Felicity and Michael's Festival Themed Wedding at Home in Cheshire by Shane Webber Photography

Happy Monday everyone, and how are you this fine, hopefully sunny Monday morning? Here in Sheffield it’s the first week of the Easter holidays. We started the holidays off in style with a trip to Yorkshire Wildlife Park yesterday, which was so much fun. We walked for miles, saw lots of the animals and enjoyed the first of the spring sunshine! Long may it last! This week I am at work before I take the following week off for a trip to Cornwall! So on with today’s wedding and it’s the stunning wedding of Felicity and Michael who were lucky enough to hold their wedding at home, and get married in Michael’s parents’ beautiful garden in Cheshire. With a gorgeous outdoor ceremony, followed by a big old marquee reception, this wedding is filled with the most amazing autumn decoration, festival themed styling and so many smiles. Big thanks to Shane Webber Photography for capturing it for us.

A festival-chic style wedding day filled with love, happiness and surrounded by the bestest.

Felicity and Michael were married on 24th September 2022. ‘We got married at my dad and his partners house because we thought a home wedding would be more intimate and have a more relaxed feel. It helped that their gardens are beautiful and rather large and could host that many people! It is also where Mike (husband) proposed to me so it felt special to continue that feeling there. We had 150 guests. I started to look and plan certain things about 15 months in advance. For example; the dress, photographer and band were important things we wanted to book early because of covid and delays. I was really grateful that early planning Felicity had started booking and sorting some things in advance so when it got closer to the time I felt really organised!’

How they met
We met on the dating app, Hinge when we were both living in London and we have been together now for 3 and a half years.

The proposal
Honestly the most sneaky proposal and I was absolutely gobsmacked that he pulled it off! He was in the RAF and away on exercise abroad in Jordan, and essentially came home early and didn’t tell me and stayed at my mums house. He had a spreadsheet that told family members timings and what he would be doing. I was staying at my dads for the night and Mike had orchestrated for me to go on a dog walk with my dad and then he drove over to my dads and hid in a bush so when I came back he was standing on this beautiful little bridge that crosses over the brook that runs through the garden and called my name. I was so overwhelmed that he was standing there when I thought he was abroad, it was all very confusing! I ran over to him and asked why he was home, and he said he had something important to ask me, and got down on one knee. To say I was lost for words was an understatement! After answering a very definite yes, I then spun around to see random family members popping out behind walls, and trees! Ugly tears definitely happened!

How did you allocate your budget?
We did a loose costing at the start and had a figure in our head from that and then tried to keep to that.

Where did you splurge and where did you save?
We splurged on the photographer because we both agreed we wanted a fab photographer (so glad because they are amazing!) And we also splurged on the food and alcohol for our guests. We wanted it to be an incredible experience for them. We saved a lot of course on the venue which was a huge bonus but the sperry tents we had were a bit more expensive that we had bargained! But glad we did because they looked excellent.

How did you choose your photographer?
I looked at loads of different photographers in the area or who worked in Cheshire and found Shane Webber, and looked through their style of photography and immediately loved it. It was elegant and clean and just beautiful. It was a really easy decision in that respect.

Theme or colour scheme?
We wanted a festival chic style wedding so that was more the overall theme. We wanted guests to feel relaxed and not have this formal style. We like to think we pulled it off! In terms of colours I wanted an autumnal feel so burnt oranges and dark purples and soft yellows.

Flowers
I had the most wonderful florist – Hannah Williamson who straight away understood my vision. We had a lot of dried elements in our flowers and I loved the idea of bunny tails in the mens buttonholes. We had my wedding bouquet dried out so I now have it on display in the house. I can’t remember all the names of the flowers!

Decoration
Lots of multi coloured vases on the table, quite Moroccan themed in that sense, lots of glass jars with candles.

Food
As foodies, wanted a really informal style dinner. We worked with a company called Dronsfield catering. Our caterer Laura was phenomenal. We didn’t want a traditional sit down starter, main and dessert. So we had lots of canapés after the ceremony, and then a huge feasting table with gorgeous meats, and fish for everyone to help themselves to, and we did dessert trucks for desserts and kept them on as our late night food.

Wedding cake
A wonderful baker called Hannah Matilda who made us this beautiful two tiered gold trim wedding cake with imprints down the side. Fillings were chocolate and ganache and a lemon and blueberry; and a load of cup cakes for the guests to have as desserts.

Entertainment
A soul/funk band called Manhattan. They were so good.

Where are you going on your honeymoon?
We had a mini moon just before Christmas to Paris as the week we got married, we both started new jobs and were moving into our house so rather stressful! However we have just booked The Mauritius for later in the year.

Personal touches
We did a lot ourselves to save money, like a lot of table decor we made ourselves, and the menus, welcome sign, and guest lanyards to keep the festival theme going. However, I asked for a bit of help from a planner for the logistics I had no idea of like marquees because I didn’t know where to start, but the majority Mike and I had a really clear vision and it was quite easy to organise the majority ourselves. Having someone to liaise with on the day was incredibly useful though.

Special moments
A huge personal touch was asking my dad to act as our celebrant. It was beautiful. The whole day was just wonderful. It was just so happy and lovely. I was surprised by how little I drank as well! There was no time!

Advice for other couples
Have a moment of just you two, literally 2 minutes to hold hands together and breathe it all in. It goes by SO quickly, so make sure you have a moment to stop and just be like… this is it. We did it and look around and everyone.

Biggest surprise
Both Mike and I had completely forgotten to write our vows to each other, so off-mic we ad-libbed them to each other and it was a really beautiful moment for each other that no one else got to hear. And very in the moment!