Gemma and Alan’s Winter Tipi Wedding. By S6 Photography

I am delighted to share with you todays wedding which is one of the first from this year! I do love a winter wedding, all that low lighting and twinkly fairy lights and this wedding has plenty of that! Sent into me by my good friend Jon at S6 Photography this wedding has all the makings of a classic winter wedding! With a lovely snug Tipi complete with open fire, melted marshmallows and a LOAD of fairy lights, Gemma and Alan’s wedding is just gorgeous! By choosing a venue that nearly all of their guests could stay over night, they managed to make their wedding last all weekend, carrying on the celebrations way into the early hours! They certainly look like they are having fun!

It was fun and informal, filled with hearty food, hearty laughs and hearty knitting! We focussed on making sure our guests had an amazing time without having to spend a fortune on expensive drinks and accommodation.

Gemma and Alan were married on 18th January 2014. The Ceremony took place at St Vincent’s Catholic Church, Crookes, Sheffield. ‘The church was a pretty easy decision, I (Gemma) am a Catholic so we just picked the Catholic church round the corner. For the reception, we hired an Outdoor Activity centre for the weekend. This included accommodation, a large hall for the evening dancing and space to put a tipi up in the grounds. The reception venue was very important to us. We weren’t really interested in having it in a hotel as we were after something a bit more unique. We wanted the flexibility of choosing the food ourselves and didn’t really want to pay the premiums charged by your standard wedding venues. Another important factor was the lack of a curfew. We had attended a friend’s wedding the previous year where many guests were still dancing into the early hours. We hoped to re-create this and despite only managing an hours sleep the night before, I was extremely happy to be still rocking along to power ballads at 4am.
There was so much accommodation on site. 80 of our guests stayed over in bunk bed dorms and joined us for breakfast and the clean-up operation the next day! It was lovely to make a full weekend of the celebrations and meant that guests didn’t need to worry about booking taxi’s back.
We had 140 for the whole day and another 30 or so who came to the church and joined the party later. Our wedding day was a year to the day that Alan rang my mum to ask her permission to propose! So we had just less than a year to plan everything.’

How they met
We met at Sheffield University, through the University Ski Club. We’ve been together for about 8 years and love Sheffield so much that we decided to set up home together here.

The proposal
A few years ago we worked for a season in a ski resort called Montgenevre, in the French Alps. Apparently since then, Alan had always wanted to propose there as it held such good memories for us. Luckily, for our annual ski trip last year we decided to stay in a resort only a couple of hours away from Monty. We planned to visit for a day – however our plans were thwarted when heavy snow started to fall as we drove down the mountain, forcing us to turn back. Unbeknown to me, Alan was panicking that we would never get there, especially when the van refused to start on the morning of our second attempt. Luckily for him, we eventually made it to the resort safe and sound and he got down on one knee in the middle of a powder run. I was completely surprised, especially as I thought he was just faffing with his boots and nearly skied off without him!
As Alan proposed with a wooden ring, we had the fun of ring shopping to look forward to on our return to the UK. After quite a bit of hunting, we decided to have a bespoke sapphire and diamond ring made at a local jewellers which was a lovely experience and meant we could come up with a completely unique design – I absolutely love my ring!

How did you allocate your budget?
The majority of our budget went on the tipi. It was our little piece of ‘wow factor’. After the tipi, we prioritised the food and photographer and a decent proportion of the budget went on these.
We also bought in a huge amount of alcohol and soft drinks to run our own charity bar. The caterers provided bar staff and guests were encouraged to give a suggested donation in return for drinks. This kept our guests nicely tipsy throughout the day and as an added bonus, we raised over £1,000. We split the money between three charities close to our hearts – Headway, Stroke Association and Maggie’s Centres.
We saved money by roping in numerous friends and family members to help us make decorations and favours.

How did you choose your photographer?
We found S6 photography online, through wedding websites and blogs. Jon from S6 was our clear favourite from the start and when we met him we knew he would fit in perfectly to our day. We liked the fact that his photos are modern, yet very classic, lovely natural, colourful shots that document the day. He also managed to make me a perfect cup of tea when we went to visit him, which was a bit of a deal breaker as I’m notoriously picky about my tea!

The dress
My dress was by a small Spanish brand called Aire Barcelona and my shoes were a steal at £20 from Debenhams. I hardly even wore them as they were quickly swapped for my furry snow boots in an attempt to keep my feet toasty in the January weather! My cape was from ASOS Marketplace. My head piece was a £5 bracelet from the Accessorize bargain bin. My lovely veil was my ‘something borrowed’ from a friend and just happened to go perfectly with my dress.
I always wanted to buy a second hand dress. I wasn’t bothered about it being new and preferred to have a higher quality dress, pre-loved, than be restricted to the cheapest dresses in bridal shops. Not long after we got engaged, I was visiting some friends in Edinburgh and thought I’d see if there were any second hand wedding dress shops as it would be a nice girly activity for us to do. I didn’t expect to find an amazing second hand dress shop and buy the second dress I tried on there and then

The suit and bridesmaids
Alan wore his own kilt which was a present from his family for his 21st birthday. He managed to find an exact tartan match at a shop in Edinburgh for his dad and groomsmen. Davison’s Kilt Hire were extremely helpful and even made a tie and pocket square out of the tartan for one of our guests.
The bridesmaids dresses were twist and wrap dresses from BHS. The girls loved them and had a great time playing around with the different styles. A little tip about these dresses – if you’re buying small sizes (8-10) then try the teenage versions. They include the bandeau for those that don’t want to flash too much flesh and are also cheaper! Their snoods were from TK Maxx and the mittens were from Primark, customised by my very talented mother-in-law.

Theme or colour scheme
We took the colours from Alan’s kilt, using a mix of blues and greens for the decorations and flowers.
We didn’t really start out with a theme, but as we’re such big fans of skiing and mountain biking, a mountain theme started to emerge which suited us and the winter season perfectly.

Flowers
We decided to only have bouquets and buttonholes. Having a winter wedding meant that there aren’t really many fresh flowers in season, so it seemed a bit fake to have hundreds of blooms everywhere. Throughout planning our wedding, we strived to have as little unnecessary environmental impact as possible.
That said, I absolutely loved my bouquet. We concentrated on quality over quantity and so were able to choose the best supplier. Anna from Swallows and Damson’s was brilliant. She has a great eye for detail, proportion and colours which was important to both of us. My bouquet included succulents, anemones, thistles, ranunculus and eucalyptus.
In fact, Alan has since said that my flowers were his favourite part of my whole outfit!

Decoration
The tipis are so beautiful on their own that they didn’t really need a lot of decoration. We had thousands of fairy lights which looked magical. Our friend made some paper-cut mittens which we hung in pairs around the tipis.
In the main hall, where the dancing took place, we used even more fairy lights along with paper chains and yarn balloons

Food
We started off with a selection of canapés served with mulled wine and hot apple punch. The main wedding breakfast consisted of 3 bird terrine, braised beef stew and sticky toffee pudding with custard. The vegetarians had cheese soufflé followed by pumpkin and squash pie.
We decided to give guests a choice for the toast drink and provided four options for them to choose from; two different types of whisky along with Prosecco and Shloer. These went down really well and our guests enjoyed filling out mini blackboards with their choices.
For the evening food we hired Hettie the pizza van from The Artisan Pizza Company. The pizzas tasted amazing and it was great to see them baked to order in the wood fired oven.

Wedding cake
Our incredible mountain wedding cake was made by my brother and his fiancee who both put so much effort into practising and perfecting the flavours and techniques. We had a chocolate sponge layer and two orange sponge layers.
The extremely cute cake toppers were made by my bridesmaid Catherine out of Fimo. She managed to bring them all the way from Spain and only minor repairs were required – I think my character managed to lose an arm in transit!

Entertainment
We hired a ceilidh band as we had a large Scottish contingent attending and no proper Scottish wedding is complete without a bit of ‘Strip the Willow’. They were fantastic and got everyone up and involved. The dance floor was absolutely crammed. After the band my brother Ben and our Usher Will DJ’d until the early hours. We hired a PA system and used Spotify to create playlists before the big day. I am a Girl Guide leader and we asked two of my old guides to come along to run some games and a disco for the kids whilst the speeches were taking place – this gave the kids a chance to let off a bit of steam.

Buy or DIY your Stationery?
For our invitations we had tea towels printed with our own design containing basic information and then made a website with more detail on. This meant that we weren’t sending out reams and reams of paper and also ensured that guests have a keepsake which they can use rather than a piece of card that might get thrown away.
We then had a stamp made up with the same design as the tea towel and used this to make the Order of Service booklets

Personal or handmade touches
• We were extremely pleased with how our table plan turned out. As Alan and I are really keen skiers, we decided to name each table after a different ski trick. We then bought wooden artist mannequins and recreated each trick by sticking lolly sticks on their feet for skis and moving their arms and legs around. Our friend even knitted them mini bobble hats!
• Rather than a traditional guest book we bought two pairs of old wooden skis and asked our guests to write messages on them – we’re going to use these to make a coat stand eventually.
• We also made two blackboard speech bubbles and set up a camera on a tripod for guests to write us messages and take photos.
• For the tables in the tipi some friends made blue and green fabric runners and we planted succulents in glass jars from Ikea. Keeping with the fairy light theme, we lit the tables with wine bottle lamps which we made ourselves.
• We made party packs for the kids and designed a puzzle booklet including a wedding treasure hunt.
• For our favours, our amazing team of knitters made 140 mini cosies which we wrapped around small glasses from Ikea. We then popped a couple of scoops of hot chocolate powder into the glass and a couple of marshmallows on top for guests to help themselves to hot chocolate later in the evening. We also made each guest a wooden badge using old bits of wood which we cut into discs with a chop saw and then used a wood burner to write their names.

Special moments
The speeches were a really special moment. We had four speeches and they were all amazing.
We were quite impressed that we managed to pull off a half decent first dance despite very little practise.
Another highlight was having photos taken on the banks of Ladybower Reservoir. We both love Ladybower and were really pleased when Jon said he hoped to stop there on the way to the reception venue. Luckily Jon managed to sweet talk the warden and we were able to get right down to the waters edge.
We were so touched by the effort our friends went to, to make the day personal to us. Our friend Anna – a ridiculously talented musician, approached us a couple of months before the wedding to tell us that she’d been inspired to write a piano composition about us. Obviously we wanted it to be a part of the wedding and so asked if she could play it whilst we were signing the register. It was so special to have our own personal piece being played by one of our close friends and everyone thought it was such a lovely touch. It was called Mrs and Mr MacDonald because Anna thought it’d be nice for the bride to be mentioned first for once!

Advice for other couples
• In hindsight, we wished we’d employed an on the day co-ordinator as our venue wasn’t really set up for weddings and there was quite a bit of organising to do throughout the day. Luckily we have an amazing set of friends and family who were more than willing to muck in. It would have been nice to take the pressure off them a little bit though
• If you’re setting up the venue yourselves, don’t underestimate how long it will take to pack up cars/vans and ferry things around. The day before the wedding was complete chaos, even though we had lots of people helping us out – be prepared for this and make sure you buy snacks to feed the troops!
• If you’ve got a DIY venue the last thing you want to be doing the day after is scrubbing toilets so hiring a cleaner is worth its weight in gold.
• Lastly – don’t forget to listen during your ceremony rehearsal! Both Alan and I were stood at the front of the church panicking because neither of us could remember whether we were meant to say ‘I am’ or ‘I will’. Luckily for me, Alan had to go first and managed to pick the right one.

Biggest surprise
Aside from the unseasonably mild and mostly dry weather, our biggest surprise was when our friend Jonny, who was acting as Master of Ceremonies, delivered an amazing speech about the different whiskies we had chosen for the toast drinks. He compared the tasting notes to each of our personalities which was a lovely touch

Supplier Shout Outs

• Totally Tipi: Jay and Laura were great. We really appreciated the fact they respected our budget and worked out ways that we could have what we wanted without unnecessary expense – www.totallytipi.com
• S6 Photography: www.s6photography.co.uk
• Barrett’s Bespoke Catering: James and Katie were so helpful and the food was delicious. www.barrettsbespokecatering.co.uk
• Artisan Pizza Company: www.artisanpizzacompany.co.uk
• Dress – Bliss Studio, Edinburgh: www.blissstudio.co.uk
• Alterations: Heide Garrington did an excellent job of taking my dress in and making it shorter. She also made the capped sleeves and managed to find a perfect match for the lace. www.bridalalterationfinerdetail.com
• Hair and Make up – Jenn Edwards: Jenn was a brilliant addition to our day. I’m not usually one for wearing lots of make up but I felt very glamorous whilst still looking natural. www.jennedwards.com
• Flowers: Swallows and Damsons www.swallowsanddamsons.com
• Davison Menswear and Kilt Hire: www.qualitykilts.co.uk
• Ceilidh Band: www.rogerthebadger.com
• Screen printer for Tea Towels: www.archipelago-art.co.uk
• Jewellers – Edward James: James put so much time and effort into helping us design our dream engagement ring. We were so pleased with the result and the level of customer service we received, he’s a complete perfectionist! www.edwardjamesjewellery.co.uk
• Kegs of beer: Bradfield Brewery www.bradfieldbrewery.co.uk
• PA System – Nightingale Audio: http://nightingale-audio.co.uk
• Venue cleaners – Lizzie P’s Cleaning Agency: www.lizzypscleaning.co.uk

For more information on Jon’s work go to:

www.s6photography.co.uk
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