Jo and Miles opted to have a fun and relaxed weekend wedding that their friends could turn into a mini holiday. They booked out Ilam Hall, which is a YHA hostel and everyone filled the dorm rooms! They are a really stylish pair so they decorated Ilam Hall with beautiful wildflowers and lots of personalised Jo + Miles touches!
Miles is part of a cycling team so they had a sweet custom bike welcome sign outside the hostel! 
They also dried lavender to make confetti and put them in floral fabric mini bags!
I love shooting alternative weddings and basically embracing it all and getting immersed in the wedding so I opted to stay from Friday evening until Sunday morning. When I arrived at my dorm I found they had named all our rooms after music bands and placed the CDs for that band inside the rooms! We also got a cute welcome pack in a brown paper bag!
The first night was pie and chips night with 4 different types of pie. I’m really keen to come back to Ilam Hall for a cycling weekend with my boyfriend, the catering is really good there!
After Friday dinner, the guests played garden games, and then Miles hosted a pub quiz with an appropriate round of Tour De France questions
The next morning, myself and most of the wedding party went on a hike through Dovedale to Thorpe Cloud. 4 of the wedding guests even went on a run, which seemed like madness to me in that heat!! In case you’re wondering yes I did actually stand in the river.
Miles and Jo decorated the ceremony room beautifully with pom poms and fabric streamers and lots of wildflowers
The ceremony was quite late in the day to allow the guests to enjoy themselves a bit more…
Miles got ready in a 6 bed dorm and outside. He wore a mixture of Topman and Kooples in earthy brown and green shades with a lavender button hole.
Jo got ready in the largest bedroom and wore a Claire Pettibone wedding dress with her hair in a fishtail plait
The ceremony was short but sweet with several readings that celebrated Miles and Jo’s quirkiness and personal vows they had written for each other.
After the ceremony, they tossed the dried lavender confetti, which Miles and Jo instantly regretted making as they realised it would be really difficult to unpick from their hair, but it got a great laugh!
Everyone had Pimms and canapes in the sun…
Before going in for an Ottolenghi-inspired dinner.
The cake was made by their friends Bex and Ruth and frankly it was bloody fantastic! It was a rustic naked wedding cake complete with lots of fruit and flowers!
The speeches were held back in the ceremony room, there were lots of tears and laughter
Jo and Miles wanted to keep their day as informal and relaxed as possible, but we did a few couple photos as the setting was so lovely
After that it was party time. Miles is probably the best dancing groom I’ve ever seen!
All in all I just want to thank Jo and Miles for letting me both photograph and be a part of their brilliantly laid back wedding, it was awesome and you guys rock. As does seconds of an English fry up on Sunday morning!
