Ceri & Terry didn’t really plan to have a theme for their November wedding, however once they started with the origami they found it hard to stop! Ceri told me all about their beautiful wedding, “When we first started planning the wedding, we were determined to do our best to be relaxed about the whole thing. We decided that, if we could find the right venue then even if everything else went wrong, we’d be ok – we could turn up in jeans and order pizza, if necessary, as long as we could get all our loved ones in the right place. After a couple of months of looking, we found it: Great Wilbraham Hall Barn. It was perfect – big enough for our guests, fairly isolated, licensed for weddings (we wanted everything in the same place), ideal for the winter months with lots of warmth and character, and within 30 minutes drive of Terry’s grandparents.”
“A few weeks after we had booked, we got the call – the barn had burnt down. Ah. So, onto plan B. We saw the marquee which was put up in place of the barn, and liked it – it was light and airy, and still had all the things about the location that we had loved initially. The only problem was that, whereas the barn was full of its own character, the marquee would definitely need decorating. We spent a lot of time going for walks and kicking ideas about, until I remembered the Senbazuru – an ancient Japanese legend promises that anyone who folds a thousand origami cranes will be granted a wish. It is a traditional wedding gift, or something done together by the prospective husband and wife to prepare them for married life together – it does take a lot of time and patience. I love origami, but Terry had to learn – which he did, and the next few months were spent folding cranes together in the evenings. We also went on to fold tiny cranes for all the place cards, and decided to carry the theme through, picking origami animals to be our table names and I even folded my own origami bouquet.”
The couple spent months collecting different types of paper for all the origami – from comic book patterns (Terry is a big fan) to headed paper from their work! “It was really exciting getting the paper for the cranes,” Ceri continued. “Every time we got a new batch in we’d sit and fold one of every colour just to see what they looked like!”
“The thing which we found most difficult about planning a wedding was the assumption from other people that things would always be done a certain way,” the bride concluded. “We wanted to start from scratch and do things because they felt right, rather than just because they were traditional. Our two best friends are guys, so no bridesmaids, but two best men. Because the marquee wasn’t licensed for weddings, we were legally married in a very small, very quick ceremony in the billiard room, and then had a public ceremony in front of all our guests, so we personally adapted both ceremonies to make them right. Neither of us were particularly interested in wedding flowers – so we didn’t have them, using flower-pots filled with Love Hearts to stand our origami animals up in in the centre of each table.”
“Also, music is really important to both of us, so we chose the songs that make us think of each other for background music throughout the reception, and picked a complete set-list for the DJ so we were sure that every song was one that we would want to dance to! Looking back on the day, it feels like every bit of it was very much ‘us’ – we didn’t have a wedding, we had our wedding. That’s what made us Rock n Roll.”
Thank you so much to Ceri & Terry and their photographer Ria for sharing this beautiful wedding with us today.
Thank you so much to Ceri & Terry and their photographer Ria for sharing this beautiful wedding with us today.
