sophie & dale’s wedding

Summary

Check out Sophie & Dales fabulous tipi summer wedding at their family home with a relaxed and chilled vibe, and read through their vision leading up to the event with lots of great tips to ensure the day ran smoothly.

Best Memory of The Day

Bride

“Sitting on the top table and with her Husband watching the room and everyone eating, chatting and laughing. I remember whispering to Dale. Look everyone’s having so much fun! The buzz and atmosphere and sound gives me goosebumps now. I had dale with me and I was just absorbing our day!”

Groom

Arriving back from the church in the car. We pulled up in the field Infront of the TIPI’s no guests were with us yet and it was just me and my wife. And then a lady appeared with some champagne congratulated us and gave us a hug! Seconds later everyone was with us and the area was full!

VENUE

Church wedding in a village called Mursley

PHOTOS

Ela Walendar Photography

INVITES

Kate at LoveLee

DO YOU HAVE ANY TOP TIPS FOR THE DAY:

Top tip for the day is to enjoy it, don’t put to much pressure on the day and it will then exceed your expectations. I genuinely didn’t think it would be the best day of my life hadn’t really thought about it or expected it. But it really was and I think removing that pressure made it just perfect. Plan plan plan is key and I did this the whole way through. I did what I could as early as possible as I knew I didn’t want to be doing it all on the final days to the wedding so I did as much as possible as early as possible. You can do lots yourself and shop about for the best prices! I don’t think I would change anything on the day it went so so smoothly and everyone had a fantastic day!

I would say that lighting is key for TiPI’s inside and out. We had fairly lights outside along with uplighters in trees and on the Tipis inside we had artificial ivy around all of the poles with fairy lights and it just made it so so cosy. I loved it and so proud we did so much ourselves.

Top tip for after the day is you can sell a lot of the things you bought, so don’t panic! Sweet jars, blankets, candles etc can all be sold/ given away and res used for someone else’s big day!

Another tip I had to keep telling myself was will it impact someone’s day? So when I was trying to choose between design on some wrapping for my wedding favours I had to keep myself in check and think will it impact someone’s day? Will they remember it? For example ‘I liked their wedding but I didn’t like the design on the wedding favour wrapping!’ NO!… this type of thought really helped and made me keep myself in check and made me just make a decision and not focus on the little stuff that doesn’t matter. It also made me not buy certain things for example a sticker that went on the confetti packets… will someone remember it? No.. will it make their day better? No… ok let’s not buy it!

SHOUTOUT TO YOUR FAVOURITE WEDDING SUPPLIER

So we need 2 here on the day and prior to the day…

Prior to the event it has to be YOU! I think EUC were my favourite! You guys made it so so easy and simple. Your communication was fantastic from prior to booking, throughout my booking to the install and take down. Your replied to emails so quickly. Always so helpful.

I would recommend visiting the open days we did this when we had most things booked and added o my booking but really helped us plan the day. After the open day we added the matted flooring and the wall extension for the Band and was great to get a sense of vision for the day.

On the day it has to be our catering team- Kingfisher Caterers!

The food was incredible considering they cooked for 75 guests it was fantastic quality. I was nervous that we had no time to over run on the day and didn’t want to still be eating when evening guests arrive. The team kept us bang on time and I mean NOTHING slipped everything just went so smoothly and this takes skill to heard 75 tipsy guests throughout the day! The bar staff on the bar in the evening were fantastic and were even up dancing with us at one point!

TELL US ABOUT YOUR WEDDING DAY VISION

My vision was to have a really chilled out wedding with nothing to formal. Whilst I wanted to keep traditions in place I wanted it to be really relaxed for our us and our guests. Having it at home made it extra special but also gave us 100% flexibility and control. I love the Tipi’s as they really do give you the relaxed vibe but also look absolutely amazing. My visions all came from scrolling on Pinterest, I did a lot myself and tried to Recreate things I had seen that I thought would fit in for the day. These little things just made the day fantastic. Most importantly they were all used here are some of the little things we had…

Basket with fleece blankets for the chill out area. Every single blanket was used and some even went home with guests!
Sweet table – this was mainly for the Groom as he has a sweet tooth but went down a treat with the 16 children we had for the day and a few of the adults also!
Basket of flip flops for guests – these all went by the end of the night and we used a big basket that we keep a plant in at home so everything was used again!
Marshmallows for round the fire pit- these looks fantastic in the pictures and the kids loved this
Kids activity pack – this was found on Pinterest and the bride made these herself – every child had an activity book & crayons to keep them busy whilst the wedding breakfast was on the go.
Kids weren’t included in the Canapes so the Bride recycled a picnic hamper and filled these with crisps to keep the kids going!
All of the kids had a fruit shoot on their table, this was for 2 reasons most parents want to avoid fizzy pop and they are in bottles so we had no spillages on the tables!
Kids play area- we did this on a really low cost budget but was fantastic for the little ones!
Order of the day & table plan were DIY from pallets
Cigarette butts we used terracotta plan pots filled with sand! Popped a little sign in and we could use everything again!
Don’t be afraid of doing lots yourself! I made all of my bridal party personalised hangers this cost me less than £5 for 6 of us bought white hangers from Primark and sticker decals off eBay. If I had bought these off Etsy it would have been £8 per person x 6 £48!
The same for the sliced logs on the tables and the wedding pallets we did all of these ourselves, they took time but they were free!!

IF YOU HAD YOUR TIME AGAIN WHAT WOULD YOU DO DIFFERENTLY?

I would Kiss my husband in the church! Our reverend didn’t say ‘you may now kiss the bride’ and so we didn’t! we looked at each other like shall we shan’t we and dithered as not sure when it would come later on but it didn’t! this we missed out on and even the guests noticed!

The only other thing I would do is book a few days before and after off work. I had started a new job this year and therefore didn’t do this! Also being back on site on the Sunday to take everything down the following day and clean up I would 100% change and do it the following day and get everything collected on the Monday and no the Sunday