Zoë and Tom's festival wedding {wedding photography}

Zoë and Tom’s gorgeous festival wedding was a joy to photograph. The day was relaxed fun and had everything a guest… or bride and groom could want. From personalised cocktails, to silly games and lots and lot of wellies! I even bought special wellies especially for the occassion {leopard print as they made me laugh). Ian opted for hiking boots with his suit which with the beautiful walks across the fields was probably more sensible that the sandals I was wearing (wellies in church seemed wrong somehow!)

Here is the story of their day, in photographs and Zoë’s own words…

Where was the wedding held? My parents garden and their neighbours fields in Mayfield, Ashbourne, Derbyshire. Perfect for the relaxed festival style wedding we wanted

Tell us about your dress… The dress is Halston Heritage which I purchased from a US website. I saw the dress in a magazine quite a while ago (I think Sarah Jessica Parker was wearing one) and I always thought it would make a perfect wedding dress. I think I’m a bit of a hippy kid at heart and the softness and simple-ness of this dress always stuck in my mind.

Tell us about your hair and accessories… I had a few flowers in my hair, these were the same as those in the bouquets and button holes. I also had a Victorian broach pinned into my hair, this was given to me by Tom’s mum the night before the wedding and the broach had been given to her by Tom’s Grandma when he was first born so it was nice to include it. The only jewellery I wore was an amber pendant necklace which belonged to my Gran and is very special to me. When I saw the dress I knew that the necklace would be perfect.

Tell us about your shoes… They are from Miss KG by Kurt Geiger. I always wanted shoes I could wear again and shoes that made a statement so when I saw these I fell in love straight away! Earlier in the day I’d been in white havaianas for ease of crossing the fields and had wellies on stand by should it have been wet and muddy!

And your beautiful bridesmaids… My sister Lucie, and cousins Sally-Ann and Megan wore dresses from Zara. Our gorgeous flowergirl Cydney wore a dress from Monsoon.  ucie’s were her own shoes from Lulu Guiness Sally-Ann, Megan and Cydney wore simple ballet pumps and we all wore flip flops, except for Cydney who wore her bright Nike hi-tops, for walking across the fields!  Simple loose flowers in Lucie’s hair The others all had a simple circle of flowers entwined with rosemary

What about the handsome Tom, what did he kit himself out in? His suit was from Reiss, a tie from Thomas Pink and shoes from Jones the Bootmaker – but the really special touch was handmade silver cufflinks from Etsy.com – stamped with Kiddfest and the date (a gift from me)

Who was Tom’s right hand man/woman? Keiron, the Best Man, was in charge of suits and ties for himself and the Ushers and he did a fab job! Robyn (the Groom’s sister and best woman) was in charge of the wedding rings in the church and she wore grey to match the boys. Both of them did fab speeches!

Who gave you away? My mum!

What did you walk down the aisle to? I walked in to Purcell’s Trumpet Tune … and w danced all the way out of the churchY

ou decided yo make a cute walk across the field part of your day, Tom pretending to be the Piped piper?  After we wanted to walk across the fields to the church and back to the reception (Kiddfest) afterward. It was so much fun, and everyone had wellies at the ready, but as it was dry most people ended up walking across in their sandals.

So the reception was a bit different…I think the inspiration came when I found out that we could get married at my Mum’s local church. I love the walk across the fields to the church and just thought it would be such a lovely thing to do. We also always knew we didn’t want a typical wedding, we’re both very relaxed about the whole thing I knew I wanted a church wedding and Tom’s views were always ‘free bar and good disco = fab wedding’ so that was where we started.

That’s why we created “Kiddfest”. The name Kiddfest was created by Tom as his name is Thomas Kidd. He mentioned it as a joke (I think) but from then on that was how we referred to the wedding. The invites didn’t say ‘wedding invite’ they said Kiddfest, which confused a few of the elder members of the family to start with, but it also meant that people got excited and were kind of prepared for what lay ahead.

I didn’t want a sit down meal as I feel you lose so much time with your guests when everyone is separated, so we left it very relaxed. People could eat when they wanted to and the food was available all day. This meant there was no seating plan so we didn’t need a formal seat for everyone so we were able to have hay bales and the deckchairs and create the festival feeling, people could perch where they wanted to and just chatter away. I’ve always loved things vintage so the china tea cups and dessert plates were important to the overall look, as were the little details like salad dressings in china jugs and flowers in tea pots. The general inspiration was to make sure everyone had fun and felt involved. The summer fete/festival theme was perfect as there were games for people to play rather than just milling around and the day just evolved from things that Tom and I love. The day was really just me and Tom and what we love…..just wish we could do it every year!

  So you had a lot of finishing touches…The décor reflected our festival village fete theme… we had vintage china tea sets, flowers in tea pots and a mixture of china vases. My friend Hester made all the bunting for me and my friend Lizzie at work made the special ‘Kiddfest’ bunting as a surprise gift.

A couple of my friends and I made all the hanging paper hearts and heart confetti and other friends collected jars for me to place candles in to hang from the trees to provide twinkling light in the evenings. Lots of white fairy lights in the garden in the evening. I used a collection of old suitcases as a low table between the deckchairs, also used one to store the blankets (should people have got chilly) and for the wedding post. We borrowed deckchairs from family friends and hay bales from the field owners for seating.

We had simple flowers on the tables in various vases and tea pots and I also used apples as part of the table decorations and pears from the trees in my parents garden. A friend made lots of little brightly coloured wooded signs to be dotted about the garden, fields (saying things like bar, Loos, Boules, Welly Park and Campsite)

Other finishing touches to the festival day were the ‘Kiddfest’ branded cups, cocktail menu’s and the little information cards. These were all created by my friend Hannah who was also responsible for the brilliant festival flyer style invites.

So tell us about you two… We met in one of Tom’s bars when I first moved to London, I was being chatted up by one if his bar staff and Tom didn’t appear to like it very much so kept coming over with drinks for my friend and I and sending the other guy off to do jobs to keep him out of the way! We started going out about 5 months later. Fast forward 3 1/2 years to a sunny Monday morning in June 2011 and he called me to ask if I’d like to meet him for lunch, he then completely caught me by surprise and proposed while we sat on the dock outside my office.

13 Weeks later we got married!

“Cute story eh …”

So the party… The party was very relaxed…. lots of silly props, and the kids love the animal masks. Owning a bar Tom got his amazing “mixologists” to create special cocktails for the day… which were yummy!

We opted for a cheese cake as we both love cheese. We also didn’t want a traditional wedding cake as the meal was very relaxed and with the summer fete themes that we had running through the day the idea was to have lots of delicious puddings that people could help themselves to like pavlova, roulade, trifle, cup cakes, rocky road etc etc so to add another cake on top of that would have been over kill.  The cheese that Sarah at the Cheddar Gorge supplied was amazing and she presented it in such a beautiful way we were over the moon. Everyone loved it so much we had people trying to take the leftovers away with them at the end of the night!

The speeches were a highlight of the day… Particularly as my brother took the role of compere, along with hats, pegs and moustaches as props! But the best man Keirons speech “Top tips for a best man speech” played over the speakers as a mock instructional tape was hilarious! What was your first dance song and did it have any meaning? ‘I would do anything for you’  by Foster the People

We actually struggled to come up with a song that we both liked. I was listening to this album at work one day and this song just hit me and made me quite emotional, it just summed up my feelings really. Tom wasn’t so keen as he thought no one would know it as the band are relatively new and thought he could come up with something else….. however the day before the wedding we still didn’t have a first dance song. I then played this one for my sister and it just made me cry, after that Tom said we’d have to use it! Everlong by The Foo Fighters was Tom’s preference for a first dance but we both agreed it may be a bit heavy so we played it at the end of the night instead.

Last but not least what are your top tips? 

1) Do it your way, it’s your day, you don’t have to follow traditions if you don’t want to.

2) Always have someone else to clear up the next day (we didn’t and although lots of people pitched in to help it took two days to sort it all out and we were exhausted!)

3) Go away straight after, even if its not your main honeymoon, just take a few days to be together with no one else around…..you definitely need (and deserve)it.

THE END

Congratulations Zoë and Tom! We had a great day!