Food & Family: A Casual Vegan Wedding at a Recording Studio Meets Antique’s Warehouse

When Lily and Ian got engaged, the first thing the bride did was buy the Rock n Roll Bride book (excellent start!) and using it as their guide they planned a laid back, vegan wedding at a recording studio meets antiques warehouse.

“I was clueless about weddings but it turns out doing very little planning and having a laid back approach worked perfectly for us”, Lily said. “We kept it local by getting married a few doors down from our own vegan chocolate business at a recording studio / music venue / antique warehouse all-in-one.”

The day was a real family affair with the bride’s brother acting as celebrant, her other brother’s band playing and their friends doing all the food including the cake. Lily made the desserts and favours and ended the night by performing with her dad and the band. As post-ceremony snack they had a wall of their favourite crisps for their guests to help themselves too!

“We joked that our mantra should be ‘What would Henry Rollins do?’ and it kind of stuck”, she continued. “We agreed we didn’t want a colour theme, specific aesthetic or for anyone to wear anything in particular we just wanted to keep things simple with a vintage vibe to match our personal style. We make chocolate and I come from a family of musicians so we knew food and love music would be a big part of the celebrations. Ian is a writer so he wrote our ceremony for my brother to read as the celebrant and we wrote our own vows.”

The bride arrived via VW camper with her parents and best friend and made her way through the courtyard to the warehouse space in the venue for their ceremony. Accompanied down the aisle by her dad in a rainbow suit and giraffe t-shirt (“I had explicitly told him he could do, wear and say anything he wanted to that day because he is unapologetically himself and I take my inspiration from him”) she walked in to Tuesday’s Gone by Lynyrd Skynyr.

I hadn’t seen the venue set up beforehand and it was their first wedding for 18 months so I had no idea how it would look”, she explained. “It was incredible, antiques dotted about and a stunning arch. Seeing my friends faces I teared up as just the week before we weren’t sure if guests would have to wear masks whilst seated. My brother performed a short ceremony that Ian had written and Ian’s niece and nephew performed a poem about a cake eating dinosaur, which was perfect. We read our own vows and laughed and cried and walked out to Hans Zimmer’s You’re so Cool.”