Fun and colourful festival wedding at Horningsea Pavilion | Cambridgeshire Wedding Photographer

Back in June, I photographed Vicky & Rich’s wedding in the South Cambridgeshire village of Horningsea, which is located outside of Cambridge. The village green adjacent to Horningsea Pavilion was the perfect backdrop for their wedding reception, where they had a giant marquee set up for their bohemian-style festival-themed wedding. 

Horningsea Pavilion wedding - Cambridge wedding photographer

Vicky and Rich had got married before their Horningsea Pavilion wedding reception with a small ceremony at the registry office in Cambridge, but they wanted a much bigger party to celebrate with all their family and friends. Because let’s get real. Your wedding is about the two of you and all the people you want to celebrate with you. It’s a celebration of love, which Vicky and Rich felt very much they wanted their wedding to be about and I was privileged they asked me to capture their beautiful day for them.

The wedding details

It was overcast skies on the day of the Vicky and Rich’s wedding party, however, I arrived at Horningsea Pavilion to an abundant array of colour from the couple’s name sign at the entrance to the drive to the table and tent decorations inside the marquee. The ‘unicorn’ Shetland ponies from Cambridge Shetland Pony Parties even wore colourful ribbon braids in their hairs and unicorn headdresses too.

The beauty of picking Horningsea Pavilion as the venue or location for your wedding reception is that it is a completely blank canvas that you can dress up any way you like.

Both Vicky and Rich are very creative, and with the help of Vicky’s mum, they created inside the marquee a botanical look with floral paper-hanging decorations. Rich spray-painted the pineapples with gold paint and made the origami birds for the table decorations. The two long tables were then completed with botanical-themed runners right down the table.

Vicky also made the DIY signs, including this fun and quirky guest table board. There was no doubt at who was sitting next to who at the table, although the guests did laugh amongst themselves on which team was the best later on! Hanging over the wedding cake was a photo bunting that included ten photos of the couple for each year that they were together.

Vicky and Rich also hired Jenny Evans of Host Events as their wedding planner, who did a fabulous job of coordinating the party and ensuring all the details and timings ran smoothly.

The woodland ceremony - A celebration of love

As the wedding guests started to arrive, they were ushered into the little woodland area right by the village green and sat down to bubbles blowing out of a bubble machine, as they waited for Vicky and her two bridesmaids to arrive. 

Since the official ceremony took place at Cambridge registry office, the couple and their wedding guests were able to relax in the natural woodland surroundings. Christmas songs was playing on the soundtrack as the bride walked down the woodland path on the arms of her father and led by the Shetland ‘unicorn’ ponies. 

Everyone watched as both Vicky and Rich celebrated their union together with a blessing in the woods. The wedding arch which they stood under was decorated with 200 crochet flowers handmade by one of Vicky’s friend. The bride’s mum (Kate Hallam of Kate’s Curtains in Cambridge) also hand-sewed the butterfly and flower embroidery details to the bride’s wedding dress, which was a beautiful white tea-length wedding dress from Wed2b. She wore them with her quirky, colourful shoes from Irregular Choice.

A boho wedding in Cambridgeshire

After the blessing, the wedding party were treated to a pimms bar, garden games on the lawn and ice-cream from ‘Lottie’, which was a beautiful pink and vintage ice-cream van owned by Ally of Sweet Ally scoops. Some of the guests were also served by the bride and groom as they took their turn to have a go at serving ice-cream, which isn’t as easy you would imagine.

Once again, Vicky’s creative and artistic family provided some of the music for the entertainment and dancefloor. Her brother, Oliver, playing on the saxophone alongside his bandmates of the Cambridge music band, Chords Against Humanity. 

The catering was provided by The Wandering Yak and the Churros Bar who served up some delicious meals for all the guests. 

Later on, Vicky and Rich cut their M&S rainbow cake before taking to the dancefloor again and being showered with confetti, where I left the party just as the evening party got started.

I was genuinely thrilled to be Vicky and Rich’s Cambridgeshire wedding photographer and their wedding photos are one of the most memorable ones I captured. I was honoured that they trusted me to purely document their beautiful day for them as the magic of the real-moments unfolded, which I was able to do simply by wandering around everyone without them realising I was there. We did do some couple and group shots as well, but both Vicky and Rich did not want to do a lot as the beauty of documentary photography is that I can capture the raw emotions and moments without needing to stage or direct moments to make you feel those moments in your photos. I was so happy to be able to create some true memories for them that they will be able to relive over and over again.

If you’re looking for a Cambridgeshire documentary wedding photographer, please get in touch. I’d be delighted to send you some more information about my prices and availability for 2019 and 2020. These fill up pretty quickly so don’t hesitate to wait to book as soon as possible. I also travel to Suffolk, Norfolk, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire or beyond as well.