Covid Wedding: Sustainable and Ethical Farm Wedding: Nikki & Ian

Sustainable and Ethical Farm Wedding

We married at Folly Farm Centre, Chew Valley, Somerset, UK
The main criteria that were paramount to us when planning our wedding were that it be as sustainable and ethical as possible. Given the amount of money that people spend on weddings, it was important to us that this money was going to creating impact and doing good. This is the main reason we chose Folly Farm, it is part of the wildlife trust and so any profits from our wedding would go straight to the charity. On top of this, they have renewable energy and rainwater harvesting on-site (and obviously we were very lucky to find such an ethical venue that also looks BEAUTIFUL and has the friendliest, most accommodating staff!)

My dad gave me away – luckily we’ve been living with them during lockdown so we’re part of the same household. We walked down the aisle to ‘Concerning Hobbits’ from the Lord of the Rings – our friend who’s a music producer edited it for us so it only had the happy sections, not the sad ones.

Our wedding photographer Natasha is more than a photographer, she is a genuine friend to the couples she works with! We were so happy to have found her (all the way back in October 2018!), we met and instantly felt like she understood us and listened to what was important to us (mainly being really geeky about sustainability!). We were all on track for our official wedding in May 2020 when we met up with Natasha in early March to discuss specifics… then the following month everything had changed with covid-19, and we had to find a new date in 2021 (which we’re delighted to say Natasha will also be our photographer for). We stayed in contact with Natasha through lockdown and it was hard to hear how badly the pandemic was impacting her business and many of her close friends in the wedding industry too.

We knew we still wanted to officially get married in 2020 and spent a long time waiting for the Government to announce that weddings were to be allowed again. After months of waiting, they officially made weddings legal in July, and we were straight on the phone to Natasha to see if she might be interested in photographing a VERY small wedding of 10 people. She was as excited as we were and we booked it in straight away – it was Natasha’s first wedding since February!!

All of the flowers on the day were also from friends and family’s gardens. Ian’s mum, Sue, had gone above and beyond to coordinate with her friends Anne, Alan and Yvonne the cutting and collecting of flowers from their gardens! It was such a wonderful addition to the day having everyone chip in with decorating the venue.

Ian and I also made our wedding cake together, we spent the 18th of July doing this, which again was really nice to do in preparation. The cake was a lemon drizzle cake with lemon curd and lemon buttercream frosting.

If we could impart any words of wisdom to future brides/grooms planning their covid wedding day, we say… Go with the flow as much as possible. All of the couples hoping to get married this year will have had the biggest disruption possible to their days, so I’m sure this is advice a lot of them will echo too.

Isn’t this sustainable and ethical farm wedding just so sweet! Congrats Nikki & Ian – we can’t wait to see your full wedding when the restrictions are lifted.