Chris and Veryan’s Flower Filled Tipi Wedding By Life in Focus Photography

Happy Thursday everyone and how are you today? It’s been a busy old week so far here at Boho HQ, so much going on I can hardly keep up! We are in the midst of house selling/buying so lots to keep my little brain busy! Along with the new blog design of course. I have a stunning wedding for you today. A flower filled Tipi Wedding, that is just gorgeous! I do love a tipi wedding and this one is brimming with beautiful english blooms. Gorgeous table arrangements, as well as hanging from the ceiling, they really do fill the tipi with pastel pretty and spring time gorgeousness. As for Veryan’s amazing bespoke dress, well it really is a thing of beauty! I know you are going to love this wedding as much as I do. Big thanks to Scott from Life in Focus Photography for the fantastic images.

‘A beautiful spring day, made all the more lovely by the fact that everything went to plan’

Veryan and Chris were married on 16th May 2015 at St Margaret’s Church, West Hoathly and the reception at a Farmer’s field in West Hoathly. ‘We live opposite the 950 year old church in West Hoathly, and couldn’t think of anywhere else we’d rather get married. We love our historic village and wanted to share it with all our friends and family. We had 90 guests in total and it took a year to plan it, but most of the major decisions were made early on. We knew we wanted to have the reception in tipis after we attended a Vintage and Floral Fair in the grounds of Knepp Castle, West Sussex, where our tipi company had put up a couple of their tents for visitors. We just thought they were fantastic and a bit different from the usual marquees.’

How they met
We met at a Christmas party in December 2009. I had no idea what his name was when he left the party, but we managed to track each other down through a bit of Facebook stalking!

The Proposal
We were on a trip to Bordeaux, and decided to take a day excursion to a nearby coastal town called Arcachon, which has the highest sand dune in Western Europe. Chris made me walk for 3 hours to get to the sand dune in iffy weather, and when we finally reached it, I climbed halfway up, sat down, looked out over the stunning view and jokingly said “Why aren’t you down on one knee? This would be the perfect place for you to propose to me”. I probably wouldn’t have said that if I’d realised that he was planning to do just that a couple of minutes later when we reached the top, diamond ring in hand.

How did you allocate your budget
The vast majority of our budget went on the tipi tent hire, decoration and the catering, which – being food lovers – we weren’t prepared to skimp on. We did find that some things were more expensive than we thought they would be, but at the end of the day, we both believe that it was worth every penny.

How did you choose your photographer
I used to work in events at the British Museum, and Scott was our event photographer there. He was always a pleasure to work with, and when I found out that he lived in the same village Chris grew up in, he felt like the perfect choice. His natural documentary style of photography appealed to us too – our wedding photos really capture the feel of the day.

The Dress
My bespoke dress was by a local designer called Emma Tindley, based in East Grinstead. She has won all sorts of national awards, and is absolutely lovely. My shoes were from L.K.Bennet, and I bought my hair accessories from Chez Bec and Mabelicious Bridal off notonthehighstreet.com.

The Suit and Bridesmaids
Chris’s suit was by William Hunt on Savile Row. We didn’t have bridesmaid dresses so were able to splurge a bit on an off-the-peg three piece.

Theme or Colour Scheme
All we knew was that we wanted muted pastel tones, but didn’t really have a colour theme.

Flowers
I was very keen to have locally grown seasonal english flowers in an unstructured style. We went for cottage flowers including stocks, astrantia, sweet rocket and sweet peas. My bouquet had a ’just picked’ style to it, with all the flowers being of different stem heights.

Decoration
We possibly went a bit overboard on the flowers (some people joked whether there were any flowers left in Sussex), but it looked fantastic. Some were in jam jars wrapped in hessian and the others were displayed in Sussex trugs. One of our best decisions was to hire hops to decorate inside the tent, which looked great next to the fairy lights. There were candles everywhere, bunting and even a fire inside the tent.

Food
Canapés, hog roast, with baps and apple sauce, cold salads, boozy jelly pots and 6 unusual flavours of ice cream served from an old-fashioned Gelato bike. The evening buffet included our cake of cheese, ‘moo pies’, veggie pies, pizza and boerwors sausage rolls.

Wedding Cake
We had a multi-tiered cake of cheese decorated with figs, kumquats, grapes and ivy and displayed on a wooden log slice.

Entertainment
We hired a band called The Beats through Gigz Management who were absolutely amazing and really knew how to get everyone on the dancefloor.

Stationery
My friend Lucy Craker, who is starting up her own design business, designed the wedding stationary

Personal or Handmade Touches
We had a real wedding tree instead of a guest book, and guests wrote messages on personalised tags and hung them from the branches. The design of the tags was taken from the wedding invitations, so it felt like there was a theme running through the day. I also made the place tags myself using bunches of dried lavender, manila tags, floral tape and letter stamps.

Special Moments
I can honestly say that we didn’t stop smiling all day, but we loved the fact that everyone in the pub opposite the church spilled out onto the street to see us get bombarded with lavender confetti by our slightly over-zealous friends and family. Another memorable moment was when the sun had gone down later in the evening and Chris and I took a step back from it all – just the two of us – and looked at the tents all lit up in the darkness. The photographer captured this moment and it is one of my favourite photographs.

Advice to other couples
Above all, I would advise other couples to do what you want and not feel hemmed in by tradition or what other people expect. We did our own thing and everyone loved that it was a bit different. My other tips would be to try and keep the number of suppliers to a minimum. We had so many contractors that it was a bit challenging to manage them all at once. Also, remember that suppliers put their prices up if they know your event is a wedding. We decided against hiring a minibus to shuttle people down the road because their prices were extortionate. Instead, we asked a local taxi company to send three 8 seater cars and instead paid a fraction of the price.

Biggest surprise
That the sun shone all day!

Supplier Shout Outs

• Tents – www.beautifulworldtents.co.uk
• Caterer – www.circacirca.com
• Flowers – www.thehomegrownflowercompany.co.uk
• Photographer – www.lifeinfocusphotography.co.uk
• Wedding Dress – www.emmatindley.co.uk
• Accessories – www.notonthehighstreet.com/mabeliciousbridal www.chezbec.com
• Alcohol – www.theruralvintner.co.uk
• Suit – www.williamhunt.co.uk
• Festoon Lights – www.cinemattag.com
• Band – www.gigzmanagement.com
• Car Hire – www.westhoathlygarage.com
• Field – www.hook-farm-west-hoathly.co.uk
• Portaloos – www.firstclassflush.co.uk
• Generator – www.sparkspower.co.uk
• Dreied Lavender Confetti – www.lavenderworld.co.uk

For more information on Life in Focus Photography Photography go to:

www.lifeinfocusphotography.co.uk / GOOGLE+ / PINTEREST / FACEBOOK / @scottinfocus