Awesome DIY Geodome Wedding on a Woodland Campsite

Geodome Campsite Wedding

I cannot tell you how much this real wedding made me grin today. From beginning to end there is laughter and smiles all round, it really is full of joy and party atmosphere. Phil and Sarah were hitched on the 18th May 2019 at a campsite in Lincolnshire. They completely DIY’d their day, organising everything from the toilets to the generator and all the wonderful decorations. No mean feat!

First up they were married in the woodland by their friend before partying in a very cool geodome wedding tent. The geodome looked really cool, especially lit up at night, it must have felt totally magical to be in there.

Phil and Sarah really injected their personality with their handmade day, think DIY wedding flowers, dinosaurs, roaming brass band and stunning attire. What a hoot! Huge thanks goes to Aden Priest Photography for sharing these really awesome photos. Whoa!

The Proposal

On a holiday to Iceland in December 2017 Phil proposed under a frozen waterfall.

The Vision

We wanted the overall feeling of the day to be fun, whilst maintaining a link to traditional weddings with our own twist. We discussed a traditional church ceremony, but not being particularly religious, we decided to use the grandeur of the forest and nature as the backdrop to our ceremony and celebration. We wrote out guestlist and didn’t want to cut numbers so we needed to find a solution to fit everyone in. This is when we realised we were going to have to DIY our wedding

The Planning Process

We started out looking at wedding barns and traditional venues but quickly realised there wasn’t any venues out there that could give us what we wanted and allow as many people as we wanted to invite (170).

We started looking for a piece of land or woodland to hire and agreed to go ‘DIY’ to ensure we could have everything and everyone we wanted without breaking the bank.

Budget

£27K

The Venue

Jim Page campsite near Lincoln.

Using a double dome from BayaHire.

Groomsmen

Hired from Dapper Dan’s Suit Hire.

Bridesmaids

Adult bridesmaids dresses were purchased on Amazon.

Children’s bridesmaid dresses were purchased from China through eBay.

The Readings & Music

We decided we wanted the ceremony to be as personal and fun as possible so 9 months before the day we asked one of Sarah’s oldest friends to conduct the ceremony for us. This was one of our best decisions as we were able to agree on which traditional parts of the service we wanted to keep and Suzanne was able to add to that to include personal touches and stories.

Sarah walked down the aisle to ‘Grow old with you’ by Ortopilot.

Phil’s Sister read the lyrics to a song called ‘I love you for being you’.

We walked out to ‘Celebration’ by Kool & the Gang performed live by ‘New York Brass Band’.

Check out our wedding readings and wedding music inspiration pages too!

Your Outfits & Accessories

Sarah struggled to fall in love with the dresses she tried on in standard bridal shops until she visited Beautiful Brides Liverpool. They specialise in plus size wedding dresses and their ethos is that they don’t do sizing labels or dress numbers.

Phil’s suit was hired from Dapper Dan’s suit hire in Wolverhampton.

Beauty

Bride and bridal parties’ hair – local hairstylist CC’s Wedding and Updo Hairstylist.

Makeup – by Alluring Makeup Lincoln.

The Flowers

We bought £300 worth of flowers at the local flower market and Sarah and her parents did all the bouquets, tables, aisle flowers, pinholes and headdresses following Youtube tutorials.

The Cake

Cake bought from Marks & Spencer. Decorated by family friend.

The Details & Décor

The campsite was a completely blank canvas. No power, no toilets, no cover, just a field surrounded by trees. We booked toilets from MB Luxury Loos, hired a generator, and booked ‘Cater Me Tasty’ for the catering. Our reception was held inside a ‘Geometric Double Dome’ from Baya Hire who provided all the furniture and we used the chairs from the reception for the ceremony.

We spent 12 months in the run up to the wedding making furniture, upcycling mirrors, and apple crates, adding artificial flowers to garden décor, spray painting dinosaurs and using photoshop to create signs and menus. Our friends did the stationery, aunties and uncles made décor and Phil’s Dad built an arbour for us to get married under. Many trips to Ikea, knocking on strangers’ doors to collect things we had bought on Facebook marketplace, searching through reclamation yards and online auctions to gradually build everything from the ground up.

We wanted the drinks to flow and be cheap, so we bought all the alcohol from Cash & Carry and hired staff to run the bar for us selling drinks at just £2.

We didn’t want the traditional Champagne toast so each table got a crate with all the glasses, equipment and ingredients to make their own cocktails to toast us with.

We created a gallery in the trees and had photos of every single guest and some of those who couldn’t make it so everyone felt involved, and part of the day.

Your Photographer

We found Aden online and booked in to have video call so he could hear our ideas and the style of photos we wanted. We did not want to spend half our day posing for traditional photos and wanted someone to get involved with the party and capture moments that reflected the day. We instantly agreed he was the man for the job and his portfolio filled us with confidence he would pull it off. As you can see from the photos he nailed it.

Your Filmmaker

We met ‘Shoot It Yourself’ at the wedding show at the NEC and they opened our eyes to the fact that you don’t have to have the traditional boring, soft focus wedding video. We booked a ‘2 camera’ package and our guests filmed our wedding for us. The raw footage was then edited into a 40 minute video which perfectly reflected our day.

The Honeymoon

Just a cheap relaxing break in an Airbnb villa in Greece to recover from the madness of the big day (and the hard work of clearing up afterwards).

Memorable Moments

Having our friend officiate the ceremony for us.

Surprising all our guests when New York Brass Band jumped out from behind the trees to play us back up the aisle.

Our entire wedding party doing the conga around the forest following the brass band.

Seeing 170 of our friends and family shaking and stirring cocktails all at the same time ready for the speeches and toasts.

Our first dance (Budapest – George Ezra) performed live by our band The Red Jack.

An absolute highlight was sitting down and watching the hilarious raw footage from the video cameras had us in tears of laughter for weeks.

Why not check out our first dance songs playlist here?!

Advice For Other Couples

Don’t be scared to have what you want not just what is on offer. Add your personality to the day where possible and make it unique to you rather than just ‘off the shelf’.

Write your guest list and agree numbers before looking at venues. Nothing worse than having to cut people because of space.

Forget the budget. It’s all worth it if it’s what you want.

Credit Where Credit Is Due

Such fun!

Phil and Sarah I really cannot thank you enough for sharing with us your totally brilliant geodome wedding xo Lou