Emily and Benedict's Eco Friendly Festival Wedding in Devon with Glitter and Sausage Dogs by Sam Box Photography

Happy Friday everyone! I hope you have had a good week? Are you feeling festive? With less than 2 weeks to go I am SO excited for Christmas. It seems especially hectic at the moment though with work, school and finishing off Christmas plans, but the light is at the end of the tunnel, only a few more days and it will be time to stuff our faces, spend time with friends and family and have a good old rest! This weekend we are off to see Peter Pan at the Lyceum in town, which I cannot wait for, then on Sunday we are off on the Santa train! Before that though I am delighted to share with you the lovely wedding of Emily and Benedict. This Eco-friendly couple chose to hold their wedding on Benedict’s family farm, with a gorgeous outdoor ceremony, followed by a tipi reception. The day was filled with vegetarian food, their pet sausage dog, loads of glitter and a massive party! What a way to end the week! Thanks to Sam Box Photography for the photos.

All our favourite people together in one field. A crazy combination of glitter, quadbikes, a sausage dog in a bow tie, vegetarian food, festival flags, fire pits, music, recycling and a lot of love.

Emily and Benedict were married on 8th September 2018 at At Benedict’s family farm in the Exe valley in Devon where he grew up. The ceremony was held an under oak tree in middle of a field and the reception was in a tipi marquee in the field. ‘It’s our happy place. We live and work near London and we love escaping to Devon for weekends. After we got engaged we were walking the dogs around the farm and we realised we would be crazy not to get married there. We ahd 100 guests and it took 15 months to plan.’

How they met
We met in Swansea university library when revising for our exams 7 years ago.

The proposal
At Glastonbury Festival 2017 watching sunset from the top of a hill on the first day of the festival. Benedict had managed to smuggle the ring in his pocket and it was a TOTAL surprise. It was witnessed by a crowd of hundreds of people also watching the sunset who then all celebrated with us when I said yes.

How did you allocate your budget?
As we went along really

Where did you splurge and where did you save?
Splurged on the tipi hire as we just loved them. Also as the wedding was in a field we had to create the venue from scratch so needed power supply, toilets etc.
We saved a lot by organising it all ourselves and having had soooo much help from our lovely family and friends e.g. growing flowers, making the cake and decorating the venue.

How did you choose your photographer?
Sam was recommended to us by another photographer who was already booked up. Best decision ever to use him!!

The dress
My dress was made for me by This Modern Love based in Worthing. I was nervous about finding a dress I would feel comfortable in as I’m not really a dress wearer. I found Anna on Etsy and she makes gorgeous boho dresses from scratch for brides. When you go for your last fitting at her beautiful studio she sews it in front of you and you take it home. The whole experience was so special and the dress was perfect. Also she made it with crepe de chine material instead of silk to make it vegan.
I wore a flower crown made by the local florist and was bare foot most of the day until I put on my forest gump trainers.

The suit and bridesmaids
The bridesmaids wore long dusky blue dresses from h&m and they looked beautiful. Benedict wore a camel checked jacket from Moss Bros, and navy chinos and pocket square. It was important to us that the styling was relaxed to match the kind of day we wanted.

Theme or colour scheme
Theme was fun and relaxed. We also wanted to make sure we were environmentally friendly as possible, we used compostable plates and cups, paper straws, biodegradable glitter, ate vegetarian food, up-cycled lots of stuff from around the farm instead of buying new and we actually ended up with very little rubbish. Colour scheme was really just organic, a lot of white, green and natural wood.

Flowers
Flower crowns and button holes were made by Culm Florist and they were beautiful!! A lot of different green foliage with white/ivory flowers. Family/friends spent the whole previous summer drying petals for confetti and growing plants for decoration.

Decoration
The inside of the tipi was covered in fairy lights and we picked hops and ivy from around the farm to hang. Outside there was awesome festoon lighting, festival flags, loads of plants, hand painted signs, log candles and we used a huge floodlight to light up the oak tree which was such a feature when it got dark. For the ceremony we hung glass jars on ropes from the tree branches and filled them with flowers.

Food
Such gorgeous vegetarian barbequed food by Ark Events. Highlights included lime and chili grilled halloumi, greek salad skewers, black bean burgers and the yummiest salads. We sat down for the main then had a help yourself pudding station which had endless supplies of chocolate brownie and millionaire’s shortbread homemade by family. In the evening we had Exe Valley Pizza Co. turn up in their van to cook wood fired pizzas which went down so well.

Wedding cake
Benedict’s mum Claire and sister-in-law Huda made the most beautiful lemon and elderflower cake decorated with Swiss meringue buttercream and lot of fresh flowers.

Entertainment
Bootlegger’s Turn, a local band who actually made the wedding! They were absolutely awesome and completely rocked the tipi all night. Also my sister’s partner and my best friend’s partner teamed up to play viola and guitar for the ceremony.

Who supplied the stationery?
All handmade. A friend of ours did a lovely drawing of us which we used for the invites. Place names were origami cranes made by bridesmaids.

Personal touches
It was all so personal to us and our relationship but also to all our guests. So many people contributed in different ways from painting signs to making a bar out of old solar panels to foraging for hops. It was such a group effort.

Special moments
The ceremony under the tree was just so special in every way. Including me and bridesmaid’s arriving on Benedict’s old quad bike, my mum reading us a poem she had written about us, and the humanist celebrant telling ‘our story’…and it didn’t rain! Also being able to have our miniature dachshund Henry there to share our day.

Advice for other couples
Don’t follow the rule book and make your wedding whatever you want, for example our guests had cocktails and beers during the ceremony, we set up a campsite for accommodation, the wedding was dog-friendly, both my parents walked me down the aisle. Just do what feels right to you. Also using smaller local suppliers really paid off, they all put so much effort into our day. Also to consider a humanist ceremony, it really was the most special, personal experience.

Biggest surprise
My dad surprising everyone by singing ‘Love is all around’ with the band. Everybody loved it and he even did an encore.