Esme & Steve's Countryside Tipi Wedding

Esme & Steve’s Countryside Tipi Wedding

Esme and Steve celebrated their Countryside Tipi Wedding in Two Giant Hats and Chill-Out Tipi back in September. They were super lucky with the weather and got to celebrated their gorgeous day in the sunshine on their local farmland, surrounded by their family and friends.

Both of them are big farm and countryside lovers, so being able to host their wedding on a local farm, gifted to them, was just perfect. They created a super chilled out day, with no formal seating plan, lots of different food that their guests could eat whenever they wanted – and in whatever order! If they wanted dessert first, why not!

Esme talks us through the details here, alongside gorgeous photos by Clive Blair.

What made you decide on an outdoor wedding?

We always knew we wanted an outdoor wedding. My husband is a Farmer, and I am a country girl so it was always something we had agreed we’d want, even before we were engaged! Once we had announced our engagement one of the local farmers we work with kindly offered us some land that overlooked our village with beautiful views, for us to host our wedding on as a wedding gift. It was absolutely perfect, we could see our house from the top of the hill, and it felt like we were on top of the world. It was flat at the top with hills cascading down to the local villages and we knew tipis would fit in perfectly with our plans.

What did everybody wear?

I actually got my dress in a closing down sale of a wedding dress store in my local town. Typically it was the last dress I tried on, and one that my bridesmaid got me to try on as it was opposite to what I would normally wear. I felt really comfortable in it, and it suited the style of wedding we were having.

My bridesmaid and daughter were our only wedding party members and I got both of their dresses from Next. We didn’t have a colour code but they both liked the light green colours, and I wanted them to wear what they wanted and would be comfortable in. I also treated us all to a new pair of vans each!

Steve, being a farmer, isn’t a big suit wearer, and again we wanted him to be comfortable. So we found him some comfortable chino trousers, had a shirt tailor made, and bought a contrasting waistcoat from Next. His outfit was almost more than mine, but he purposefully got items that he could wear again. We also found Ebbi (our son) matching shirt and trousers to the Groom.

Tell us about your ceremony.

With us having our wedding on private land, and the laws not being changed to allow weddings to become legal in any surrounding, we had to do the formalities somewhere else. We had what we called a Wedmin day. We booked the cheapest ceremony possible at one of our local registry offices, and took just two friends with us as witnesses. It was actually really magical, and we celebrated with a cooked breakfast at a nearby cafe while planning the events for that coming Saturday.

We made the decision not to tell any of our guests that we had had a wedmin day. A few days later, with all of our loved ones, we had a beautiful ceremony hosted by the wonderful Jo at ‘My Perfect Ceremony’. We decided to keep it brief, as neither of us are keen on the limelight being on, and we wanted it to be personal to us which is why we chose Jo. She wrote the whole ceremony based on a number of meetings she had with us, and it talked about the start of our relationship, some funny tales of our story so far, as well as mentioning our children. It also allowed us to have the whole ceremony in one location, we wanted to avoid guests having to travel from one place to another.

Theme and Entertainment.

As we didn’t have a sit down meal, we just created as much seating as possible from hired tables and chairs, straw bales bought from a local farmer, and pallets we already had. The tipis talk for themselves, especially with all the lights inside.

We wanted to encourage casual vibes, so had the chill out area kitted out with soft seating, as well using straw bales for the seating on our ceremony. I went around all the charity shop for off cut materials to cover them, and picked as many mis-match bright colours as possible! We like to think the theme reflected us a couple, and more importantly allowed our guests to relax and enjoy the day.

The entertainment for the day and evening was provided by the wonderful musical duo of “Ear Candy Oxford”. They were brilliant at playing the music we liked to hear, tailoring songs for us, and great at playing to the mood whether it be more casual while people enjoyed the sunset and their food, or getting everyone up on the dance floor. We also made some large garden games for guests to enjoy.

How did you feed your guests?

We wanted our food to be as casual as the rest of the day. Our service started late. We didn’t have our ceremony until 16:00. Once the ceremony was over people were allowed to help themselves to whatever food they wanted.

We had two food vendors, a mobile pizza company, and ‘Phata Phat’, an Indian Street Food provider, and ensured they could cater for everyone to eat at least twice if they wanted. We are big foodies ourselves so wanted the food providers to reflect that. And of course, the food is one of the main things people remember from a wedding!

Both vendors were around until late in to the evening, and my Mother in law and I made plenty of homemade cakes for people to get their sweet fix from. We also built our own bar and supplied all the drink for people to help themselves to. It was the most cost effective way – we took advantage of seasonal deals in superstores, and local wine merchants.

What are your Top Tips for planning a Tipi wedding?

Top Tip 1

Let the tipis do the talking. You can get carried away thinking you need to decorate very inch of the tipis, but chose special features you don’t want to compromise on such as special seats for the bride and groom. For us, as we were using private land that had no services at all we wanted to light the outside area as much as possible, so Sami Tipi were able to provide us with a much larger area covered by the shepherd hook lighting.

Top Tip 2

Be brave! We were so grateful to have been offered a space for our wedding, but we were dealing with a space that had no electricity, no water, and no facilities at all! But Sami Tipi were really helpful in guiding us and enlightening us on things we would need to think about that we might not have alone.

Top Tip 3

Hire some help. We hired a small local events company to provide support throughout the day. Mainly to lay out the cakes while we got ready, put the drinks on ice and to keep the ice topped up, and do general tidying up throughout the day. They were worth their weight in gold. We wanted to avoid our parents walking around with bin bags tidying up! And get yourselves a small group of people who can help the next day. Treat them to a BBQ on site, or a way to thank them. It makes the tidy up the next day a lot easier, more entertaining and feels like it’s a continuation of your day.