Well, I never, WWW readers Emma and Chris’ Cheswell Grange wedding in Shropshire is gracing WWW today and what a marvel it all is. First up I have to rave about the gorgeous photography by WWW wedding supplier member James Merrick Photography, which is so joy-filled and the fabulous confetti by another WWW member, Shropshire Petals. Epic.
I really love how Emma and Chris made their DIY wedding theirs. From the Vietnamese nods (the location of their proposal) to the house music soundtrack, as well as the industrial vibes. It’s pretty cool that so much of their decor; the dried flowers, neon lights and signs, are all now being reused in their home as decor. Top tip right there! Sustainable and great for amping up your interiors post-wedding.
I think you’ll love their outfits, all the info on how they crafted their day and all the wedding song inspo. Do go and enjoy it all.
Emma on WWW
WWW was a real gem of inspo. We (well, really I, haha) often got into a right WWW hole when reading the ‘Real Weddings, DIY Weddings’ section. A DIY wedding is quite daunting, but the stories from other couples was a great resource to keep motivated and inspired.
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Cheswell Grange Wedding
The Proposal
We got engaged on a beach in Vietnam and Chris actually got it on video!! We sat on the beach with some drinks and Chris suggested that we ‘timelapse’ the sunset. He then said how great the video would be if we went and waved in the camera.
I obviously jumped up at the chance for a great insta post so up we got…there I was frantically waving, glanced to my right, and Chris was down on one knee with the most beautiful ring (that he had gone through numerous airports with undetected on our trip as we travelled the country). Although my initial reaction was ‘f*ck off’ as I was so shocked haha.
Real big props to Chris for being able to capture one of our most memorable moments. We sent out our Save The Dates (and Invites) online and we actually used the video in these which was amazing.
The Vision
We wanted something totally unique to us, so we chose to have a DIY wedding.
We didn’t have a ‘theme’ as such, or a colour scheme for example, we just wanted our day to reflect our style, be relaxed, fun, with an amazing soundtrack and beautiful food. We took inspiration from our home and therefore wanted a bit of an industrial feel, but also wanted a lot of colour, awesome florals, as well as a nod to Vietnam.
Budget
£25k
The Venue
Initially, we were thinking of having our wedding at home on our smallholding and started looking for somewhere for the ceremony. We found a venue, that was around 15 minutes from home, that had a Boat House that would accommodate us just for the nuptials. Upon going to view the venue, Cheswell Grange, we absolutely fell in love with it and decided to have the whole wedding there.
The Boat House sits on a beautiful lake, and opposite is the DIY marquee with amazing views of our local countryside.
The venue also only has a handful of weddings a year, so we felt it was even more special in that we didn’t know anyone who had got married there (unbeknownst to us at the time, the limited number of weddings there made it an absolute lifesaver when we had to choose a new date due to Covid).
1 year to the date of our wedding (in the midst of Covid), Chris organised with the venue for us to visit and have champagne in the Boat House which was really lovely, as well as testament to how amazing Susanna (venue owner) was.
The Ceremony & Music
Music was a huge part of the wedding for us. We spent a fair old time choosing the right tunes to soundtrack what was going to be the best day of our lives, and created playlists for each element of the day. I had also added some extra pressures on us by wanting things to happen on ‘the drop’ haha i.e. my entrance into the Boat House, our exit out of the Boat House for confetti, and our entrance into the marquee for dinner as the new ‘Mr & Mrs Manahan’.
I am real proud to say we got everything spot on! (special shout out to our ‘on-the-day’ wedding coordinator Lynda, who even practised when to introduce us, and my girls for getting their steps spot on when walking towards the Boat House).
I walked down the aisle with my Mum, to the acoustic version of ‘Latch’ by Disclosure ft Sam Smith. And was greeted halfway down by our excited dog, Baxter. The boys were meant to have kept hold him, but I think he obviously had other ideas.
I thought I would be a jabbering mess. All morning I felt I was on that teetering edge of just bursting into tears, and I am known to be a ‘bit of crier’ haha. But when it got to it, all I could do was grin ear-to-ear and stare into Chris’ (very sparkly) blue eyes.
We signed the Register to ‘Always There’ by Incognito ft Jocelyn Brown; ‘So Hooked on Your Lovin’ by Selace (Mousse T Remix) and ‘Want You in My Soul’ by Lovebirds ft Stee Downes. Amazing house tunes, with lyrics that really meant something to us and the very start of our married life.
We left the Boat House to get the ‘Confetti shot’ with everyone to ‘I Feel It’ by Leftwing & Kody and after a ‘House fuelled’ Drinks Reception, we were announced into the marquee to ‘You & Me’ by Disclosure (Flume Remix).
We actually went a little off the ‘house music piste’ for our First Dance, as we both love James Bay’s ‘Wild Love’ and its meaning. It does have a great synth-based sound though, so we didn’t quite lose the electronic vibe. We also chose a ‘Second Dance’, ‘Thinking of You’ by Sister Sledge (Dimitri from Paris Remix) to keep everyone on the dancefloor with us.
Remainder of the night was banger filled, and we also decided to choose a ‘Last Dance’ (well, a last two dances) for us all to make sure our last moment with everyone was as memorable as the rest of the day. ‘Gold Dust’ by DJ Fresh (Shy FX edit) and to close, ‘Show Me Love’ by Steve Angello & Laidback Luke ft. Robin S.
Your Outfits
Chris was dressed all in Reiss with some Dr Martens. As it was Summer, Chris wanted something lightweight, and colour-wise we wanted browns/blacks to fit with the bridesmaid’s (black vests and different coloured skirts) and my shoes/florals.
The Reiss suit we found fit the bill perfectly. A black/brown small dogtooth check in a cotton/linen blend. We asked Chris’ Aunty to make the pocket squares as we wanted black with stitching to match the bridesmaid’s skirt colours, and they were great. The Groomsmen were also dressed in the same suit jacket and Docs, but with black chinos (also from Reiss).
My dress was from Dolly Blue Bridal, in Shrewsbury. I had been to two places prior to getting in there and was actually feeling pretty ‘meh’ about the whole process. I had found nothing I liked and felt like my ‘perfect dress’ hope was dying with every bloody bit of sparkle I saw on the fabrics. Then along came Adele …
I tried a fair few dresses on in the shop, none of which I liked. I explained to Adele, Boutique Owner as well as Dressmaker, exactly what I had in my mind. She pulled a dress from the one-off rail (one she had actually made herself) and asked me to try it on ‘for the skirt’ and that she would make my top half out of the lace on the dress (all sparkle removed) in the exact style I wanted. After a few visits for measurements and trying on the work-in-progress, I finally had my perfect dress.
My shoes were pretty bloody lovely too, and comfy (I raved in them till 1am very happily). I had a bit of a tight spec for them actually. I wanted platforms, didn’t want them to be ‘bridal’, wanted suede, as well as for them to be mustard/brown (to go with the boys’ suits and florals). As you can imagine with my tight spec, I did trawl the internet for a while, but stumbled across my Chie Mihara bad-boys and instantly fell in love.
Your Photographer & Filmmaker
Our Photographer, James Merrick was amazing. We had a pre-wedding shoot with him at Cheswell Grange, and I’m glad we did as it was nice to meet him before the day and quash the nerves we had about having to pose for those ‘corny’ wedding shots. Thankfully James assured us that he wouldn’t take many of those on the day and did a fantastic job.
Our Videographers, The Wandering Film Company, were also just as amazing. We didn’t want the traditional ‘cinematographic’ type video and they truly delivered. Our video is undeniably ‘cool’ and fits perfectly with the day we had. Emma & Ryan are awesome.
The Styling & Decor
The only thing our venue provided was an empty Boat House for the ceremony, a marquee shell and amazing views, everything else was over to us to create and source, so we were able to make sure absolutely everything fit with our style.
The most important aspect of the styling for me was the florals. So that’s where we started first. I came across Kate (Damson & Vine) on Instagram, had a Teams call with her, and thought ‘yes, we would be friends, she’s the girl for me’. We wanted lots of colour, dried flowers, grasses, foliage and tropical leaves and she interpreted my ‘rich, industrial, Vietnam nod’ perfectly.
The florals were the most expensive thing for us, and totally worth it! We also didn’t mind so much as we knew because of the dried elements we could all keep our bouquets/the table bottles/pampas etc. We even kept our huge floral installation that hung in the centre of the marquee. This is currently still hanging in our garden room.
For our table decorations, we collected over 100 brown and clear bottles (thank god for lockdown life) for the florals to go in, and went through god knows how much acetone to get the labels fully removed (again thank god for lockdown life). All worth it though, as the day after the wedding, we spent some time removing some of the fresh leaves from the table bottles and creating new arrangements ready for our friends and family to come and collect for their homes.
Everything else flowed from the florals then really. My pal, Laura, is a very talented graphic designer and she helped me create our e-invites using Mailchimp. We incorporated the floral ideas, the different bridesmaid’s skirt colours and used a lovely ‘industrial yet clean’ font. This font was also then used by our amazing Signage supplier, Anna at Chalk it Up. Our industrial-esque signs were bloody incredible, again the brief interpreted perfectly, and Anna was more than happy to create our ‘Dance Where the F*** You Like’ sign to reference our tiny little Covid revolt. A bit like the florals, we also wanted to make sure they were cool enough for us to hang up in the house after, both as lovely memory, but also to get the most out of our wedding spend.
Our Neon Signs were also central to the vision/styling and again we chose to personalise these and they are also hanging up in our house. We also created our ‘C&E’ Neon Sign (which hung behind us on the top table) as a bit of a ‘Wedding Logo’ and had this made into a stamp that we used on the ‘Leave us Some Love’ polaroid (alternative guest book) table, on the sleeves of the coffee cups, and on the furniture items we made.
Chris is thankfully incredibly handy and we made loads of our props/furniture together; pieces that also added to our industrial feel. This included our coffee station (out of a potato crate and chipboard), neon sign frames/stands, oil drum tables/cake stand, the table and stand for the polaroid table, and lots of pallet furniture for outside.
We sourced our dining tables and guest chairs from Rustic Hire and opted for industrial metal folding chairs that came in loads of cool colours and trestle style tables that would accommodate our relaxed banquet style food. Trying to find the right sort of crockery/cutlery/glassware took a fair bit of searching, but I came across Whitehouse on Instagram and they happily set up a tablescape for me with the lines we liked, and it tied in with our styling a treat.
We bought seating for our chill out areas from ebay/Facebook marketplace, including a Parker Knoll chair, a green chesterfield and green chesterfield chairs, as well as borrowing a brown chesterfield from Chris’ Nan. We started looking for Persian Rugs, but then Kate our florist mentioned one of her industry pals who did wedding styling and had lots of lovely rugs.
After a quick DM to Katie (The Vintage House that Could), she was firmly on board and she ended up being the glue that held our vision together! She arrived on marquee set up day with her van of treasures and helped me style all of the different marquee areas (as well as make great use of the random Vietnamese hats we had bought, amazing what fishing wire can do). Loads of her props really leant themselves to our Vietnamese vibe, and she also provided us with the table runners (that she had died a lovely bright blue), created our name places to fix onto our homemade sloe gin, as well as our table plan (thankfully as last minute as possible to account for Covid related amendments).
Finally, I can’t forget to mention our amazing Vietnamese silk lanterns. As soon as we started thinking about our styling we knew we needed these in between the marquee poles. We sourced them from an Etsy seller in Vietnam and played around with different colour/size/shape combinations and even had them set up between the beams in our house in preparation. Everyone absolutely loved them.
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The Honeymoon
We have been on some pretty amazing holidays, travelling around beautiful countries, so naturally we wanted our honeymoon to be the best one yet. We started thinking about our honeymoon during the Christmas break of 2019, which would see us travel to Singapore, then island hop for a couple of weeks in Fiji and finally on to Hong Kong.
Sadly Covid had other plans. However we did manage a lovely mini-break in Dorset where we stayed in very secluded Shepherd’s Hut with a wood-burning hot tub, and we were also able to take Baxter with us which was great.
Memorable Moments
Memorable moments is a tricky one man, there are just so many! We say to each other all the time how much we wish we could do it all again (but for free obvs).
- Getting the marquee all set up for sure (although slightly hungover on account of us having pals over for England vs Denmark the night before). Seeing all the planning and designing coming together was amazing. The lads started on the Thursday getting all of the festoon up and getting car loads of all the things we had made/bought over to the venue. Then Friday was the big day of putting everything together with our friends, my Mum, Kate and Katie. We got the tunes on, ate our weight in sweets, and voila! Even enough time for me to go and have a lovely meal with the girls in the evening!
- The sound of the music thumping (Guests Arrival playlist had some absolute tunes in) as we walked towards the Boat House gave me that feeling of rush and excitement to see Chris (Although slightly interrupted by the girls being asked ‘where their masks were’. Thankfully we ironed that one out quickly with the Registrar before walking any further).
- Walking down the aisle and seeing Chris’ grin and the bluest of eyes, as well as Baxter coming to greet us.
- Entering the Marquee, drop perfect, and seeing everyone together all cheering and happy as f***. Actually, that was a memorable moment of the entire day, having everyone together and partying with everyone for the first time in well over a year, as well as getting a chance to see friends and family we hadn’t been able to see in such a long time. Our wedding was the first big social event for many, and we were so lucky that our venue was considered outdoors so were able to have all of our Day Guest list celebrate with us.
- The food. We wanted a menu that was inspired by our travels and Vietnam in particular. I found a street food vendor, Sticky Beaks on Instagram, and we went to a local event to try their food and didn’t look anywhere else! Due to Covid Sticky Beaks started doing takeaways, however we were out of area, so Chris would pick these up on his way back from work about an hour from home. So maybe the only couple to ever eat their wedding food on a weekly basis! We couldn’t have hoped for a better menu.
- Chris and I getting kicked out of the marquee at 01:30am was pretty funny. We stayed after all of our guests had left, having a whisky together, taking everything, but the Security guy ended up sending us on our merry way back to the Farm House.
Advice For Other Couples
If you’re having a DIY wedding, the most important piece of advice from us would be to have a ‘Wedding Spreaders’ i.e. a Spreadsheet with an itemised list of everything you need to source/sort (this surmounts to a lot when you start writing it down), all of your Suppliers details, costs, Payment dates etc.
Having all of this in one place really helped us with the planning, and in all honesty, we didn’t really get that stressed with the management of everything (aside from the Covid curveballs/rearranging our date).
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Golly, just so beautiful!
Emma and Chris thank you so much for sharing your Cheswell Grange wedding story with us. Thanks also to James for sharing these magnificent shots.
The post Colourful DIY Industrial Wedding with Vietnamese Influence & House Music first appeared on Whimsical Wonderland Weddings.