Laura and Ezra's Flower Filled Rustic Tipi Wedding With Home Brew Cider and a Brass Band by Toast of Leeds

I have the most gorgeous Tipi wedding to share with you today, courtesy of my good friend Shelly from Toast of Leeds. I have known Shelly for years now and she is one of my favourite wedding photographers. She is cool, funny and excellent at her job. If you book her for your wedding you are guaranteed first class wedding photos and a fun filled time with a friend you will make for life! But don’t take my word for it, have a look at today’s wedding and you will see for your self! Laura and Ezra were married in June 2023 after a disaster of a wedding planning story! After having to re plan their entire wedding they did so with great gusto and created a picture perfect day, filled to the brim with the most stunning flowers. I do love a tipi wedding, and this one is just gorgeous, so many personal touches, so many homemade details and those flowers! Just Wow!!!

A beautiful blur of laughter, great food, too much home-brewed cider, live music, hundreds of flowers, rustic festival feels, and all our favourite people in one place. It was a perfect melting pot of all the things we both love the most.

Laura and Ezra were married on 17th June 2023 at St Thomas’s Church in Halifax, with the reception with The Cheshire Tipi Company in the family’s fields. ‘We had to get married in the church, as it is where 3 generations of Laura’s family have been married. We knew we wanted a reception venue where we could have all of the people we love in one place and where the party could carry on until as late as we wanted. Laura wanted to be able to fill the space with flowers, so having it in the field meant we could grow most of the plants ourselves and plant them around the location. Being able to have our wedding around Ezra’s childhood home meant our day was full of memories of his late mum and other loved ones we wish could have been there. We had 100 guests during the day and around 200 all together in the evening. Unfortunately, we planned our original wedding with someone who turned out to be running a fraudulent company, they ran away with our deposit, months of planning and what we thought was our dream wedding. We were the lucky ones as many other couples lost their full wedding budget and much more of their timeframe. After this nightmare, we were able to pull together all the best bits of our original wedding plan, and truly make it personal to us in just 7 and a half months. Everything happens for a reason, and it turned out better than we ever imagined.’

How they met
We met in our school woodwork class as baby 16 year olds, and have been together all of the 11 years since.

The proposal
We took our lovely spaniel puppy Bertie for a walk on Norland moore, where we had our first ‘date’ 11 years earlier. I was telling Ezra a story about our friend’s engagement party and he said “would you like one then?”, meaning an engagement party. I turned around confused, and he was on one knee asking if I’d marry him.

How did you allocate your budget?
We kept a strict idea throughout our planning on what we thought was an acceptable amount to spend on each aspect of the day. We were pretty good at sticking to this, but had help from very kind family and friends along the way.

Where did you splurge and where did you save?
We saved on pretty much all of the decoration by doing most of it ourselves, including growing lots of flowers from seeds collected from our local park, sewing bridesmaids outfits, even brewing our own cider. We splurged on a good band, good food and great outfits.

How did you choose your photographer?
I followed lots of wedding suppliers on Instagram. Many of them would also tag other suppliers involved in the day photographed and that’s how I came across Shelly’s page. We absolutely loved her style of photographing weddings!

The dress
My dress was Badgely Mischka (from Perfect Daze Bridal), my shoes were Jimmy Choo and my hair piece was Lelet New York – I fell in love with it, but could never justify the price, then I found it on Vinted second hand for a fraction!!

The suit and bridesmaids
The suits were Marc Darcy and the bridesmaid dresses were Oasis. I found one of the bridesmaid dresses second hand for just £6, so I remade it into a top with sleeves for one of my bridesmaids who prefers not to wear dresses. Our page boy trousers and waistcoats were from River Island, and our flower girl dresses were from John Lewis, but again all second hand from Vinted!

Theme or colour scheme
There were flowers, everywhere! We tried to stick to a colour scheme of oranges, pinks and yellows, to reflect our love for watching sunsets/sunrises.

Flowers
So many! All seasonal and British flowers. We kept lots of our plants in pots so that it was more sustainable, they have since been replanted in our gardens. Any cut flowers were taken by our guests to enjoys for days after.

Decoration
Lots of rustic decoration. Ezra cut all our signs out of scrap wood and Laura painted and decorated them. Most other things were items we found and repurposed. For example, we had flowers growing out of cast iron items, such as a giant ladle and urn!

Food
Duke Street Kitchen put together the most amazing menu that beyond satisfied all of our guest’s tastes.

Wedding cake
Laura’s brother’s girlfriend is an incredibly talented baker and she kindly agreed to make us lots of cakes and brownies to share between all of our guests – they absolutely flew off the table!

Entertainment
We had the wonderful Back Chat Brass. We had been to Glastonbury the previous year and fallen in love with Brass Bands covering a lot of the music we loved. We wanted Back Chat Brass to surprise our guests by parading down the field just as we finished our first dance; they more than delivered!! Seeing the shock on our guest’s faces was one of our favourite parts of the day!

Who supplied the stationery?
Our invites were from Feel Good Invites on Etsy. Laura then made all of the rest of our stationary herself, from their template.

Where did you go on your honeymoon?
We flew straight off 48 hours later for the trip of a lifetime going on safari around Kenya before finishing off with a week in Mauritius.

Personal touches
Some of our favourite touches were:
– Our tables were named after each year of our relationship, with the table numbers made up of photos from that year.
– Our table numbers were stood up in corks from throughout our last few years living together. Any time we have had a major life event in the last three years, we have opened a bottle of bubbly and saved the cork for this purpose.
– We made a direction pole with signs pointing to significant places either at the wedding or in our lives.
– Laura decorated a mirror with hand-drawn flowers, this acted as our welcome sign and will now be hung in our new home.
– Laura’s mum and dad collected antique vases that we used on our tables to fill with beautiful flowers.

Special moments
Laura’s favourite moment was walking into the church and down the aisle. Ezra’s favourite moment was the best man’s speech. We both agree the band walking down the field was a huge highlight. We also had a moment of peace together, after our photos, where we stood at the top of the field and just looked down on the wedding. It was the best feeling seeing what we had managed to pull together with many months of hard work, knowing it was all so worth it. Hearing the music and laughter spilling out of the tipi was the happiest sound and exactly what we hoped for our wedding day.

Advice for other couples
Try not to spend the whole-time welcoming all of your guests. Giving everyone 10 minutes, when you have a big wedding, means you end up missing lots of the things you put so much time, thought and money choosing! It goes by in a blur, so try to make sure you actually get to enjoy every minute surrounded by the people you love. Try to give yourself time to step back together and take a look over what you have created, just listen to the happiness in the room. Also, remember to eat!!

Biggest surprise
How incredible the speeches were!