This quirky, laid back British wedding with a cool festival vibe was sent over to be last week and you guessed it, I couldn’t wait to feature it. Rachel & Dan really did it their own way and I love the idea of a chilled out party in a tent to celebrate a wedding.
The couple were officially married at a registry office but has an ‘unoffical’ church blessing at St Peter’s Church, Weston, Suffolk. They didn’t make a big deal about the registry office part as they didn’t want this to feel like their actual wedding – in fact Rachel was still at work half an hour before their appointment! The reception was held at Marsh Farm which was just a holiday property when they found it. However since the couple got married there and Rachel published an article in The Guardian newspaper about the wedding, the owner decided to change it to a wedding venue.
The couple were pretty much given free reign at the venue and were able to organise however they wanted. They hired two kata tents and they supplied the furniture and tables. They also diy’ed everything from the flowers (which they bought at 5am on the morning of the wedding from New Covent Garden Flower Market) to the centrepieces and the cake. “We got up at 5am to get decent blooms and we chose flowers that were in season, luckily for me these were peonies and sweet peas which are my FAVOURITES!” Rachel told me. “We went back home on the bus with these massive brown boxes of flowers and got funny looks from all the early morning commuters in London! We collected mismatched vases from charity shops and interesting glass bottles to put them in. My mum made the cake – the lace cases were made out of doilies. She spent a long time with scissors and a Pritt Stick doing those. Catering was courtesy of a friend of a friend of a friend called Sylvain Jamois. He used to work as sous chef at a restaurant called Moro in London and he came highly recommended. He did a great job – the poor man had to contend with cooking a 60 kilo pig on a stick over an open fire in strong wind and occasional showers. He did it from 5am to 7pm. It must have been a nightmare yet he delivered what the bride and groom had requested: crispy crackling.”
Rachel found her Amanda Wakeley sample dress at Bicester Village (an amazing outlet place just outside Oxford) which was reduced from £3000 to just £750! She teamed it with a cardigan from Banana Republic and thoseVivienne Westwood/Melissa shoes. Her earrings and wedding ring were from an antiques shop in Salt’s Mill (Saltaire) and her string of pearls which she wore round her wrist was a necklace and was a gift from Dan. It came from Sam Ubhi.
“We were on a very tight budget so all the bits and pieces you see decorating the tipis like the tissue paper pom poms, the lace-covered lanterns (made from net curtains and old jam jars), and the hanging table numbers were made by me on long winter nights!” Rachel continued. “Towards the end I got mightily sick of making them but it was worth it for how they looked on the day. Touches like the fancy dress photobooth worked really well too. Not that the photobooth looked like a photobooth, but everyone went mad for the crazy hats and other fancy dress bits I had in the bag (I went to an Angel’s costume sale and got 25 bizarre hats including what can only have been a Dr Who alien outfit from the 1970s – a sort of silver sequined jellyfish hat with bits of lace hanging off it. I don’t think any photos exist of people wearing it though.”
Huge thanksto photographer Sass and to Rachel & Dan for sharing their incredible wedding with us today
