Indian Mint Garden Party Wedding

This lovely wedding was a mix of Indian and British cultures, complete with a gorgeous mint, teal and white colour palette.

WWW readers Parina and James were married on the 25th July 2015 at Chester Town Hall, followed by a reception at Eccleston Village Hall in Cheshire, all on a budget of £7,800. They decided on a village hall do, due to the ability to enable them to have the scrumptious Indian cuisine they dreamed of and boy oh boy did it sound delicious!

Parina and James looked stunning in their chosen attire, while their bridesmaids wore embellished saris. White blooms were used throughout alongside chic and simple décor and an ice cream cart for pud.

Thanks so much to Heledd Roberts for sharing these lovely images with us.

THE PROPOSAL | We’d been together 5 and a half years before James proposed. We were on holiday in India visiting the Taj Mahal. While we were posing to have our picture taken, James got down on one knee and surprised me with a beautiful ring. As we’d both had a few tummy troubles leading up to the morning, my initial thought was he was bending down to be sick! It turned out he had been hiding the ring in his washbag throughout the entire trip. Luckily, the people who were taking our photo carried on snapping so we have a lovely ‘in the moment’ memory.

THE VISION | Neither of us had ever really thought about our wedding day before – as a child I wasn’t the type to walk around with a pillowcase on my head pretending to be a bride. We knew we wanted the wedding to reflect our personalities – anything showy, extravagant and formal was out of the question as we would both have felt uncomfortable. We decided to focus on the four Fs – family, friends, food and ffotograffiaeth! We wanted to mix both cultures and took aspects from Indian and British weddings. If our wedding had a theme it would be Indian garden party. We chose white, mint and teal for our colour palette.

THE PLANNING PROCESS l We knew we wanted Indian food and so approached venues with this in mind, although they weren’t so accommodating. Many wanted us to use people on their approved supplier list and one even offered to, ‘knock us up a few curries’, despite specialising in traditional wedding food. We didn’t think it would be this hard. Nowhere seemed to offer the flexibility we were after so we started looking at village halls for our wedding reception.

Once we knew we could have Indian food, the rest was simple. Having the reception at the village hall meant that we could effectively do what we wanted without being tied into any package. We could have the wedding on a Saturday, in summer, serve wine and champagne we had purchased without paying the dreaded corkage, have a bar that served drinks people could afford and without any restrictions on a guest list. The hardest part was trying to incorporate the vibrancy of an Indian wedding with the muted tones of a traditional British wedding without ending up with a ‘Big Fat Indian Wedding’.

BUDGET | James and I are very sensible and didn’t want to get ourselves in loads of debt. Even though family had generously offered to pay for the wedding, we politely declined. Paying for the wedding ourselves meant that we focused on things that were important to us – it’s so easy to spend someone else’s money. We knew we didn’t want to spend more than £10,000 and only ended up spending £7,800. We both love shopping locally and wanted to use local suppliers where possible.

THE VENUE | We got married at Chester Town Hall and had our wedding reception at Eccleston Village Hall three miles down the road. Neither of us are particularly religious and so a church was out of the question but we wanted a beautiful building. We both love architecture and picked the town hall because of its gothic style. Plus, we wanted our ceremony somewhere which would still be there in years to come, rather than at a hotel which may get knocked down.

The village hall is charming; it is built in Victorian red brick and has a large grass area outside which backs onto the River Dee. It’s worth bearing in mind when you hire an empty space, you really have to think of and provide everything from tables, chairs and cutlery to hand wash and toilet roll!

THE DRESS & ACCESSORIES | The dress was definitely the hardest part. I knew I wanted something which incorporated both cultures and I didn’t realise how difficult it would be. Indian brides traditionally wear red but I wanted white which in Indian culture is a massive no-no (white is worn to indicate mourning). I also wanted beading and sequins without it looking tacky and I couldn’t bring myself to spend a fortune on something I would only wear once. I ended up buying a second hand lengha from Gumtree and getting it altered by a local seamstress. By the time she had finished with it, it looked nothing like the original and was perfect!

GROOM’S ATTIRE | James knew he wanted to buy a suit rather than hire one. The fit and colour were the most important factors and he wanted something he could wear again. Even though James is tall, he is also slim, which was a problem when he was trying on suits. He eventually found one that was the right shade of blue and fit well in T. M Lewin. The suit was tailored to fit him, which made him very happy. He also got a shirt from T. M Lewin, brown brogues from John Lewis and the Paisley tie was purchased online.

THE READINGS & MUSIC | We picked out three readings which were read by James’ sister Sarah, one of my bridesmaids Heather and her husband Amit and Rachel, a friend who had known us throughout University where we met. We picked ‘This Day I Married My Best Friend’ and a passage from Great Expectations which features at the beginning of the novel ‘One Day’. We asked Heather and Amit to select some marriage advice from the books ‘Don’ts For Husbands’ and ‘Don’ts For Wives’ which were first published in 1913 when women stayed at home and their husbands went out to work and so were somewhat outdated. Our personal favourite was ‘Don’t omit to pay your husband an occasional compliment. If he looks nice as he comes I’m dressed for the opera, tell him so. If he has been successful with his chickens, or his garden, or his photography, compliment him on his results’. We have very different taste in music so that was probably the hardest part. We finally decided to have a sitar player to play during the ceremony and while guests were arriving and mingling over canapés and champagne at the reception venue. Ravi played Pachelbel’s ‘Canon’ (which sounds amazing on sitar) as I walked down the aisle and The Beatles’ ‘Here Comes The Sun’ as we walked out as Mr & Mrs Prior.

BEAUTIFUL BRIDESMAIDS | I chose two of my childhood friends who I had known since I was 7: Rebecca and Gemma and a friend I met through a part-time job when I was 16: Heather. I haven’t lived near any of them since the age of 18 but every time I see them, it’s like we’ve never been apart. The sign of a true friendship. That and the fact that they were all willing to get their midriffs out in a sari on our big day. The bridesmaids were brilliant. They helped set up the reception venue the day before and were great for bouncing ideas off and offering advice. The bridesmaids wore mint green saris and silver and mint accessories.

THE FOOD & DRINKS l We had Indian starters served as canapés – samosas, dhokla (a traditional Gujarati snack), pieces of spicy chicken and lamb sheekh kebabs washed down with chai tea and champagne we’d stockpiled before the wedding. The main courses (a selection of curries, daals, chapatis and rice) were all served to each table family style (so guests could help themselves). We’d bought our own wine for the tables too. We didn’t have Indian desserts but had an ice cream tricycle which, as well as traditional ice cream flavours, served mango kulfi. As food was one of our big priorities, we wanted to make sure no one went without. Our biggest pet hate is when you go to a wedding and the canapés have all gone before you’ve even had a chance to have one. We told this to our caterers and they said they would keep cooking them until the trays were coming back into the kitchen full.

THE FLOWERS | We both wanted white flowers. The bridesmaids carried gypsophila bouquets tied with mint ribbon. The buttonholes were white roses with gypsophila and peacock feathers (which we had used in our invitations and reception flowers). The reception flowers were white roses, gypsophila and gerbera which were purchased two days before the wedding at a flower market in Liverpool. James’ mum arranged them all into jars the day before the wedding and dotted them around the village hall. Our florist was very open to ideas; we told her we wanted to exchange garlands and she managed to source some light green carnations which were beautiful.

THE CAKE | We didn’t have a wedding cake but we did have vanilla cupcakes with a name flag in them which doubled up as place holders.

YOUR PHOTOGRAPHER | We had the very talented Heledd Roberts. We came across Heledd by accident. When looking for wedding photographers, we struggled to find someone who had could bring out colour without it looking garish and had the attention to detail we were after. I spotted her photos on a friends’ website – Laura was upcycling and upholstering furniture at the time and Heledd had taken photographs for her website. They were beautiful – I asked Laura who had taken them and if they did wedding photography. Turned out we were in luck. Heledd was very patient throughout the whole process. James and I have the tendency to look a little wooden when we pose so she did a fantastic job!

THE DETAILS & DÉCOR | I love craft and making things but the wedding was a huge task. My friend Tom is a very talented graphic designer and as soon as we got engaged, he offered to design our invitations. He did a fantastic job and once we got the final PDFs, James and I printed, cut and assembled them. It took ages but they looked amazing – one guest commented that they were the best wedding invitations they had ever seen! We collected jars for flowers, we made glittery table numbers, we made all the flags for the cupcakes, metres and metres of bunting, the table plan and for the tables where we had mixed mine and James’ friends, we made a ‘guess who’ icebreaker with a fact from each of them. We definitely learned some things we didn’t know about our friends!

THE HONEYMOON | We went on a mini moon the day after the wedding to Naples. The wedding and the lead up to it was exhausting so we were happy to drink wine, eat pizza and relax for a few days. In December, we jetted off to Mexico for three weeks and travelled 700 miles from Mexico City down to the Pacific coast. It was the most incredible trip and we both has an amazing time. We were glad we waited for a few months before going on honeymoon as we wouldn’t have had the time to plan and enjoy it properly with all the wedding planning and with both of us feeling drained after the big day.

MEMORABLE MOMENTS | Parina: Waiting nervously with my parents, listening to the sitar player as my bridesmaids walked down the aisle in front of me. Seeing James for the first time looking all dapper in his suit. Watching everyone mingling at the reception venue eating the Indian canapés, drinking champagne and chatting in the sunshine and thinking ‘wow, we did this, we made this happen’. Watching the caterers, bar staff and ice cream servers trading leftover food and drinks with each other at the end of the night. James: Panicking I was going to miss my own wedding day as I was stuck in traffic outside Chester (what should have been a forty minute journey took nearly 3 hours). Watching people who, even though we knew them very well, had never met before and getting on really well.

ADVICE FOR OTHER COUPLES | Don’t be afraid to do your own thing. We didn’t have a first dance, mostly because we both hated the thought of everyone watching us as we shuffled awkwardly to a song neither of us had any great feeling about. We didn’t have a cake because we didn’t want a tacky cutting the cake picture. I didn’t have a bouquet because I wanted to walk down the aisle with both my parents and thought it would look strange linking arms with them both whilst trying to balance it. And guess what, no one noticed! We didn’t have traditional wedding food and most people said it was the best wedding food they’d ever had. Our wedding was like no other we had been to but it was everything we wanted. Don’t be pressured into what other people feel a wedding should be. It’s your day.

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE | Our suppliers were all great and we loved supporting local businesses.

Photographer | Heledd Roberts

Wedding Venue | Chester Town Hall

Reception Venue | Eccleston Village Hall

Caterers | Eurocaterers

Sitar Player | Ravi via Alive Network *WWW Wedding Directory Member*

Florist | Flowers at Number 30

Ice Cream Trike | Ice Cream Dream

Bar | Dinner By Design

Table and Chair Hire | Tents and Events

Invitations | Tom Grant

How gorgeous.

Parina and James, thanks so much to you both for sharing your wedding story today xo Lou