Married by the river, mini golf and a Rolling Stones connection

Very rock ’n’ roll at this Der­byshire Tipi Wedding!

“Please allow me to intro­duce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste I’ve been around for a long, long year. Stole many a man’s soul and faith and I was ’round when Jesus Christ had his moment of doubt and pain. Made damn sure that Pilate washed his hands and sealed his fate”

Those are the open­ing lines from ‘Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il’ by the Rolling Stones. What a ran­dom way you to start a wed­ding blog perhaps?!

Welllllll…..I’m not los­ing it, time for a musi­cal his­to­ry lesson

Back in 1968 the band had just fin­ished record­ing Beg­gars Ban­quet and need­ed shots for the album cov­er. Cue a trip up the M1 to Der­byshire to the (at the time) ruined Swarke­stone Pavilion.

20 years lat­er The Land­mark Trust bought the ruins and ren­o­vat­ed it to its for­mer glo­ry. Then leap­ing for­ward to the present day, it’s where Fabi­enne got ready on the morn­ing of her wed­ding to Chris!!

Thus endeth the his­to­ry lesson

A wed­ding is one of the most sig­nif­i­cant chap­ters in every cou­ples his­to­ry book and I do feel like a story-teller.

Every good sto­ry, of course, has a begin­ning, mid­dle and end, and with a wed­ding you have lots of lit­tle ‘side plots’ and colour being added as you go through the day, dri­ving the nar­ra­tive forwards

At Swarke­stone Pavil­ion it acts as a look out so you can peek as your guests pull off the main road, dri­ve past you and head down the dusty road to Cut­tle­brook Farm by the Riv­er Trent

There are hors­es and sheep peace­ful­ly graz­ing in the field below and you feel hid­den away as the groom and guests arriv­ing cre­ate their own par­al­lel storyline.

MORE LIKE THIS

  • Bringe­wood — Shrop­shire Tipi Wedding
  • Wood­land Bless­ing & Tipi Reception
  • Wethele Manor Out­door Wedding

Oh don’t you dare look back
Just keep your eyes on me
I said you’re hold­ing back
She said shut up and dance with me
This woman is my des­tiny
She said oh oh oh
Shut up and dance with me

Walk the Moon — Shut up and Dance

Derbyshire Wedding Photo-journalism

With the Bride & Groom now only about 1/4 mile apart I was able to shut­tle up and down the lane to visu­al­ly tell the two sides of the sto­ry, doc­u­ment­ing both the main characters

Derbyshire Tipi Wedding Photographer 

Mini Golf, Food Van and Dancing

A wed­ding like this is total­ly chilled with no venue host or wed­ding coor­di­na­tor to hus­tle things along. It’s very DIY so after the cer­e­mo­ny, every­one grabbed a bench or a chair. Car­ry­ing them over to the tipi, ready for food lat­er on.

The rest of the day com­prised a 9 hole mini golf and yum­my food from Hei­di the food van. Then music, danc­ing and some bridal floss­ing, all by the riv­er bank with swans grace­ful­ly swim­ming by

I hope that if you’ve looked through all these images they give you a real­ly good feel for Fabi­enne & Chris’s wed­ding day.

Their tipi was pro­vid­ed by Sami Tipi, if you want to check them out!

If you’re plan­ning your own wed­ding and this approach to pho­tog­ra­phy is for you then please get in touch!!