James and Victoria's 'English Garden' Tipi Wedding at Home in Essex by D&A Photography

Happy Monday everyone, I hope you are doing well and had a good weekend? We had a great Halloween and a really good half term. It was my aim to make the most of every day and to get out and about as much as we could, so I feel we really made the most of each day. And with the news we got on Saturday that England is going into another lockdown this week, I am so glad we did! I have to say I’m not looking forward to the next few weeks, and I really feel for anyone who had a wedding planned in the next month, its so hard on everyone in the wedding industry at the moment! However, we are here to celebrate the weddings that have happened starting with this gorgeous Tipi wedding that took place at the bride’s parents’ garden last June. Victoria and James held a beautiful English Garden themed wedding with the most gorgeous flowers, lots of personal touches and some lovely photos by D&A Photography.

We wanted to create a fun, personal and laid back day, for everyone to enjoy in Victoria’s parents traditional English garden, with a hint of Boho.

Victoria and James were married on 8^th June 2019 at St Peter & St Pauls Church, West Mersea in Essex with the reception at Victoria’s Parents home in West Mersea – Tipi’s in the Garden. ‘I (Victoria) have always wanted to get married at my parents home, since I was little. We have such a close family and it meant so much to me, to involve our family home, as part of our special day. We had 90 guest in the day and 100 additional evening guests. It took 18 months to plan but was super organised and knew what we wanted, as I (Victoria) am a wedding co-ordinator, so knew which suppliers we wanted to work with to make our day, and James and I had the same vision of how we wanted out wedding day to be.’

How they met
We both live on Mersea Island and knew each other for a while, but it took us getting together by bumping into each other at Glastonbury. I (Victoria) was on a hen do and James was working on a food stand and he asked me on a date while watching Mumford and Sons.

The proposal
We were in Sorrento, for our very close friends wedding and James was Best Man. He had asked them if it was okay to propose while we were out there, as I had always wanted to go to Italy. He had involved my sister Gina, who works with jewellery to help him find the ring. We had all been for lunch on our last day in Sorrento and we went to take a photo of the beautiful scenery, where he then got down on one knee. It was perfect and we got to celebrate with all of our friends afterwards, who witnessed the proposal.

How did you allocate your budget?
I (Victoria) had an idea of how much most things costed due to being a wedding co-ordinator, so that helped a lot.

Where did you splurge and where did you save?
We decided to spend a lot on flowers to create the Boho / English Garden look we wanted and our Florist Luke and Lottie Floral Design, understood exactly the look we were wanting.
We also invested in the food and drink for the day as this was really important to us and our caterer was amazing – Gather and Feast.
We saved a lot on finishing touches, like making additional tables, like cake table and casual outside tables out of cable drums, making our own stationary, not having favours, but picked springs of lavender from my mums garden for each place setting.

How did you choose your photographer
As soon as James proposed, I messaged Dan from D&A Photography. I have known him for a long time and always told him, when the time came and I got married, he was going to be the photographer and I kept to my word. His work is amazing and he is fun and captures the day perfectly.

The dress
Wedding Dress was Pronovias, bought from House of Snow Bridal, who were amazing, can not recommend their service enough. I wore a one tier veil, which my seamstress made for me, which I teamed up with a beautiful hair vine from Botias Accessories.

The suit and bridesmaids
Suits were from The Grooms Room in Colchester and the Bridesmaids dresses were from TFNC.

Theme or colour scheme
English Garden / Boho / Pastel Pinks

Flowers
Peonies (My favourite flower)

Decoration
We used the company Wedding Creative to create an array of lighting in the Tipi’s and around the gardens with fairy lights and uplighters, so the evening became magical and they created chandeliers made from filament bulbs to be hung from the tipis.

Food
We decided not to have a starter, but to serve an array of canapes throughout out drinks reception. For our Wedding Breakfast we wanted it to be casual and we had a BBQ style meal, served to the table, steak, prawns, chicken and a variety of different salads on the table. The dessert, we did a big sharing summer Pavlova, our favourite dessert.

Wedding cake
We love cheese, so it was a no brainer to have a cheese cake, and a close friend of ours is a caterer, so we did lots of fun cheese tasting and sourced it from the Fine Cheese Company. We also had a small traditional 3 tier wedding cake from Marks and Spencers.

Entertainment
For the church, we had a string quartet perform, which was beautiful.
For the evening, we had a friend – Charlie Marshall DJ and as a surprise we had Visual Sax perform, who was amazing and really created the atmosphere we wanted to our evening. In addition, a friend of ours plays the Bongo drums, so he also did a set throughout the evening, it worked so well.

Who supplied the stationery
We made our own Save the Dates, by ordering a stamp from the English Stamp Company, and printed it on wild flower seeded paper, to keep with our English Garden Theme. For our main invitations, we used Papier and for our table stationary and table plan, we made ourselves.

Where did you go on your honeymoon?
We went to Mauritius and stayed at St Regis is Le Morne.

Personal touches
Having the wedding at my parents house, we all spent a lot of time the months before prepping and making the garden look its best. A really personal touch was that we recreated my childhood swing at my parents house and decorated it with flowers and this was on the tree next to the Tipis.

Special moments
The whole day was special and wouldn’t change anything about it but if we had to choose one highlight it would be kicking off the evening reception, with our first dance – I will wait by Mumford and Sons, a very memorable song / moment for both of us from Glastonbury.

Advice for other couples
Enjoy every moment of the day, as it really does go so quickly and make sure you pick a decent photographer, who understands you as a couple and captures your special day, just how you remember it.

Biggest surprise
Not a surprise, but the most special part of the day, was just having all our friends and family with us to celebrate our special day with us, as we are both so close with our family, so meant a lot to us both to all be together.