Your weddings paradise found

From lanyard orders of service to old 7" single invitations, Glastonbury was the inspiration for Matt and Charli’s tropical Cornwall wedding

Photos: Alan Law Words: Matt Glass

Charli and I run a PR company, so we organise big events for a living. One of the things we’ve learnt over the years is that no matter how big your budget, you’ll always have to prioritise some bits of your party over others, and for us the venue topped the list. As soon as we visited the Eden Project, we knew straight away that it was the one for us.

The venue has one of the longest zip-wires in the UK so, as a thank you to my groom’s party, we hired it for two hours in the morning and zip-wired over where the ceremony would be. It was probably the only time in the whole day that my best man and I weren’t panicking about our speeches.

We got together at Glastonbury Festival, so we decided to use that as a wedding theme. Guests were given festival-style lanyards instead of a traditional order of service. We bought a box of old 7” singles from eBay and designed our own covers – a spoof of Pulp’s Different Class album, which features a wedding party on the front – and sent them out as our invitations. And our wedding cake was specially made to fit our theme and our personalities, with a big skull on top of a pair of Glasto wellies, while the base was covered in album covers of bands we love.

We tried our best to ignore how weddings are ‘supposed’ to be and did things how we wanted them, because it was our day. Charli wore red shoes that she’d designed herself and we didn’t opt for traditional rings, but instead went to our favourite rock ’n’ roll jewellers, The Great Frog in London. Our photographer, Alan Law, prefers reportage photography, rather than big, staged shots. It meant the wedding day wasn’t spent trying to line everybody up in family groups and, instead, we got natural photos that captured the day so much more honestly.

Highlight of the day…

Matt: ‘Seeing my wife for the first time. There was a gap in the trees which meant we got a glimpse before she came down the aisle.’ Charli: ‘Our friends and family all hired chalets in the grounds of the Cornwall Hotel and most stayed from Thursday until Sunday. It meant we got a chance to party before the wedding day and chat to everyone properly.’