Rustic tipi wedding in sheffield

I haven't been able to stop grinning since I started putting this rustic wedding together for you lovely lot. Set in the gorgeous Ecclesall Woods in Sheffield, featuring an incredible outdoor ceremony with guests seated on hay bales, followed by a tipi reception of dreams and an abundance of love, laughter and DIY decor. Bride Becky is absolutely jaw dropping in her tea length Blue by Enzoani Danbury gown, showing off her fabulous Badgley Mischka and Vivienne Westwoods shoes perfectly. Also have you seen her hair? Serious goals! Her best girls look equally stunning by her side in Ted Baker dresses, and the pic of them all together showing off their wild flower and peony bouquets is simply beaut. The whole setting with its wooden signs, bunting, paper cranes and more will bring you so much joy. Make sure you are sitting comfortably as RMW favourite Richards Skins Photography shares all the delicious details this woodland wedding has to offer.

The Dress

Becky the Bride: My dress Danbury by Blue By Enzoani and was from Emily Bridal Wear in Sheffield. As soon as we got engaged, I pretty much booked a dress appointment straight away! I had a rough idea that I either wanted a short style dress or a long maxi style. Emily at Emily bridal was fantastic and it was such a lovely experience - we had the shop to ourselves and Emily pulled out styles that she thought Id like. The dress I went for was actually the first dress I tried on and I pretty much knew as soon as I put it on, that that was the dress. Even better it was in the sale as a sample so was half price and I bought the dress there and then. The seamstress at Emily custom made me a lace top to go with my dress after I had found several ideas and styles I liked on Pinterest and it complemented the dress perfectly. Shoes proved to be a lot harder to find than my dress and I ended up buying 5 different pairs and decided on the morning of the wedding, with the help from my bridesmaids which ones to wear. I decided on a stunning pair of blush pink peep toes with crystals on the heel that I had imported from America by Badgley Mischka for the day and then changed into a pair of Vivienne Westwoods for the evening dancing. I’m not big into jewellery so just had a simple pair of crystal stud earrings for jewellery.

The Grooms Fashion

George’s 3 piece suit was from Ted Baker and again found it pretty much straight away! Ties were from eBay and crisp white shirt was by Micheal Korrs and shoes from Office. I had put together little gift bag for him to open on the morning of the wedding which included an iWatch (as not to be late!), some chewing gum, chocolate, alcohol and socks!

The Venue

From early on we decided we wanted a relaxed, informal wedding where people could just have fun and party. We also decided that as neither of us were religious we did not want a church wedding and I really wanted to get married outside. We originally were looking at marquees but then stumbled across tipis and we both fell in love with them. Originally we were going to host our wedding at Georges Mum and Dads house near Preston in the fields on their farm but after a trip up the year before and seeing how wet and muddy the fields were we had second thoughts. On returning to Sheffield we went for a walk around our local woods, Ecclesall Woods where we regularly walk our dog Rio and stumbled across a beautiful clearing. We got in touch with the council who own the woods and the new venue was booked! Our Tipi company All About Me Marquees & Events were fantastic, and when disaster stuck the week before our wedding and the clearing got flooded and pretty much ruined they were straight down visiting the site and helping us come up with a plan to make sure the wedding happened. With a fair amount of stress, drastic phone calls, a few tears and a LOT of woodchip, matting and hay we managed to get the muddy woods unrecognisable and turned into a tipi woodland wedding even better than I had imagined!

Colour Scheme/Decor

We decided on a pink/peach/mint colour scheme and themed most of our decor and stationery around this. We did all the decor and styling ourselves, with some help from family and friends. It was a task that took up most evenings and weekends running up to the wedding! My mother in law made over 100m of bunting, we made all the wooden signage ourselves, picnic boxes were made by George, I decorated hundreds of jam jars with hessian and ribbon, mr and mrs chair ties, personalised clothes hangers for the bridesmaid dresses, bathroom boxes, bridesmaid survival kits, a pimp your prosecco station, we bought a polaroid camera and props from eBay to make our own photo booth, borrowed giant garden games of family. One of the biggest tasks was making 1000 oragami paper cranes as a back drop for the photo booth - this was a great idea I thought at the time but underestimated how long it would take! Anyone who came to visit got instructed on paper crane making! I made the table plan and signage and one of my favourite touches was our family tree of polaroid photos strung around the big tree in the middle of the clearing full of our favourite photos of family and friends through the ages. We also made all the stationery ourselves - invites, save the dates, place name cards, weddingfavours (which were s’more kits to eat by the fire pit) order of services which doubled as bags filled with confetti. One of the biggest tasks was making the giant LOVE light up letters. George is very handy so decided to make these from scratch and they were amazing. I dont think our guests realised that George had made them and thought we had hired them! The only things we hired were a step ladder, some wooden crates and glassware but other than that everything you see, we made ourselves!

Flowers/Florist

One of my clients is a florist and asked early on if I was happy for her to do the flowers so jumped at the chance. Jayney was incredible and listened to my ideas and I left her to it! The flowers were absolutely stunning and I loved carrying them on the day. The bridesmaids had smaller versions of my bouquet and on the tables we had peonies and gypsophila in our decorated jam jars. We also had several jam jars full of flowers scattered around the trees outside as well as watering cans and milk churns of flowers decorating the outside of the tipis.

The Wedding Party Fashion

I had 5 bridesmaids and we also had a best man and 4 ushers. We decided to go with high street dresses that the bridesmaids could wear again and went for two colours on our colour scheme. The dresses were Faybll by Ted Baker and the mens suits were from Next.

Ceremony

We had an Independent Celebrant conduct our ceremony. We decided to host the whole day in the clearing and found an amazing wedding celebrant called Claire from When Life Changes to conduct our ceremony. Claire got to know us as a couple and wrote a personal ceremony just for us that really captured us as a couple and our stories and it really was so relaxed and lovely. As this was not a legal ceremony, we got legally married on a holiday to Las Vegas in the Little White Chapel drive thru with two of our best friends as our witnesses which no-one knew about! On our ‘proper’ wedding day which we class as our tipi wedding, our dog Rio, was our ring bearer (with a bit of help from my brother!) Our ceremony was so relaxed and I was not nervous at all - just so excited! My sister did a reading called The Lovely Other Dinosaur and my sister in law read an extract from The Velveteen Rabbit and both readings were funny and not too serious, in keeping with our day. We walked down the aisle to Don't Worry About Me by Frances and when signing our certificate we had Stevie Wonder Signed, Sealed Delivered. Back up the aisle was Bruno Mars Marry You!

Entertainment

Straight after the ceremony we had a drinks reception in the clearing which was pimp you processo station, beer and kegs full of local beer. We had a close up magician who was incredible and entertained the guests with magic tricks. In the evening we had an amazing band called Kings of the Dancefloor who kept the dance floor full all night! I would really recommend a live band if you can stretch to it.

Food

We didn't want a traditional wedding cake so instead decided to go with a tower of Krispie Kreme doughnuts (which were left on a wall outside the ushers house on the morning of the wedding resulting in a panic drive back to get them!) and displayed on an amazing wooden cake stand that my dad made for us out of tree trunks from the wood. Instead of cutting the cake we decided to have a ‘first bite’ and shared a doughnut by biting into it at the same time! We served little tubs of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream as our canapés. As we were going down the relaxed and DIY route we decided to have picnics as our main meal. We thought this would be simple enough to put together ourselves, and with the help of a local deli Porter Brook Deli we had a gorgeous picnic which each table tucked into and shared which consisted of bread, various cheeses and meats, quiches, sausage rolls (made my by mum!) pate (made by mother in law) scones, clotted cream and jam, crisps, pork pies, salads and relishes. It was delicious and everyone said how tasty it was. For dessert we had a dessert table full of puddings and cakes made by both my mum, my mother in law, aunties and a few from Waitrose! In the evening we had a stone baked pizza oven by Nether Edge Pizza Company which went down a storm. We also made a sweetie bar full of pick and mix ourselves which was popular!

Photographer

Our photographer was the amazing Richard Skins. Richard had photographed my brothers wedding a few years before and we knew we wanted Richard as our photographer from day one. Richard was so relaxed and we loved his style of photography. The photo sessions where it was just George and I, Richard made us feel relaxed and we both really enjoyed the time together away from everyone. Richard even ended up staying an extra 3 hours in the evening of our wedding and having a beer and pizza with us, sneakily whipping out his camera at every opportunity on the dance floor which has made for some amazing late night photos! We would recommend Richard to anyone looking for a wedding photographer.

Videographer

George initially wasn't keen on having a videographer but I really wanted memories of our speeches and ceremony. I stumbled across Shoot it Yourself on Facebook and was instantly sold on the idea of again how laid back and relaxed the videos were. The idea is they send you two video cameras and you film the whole days yourself between friends and guests and then they edit it for you. I was a little worried at first as I wasn't sure how much good footage we had got from the day but our finished video is amazing and so funny to watch.

Advice

My advice to any brides to be who want a DIY tipi wedding is to really allow yourself enough time to plan, prepare, make and get lots of help on the days before setting up. With a tipi wedding you have to organise everything - from the electricity, toilets, security, staff, plates, crockery, drinks, decor...literally everything!!! We also were maybe a bit naive and thought it would be a cheaper option! We were very wrong! However, we wouldn't change our day for the world and despite several things going drastically wrong in the week before the wedding it was the best, most beautiful, personal day ever.