Theme

I strongly advice anyone doing a party of any kind to have a theme. Nothing super elaborate but to the point. It's a great help when deciding on food, colours, décor and anything else party related you can think of. It's not meant to be like a theatre or a masquerade and you can make it very subtle. Having a Star Wars theme don't have to mean you've got storm troopers and Darth Vader invited, but you can choose subtle details. The nerds will know and the rest will just have a great time.

Of course we have a theme. This party will be in the Swedish equivalent to the hilly American south and because I'm the DIY queen who is keeping a lock on the wallet, the obvious choice was to steal ideas from the American poor south. The hillbillies. But since it's me I won't be able to not style things (once a designer - always a designer), so it will, whether I like it or not, lean heavily towards vintage. Those two are actually closer than people think. Vintage is the romantic notion of life on the countryside, so it's just a bit more arranged than real life. And the car wrecks are stowed away.

We have a barn

We're blessed with one thing. We come from the countryside and my parents still live on their farm. This cuts a huge cost from the budget because we don't have to fork out money on a venue. We'll have the ceremony on a field and the party in the barn. There are lots of space for people to stay, some in the house but also camp out in one way or the other. This means that it's also free for friends and family to stay.

At the moment I don't have pictures because when we visited the last time, a couple of weeks ago, I forgot my camera. We did get rough measurements though so we could start planning.

It's a classic barn with earth floor and huge double doors. The size we have to play with is 9x11.5 m (10x12.5 yds) which isn't huge but considering we're expecting somewhere in the neighbourhood of 60 guests, that's actually perfect. It will have to be cleared of hay bales, straw and as much dust and web as we can get rid of naturally. Until that work begins, I'll finalise the décor plans.