Bohemian Funfair Festival Wedding with a Ferris Wheel

Welcome to Hollie and Sam’s funfair festival wedding extravaganza! They were wed in an outdoor ceremony at Horsley Hale Farm in Cambridgeshire followed by a tipi reception.

One of the most awesome things about their day I love? It has to be the epic Ferris Wheel, which I am certain guests must have enjoyed so much. There was of course the most gorgeous boho styling, wonderful stationery, super sweet cakes and seriously amazing outfits too. In fact, there’s so much to wax lyrical about that I just can’t cover it all!

WWW wedding supplier fave, Thyme Lane Photography, captured the whole day in their stunning signature style. Wowwee.

Funfair Festival Wedding

The Proposal

It was on an epic road trip, one of the world’s most iconic ones that we got engaged.

After two years of saving hard, we had set off on a dream trip to complete Route 66 in America, covering 3,400 miles in just 17 days! Halfway through our trip on the 13th of October 2019 we reached William’s Arizona where I managed to convince Sam to do a helicopter ride around the Grand Canyon.

It was the absolute highlight of the trip…until… we took a tour in a hummer around the edge of the canyon, where we stopped to take in the view at sunset, Sam got down on one knee and proposed! The location was truly spectacular!

This trip of a lifetime will always hold a very special place in our hearts. We knew we had to feature an element of this trip on our wedding day! We decided to feature the states we visited as table names for our seating plan.

The Vision

We love adventure, nature, and the idea of an outdoor wedding. We wanted our wedding to be as relaxed and fun as possible with all our loved ones in one place! Something we felt very strongly about from the off was that we wanted our wedding to truly represent us as a couple and to do things our way!

Hollie – Being a Designer, I had a clear vision of how I wanted everything to look and feel. And being a very creative person, I really wanted to try and do as much as possible myself as well as use some of our wonderful friends and family’s talents! I am very lucky to of married Sam who always completely supports my crazy ideas!

This totally meant that so many parts of our wedding were completely suited to US and what we love!

Budget

We will admit we went very over our original budget….COVID definitely meant we managed to save a lot more than we initially anticipated. Along the way of planning we discovered there was certain things we really didn’t want to compromise on so ended up spending more than we originally planned.

The Venue

We visited Horsley Hale in January 2020 on a cold and rainy day, We were only there for a matter of 10mins before we both looked at each other and said this is where we are getting married! We absolutely LOVED everything Horsley had to offer, and that we would have exclusive hire from Friday to Sunday of the grounds and glamping.

The idea of our close loved ones being able to stay with us for the whole weekend, and that people could bring their own tents and campervans was great. We also loved the idea of our guests relaxing, enjoying the outdoors, gathered around the firepit as the sun went down on the evening of our wedding reception.

The empty party paddock was what really excited us the most, as that meant we could do WHATEVER we wanted!!! Planning every single element of our festival wedding was a dream come true for us and an experience we really enjoyed! It meant we could make everything from our reception to the catering, décor, ceremony, and schedule of the day completely bespoke to us.

I have always been a lover of boho and nature so instantly gravitated to this theme and it worked so perfectly with the venue. When we first visited Horsley Hale we knew instantly that we wanted a tipi at our wedding and Stuart put us in contact with Lisa at Magical Tipis and the boho festival wedding idea was born.

Our most favourite feature was that we were also allowed to have our fur babies Winston and Wilfred at our ceremony!

The Ceremony & Music

We didn’t get our ceremony by the lake as the weather had other plans! What’s a festival without a little rain… Instead, we had the most beautiful ceremony under the trees that was just PERFECT and was totally meant to be.

Jamie Walker our wonderful celebrant created the most perfect ceremony for us. We had so many comments from our family and friends about how it was so personal and really told our story! Everyone experienced the love, laughter and emotion with us and it was everything we could have hoped for.

This was one of the things we initially were so worried about as we hate being centre of attention but with Jamie’s experience, she made us feel like we were in our own little ‘LOVE’ bubble at the front and our nerves just melted away!!

Walking down the aisle – Here Comes the Sun – The Beatles – Acoustic
Signing the certificate – Somewhere Over The Rainbow – Israel Kamakawiwo’ole
Exit song – You’ve Got The Love – Florence and the Machine

One thing we really wanted was for the music not to stop! Throughout our day we played music using a sound man from our ceremony until midnight. We put together various playlists that reflected our favourite music but also suited the time of the day it was being played.

Megan Mc Partlin – A wonderful acoustic singer who entertained our guests straight after the ceremony during the welcome drinks up until the wedding breakfast.

First Dance – You’re My Best Friend – Queen

We had an incredible live band – Last Minute Brigade who regularly play at Hollie’s family restaurant (Iron Horse Ranch House). They were incredible and had everyone on the dance floor for the whole night! We will forever cherish our impromptu second dance where Hollie’s sister Kirsten completely surprised us by playing the drums with LMB to Coldplay Yellow!

Your Outfits

Hollie’s Dress – Was made by my wonderful Bridesman Justin Mason, we met at Art College at 18 when he was studying fashion and have been best friends ever since. I knew straight away that I wanted Justin to make my wedding dress, it was always something we joked about before the engagement. Having Justin make my wedding dress was so special and will always mean so much to me!

Hollie’s White Dr Martins – I was always going to wear white Dr Martins after the wedding ceremony, as I wanted to feel as comfortable as possible for our celebrations in the party paddock. I did have a pair of heels for the ceremony, but I ended up ditching these 20mins before walking down the aisle as I just knew, with the rain, mud and a big dress I wasn’t going to feel comfortable! It was one of the best decisions I made! I love that I can wear them after the wedding too!

Custom Leather Jacket – Emily Kate Aesthetics. A fellow creative whose hand-drawn floral tattoos are truly sensational. It was something she had never done before but was up for the challenge and completely nailed the design! As soon as we decided on the festival theme, I just knew I needed a cool jacket, which due to the rain came in very handy!!

Sam’s and the Groomsmen 3-piece suits – Moss Bros – Hired. Sam wanted to feel as comfortable and relaxed as possible, he didn’t want anything too formal.

Bridesmaid Dresses – TFNC from ASOS. TFNC do a wide range of styles in the sage green dresses which seamlessly complement each other, so I let the bridesmaids pick their dress to suit their own personal style so they felt happy and comfortable on the day!

Bridesman Suit – ASOS two-piece suit in sage green to match perfectly with the bridesmaids.

Your Photographer

Noemi and Pal from Thyme Lane completely captured everything of the day so perfectly!!!! And are sooooo easy to work with.   You can tell the utter joy we both felt throughout the whole day. They truly captured every essence that was our wedding, we are all smiling, laughing and having fun in pretty much every photo!!!

We seriously love their style of photography… They totally understood what we wanted from our photography and the results are so much better than we ever expected our photos could be!! Hands down the easiest and best choice we made!!

The Styling & Decor

Our main wedding colours were inspired by the outdoors, using sage greens and contrasting warm earthy tones. We love eucalyptus and wanted to feature this throughout the day in various ways. The blue/green/grey tone of eucalyptus also inspired the colours of the bridesmaid dresses and groomsmen’s ties.

Sam was adamant he wanted a ferris wheel to feature at our festival wedding and worked closely with Stuart at Horsley Hale to bring his vision to life. We kept this a complete secret from everyone even our close family and friends so they had no idea until they walked into the party paddock! As you can see from the photos it was a complete showstopper!!!

I have worked on various creative elements for weddings before and I couldn’t wait to be able to create our wedding styling and décor. All stationery; favours, labels, our table plan, table names, place cards and decorative signs were created and handmade by myself @hollieswinscoedesign.

Most of the decorations, such as the lanterns, candle sticks, and crates were collected over the 2 years of planning from eBay, online in the sales and brought used from other people’s weddings. I was also very lucky to borrow some dressing from our props department at work which helped with the budget, this included various-sized disco balls to help tie in the festival theme in the styling!

I wanted our table decorations to be simple yet beautiful, featuring soft ruscus greenery garlands with miss matched gold lanterns and candle holders. All the candles looked incredible when lit at dinner, and created a magical feeling within the tipi! Each place setting had a sprig of eucalyptus, a bottle of tequila for our toast, and s’mores as our wedding favour that could be toasted around the fire pits!

One of the best decisions we made for the wedding breakfast was to have a sweetheart table with our ‘Bohemian Thrones’. This gave us some time just ‘us’ which can be very rare on a busy full-on wedding day!

Our soft ruscus table garlands, boho ceremony archway and gantry flowers were created by Lydia at Fiori and Co after seeing her stunning work at one of Magical Tipi’s open days. These were a perfect mix of dried grasses, eucalyptus and ruscus as foliage and bright pink and orange flowers to make everything pop!

We did hire a few key pieces of furniture such as the ceremony seating, wooden archway, the wonderful peacock chairs and large Moroccan rugs, as well as our party games from Belles and Beaus.

The bouquets were all handmade on the Thursday before by Hollie, her sisters and Gwen Sam’s Step Nan. It was lovely to be able to make these together. Our flowers featured a mixture of dried grasses, oats and pampas with bright peach roses, orange and yellow flowers and lots of eucalyptus. Gwen was a florist so had some contacts to source the flowers locally.

We had a glitter tipi from @glitipi which was absolutely brilliant! Everyone really got into the spirit and embraced the GLITTER!!! People looked incredible and commented how unique this was for a wedding!

Our cake was made by one of Hollie’s old work colleagues turned friend Charlotte Sinclair. Our cake was spread across two tiers due to the fact one was vegan. Our larger cake was chocolate and coffee. The second cake was vegan lemon drizzle! Charlotte nailed the décor by using our colours and flowers. Safe to say they were a massive hit with us and our guests.

Charlotte now works as a wedding planner in Cambridge so we hired Charlotte to be our wedding co-coordinator for the day. Planning a lot of the wedding ourselves, it was great to be able to have Charlotte who we completely trusted, to ensure everything ran smoothly and seamlessly. She was an absolute superstar when our ceremony had to change locations last minute due to the rain.

The Honeymoon

We went and stayed in a cottage in Cornwall for 5 days straight after the wedding with our dogs Winston and Wilfred. Which was so lovely!!!

We have since booked to go to New York to celebrate in the New Year using our wedding money, something that has always been on our bucket list!

Memorable Moments

THE FERRIS WHEEL!!!

Our TEQUILA TOAST, Watching all our friends and family, especially everyone chanting encouragement to Hollie’s 88-year-old Nan, was SO MUCH FUN! And set the scene for an evening of celebrations, drinking and a lot of dancing to our incredible band!! We barely left the dance floor all night.

Everyone is still talking about the pizzas…. they were soooo delicious!

My Cousin/Bridesmaid Nicola, getting so drunk on tequila she needed assistance getting back to her tent…. Which ended up being in a wheelbarrow!

The whole weekend was truly incredible and really was the best weekend of our lives. We had so much fun from the Friday evening BBQ with our closest loved ones and wedding party, swimming/paddle boarding on the lake, pampering , drinking, OUR MAGICAL WEDDING DAY. Finishing off the weekend of fun meeting up at the kitchen barn for a massive breakfast to reminisce the antics from the night before. It was a weekend full to the brim of wonderful memories!

Advice For Other Couples

Have as much fun as you possibly can, stay true to what you truly want from your wedding day as a couple and forget everyone else! Embrace anything that doesn’t go to plan, you will still have the most incredible day and things sometimes work out better than you could have planned them to be!