Lavender-Themed Outdoor Wedding at South Farm, Cambridge

“Kevin and I first met at school, and then we lost touch. We were both going through a divorce at the same time and reconnected through Facebook. Our inspiration for our wedding was our relationship. We had both had very traditional weddings with our exes and we wanted to reflect us and our relationship. We wanted lots of fun and laughter, and we wanted our guests to laugh and have fun.”

“South Farm was incredible. We originally wanted to get married abroad, but I had been poorly, leaving me in a wheelchair, so we wanted somewhere that I could use the chair if I needed it, and we wanted to have a mini holiday, too. South Farm gave us 2 nights and all the family stayed. The venue gave us the country (I’m a country girl) farm animals as well as space and the beautiful elegance of the grounds. We also surprised our guests with some fun entertainment. Both our first weddings were very traditional church weddings and we wanted the opposite of that. We wanted fun, silliness, laughter and not tradition. Plus, we dedicated our day to our guests for helping us through the hardest and worst time of our lives (I was in hospital for 3 months).”

“I have a PEG tube in my tummy meaning I can’t eat food and have liquid food through my tube. So access to my tube was very important, plus I didn’t want the tube to be visible and sticking out through my dress. I wanted my dress to be a bit summer garden fairy-like. I tried on several dresses before finding the perfect dress, but it needed a lot of adjustments to allow access to my PEG, so my PEG wasn’t visible as parts of the dress were originally see-through. So lots of fittings and adjustments. My tummy is also very distended and looks like I have a big fat tummy, so this made me feel very self-conscious, but the seamstress was amazing and made my tummy appear as flat as possible. However, on the day, I was in a lot of pain and couldn’t wait to get it off as the boning in the dress began to dig in. My husband and his 5 best men all had matching suits with lilac bow ties, and my husband wore a black bow tie.”

“Our families knew each other as some of them went to school together, so we faced little challenges around blending families. We live in East Sussex, so most of our family stayed in Cambridge. While we were there, we found out that my husband’s nan was buried just around the corner from the venue, which he didn’t know, so that was a nice surprise. Kev’s family dynamics are interesting, his parents were 15 and 16 when he was born and his mum didn’t know she was pregnant. So he had his mum’s surname as a baby. Then, his mum married, and his stepdad adopted him. Then, later in life, he changed his name to his biological dad’s surname. His mum left him when he was 12, and he hasn’t seen her since, but he does see his mum’s siblings. So Kev had 3 different families at the wedding, but his mum wasn’t there. We both come from very big families who all grew up in the same seaside town. We couldn’t invite everyone so we had to agree on the number of family members each. We couldn’t invite all of our cousins, and this caused a bit of a problem. We justified it by telling everyone that we wanted to thank the people/family and friends who gave us help and support while I was poorly. So we only invited people who were there for us and to whom we wanted to thank. We made it clear that we were dedicating our day to saying thank you to them. We had a table of photos of people who had passed away, and we mentioned our late grandparents in our vows, too.”

“We didn’t have any young children at the wedding. The youngest was my stepdaughter, who was 11 at the time, and my Maid of Honour’s daughter was the same age, so they played together. Our wedding was very adult; we had a murder mystery, a casino and a bucking bronco (which was a penis). So the girls were still able to play along with the murder mystery and casino and even had a go on the bucking willy. I also got them activity packs, but I don’t think they had time to complete them.”

“Our ethical elements (apart from the venue) included wild seeds (for the bees) as favours and a small pot of Cambridge honey. We also used invitations that were impregnated with flower seeds so they could be planted after use. South Farms use all their grown vegetables, herbs and meat in their food. We had rose petals for confetti and a little pony called Jack who handed out all of the rose petals to our guests.”