A totally chilled out, homemade, country-fair extravaganza in Hilden Brewery in September. This wedding combines the best of homemade and handmade with fab food, great music and homebrewing, what more could boys and girls want?!

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How's about this for the perfect late summer wedding - today's couple Helen and Kevin celebrated their vows with a totally chilled out, homemade, country-fair extravaganza in Hilden Brewery in September. It sounds like my sort of party, and I'm guessing a lot of you will too! This celebration combines the best of homemade and handmade, with great music, fabulous food and some homebrewing that had the boys (and girls) happy all day and all night! We're delighted to be able to bring you Helen and Kevin's love story told through the images of Paper Window Photography...

Kevin and Helen met serendipitously over 5 years ago, just before she was due to travel around South East Asia for a month their eyes met across a crowded bar (The Spaniard in Belfast) and he came over to talk to her. They exchanged numbers and he stayed on Helen's mind throughout the trip, so when she arrived back home she decided to make contact again, they met up, started dating and the rest is what you see before you...

Kevin was offered a job in Bosnia a couple of years ago so we both decided to take career breaks and head off together for an eastern European adventure. We had an absolutely amazing year together exploring the Balkans. On our last weekend there Kevin hired a car so we could drive out into the countryside that weekend and enjoy “one last walk” in the beautiful Bosnian countryside. It was St. Patrick’s Day, it was beautifully warm and sunny, and spring was in the air. We climbed a lovely little hill called GrÄka Gradina that sticks up by itself on a huge open plain, there was still some lingering snow but spring flowers like violets, crocuses and primroses were beginning to show. At the top of that beautiful mountain he got down on one knee and asked me to join him on the biggest adventure of our lives.

My Nana sadly died a few months before Kevin proposed to me. I was very close to her and she was a big fan of Kevin. After a few weeks looking for something a little bit different to the usual engagement rings we discovered that she had left me hers. It had originally been given to my Grandpa from his grandmother who’d worn it as her engagement ring too, so it is a real family heirloom. It’s one of the prettiest rings I’ve ever seen, a beautiful flower setting of a single diamond surrounded by eight sapphires, and it is a lovely reminder of my Nana.

Kevin and Helen's overriding wish for the wedding celebration was for it to be as relaxed and informal as possible. "We wanted everyone to enjoy themselves and remember our wedding for being a bit of craic and something different to the norm. We both love spending time outdoors so we didn’t want to be restricted to a function room all day. We’ve always loved the beer festivals at Hilden Brewery, and we loved the management's relaxed attitude and openness to different ideas. The option of the amazing tipis, barrels of Hilden Ale available for guests to help themselves and a big BBQ in the pretty gardens clinched it for us!

The wedding decor was very much a family affair, with Helen's Kevin Mum organising all of the flowers as a surprise (having gotten a brief from the bride of course). She, her sister and Helen's sister-in-law’s mum made up dozens of arrangements in the days before the wedding, there were beautiful flowers everywhere on the day. Little pots of raspberry and rhubarb jam, harvested and homemade by Helen's brother from his allotment in the Lake District as wedding favours, and Kevin’s Mum organised a super sweet buffet, packing glass jars with dozens of old-school and traditional sweets, apparently a real hit with all the big and little children (who doesn't love sweets!).

We added some comfy seating areas with sofas and straw bales and a garden games section on the lawn where guests played everything from boules, croquet and hurling to swing ball. Running around in a wedding dress and bare feet for an impromptu game of Ultimate Frisbee with Kevin and our friends was a great contrast to the formality that we wanted to avoid and was one of the highlights of the day. In the evening we had a massive chimney for guests to sit and chat around as the stars came out. We’d bought and borrowed lots of lanterns and blankets so it was lovely to be able to stay outside even as the evening got cooler.

We were completely overwhelmed by the effort that our families and friends went to for us to create such a great party. We couldn’t get over how fantastic the tipis looked and are still singing “our” song (the one performed by our Dutch relatives). We loved having so many homemade things there that family had created for us, they were such special and thoughtful gifts. It was great to see people having so much fun playing the garden games that friends had lent us, it was a fantastic way for people to meet each other and it really helped to keep everyone entertained and have a laugh. The speeches were a big highlight. Kevin’s brother David was hilarious and my Dad sang a verse of the Beatles ‘All My Lovin’ (a song he used to sing to me as a toddler) and almost had me in tears.

The musical highlight for us was our Dutch family performing a song that my aunt had written about us. We were so impressed, the lyrics had everyone laughing and it was a real show stopper!

With so many friends and family travelling to be with the couple for their wedding, they decided to postpone the honeymoon in favour of taking the opportunity to spend some time with everyone, so after the wedding they enjoyed a lovely week going on day trips and relaxing at home. But a couple of months later they headed off to for an adventure "In November we headed off on an amazing flash-packing honeymoon. We had a week in Nepal over Diwali (the festival of lights), exploring the Himalayan foothills and temples of the Kathmandu Valley. We toured around India with a driver seeing sunrise at the Taj Mahal, going on a wildlife safari and seeing a huge wild tiger, exploring temples and castles in Jaipur and Delhi and rode elephants and rice boats along the beautiful Keralan backwaters . It is such a fascinating and colourful part of the World; a real trip of a lifetime"

After creating your own perfect day, and clearly achieving your goal of a relax and informal celebration, what advice do you have for others in the throes of planning? "Think about the things you both enjoy and incorporate them into the wedding. Break the mould, be creative and you can stretch your budget a long way."

Huge Congratulations to Kevin and Helen - hope you're loving newlywed life! And for those of you who can't get enough of this festival celebration, you can see more in the couple's sweet video created by their friend Matthew as a special wedding gift... http://vimeo.com/49921108

And a great big Thank You to Paper Window Photography for sharing this fabulous day with us! To see more of Paper Window's work pop on over to paperwindow.co.uk

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