Charlotte and Edward’s Woodland Tea Party Wedding at Chester Zoo by Petal and Blush Artistry

Happy Monday everyone, I hope you all had a smashing weekend, what did you get up to anything good? It’s a busy week here on the blog, I’m actually taking a couple of days off at the end of the week, which is a bit of a rarity, so I’m busy now getting the blog prepped and all the blog posts written in time. We are starting off the week with this fabulous tea party wedding that took place at Chester Zoo. I do love it when couples think outside the box and choose a wedding that is fun and personal to them, which is just what Charlotte and Edward did. As a fun-loving couple they were looking for something a bit different and what could be better than a zoo tour during your wedding celebrations! Big thanks to Petal and Blush Artistry for the fab photos.

Edd and Charlie’s mad adventure. The perfect beginning to a crazy story.

Charlotte and Edward were married on the7th of May 2016 at Chester Zoo. ‘It’s not everyday you marry your best friend so we decided to look for a bit more off the grid place to get married that reflected our relationship. When we heard you could have weddings in the Zoo I booked immediately and we fell in love with the beautiful grade 2 listed house in the middle of an animal lovers paradise. We are both still truly kids at heart – Everything we do has to have an element of fun in it so Chester Zoo was perfect for us. We had 60 guests in the day and 120 in the evening. We started planning 18 months before but we moved around a lot in the meantime so the majority of planning was done in the few months before.’

How they met
We met when we were 13 in school pretty much inseparable since. Up until about 3 years ago we were best friends. Edd will definitely bang on about breaking out of the friend zone to anyone who will listen!

The Proposal
Well I (Charlie) was late home from work one night so Edd took the opportunity to cook us dinner and run me a bath, I instantly knew he was up to something as he never cooks without me. Whilst I was in the bath I could hear him rustling outside the door and that’s when I saw him on one knee. He says he ran me the bath so I couldn’t run away when he finally asked the question.

How did you allocate your budget?
We tried to spend a decent amount on making memories such as photographer and the photobooth as to us pictures are everything, they are the best way to capture all the best memories. We then set aside money for me to make a lot of the decorations and the invitations myself and worked out where to spend what we had left.

Where did you splurge and where did you save?
I think our biggest splurges were our rings as we knew these were a lifetime reminder. We managed to save on decorations and invitations as i designed and made a lot myself.

How did you choose your photographer?
I actually used to work with Natasha when she was first starting up her photography business as a sideline project. I have followed her work from day one and always loved how perfectly she captures the emotions of the moment. It was a no brainer really.

The Dress
My dress was from Alfred Angelo, and I had two pairs of shoes. One for daytime from Irregular choice and a pair of Dr Martins for the evening!

The Suit and Bridesmaids
Ed’s suit was from Tailor made, and the other boys wore suits from Moss Bros & Burton. We sourced the Bridesmaids dresses from ASOS before they started a bridesmaids collection!

Theme or colour scheme
We basically used the bridesmaids dress as our main source of colour inspiration. It had so many colours we knew we couldn’t go wrong. The theme of the day was kind of a woodland tea party as we had lanterns and tea sets scattered round as decorations.

Flowers
My floral arrangements contained flowers such as peonies, roses, hydrangea and gypsophilia.

Decoration
The decorations were all mismatched as we collected them from charity shops. There was a lot of mismatched tea cups and plates with lanterns and flowers to match my bouquet.

Food
We enjoyed an afternoon tea for daytime guests, and followed with bacon/sausage butties and pizza for night time.

Wedding Cake
The top tier was a rainbow sponge iced in a beautiful cream icing from Hey Little Cupcake in Manchester the the rest of the tiers were made up of Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

Entertainment
We bought a lot of lawn games ourselves for adults and kids to play with throughout the day. I’d say the spacehoppers went down a treat. We also had a Capture cab which is a photobooth in a hackney cab it was so much fun we have so many fantastic pictures from this!

Stationery
I designed all the stationery myself finally using skills from my design degree, which I then had printed using Vistaprint. From there it was countless hours and even more glue dots to complete the task.

Personal Touches
From signs to tea cups candles I pretty much made everything, both myself and Edd love having a personal touch on event and presents.

Special moments or highlights
I don’t think I could pick out any specific moments the whole day was a success! Unless you take into account almost setting all my bridal party gifts on fire whilst getting ready. Thank god for Natasha noticing the box starting to go up in flames or we wouldn’t have got to it in time!

Advice for other couples
Plan the day for yourselves no one else. I started out worried people wouldn’t like our ideas but then i thought to myself this is our day and we are going to do it our way.

Biggest Surprise
I think the biggest surprise was how smoothly it all went – or anything that went wrong went unnoticed. It truly was the perfect day.

Supplier Shout Outs

• Oakfield Manor – Chester Zoo http://www.chesterzoo.org/weddings
• Petal and Blush Artistry – Photographer petalandblushartistry.co.uk
• Ariana Rose – Make Up Artist arosemakeup.com
• Capture Cab capturecab.com
• Eventures – Venue Decorators/Florist www.venuedressers.co.uk
• Lea Cars – Wedding Car www.leaweddingcars.co.uk
• JukeBox www.jukebox45s.co.uk
• Cake www.heylittlecupcake.co.uk

For more information on Petal and Blush Artistry:

petalandblushartistry.co.uk / petalandblushartistry.co.uk/blog / [email protected] / 07912062874 / FACEBOOK / PINTEREST/ I : @petalandblushartistry / T : @petalandblush

 My photographic style is beautiful, clean, paying particular attention to the details of the day. I predominantly work in a documentary style capturing the real and authentic moments of your day. Documentary style photography is capturing natural imagery and considering every moment important; guests laughing, children playing, the Dad dancing, the screwed up face you might pull after drinking a shot of tequila! One of the speakers at a photography workshop I attended last year called it ‘the beautiful in the ugly’ and I couldn’t of said it better myself. It’s those photos that you may not think you look beautiful, but it presents emotions, and makes you happy/laugh/cry/cringe. I am based in Lancashire but I travel all over the UK and Europe for weddings.