This is a wedding with a lot of personality and thoughtful touches. A real family affair where everyone came together to give Katie and Matthew the perfect wedding party.

Katie and Matthew married on the 5th October 2013, with a church ceremony followed by a barn reception. They wanted their wedding to be relaxed and fun, with a royal street party feel.

They home made so much of their wedding day, from hand picked wild flowers for the wedding tables to the fab decorations and jam favours. There was so much style too, with Katie donning a chic Justin Alexander dress with bountiful hydrangea bouquet, while the bridesmaids wore navy jumpsuits. Fabulous.

Thanks so so much to the utterly brilliant Gemma Williams for sharing her images with us.

Music wise we had three hymns including Jerusalem and Shine Jesus Shine. We had William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet by Craig Armstrong playing whilst we signed the register. It was very romantic and lots of people were tearful!

On the tables we had collected glass bottles and jars and put wild flowers in. my bridesmaids spent ages doing this the day before the wedding whilst I was getting pampered - they are the best friends anyone could ask for!

The second cake was a cheese cake! We chose several types of cheese from our local cheese shop and stacked the rounds of cheese to make it look like a wedding cake!! We served this after the afternoon tea with port - it was such a hit with the guests.

We knew that we didn't want to have a formal sit down dinner and I loved the idea of having an afternoon tea. Something informal but I knew it would look so pretty and wanted to hire vintage china and tableware. My auntie and her husband who run the vintage tea shop in Hereford offered to do the catering for us, they had not done a wedding previously but we were overjoyed with the outcome on the day. It really was perfect. We had finger sandwiches, cakes and scones with jam and butter. My nan and I made the jam ourselves and put it into tinny jars a local hotel had saved for me. I used material in our wedding colours of navy and red to make tops for the jam and tidied twine around them and a label with each person's name on it. We had vintage crockery, cake stands, tea sets etc - it was so beautiful. We borrowed the long tables from the local village hall and borrowed enough chairs for everyone so these were mix-matched!! We bought rolls of hessian and used that to make table clothes.

All of the decorations were homemade. Myself and my friends spent months and months making everything. I could not believe the help I received and we all really had the best time spending time together making everything. We made the invitations, bunting, table plans, place names etc!!

Seeing as my husband wanted to wear uniform and I wanted a tea party, a theme slowly came together and it ended up being a royal street party. Everything was reds and blues. The transformation of the tin barn once all of the bunting was hung and the tables were laid. We also put hundreds of jams jars, which friends and family had saved for us, and my friends had decorated, around the barn with tealights in - they really did look superb.

Its so hard to explain all of the little details - but so much thought and detail went into everything and everything was homemade. I have extremely talented friends who I will be eternally grateful to for helping with everything and especially, Claire Bushnell, Laura Read and Zoe New along with my fabulous bridesmaids who worked so hard to make everything perfect.

One of my very close friends Sarah Jane Jones did my hair which I totally loved, she also did some of the bridesmaids whilst Nicki and one of my other friends Jocelyn Mayo-Evans helped out. They all looked so stunning.

The manager of Mac Make Up in Cardiff travelled up to our make up for the day and she really did such an amazing job on myself, my mum and my older bridesmaids. On the morning of the wedding I had the perfect gift from my hubby, some beautiful diamond earrings and a pearl bracelet from my parents. It was such an amazing morning spending time with all my bridesmaids and my mum getting ready and relaxing. We didn't get married until 2pm so we had plenty of time to enjoy ourselves and no rush.

My dad and I travelled to the church in a beautiful cart pulled by two white horses, it was perfect and I felt like such a princess. The bridesmaids and my mum were able to travel together in a white Landrover which seated 11 people!! It used to belong to Royal Family.

The church service was absolutely beautiful and the church had been decorated by mum and her friend Mandy with beautiful wild flower. It was the best feeling in the world walking into that church to see my husband to be, all of our grooms men and all of our amazing friends and family.

My husband had two best men, his brother Chris who wore army uniform and his best friend Dan who wore his fireman uniform. My brother Joe, who was an Usher and Chris were our witnesses for the register. It was lovely to involve our brothers in that way. Everyone did so much to help with the day. The day before the wedding my brother and Dan amongst many others were at the house helping to set everything out.

My grandparents also played a big part in the day and my nan planted up hundreds of mini terracotta pots with plants in which were dotted around the barn. My granddad also made a huge red postbox for everyone to put their cards in. it was perfect and we were so happy with it.

When we returned to the house we had welcome drinks on the lawn. It was so lovely to have the reception at home, it felt so right to be there. We had a welcome tent and my friend Laura had made huge bunting with the words welcome on it. We had saved hundreds of jars and washed them and put twine around them and used them for the welcome drinks with paper straws with blue and red stripes on. We used pimms or pink lemonade for the welcome drinks and there were plenty of them to get the party started. We had an old fashioned grammar phone playing whilst the welcome drinks took place. Canapés were served which included smoked salmon belinis.

We then had the tea party followed by cheese and port and then champagne and the speeches. They were fabulous!!!

After the tea party the guests made their way outside where there was a barn and seating area on the lawn - It was such a lovely warm evening! I threw my bouquet and one of my good friends Louise Freddi caught it!! Cant wait for their announcement now!

The evening was so much fun - the wed shed was cleared out of most of the tables and chairs and we had an amazing band known as The Renditions who played until gone 1am. Everyone partied hard all night.

The food for the evening was a fish and chip van which really went down a treat with everyone!

Our first dance - we danced to At Last by Etta James. It was perfect song and I loved dancing in my dress!

Being on the dancefloor with my bridesmaids and best friends all night - I changed out of my incredibly high Jenny Packham shoes into my sparkly black Vans and frilly socks which had all been bought for my hen do in Ibiza.

The whole day was perfect!! I could go on all day.....

Don't feel that you have to conform to traditions - we had such a mixture of tradition and then things that we just wanted to do and we were so happy with the outcome.

Dress | High Society Cowbridge

Flowers | Hibiscus Rooms Hereford

Crockery | The Vintage Crockery Hire

Catering | Miffy & Asanga - Vintage Tea Rooms Hereford

Fish and chip | Ewyas Harold Herefordshire

Photographer | Gemma Williams

Bar | All Barredup Ross on Wye

Wow wow wow. Didn't the barn look amazing?!

Thanks so much to Katie and Matthew for sharing all about their wedding on WWW XOXO Lou