Warm Autumnal & Geeky Chateau Rhianfa Wedding & Board Ga

Alice and Dan’s Chateau Rhianfa wedding in Anglesey, Wales was nothing short of awesome. From the board game centrepieces to the colour changing science vibe gin favours and the sunflower bouquets, I love it all.

But do you know what I love most, aside from all the gorgeous touches? It’s that Alice and Dan crammed their personality by the bucketload into their day. For example, the brilliant Tetris, Mario and Lego cake was just amazingly personal.

Then there were the sumptuous red tones running through the attire teamed with colour pop yellow bouquets. And let’s not forget how stunning Alice and Dan both looked. Woah.

Fox and Bear Photography, thank you so much for sharing these epic and happy shots with us.

Chateau Rhianfa Wedding

The Proposal

After 3 years together, having just bought our first house and adopted our cat, in October 2018, Alice phoned Dan on the way home from a particularly stressful day at work to say that she needed a nice evening to de-stress.

Alice had had a dream the previous night that Dan had proposed to her using Haribo, and they had laughed it off that morning. Dan said ‘I have something to cheer you up’. Alice thought he just meant going to the shop for some chocolate!

When Dan came home, he asked Alice to go through to the dining room, showed her a bag of Haribo, then got on one knee and proposed.

He had custom-ordered the ring to include Alice’s preferences of white gold, coloured stones (rubies) and conflict free, lab grown diamond. Perfect!

The Vision

We knew from the beginning that we wanted it to be small, unique to us and not too focused on being perfect. An Autumn wedding was always on the cards as we were inspired by our Autumnal surroundings around the time Dan proposed.

Warm colours like reds and oranges were a must, as well as personal touches to reflect our shared love of gaming, science and all things geeky.

Above all, we wanted the planning, and the day, to be relaxed and fun. Matching a pinterest board or stressing about napkin colour was not for us!

Budget

We had just bought our house, so we couldn’t spend a fortune. That slightly changed when we fell in love with the venue, but our original budget was around £12,000.

In the end it was closer to £15,000, but a year of hard saving was definitely worth it.

The Venue

We only ever went to see one venue. I had already decided that if it was even slightly possible budget-wise, I wanted Chateau Rhianfa on Anglesey.

I (Alice) grew up on Anglesey and we still live close by up the North Wales coast. We went for a wedding show around of Chateau Rhianfa on 2^nd November 2018, a year to the day of our wedding, and knew there and then this is where we would be getting married.

The fairy-tale building, the views over the Menai Strait and Snowdonia, the banqueting hall where the ceremony and reception would take place, it was all beautiful and fit perfectly with our original desire for the wedding to be warm, autumnal and relaxed.

Your Outfits

We wanted Dan to buy a suit rather than rent and wanted to go for a classic black suit which we could add colourful touches to.

He bought his suit from Moss Bros and then we sourced burgundy waistcoats and ties for Dan and his groomsmen to keep to the Autumnal theme.

Alice’s wedding dress was the Bronwyn from Wed2Be. I wanted something classic, with lace and floral touches, an A-line shape, and a delicate neckline.

Bronwyn ticked all those boxes! I also wanted a lace veil, which I also bought from Wed2Be. I wore a vintage pearl necklace and my mum’s ruby earrings (my something borrowed!). I wore simple, flat white lace shoes from Dorothy Rose Bridal Boutique – I knew I wouldn’t last in heels all day.

The Ceremony & Music

We had a civil ceremony and opted to have 2 readings and a harpist for the music.

Alice walked down the aisle to a harp arrangement of ‘All You Need is Love’ and we exited to ‘God Only Knows’. The harpist, Catrin, also played music for our drinks reception.

Harps are synonymous with Wales and the music, and harp itself, was a beautiful addition.

The readings were an excerpt from Douglas Adams’ ‘Hitchhikers’ series and a poem about cats – very us!

Your Photographer & Filmmaker

Almost immediately after he proposed, Dan had decided that we would be asking Dewi, of Fox and Bear Photography, to photograph our wedding.

Dan knew Dewi through their shared love of board-gaming, and we love Fox and Bear’s style of intimate, relaxed photography. We had an engagement shoot as well, which was a great opportunity to get used to being in front of a camera and of course get some lovely photos before the wedding itself.

Dewi was amazing on the day – we were completely at ease for our photos and our guests almost didn’t notice him there. We also used Fox and Bear’s gif booth in the evening, which was a big hit!

The Styling & Decor

Mixing autumnal with geek was a challenge at first. But some great ideas from family and several days hot gluing at the dining table resulted in something that fit the autumnal/geeky theme perfectly.

Firstly, the flowers, from amazing florist Lunaflower, were autumnal, colourful, and a bit wild.

I had a flower crown, then we had bouquets, boutonnieres and a table arrangement for the registrar table and head table.

For the ceremony, we used fairy lights in jars, that had fabric autumn leaves inside to give a warm glow, to line the aisle. Alice’s mum and sister had attached the same fabric autumn leaves to strings of fairy lights to adorn the wooden panelling around the room, windowsills, and tables at dinner.

Finally, we used board game boxes, the leaf lights, and jars to create the centrepieces. There were also chocolate dice scattered on the tables.

For favours, Alice made colour-changing gin, as a nod to her love of gin and background as a science teacher.

The cake was one of our favourite elements; it was half classic white with flowers, and half game themed with Tetris, Lego and Mario tiers.

Our guestbook was a canvas with an illustration of us, which guests wrote directly onto, and we now have on our wall.

Finally, our table setting sign was also home-made, with a map from one of our most-played board games as the background, and board games for table names.

The Honeymoon

After the wedding, we headed to York for our mini-moon. We had a few days of museums, eating and drinking, spa days and relaxing. We stayed at The Grand, which we’ll definitely be visiting again.

We were supposed to be going to Lucerne in Switzerland for our honeymoon, with plans to travel on the train and stop for a night in Paris.

Unfortunately, that was scheduled for April 2020, so the pandemic put it on hold. We are hoping to go in April 2022, only 2.5 years after our wedding!

Memorable Moments

Seeing the cake for the first time was such a great moment – it sounds silly but it was a culmination of all the waiting and planning to see how it would all turn out, and the cake really encapsulated that.

The speeches were just a joy – we laughed, cried and cringed in equal measure as we were treated to board game puns, embarrassing photos and stories, and of course heartfelt words to each other. Such a lovely part of the day.

Dancing the night away in the evening – having a live band was the best decision and made the evening reception that much better.

Advice For Other Couples

Don’t stress too much about what other people will think. This is your day, not anyone else’s, so make sure it is designed around who you are as a couple.

People don’t really remember small details but do remember how they felt and how much fun they had. Focus on the fun and you as a couple and the rest will fall into place.