement ring design.

Any DIY stories/tutorials you’d like to share?

I wanted to have DIY decorations and love paper flowers ever since seeing a stunning shop window covered in them. I searched for videos and found some helpful tutorials on making them so me, my mum, friends and family all chipped in and spent hours making 3D origami flowers, tissue pom-poms and paper cutting circles out of my left over invitations (ordered way too many!) to make garlands. I also used cut up bits of the left over invites to mount peoples names on for the seating plan.
Harry’s mum and aunties made loads of amazing long bunting which we needed as the hall was so big and ceiling so high!

A friend of mine runs a vintage crockery hire company called Tea for Two. I loan my own collection of cake stands through this company so we used all of those plus lots of tea cups and saucers for the DIY tea and coffee table.

We bought all of the flowers ourselves (except bouquets, button holes and hair flowers) from the New Covent Garden Flower Market which saved us A LOT of money.

We had all the family collecting jars and nice bottles for candles and flowers and also raided other friends weddings leading up to ours for anything they’d let us have! We managed to acquire tree-trunk cake stands, lovely blue Ty Nant bottles which we used for flowers, hessian table runners and more jars and left over candles!

What was your first dance & why?

We had ‘Only Have Eyes For You’ by The Flamingos. We can’t remember how we came across it but both loved the dreaminess and classic vibe of the music and lyrics

In hindsight, was there anything you would have done differently?

The only thing we would have changed was being a bit more organised in advance with more detailed job lists for who needed to do what etc. It was an ‘everybody chip in/DIY’ wedding which is what we wanted but a few things could have gone smoother with more advanced planning and delegation.

Do you have any advice for future couples?

We were told by many married couples that they felt like they hardly saw each other on their wedding days. This was a helpful warning and I think helped us make sure we didn’t rush around too much and actually enjoyed hanging out with each other too!
I think another piece of good wedding advice is to get things done early, even if it feels too early as the time really does disappear and before you know it you’ve run out of time. I was up until 3am the night before our wedding still paying people and writing lists for the Ushers (I don’t recommend doing that!!)

Why did you choose your venue?

We ideally wanted a tipi/marquee for the reception venue but couldn’t afford it, and as our wedding was in October in Wales it could have been a risk! In the end we used Llangynidr Village Hall and chose it mainly because of the size. We needed a big space for quite a large number of guests and struggled to find venues we could afford that could seat over 175 people. We also wanted to style and decorate the wedding and do lots of DIY things so a village hall was perfect. This one happened to be one I’d been to a few times growing up, singing at the Eisteddfods there so there was a nice warm memory attached! When we went to visit the hall, the lady was really helpful and relaxed and the setting was perfect, in the Brecon Beacons with hills and trees views surrounding and a big field attached.
We wanted the food to be ‘festival style’ so having the field was perfect for our cook (The Ethical Chef) to set up his cooking tent.
He made some delicious Thai curry and chilli with fair trade and organic, top quality local ingredients.

What’s the best piece of marriage advice you received?

We asked a good friend and old colleague of mine, Chris Matthews who runs the wonderful Linden Church in Swansea to do the address at our wedding ceremony. He gave some great advice about the fact that even though we were celebrating our partnership we still very much needed our friends and family’s support and love too as we all need each other, need community to thrive.

What was your favourite thing about planning a wedding?

It was great to take on a big event project with Harry – think planning a wedding is a good way of testing out your team-work skills in preparation for married life! I personally really enjoyed thinking about the atmosphere of the day. It was important to us to have good music, lots of warm decorations and arranging things in such a way that our guests felt fully relaxed throughout. I personally enjoyed planning the designs and decorations. Spent hours on Pinterest and helpful wedding blogs like Cwtch the Bride!

What was your least favourite thing about planning a wedding?

The guest list was hard as we know so many lovely people and just wanted to invite EVERYONE! Suppliers

Photographer: Maria Farrelly Photography

Ceremony Venue: St. Mary the Virgin Church in Wales, Brynmawr

Reception Venue: Llangynidr Village Hall

Kate’s Dress: Sanyukta Shrestha

Kate’s Jewellery: Anna Loucah

Kate’s Shoes: Miss KG

Bridesmaids’s Outfit: Dress – TK Max

Flower Girls’ Outfit: Dress – Monsoon / Shoes – TOMS Glitter

Page Boys’ Outfit: Roco clothing

Fair trade Wedding Cake: Jane Dawkins (Wonderful friend of the family) Cheese ‘Cake’ – Waitrose (Did you happen to get any pictures of that? I don’t think I actually saw it on the day – so much going on!!)

Flowers: Joe Coombs (Abergavenny Garden Centre Florist) – Button Holes. Love Lily – Bouquets & Hair flowers

Hair: Lisa Logan

Make Up: Bride’s: Angharad Gibbs Assistant: Alex Gallop