Why might you plan a celebrant wedding ceremony?
It is becoming increasingly popular to plan a celebrant-led wedding for several great reasons. Firstly, a lot of couples are surprised at the cost of bringing a registrar out to a licensed venue. It is often a similar price to an independent celebrant. However, the customisation you can have to your ceremony is still the same as if you held your ceremony in the registry office. Religious wording is not allowed, you simply choose from a number of scripts.
The price of a registrar varies across the country and is unique to the council borough, it’s usually between £700-900. For a tiny bit extra you can get a much longer, more deeply personalised ceremony with an independent celebrant. Some celebrants provide some on the day coordination as part of the service. The registrar’s ceremony will often be 30 minutes at the most, but most of the amazing independent celebrants I’ve worked with create a personalised detailed story celebrating your relationship, and incorporate hand fasting, or drink sharing, and even tree planting! Whatever floats your boat, and I think that’s so brilliant to be able to hold a truly unique wedding ceremony.
Secondly, with an official registrar you are limited to getting married under a fixed permanent licensed structure. If you want a gorgeous outdoor wedding ceremony in nature, as this couple did, you need to hire an independent celebrant.
This amazing wedding was officiated and coordinated by the popular India Bel Ceremonies who I also worked with at this Wes Anderson themed wedding. I don’t normally include so many wedding details in a blog post, but I feel the effort these guys put into the decor and personal touches is worth sharing as it’s fabulous DIY wedding inspiration!


Two Simone Rocha brides
This incredibly creative couple, both with a background in fashion and art, were unsurprisingly gorgeous from head to toe! They got ready together in a small brick cottage house literally right outside their ceremony spot, which was fun as they could see their guests arriving. One of the brides and her friend create custom 3D nails, so both brides had INCREDIBLE nail sets to put on. Let’s just take a pause to look at these beauties, including a WORKING OPENING LOCKET!





Both brides wore Simone Rocha outfits with bold red details in the accessories. C made custom jewellery for both her and S, and the ring holder was a ceramic model of their beloved dog. A ruffle heart bag and DIY red bow veil finished C’s look, and a headpiece and DIY earrings polished off S.




This beautiful quirky townhouse was perfect for me to take some creative documentary wedding photos.









Outdoor celebrant wedding ceremony
The couple decorated the stone wall which formed their ceremony backdrop with rainbow tassel bunting. The guests sat on classic wooden chairs hired from Bukuu. The independent celebrant ceremony told the story of how the couple met, they gave personal readings and finished with a symbolic sharing of drinking wine from the same cup. During the ceremony we had some surprise sheep guests!
























After the ceremony friends, family and India Bel helped clear away all the ceremony chairs, so the guests were able to have drinks on the lawn. Following that the bride led a walking procession of all the guests through Chipping Campden town centre to the town hall where they were holding their wedding reception dinner.










Alternative couple photos in Summer
In between the drinks reception and the wedding dinner, we decided to take some couple photos in the sunshine. I usually recommend to every couple that we break up couple portraits into several shorter blocks. This means you don’t have to leave your wedding for a big chunk of time. Also it means you get greater variety for your time in terms of the light and atmosphere of the photos. This couple are super cute and quirky so I tried to do them justice with some edgy compositions!







Outdoor confetti throw
On the way we also stopped for the couple’s confetti throw, outside this gorgeous stone gateway. They gave several of the guests tambourines to lead the procession musically.









DIY wedding decor of a rustic town hall wedding
With a creative couple come incredible DIY decor. To entertain the guests they had a vintage tombola with cute and funny local prizes like a Cotswold tea towel. The wedding favours were a 50p piece of silver on a tarot palm. The guests used in an old school toy machine, to churn out capsules with hand made keyring. The candlesticks were decorated in rainbow tassels that matched the ceremony walls. Sofie Birkin designed all the illustrated paperworks.
















The cake was a cool tray style with quirky white flowers pushed in, baked by S’s mum. The food was catered for by the local Blockley Village Cafe.



















Village town hall wedding reception
After the dinner and speeches, the entire wedding filtered outside. This was so the room could be turned around for the evening party. There happened to be a special Morris Dancer convention happening on the same day. This was right outside the town hall and made for unique wedding photos! The guests fully embraced the morris dancers, joining in, chatting, having traditional cake for good luck, and posing for photos!





Cool sunset couple photos
As mentioned earlier, I tend to split my couple photo time up into several blocks. So when the lovely golden hour approached myself S and C went to look for some softly lit spots.





Pink Pony Club first dance
To end this wonderful alternative celebrant wedding, this lesbian couple had the iconic Chappell Roan Pink Pony Club for their first dance. The music was supplied by local DJ Cotswolds Disco.










If you like the look of this village town hall wedding check out this DIY gay pride wedding who also created a lot of their own personal touches. As an LGBTIQA friendly wedding photographer I have photographed other lesbian wedding ceremonies both in intimate back garden wedding ceremony or check out this outdoor woodland wedding photography.