We’re always asked by our customers for tips and inspiration in planning any lifetime event, especially when it comes to planning weddings.
Fortunately, we’re lucky to have loads of experience we can pass on to help couples create the perfect atmosphere for their big day. And we have very lovely customers who’ve been there, done that and are more than happy to share their planning tips with others.
Meet Laura and Tom.
Laura and Tom offered to share their experiences in preparing for their big day, in the hope you might find it useful. Read what they said here:
MyTipiEvent: What made you decide on a Tipi outdoor wedding?
Laura: We wanted laid back, rustic, summer party type vibe. The tipis helped give that festival feel and fitted so well with our venue which had stunning gardens. The tipis just helped enhance the setting.
MyTipiEvent: How did you find your wedding venue?
Laura: We chose our venue at Goodnestone park gardens, as we live down the road and so made sense to us. We wanted the venue to mean something to us, Goodnestone is where we started our family and the church is where we had our son Christened, so the venue was very sentimental to us.
MyTipiEvent: What advice would you give when choosing a venue?
Laura: Make sure that your venue suits the theme of your wedding. If like us you choose to have an outdoor wedding, you need to have a backup plan in case the weather isn’t good! Having an open mind is always good too. You need to understand how you’re going to utilise the space you have and if it meets your requirements. If you want to have entertainment like a live band, does the venue allow for this and are there restrictions? The same goes for extras like fireworks!
MyTipiEvent: Why did you choose MyTipiEvent?
Laura: You just stood out from the rest. We didn’t want to be like every other wedding with a standard marquee. You also cover our local area in Kent, which narrowed down our search. We loved the fact that we could personalise our package and make it our own. There were so many different options to chose from and your additional extras made it all so personal to our special day.
MyTipiEvent: How many Tipis did you have and how was the space utilised?
Laura: We chose three hats, two of which were used for the seating of our guests for our reception and the end hat was used for the dance floor. There was ample space, which allowed for us to include a bar on the end of the hat with the dance floor. We also had room for a sweetie cart and rustic stand for the cake in the other two hats.
MyTipiEvent: What were we able to supply to complement the Tipis interior and exterior?
Laura: We chose to have bunting inside the hats as well as fairy lights on the main poles inside both which helped bring the tipis to life. We had ribbons inside the roof of the dance floor hat and a disco ball which with the sound activated lighting and up lighting looked stunning with all the different colours bouncing off the floor and sides of the tipi. We had reindeer skins on the benches that went with the trestle tables that we chose to go for. This added a bit of luxury to our seating and was in keeping with our laidback vibe and festival feel. Lastly, we had a driftwood chandelier above the top table which created a lovely ambience as well as helped to make the top table stand out, again keeping with the rustic theme.
Outside we had festoon drape lighting and pink uplighting as well as fairy light covering the surrounding hedges. All of this created a truly magical scene at night when it was dark, it looked stunning!! We had a fire pit outside for toasting marshmallows, such a nice touch and helped to keep the theme flowing outside of the tipis. We had two extra little hats outside the main tipis which again had fairy lights covering the poles. It really helped to join together the outdoor space. It completely saved us early on the day as we had a light drizzle of rain before the meal so people gathered under these. It also provided some extra seating areas for later in the evening.
MyTipiEvent: How did you feed your guests in the day and evening? What influenced your menu choice?
Laura: In terms of catering, we chose sharing plates in the middle of the tables. We wanted it to be very informal, so didn’t follow the traditional three-course meal. We left out starters and just had extra canapés at the champagne reception and laid out wedding cake and cupcakes as well as our sweetie cart and cheese and biscuits for guests to help themselves as and when they fancied later in the evening. We had a pizza truck for late night munchies later on in the evening, which worked really well to help soak up all the alcohol consumed!!
MyTipiEvent: What advice would you give for planning a Tipi wedding?
Laura: Keep an open mind, have some back up plans for weather changes and I really do think it is well worth going all out for all the additional extras as that’s what really makes the tipis stand out and creates a stunning setting for your magical day!
It was a privilege to help create Laura and Tom’s special day.
To look for more inspiration in planning your event click here or give us a call. We can talk you through everything from start to finish, with plenty of scope to keep your mind open!
See a gallery of photos of Laura and Tom’s day
