How to Plan a Vintage Country Wedding in a Small Garden Setting

Pink cocktails for a Vintage Country wedding reception

Combine vintage and country wedding styles in an intimate garden setting, and you have a much-loved theme that has become a classic! The open-air surroundings and natural flowers and greenery provide much of the charm. Plus, you get to style the venue with a blend of dainty-and-rustic elements, serve a light, fresh selection of dishes and desserts, and gift guests with the prettiest wedding favors inspired by the setting. Gather ideas from our own Vintage Country Wedding set that we’re thrilled to share with you here!

Table and Venue Decorations to DIY

Your small garden setting could simply be a grassy stretch in a home backyard, a tree-shaded corner of an orchard or vineyard, or a section of a botanical garden. Ideal for vintage-country themed table settings where we combined dainty lace runners with burlap tablecloths for a rustic look – then contrasted these with modern “ghost chairs.”

Lace and burlap wedding tablescape details.

For centerpieces, we created groupings of fresh flowers in goblets and clear vases, crystal candelabra, and little clay birds. While for the place settings, we set classic white china on gold-edged doilies and matched these with dainty lace-patterned place cards. And to welcome each guest, we placed a ruffled rose bag filled with pillow mints on each plate.

Dainty sachets for ladies

Wedding Cake and Desserts Table

Vanilla cream ruffled wedding cake with pink peonies and mini cake bunting.

We chose a lovely ruffle wedding cake with amaretto-flavored buttercream icing and adorned with flowers to fit right into the garden setting. These were matched with pastel-frosted cupcakes for guests to enjoy at the reception or to take home as favors (seen on each plate in first photo).

Floating roses in glass vases for a vintage country wedding

In keeping with the vintage theme, we assembled a charming DIY embroidery hoop backdrop decked with hanging bottles of fresh flowers to complete the dessert buffet and favor display in one.

A Light Menu & Refreshing Cocktails

A garden reception lends itself perfectly to light dishes made with fresh ingredients – the type you would serve for a wedding breakfast or brunch. Think mini pancakes, waffles, croissants, or muffins, as well as finger sandwiches, roll-ups or wraps with a variety of fillings like salmon and dill, chicken and mandarin orange spread, dried tomato and basil, and artichoke-cheese spread among many others.

Complement these with a clear or light cream soup featuring fresh garden vegetables, and a mixed green salad tossed with chicken strips, sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, carrots, mushrooms, hard-boiled egg, raisins, croutons, and 2 or 3 choices of dressings.

Fruit tarts and mini pies are sure crowd-pleasers and easy to serve, too. Have a selection of 4 or 5 favorites for guests to serve themselves – from cherry and blueberry pies, to pineapple, key lime, apple, apricot, pear or peach.

Pink lemonade cocktails

For wedding beverages with a vintage AND garden flair, set up a drinks table offering rosé cocktails, fruit-infused concoctions, bellinis, or mimosas. While for a truly refreshing close to the meal, consider frozen cocktail desserts or spiked frozen treats.

Favor and Send-off Ideas

Vintage country wedding signage

Thinking of wedding favor options? A lovely idea you can recreate would be a “make and take” scents bar, where guests get to blend their own fragrant diffuser oils in vintage-style glass bottles. Alongside, display handmade lace brooches on pastry stands for the ladies to choose from.

Lace favor wands for a romantic vintage coutnry wedding

Then, to send-off the couple at the end of the celebration, prepare quaint lace wands for guests to wave, as well as DIY wedding favor cones filled with loose petals for tossing.

With so much charm in every detail, it’s no wonder a Vintage Country theme will never go out of style!

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