GLAMPING | Our Colourful Crazy Glamping Micro Wedding Featured by Rock n’ Roll Bride
Our cake designer described our cake as a “dinosaur disco wedding cake” which is a great introduction to the sense of playful irreverence we injected into our big (small) wedding day. read on to find out all about our DIY glamping micro wedding held earlier this year.
Like countless other couples, Covid-19 played havoc with our wedding plans. We didn’t want to postpone for another year, but we equally couldn’t face cutting our guest list down by more than half to meet the 30 wedding guest rule in place at the time.
To keep our originally planned date we decided to do things in a totally different way and canceled all previously made plans, deciding instead to do an immediate family-only micro wedding, and so a glamping wedding became the perfect alternative option for us.
We decided to do the legal bit at the local registry office followed by Champagne afternoon tea, just as we had originally planning to do and we chose to have a ring exchange ceremony and wedding breakfast the following day with our family.
Despite legally getting married on June 4th and having a couple of family members as witnesses (at the time only 2 witnesses were allowed under Covid rules), we viewed the much more personal ring exchange the following day as our ‘real’ wedding, though moving forwards it means we have the perfect excuse to celebrate all future anniversaries over 2 days instead of just 1!
Finding the ideal venue
When it came to choosing a venue for our micro wedding, of course, where else could camping and glamping blogger get married other than on a glamping site?
We previously got engaged at our favourite campsite and having stayed at the lovely Glamping Thorpe in the past, keeping the camping and glamping theme going, the new party barn rentals at Glamping Thorpe looked like the ideal choice for our scaled-down plans.
Once we had settled on our new venue, we then set about finding a caterer and planning the flow of the day, drinks and of course, the all-important venue decorations!
Looking at wedding suppliers was largely a depressing affair of white and ivory blandness. Type in “wedding decorations” or “wedding anything” really, and it was the same things we were seeing over and over again. Nothing colourful, nothing quirky and nothing that felt like it was ‘us’.
Weddings all too often seem to turn into a “look how stylish and extra we are” kind of competition, and with the average UK wedding costing over £20k, it’s just not something we ever wanted. Lavish, classic and traditional just isn’t us so opting for that would not have made for an authentic wedding.
It made far more sense for us to leave the bland world of generic weddings behind and to get creative instead. Thanks to my love of crafting I decided to make things and set out to find alternative vendors who shared our colourful creative vision.
I created our wedding arch backdrop, made countless leapord print pom poms, yarn bead chair tassels, bunting, I made myself a crazy pom pom and flower hairband (not the one shown in these pics, that one came from Zedhead on Etsy) and I even made the cake topper and had friends help me make the dinosaurs.
The day was absolutely wonderful and so authentic to us. The food was incredible, much love going out to the wonderful Dishan at Dine Indulge for that and we created a signature cocktail for the day which included old-fashioned lemonade and raspberry ripple gin which we called a Cosmic Sweet Shop.
We spent our wedding day with our nearest and dearest and thanks to such small numbers, we really got to spend quality time with everyone and to enjoy ourselves. Our best friends who of course couldn’t be there, put together a video message for us, and I hadn’t cried up to that point, but it was such an unexpected and lovely gesture that it set me off. We finished the day with old school rave tunes and a campfire.
We are so glad we went ahead with our scaled-down plans and it was an extra little bonus that our day was covered by Rock n Roll bride too! The weather couldn’t have been better and it was the perfect ultra chilled micro glamping wedding.
See our wedding featured on Rock N’ Roll Bride magazine.
Suppliers
- Dine Indulge catering – Canapes, wedding breakfast and cheese board
- Little Cherry Cake Company – Wedding cake
- Flowers On the Cobbles – Bridal bouquets x 2 & buttonholes
- English Bridge Flowers – Table decorations
- Liquorish Online – Brides evening dress
- Frock & Frill – Bridal dress
- Irregular Choice – Bridal Shoes x 2
- Gluttonous Gardener – Succulents in terracotta pot wedding favours
- Zed Head – Custom bridal headdress
- Thorpe Barns – Wedding venue
- Photography – Mark Ingham