Our Wedding - Pigment + Paper

Our wedding day! A very wet and windy day under the oaks in Herefordshire.
We were married in Hereford Town Hall on a gorgeous sunny morning, with only immediate family due to our complete fear of doing a ceremony in front of more than a handful of people…! Topped off by an absolute feast of a brunch at the wonderful La Madeleine in Hereford.

We had a party with all of our friends and family on my Uncle’s farm, with some lovely big tents, loads of delicious food, and good music. It was the hottest summer ever until…the day of our wedding – where it was torrential rain until about 7pm.
We had planned a million lovely things in the sunshine – with tent sides that opened for panoramic views over the Malvern Hills in the background but instead everyone had to get cosy in the tents until it passed, and wrap themselves up in blankets in the evening. The wonderful guys at Ffwrnes pizza kept us all fed with delicious warm pizzas – how they managed to set up their kitchen in those vertical sheets of rain I will never know!

We wanted everything on our wedding day to have a story, and to be eco-conscious where we could.
We had zero plastic, and generated very little waste. My Mum and I made my outfit – the top I designed and embroidered which you’ll see in the photos – the top half was bamboo and the bottom half was linen. It’s the first thing we had made so potentially a little ambitious… We actually also made hers, and I designed the fabric – she wanted polka dots with some very particular colours!
My sister made our wedding cakes, and my Dad made the wedding cake stand from wood slices from felling some trees in my in-laws’ woodland. My parents made 200(!) cotton napkins, and I decorated them with lavender from our garden. The table runners were printed recycled cotton rag paper, with illustrations from my top all over them. We had petals on the tables, again, dried from our garden!
We drove my car (Otis the Morris Minor!) and turned our campervan into a music-hub for the day!

We inadvertently had an oak-themed wedding. We got married in ‘The Oak Room’ in Hereford Town Hall, we live under a giant oak tree, and we ended up partying under the oaks in Bromyard. So, we harnessed that and set our invitations around it. We called it Webbapalooza (party of the newly-webbs), and created a fully hand-written, hand-drawn invitation.

We printed them onto cotton rag paper (made of recycled cotton), and bundled them up with some acorn ‘hats’ we collected from the oak tree that shadows over our home, and felted the balls to go inside them to make little colourful acorns.
We had a map of nearby towns (we were married rather remotely, and people were travelling from all over the country so we wanted to give them an opportunity to make a day of it!), a lot of information about taxis and accommodation, and an RSVP all on the 5-fold concertina invitations.
Photographed below on my wedding top with one of our table runners!

We were so lucky to have the most wonderful friends and suppliers on our day. I’ll list them properly at the end of the post, with links, but each has a long ol’ story.

The wonderful Jo at Issy & Bella created the most gorgeous flowers for us all – I just sent a picture of my dress fabric to Jo and asked her to do whatever she fancied – and had the most incredible creations with gold accents.

My shawl had a similar story – I sent the fabric image to a felt artist on Etsy and asked her to do what she liked, and ended up with a gorgeous fern filled shawl with gold threads intertwined.

The mens’ suits were from James Lear of Arundel – the lovely Polly, in Nailsworth. Frankl’s (the dog!) bow tie was from a lovely maker on Etsy.

We had a huge spread of antipasti and salads with an inhumane amount of cake for lunch – fantastic bread from the local bakery, cheese from the local deli, and salads from our local café.

Our wonderful friend Rich took our wedding photos for us, and our rings were made by Helen Brice who we are now superfans of – having 4 rings between us!

A family friend gave us his old Butchers’ bike, which we filled with a friends’ flowers to have a bit of colour outside the tent. (Soon to be a very soggy bike – but at least we had a few rainbows!)

We had so many friends help us to make the day special – those helping us in the intense few days running up (you all know who you are!) are just completely wonderful and we treasure the memories of those late nights!