Barn Didcot Wedding Cool Barn & Woodland Micro Celebration

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We are starting the week with a bang thanks to WWW readers Jody and Anna’s The Barn Didcot wedding held on the 12th October 2020 in Oxfordshire. Their day was oh so cool, with dreamy attire, stunning portraits and a lot of love.

Jody and Anna’s story is one of re-planning due to COVID-19 and in the end they had just three days to pull together their perfect micro wedding. It was intimate and relaxed, with a gorgeous barn venue and personal touches. Anna looked stunning in her boho gown teamed with dried flower bouquet, while Jody rocked his braces and trouser combo perfectly. They had an alternative triangle cake, pampass grass decor and I am loving Anna’s denim jacket. A very special day indeed.

Jen Marino Photography captured their day so beautifully, thanks so much to Jen for sharing these tremendous images with us.

Barn Didcot Wedding

The Proposal

Jody took me (Anna) to Iceland in October to celebrate six years together as it was somewhere I’d always wanted to go. He’d planned to propose whilst we were watching the northern lights but two nights of bad weather meant the trip was cancelled, so he got down on one knee in our hotel room. Although I was disappointed not to see the lights I was secretly pleased that he proposed that way as I hate public attention!

The Vision

We wanted a relaxed fun day for everyone and good party in the evening. We fell in love with the first venue we visited. It was a field with large tipis overlooking the river and bell tents for our guests to camp over night. We wanted to make sure that our guests didn’t get bored during the day so we planned a caricaturist, vintage ice cream cart, garden games and beer pong to keep them entertained before a disco in the evening.

The venue was a blank canvas so my mum and my friend were both helping me with all of our decorations, lots of greenery to match our earthy tones. We’d planned to make our own arch that we were going to decorate with drapes and lanterns at the base, and I made some beautiful lace decorations to hang.

Jody’s mum and her husband kindly made sloe gin favours for all of our guests using berries from the trees at the venue.

Everything was planned for July 2020 and then covid arrived to spoil it all!

The Planning Process

The planning was slightly stressful at times! Like many other couples we had no choice but to postpone our big wedding when the country went into lock-down and then I was diagnosed with ME. My health wasn’t great and it made us re-evaluate everything we wanted for our wedding. We then made the decision to change all of our plans, I wasn’t well enough to plan and go through with a big day for 150 guests so we thought it would be a good idea to book a family break in a log cabin for when lock-down was over. The plan was that our immediate families would join us in the woods for a small non legal ceremony, we would then have a meal and some drinks at a local restaurant and head off to a registry office to make it legal a few days later.  Coronavirus had other ideas though and a two weeks before the new date arrived, the government announced that they were again reducing the number of guests that could attend a wedding. If we chose to go ahead we would have to tell our brothers and sisters that they could no longer be there. After cutting almost everyone off of our list we really didn’t want to remove anyone else. So the day after the update we decided to go crazy and try and find a new venue, book and re-plan a whole wedding in just three days before the new rules set in!

Have you seen our wedding checklist? You can also download the free PDF!

The Venue

Our final venue was the Barn in Didcot, Oxfordshire. We held our sons naming ceremony there so already knew it was a beautiful venue. Mark and Trisha at the barn were amazing. They went above and beyond to make sure we had the most wonderful day. They took the pressure off of us by setting up and provided us with welcome drinks on arrival and served an afternoon tea for each table. They helped with everything and nothing was too much trouble.

Our biggest worry with the last minute rearrangements was that the photos wouldn’t have the result we were originally planning. Luckily we have some beautiful wooded areas local to us that we drove over to while our guests had some drinks.

Groomsmen

Our eldest son Rhys wore the same outfit as Jody. Trousers from Moss Bros, shirt from Next and tie from Daisy and Oak Studio on Etsy.

Our pageboy and the youngest of our children Eden wore dark brown trousers from Marks and Spencer. His shirt, tie and waistcoat came from Roco clothing online.

Bridesmaids

Our daughter and bridesmaid Anais wore a beautiful burnt orange dress which we bought online from Lulus Weddings in America.

Our younger daughter and flower girl Ophelia wore a dress from Think Pink Bows, again ordered from America. It was a beautiful mid length ivory dress with a similar lace design to my dress. She then had a burnt orange cardigan from Next.

The Readings & Music

My son Rhys walked me down the aisle to an acoustic version of the Foo Fighters, Everlong.

Jody’s best man stepped up for our last minute ceremony to become our (non legal) officiant. I sat up until the early hours one night to write our service. We wanted to keep it short and sweet but still be meaningful. we included some light-hearted vows and promises.

On this day, Jody officially became step-dad to my eldest children Rhys and Anais. Anais surprised Jody and gave the most beautiful reading in front of our guests –

Even though you’re not our dad,

We know you’re always there.

With the little things you do,

You let us know you care.

You’re always there to help,

Whatever the need may be.

You’ve given of yourself

So unselfishly.

We’ve had our ups and downs,

Sometimes it’s hard to bend.

But you’re always there when we need you,

And that’s what matters in the end.

You’ve be patient, kind and firm

Over the years we’ve grown.

And we’re eternally grateful to you

As you’ve treated us as your own.

We just want to thank you

And let you know we care

A dad as great as you Is something very rare.

Your Outfits & Accessories

I’d fallen in love with a dress I’d seen on Pinterest when I was planning my imaginary wedding a couple of years before we were engaged! It ticked all the boxes, bohemian, simple and very me, the only problem was that it was in America by the wedding dress maker, Dreamers and Lovers and they didn’t have a show room in England so I didn’t think it would be possible to get. I only went to one shop to try on dresses and couldn’t find anything that I liked, I didn’t enjoy the experience and kept thinking about the dress I’d seen online. Jody knows how fussy I can be so he told me to contact them as I’d never find anything else until I’d eliminated the dress! I contacted them and they sent me a sample to try, I knew straight away that this was the dress I wanted so I sent all of my measurements to them and trusted that they’d make it perfect without ever meeting me!

Not being one to follow traditions, I chose to wear my Dr Martens with my dress!

Jody wore dark brown trousers from Moss Bros, his shirt was from Next, his tweed tie was hand made by the Etsy shop Daisy and Oak Studio. He decided not to wear a jacket as he always takes it off after 10 minutes and rolls his shirt sleeves up!

Both of our rings and my engagement ring came from Beaverbrooks.

Beauty

I done the hair and makeup for myself and my bridesmaid and flower girl. Our florist, Florence and Flowers provided the flowers for our hair.

The Flowers

We found our florist – Florence and Flowers on Etsy. We chose to have dried flowers. I sent them pictures of our outfits and my hair colour so as the hairpiece wouldn’t clash and described how our day would look. They then made up our bouquets and button holes to perfectly match what we wanted. When our plans changed again they were amazing and quickly got our order shipped out.

The Cake

I like things to be a bit different so we decided to go for a triangle cake decorated with dried flowers. My wonderfully talented friend was set the challenge to make our non traditional cake at the last minute and we think she done an amazing job. She’d never created anything like the one we requested and she managed to pull it off even getting dried flowers that almost completely matched our bouquets.

Your Photographer

We chose the amazing Jen Marino to be our photographer. Jody loves being in front of the camera and is very confident, I’m the complete opposite! Jen stood out to us as all of her photos were so natural with very few posed for pictures. She was so understanding of our constant rearranging and was prepared to do whatever we needed her to do to make sure our day went smoothly. On the day she was great, she made us feel so relaxed and even managed to get me to smile for photos which is unheard of!

The Details & Décor

My mum helped me to plan all the details and our friend has recently started her own business hiring décor for events – she very kindly lent us any items we hadn’t already bought. I’m extremely grateful to her for letting us borrow her frame and lanterns so as I could still make our ceremony arch.

The Honeymoon

We kept our cabin booking and decided to have a chilled week in the woods to recover from the extremely busy wedding prep!

Memorable Moments

I think Jody’s most memorable moment will be putting his braces on upside down, leaving himself with a big wedgie!!

Having my son walk me down the aisle, he hates attention as much as I do so I was really pleased that he agreed to do it.

My daughters reading. Jody and I were so incredibly proud of her to stand and deliver such a beautiful speech.

Our woodland photoshoot. Our photos are amazing and it was lovely to be able to take some time out for ourselves during the day.

Our change of plans meant that we actually ended up getting married on the 12th October 2020 (the legal ceremony), exactly 8 years since we first got together and 2 years after we’d got engaged.

Advice For Other Couples

Don’t stress about needing to invite everyone. It was stressful at the time but looking back we had the perfect day and wouldn’t change a thing. Having only a small number of guests meant that we got to spend time with each of them throughout the day.

I’m a perfectionist but having to change everything so quickly made me realise that I was the only person that would notice if the tiny details were missing or something was out of place, I really didn’t need to lose sleep over it!

Credit Where Credit Is Due

Wow! So very special. Wasn’t this The Barn Didcot wedding just truly gorgeous?

Jody and Anna thanks so very much for sharing your epic wedding story.

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