Orange & Blue Festival Fete Tipi Wedding

I love this couple and their sweet story. They grew up in the same village and had been best friends for 15 years before they got together.

WWW readers Becky and Steve were married on Saturday 8^th August 2015 and had a strong vision for their wedding. Steve is in a band which also performs at weddings, so a festival theme lent itself perfectly to their nuptials. Think live music, tipis, DIY details and fun décor.

The vibrant orange and blue tones really made an impact and the bridal party all looked wonderful. The bridesmaids wore navy halter-neck dresses and the boys wore coordinating ties and converse. Becky found her flowing gown in BHS which she teamed with a veil and one super gorgeous bouquet of blooms.

Thanks so much to Lynsey Grace Photography for sharing these really lovely images.

THE PROPOSAL | We had been living together for about a year before Steve popped the question. He had asked me what sort of engagement ring I wanted so I knew something was on the cards, but wasn’t 100% sure when it was going to happen. It happened on a normal Tuesday evening in December – we had come in from work, eaten dinner (nothing special, I seem to remember it was something and chips!) and sat in front of the TV. I had decided to jump in the bath before bed, and while I was soaking in suds, I could hear all manner of noises from downstairs – kitchen cupboards opening and closing, general banging and crashing around and then Steve talking on the phone – which I thought was weird, but didn’t really question it. After I’d got out of the bath and put my pyjamas on, I went downstairs to find a vase with 12 huge white roses in it sitting in front of our closed lounge door.

When I opened the door, the room was lit with hundreds of candles, and the fairy lights on the Christmas tree. Steve stood in front of me and it dawned on me what was happening. He got down on one knee and had a whole speech prepared, but didn’t manage to get through the whole thing as we were both in floods of tears. When he finally asked, ‘Becky, will you marry me?’ I responded with ‘Of course I will, you idiot!’

It turns out that the phone call he made while I was in the bath, was to my Dad to ask his permission to marry me – thankfully he said yes! My Dad told me afterwards that Steve had been so nervous that he could barely get the words out, but he got the jist! The ring had only been delivered about 3 hours earlier, so clearly Steve wanted to ask as soon as possible.

Although it’s not the traditional romantic gesture proposal story, I love the fact that I was in my pyjamas and drinking champagne with a sparkly addition to my hand and my future husband by my side.

THE VISION | Because Steve is a musician, we always knew that we wanted a festival style wedding, with touches of ‘Village Fete’. We both grew up in the same village and had been best friends for 15 years before FINALLY getting together (we are the epitome of Ross and Rachel – everyone else knew we’d end up together before we did!). Because we had such a colourful shared history, we wanted to reflect that by having an eclectic wedding, full of home-made touches with elements made by not only ourselves, but our vastly creative and talented friends.

Most importantly, we wanted our wedding day to be really laid back and fun. We had been to some weddings which were quite serious and stuffy which we definitely wanted to avoid. We wanted to have a lazy day in the sunshine with our family and friends around us, with great music, food (and booze!) and a whole lot of love.

THE PLANNING PROCESS | Because I knew that a proposal was on the cards, I had started to channel my wedding fever into a Pinterest board even before we were engaged! With a number of our friends getting married before us, and the fact that Steve plays in wedding bands all over the South East, we had a lot of wedding experience to draw from! We would stand at each one, taking notes on what we liked and what we would do differently to get a better idea of what we wanted. Sometimes our opinions clashed, but most of the time we were in agreement which made things a bit easier.

My sister was also planning her wedding around the same time (she got married 4 months before us) so a lot of experiences were shared.

We knew we didn’t want an ‘off the peg’ wedding at a hotel or function centre – we wanted something totally unique and tailored to us. Although we knew that would take a lot more work and effort (not just from us, but from our parents and bridesmaids/groomsmen!) there was no question – we are no ordinary couple, and our wedding would be no different!

BUDGET | We were SO naïve at the beginning of the planning process – Steve likes to quote me on the phrase “I reckon we could do the lot for under £5k?”. When we started researching what we wanted, we soon realised that this was totally unrealistic!

We actually managed to save a lot of money by calling in as many favours as possible – the Mums created our brilliant ‘Lego’ cake, my sister made all of the bridesmaid dresses, my Dad made the brilliant ‘Postbox’ and Steve’s dad brewed all of our beer for the day (and fell into a hedge on the way home, apparently…). I did all of the design work including the save the dates, the invitations (which looked like a festival ticket!), the seating plan, VIP passes (for the bridal party, bar staff and musicians) – the list goes on.

The biggest expense was our gorgeous tipi tents but everyone commented on how amazing they were and how different they looked from the usual wedding marquees you see – they really provided the wow factor we were after, especially in such a secluded spot. Holmsted Events who supplied them were brilliant from the start – helping us to plan seating arrangements, where to put the bar as well as putting fairy lights around the poles and providing dimmable lighting to set the right mood.

In total, we managed to get the whole thing in under £15k, not including the honeymoon.

THE VENUE | We had decided early on that we wanted the tipis – the only question was, where to put them! We tried a few local venues which hire out fields, but the cost of them would have sent the budget out of control. My Mum was sitting in church one day and looked across the congregation and saw her friend Shirley who lives in a beautiful listed house in the village which has a beautiful (and huge!) back-garden. She asked if she could discuss the possibility of using the garden and Shirley was generous enough to offer us the use of her land (and her downstairs loo!) free of charge.

The garden is absolutely beautiful with overhanging trees leading to a wide open tennis court (where our tipis were placed). Thankfully, our wedding day was 28 degrees and everyone really enjoyed spending a day in the beautiful sunshine in an English-country garden! Even more handy was that the house was only 50yards down the road from the church, so our guests could just stroll down the hill from one to the other!

THE DRESS & ACCESSORIES | My dress came from BHS – I know, I know, not the usual place you would expect to find such a beautiful gown!

Because I had a long dress and I knew I would be standing up all day, I opted for a simple pair of metallic sandals from New Look – they were comfy, and looked pretty when they peeked out from under the skirt, and most importantly, I didn’t make a fool of myself by falling off my heels on the way up the aisle!

I didn’t wear much jewellery on the day – except for the stunning necklace Steve bought me as a wedding present. I had seen a necklace online that was beautiful and had ivy leaves on it, the same as my engagement ring. It came from the States, but when it arrived (approximately 3 weeks before the wedding) it was awful – poorly finished and Steve had described it as looking ‘as though a five-year old had made it with their eyes shut and their hands glued together’. He was absolutely devastated and in desperation, asked my parents and my sister for help on what to do. Thankfully, Georgina Ettridge, the designer of my beautiful engagement ring, managed to pull together a necklace for me in the nick of time. Steve and my sister arranged all of the design and delivery of it and my sister practically kissed the post-woman who delivered it the DAY BEFORE THE WEDDING. It is the most treasured piece of jewellery I own, and I make sure to wear it at every special occasion because it’s too beautiful to just keep in the box.

FINDING THE DRESS | My sister and I were both looking for dresses at the same time. She knew that she wanted to make her own dress, but we went shopping for ideas so we could find out what suited us vs what we THOUGHT we wanted. We went to a shop and tried on a number of different gowns each. You can see from my face in all the photographs my Mum took, that I was NOT comfortable in any of the different styles and I found the whole experience quite uncomfortable. I was quite downhearted afterwards as the shop boasted ‘If you don’t find your dress here, you never will’ – I was worried that I was destined to get married in dungarees and crocs.

However – a couple of days after the dress-gate incident, one of my bridesmaids sent me an email at work with a link. She said ‘I know it’s from BHS, but just give it a look’. It was the one. The exact style I had been looking for – flowing, Grecian inspired, but unassuming, without a rhinestone or skirt-hoop in sight. My Mum and I arranged to visit the wedding section in BHS on Oxford Street a couple of weeks later and the rest is history! The second I tried it on I knew that it was the one – I didn’t stop dancing and pirouetting around the changing room like a loony and when my Mum plonked a veil on my head, I instantly felt like a bride.

GROOM’S ATTIRE | I could count on one finger the amount of times I had seen Steve in a suit and tie (ie – never), so I spent a lot of time trying to convince him that we should get married with him in jeans and a t-shirt or I ‘wouldn’t recognise him’. After a while, we settled on the fact that he and the groomsmen would wear brightly coloured converse to tie in with the colour scheme (Royal blue and bright orange), as a compromise.

We planned for all the ‘boys’ to wear a 2 piece grey suit with white shirt and a royal blue tie with their blue converse. Nearer the wedding, we bought Steve a waistcoat to accommodate the vintage pocket-watch I had bought him as a wedding present and also it made him look a little different from the other guys.

THE READINGS & MUSIC | Our readings were quite different from each other – one quite serious and beautifully ‘wordy’ – the other a little less serious (a bit like us!).

We chose an excerpt from Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (Louis de Bernieres) which ends in the line ‘when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches, we found that we were one tree and not two’ – we felt this was fitting due to the length of time we had been friends and how long it had taken for us to realise that we would forever be a part of each other’s lives whether we liked it or not!

The other was called ‘Love Monkey’ by Edward Monkton. This again reflected our long history and the fact that everyone has a story – no-one’s heart is shiny and new, we have all been through things which have caused us pain or given us scars along the way, but that you can take care of each other and make a wonderful life together with everything you have (even if that’s not very much!).

In terms of music, we had a LOT within the ceremony itself. I walked into the church to ‘Local Hero – Wild Theme’ by Dire Straits – a song I’d had picked out since I was a teenager – it’s essentially just a guitar solo, but it is so beautiful, I just had to go with my heart. While we signed the registers and made things official, the church choir sang ‘Seasons of Love’ from the RENT soundtrack, and the theme tune from the Vicar of Dibley for us and the congregation – The latter is one we have heard them perform perfectly thousands of times, and the first was one we specifically requested and they had spent weeks learning, just for us. To leave the church, we had made a request that ‘Walking on Sunshine’ be played… LOUD! We had kept it a secret from all but a few, so everyone was laughing and dancing along while we skipped back down the aisle.

We had three local bands perform at our wedding reception – it wouldn’t be much of a festival without some brilliant live music!

Our first act was Fred Clark – he comes from Maidstone (like us!) and performs his own songs and covers for weddings, birthday parties and all sorts of local events.

Second on the bill were The Standard Lamps who don’t usually play weddings, but made an exception as we are friends and wanted them to play their own songs – they did surprise us with a cover of ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ by The Beatles which really got people up on the dancefloor. At one point, Steve and I started dancing then realised we weren’t supposed to as we hadn’t had our ‘first dance’ yet – so I quickly grabbed my brother in law, and Steve grabbed my sister and we continued to boogie!

Our headline act was Steve’s band who played a personalised set, hand-picked by Steve and myself. First was our first dance – ‘Can’t Stand the Rain’ by Lady Antebellum which sounded (if it’s possible!) even better than the original! What followed was a mixture of our favourite songs (including Thin Lizzy, Take That and McFly!) and some of the band’s original songs, that have become the soundtrack to our relationship. They were all bouncy tunes and everyone was singing along and dancing the night away.

BEAUTIFUL BRIDESMAIDS | It wasn’t a difficult choice when deciding on my bridesmaids. Firstly, my maid of honour (she refused to be called a matron, despite the fact she was already married!) was my brilliant older sister, Alyson (organised, creative and all-round amazing). My other bridesmaids were my oldest friend from primary school, Charlie (clumsy, kind-hearted and bloody gorgeous) and my best friend from college, Nat (silly, hilarious and totally inappropriate).

I picked them because they’re my closest girls, but also because they all have different qualities of character that I needed around me on my big day and the weeks leading up to it. One would keep me calm by making sure everything was in control, whereas another would make me laugh with a fart joke… you need that when you’re nervous and stressed!

THE FLOWERS | A friend of Steve’s mum is a florist and put together all of our buttonholes, corsages and my GORGEOUS bouquet. The buttonholes were single orange mini gerberas on a green leaf – simple, but the orange colour REALLY worked with the blue of the boys ties. The mums had corsages with orchids and freesias (each of their favourite flowers) to complement their beautiful outfits.

My bouquet was the most beautiful I had ever seen (I know I’m biased!). I found a picture on Pinterest and Sandra, our florist copied it perfectly. It had a whole mixture of blooms in it, including cala lillies, sunflowers, gerberas, and blue eryngium (which looks a bit like a thistle). Although it was beautiful, it was SO heavy, so I was glad to put it down when we got to the reception!

The bridesmaids had ‘kissing balls’ which I had made with silk roses and pearly beads – I wanted them to have something special to keep after the wedding rather than a bouquet that would last a week at most.

THE CAKE | The cake was a joint effort between our lovely Mums. Steve’s mum made the cakes (fruit cake on the bottom, Victoria sponge in the middle and chocolate sponge on the top) and my mum decorated them with the brilliant Lego design. Steve is a huge Lego fan and we hadn’t found a prominent outlet to include it anywhere else in the day, so… the cake became ‘Lego-fied’. There were little Lego chefs who were still ‘working’ on the cake – one with a steam roller, one on his hands and knees hand rolling the icing and another holding the ‘plans’ like a chef/architect.

Our topper was a tipi I had made (from fabric and Lego!) which included a Lego drum-kit, guitars and speakers inside and a working LIGHTBULB! We had little mini-figures to look like Steve and I who stood at the entrance to the tipi – Steve’s in a grey suit with a blue tie, and mine with a wedding dress and hair in a bun. There was even a ‘stand-in’ Lego bride up until the day as I had managed to find a Lego dress VERY similar to my own and I didn’t want Steve to see it and ruin the surprise!

YOUR PHOTOGRAPHER | We picked the wonderful Lynsey Grace as our photographer. We had done a lot of research into the style we were after and her portfolio fitted the bill – once we met her, our decision was sealed! Steve and I are incapable of taking a serious photograph and are always pulling silly faces at each other, but Lynsey made us feel really comfortable and got some great photos of us in our engagement shoot.

On the day, Lynsey was nipping between my parents’ house and Steve’s parents’ house (only about 200yards apart!) to take photos of us both getting ready. She stayed right up until Steve’s band played at the reception and did not stop all day. Some of our friends even asked if the photographer was even at the reception as she blended in so well – all of our photographs really capture the mood and atmosphere of the day with some really natural photos of our friends and family.

THE DETAILS & DÉCOR | Our wedding was full of little details which probably made no sense to anyone but us! Our top table guests had place Lego mini-figures which we had custom-made and personalised to look like them – we had so much fun searching for the perfect hair, clothes and accessories for them all – I was most proud of my Dad’s, which came complete with bushy beard, jeans and a fishing rod!

We made VIP passes for all of the wedding party, the bar staff and the musicians, we made the bunting which decorated the tipis (which is now being turned into a patchwork quilt) and the cocktails (named ‘Berry Happy Together’, ‘Rum-Away Bride’ and ‘Zest Man’s Speech’) were tailored and mixed by our friend Greg (cocktail mixologist extraordinaire).

My favourite part of the décor was our welly planters, placed around the tipis and the garden. We searched charity shops and got lots of donations of wellies which we filled with foliage and a few flowers – no festival would be complete without a few pairs of wellies – they were just a quirky addition which brightened up the place and stopped people tripping over the tipi poles!

THE HONEYMOON | We had about a month after the wedding at home before we jetted off on honeymoon. We took a tour of Italy over a fortnight, taking in most of the major cities. We booked through a company named Travel Counsellors who honestly could not have done more for us – all of the hotels were brilliant and they gave us lots of suggestions for attractions and sights to see while we were staying in each city, as well as catering for Steve’s gluten intolerance and including a speedboat transfer from the airport in Venice to our five star hotel in the heart of the city.

MEMORABLE MOMENTS | Because our wedding was so jam-packed with brilliant memories, it’s really difficult to pick just one. I think our favourite part of the day was at about 7pm – we found a quiet bench in the garden at our reception and took five minutes to just look at what was unfolding in front of us. People had been well fed (an amazing posh-BBQ supplied by the wonderful Cucumber Catering and delicious ice-cream pots supplied by Taywell), everyone was dancing to some great music and were just having the best time. The sun was still out and we realised how truly lucky we are to have so many amazing family and friends and to have pulled off ‘the vision’ for the whole day. We wouldn’t have changed a single thing about our entire wedding day which made it all the more special.

ADVICE FOR OTHER COUPLES | Don’t be afraid to ask for what you REALLY want from your suppliers. You are paying these people for a service, they know it’s for the most important day of your life and you need to get your money’s worth! Try to meet with them and lay out EXACTLY what you need and expect from them before paying deposits.

Secondly, where possible, DIY or delegate – If you know someone with a skill, make sure you use it to your advantage – you’ll find that people are more willing to help than you think, especially those who have planned a wedding for themselves!

Thirdly, is to remember that it is NOT the end of the world if things don’t go perfectly and that too much Pinterest can be detrimental to getting the wedding you REALLY want.

Lastly, and most importantly, take a step back every once in a while (during planning and on the day itself) and take it all in. Grab your other half and remind yourself of why you are doing all of this – it doesn’t matter if the place-cards don’t match the napkins – as long as you are married at the end of it and you can spend the rest of your lives together, no-one will care about the tiny details. Remember that life isn’t perfect and that there are likely to be a few bumps on the day, but that will just make you stronger and give you some brilliant stories to tell the grandchildren!

Good luck – I hope your day is as perfect as ours was!

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE |

Photographer | Lynsey Grace Photography

Caterer | Cucumber Catering

Tipi Hire (including tables, benches and bar) | Holmsted Events

Florist | Sandra Shoobridge

Ice-Creams | Taywell

Travel Agent | Travel Counsellors

Bands | Roxxon, The Standard Lamps, Fred Clark

Jeweller | Georgina Ettridge

Oh so wonderful, what a fun celebration.

Thanks so much to Becky and Steve for sharing all about their wedding here on WWW xo Lou