A 'Bringing the Outside In' Wedding - The Wedding Community

Gemma and Thomas’ wedding took place at The Lost Village of Dode, a 900 year old Norman building in Kent. We just love the way that the couple really have ‘brought the outside in’ with their incredible vision and abundance of food for their guests, including a salad table runner and canapés served in flower pots of grass…

“We were looking for a venue that was beautiful and shrouded in history, as we both have a love of old buildings. We also knew from the start we wanted a small, intimate wedding and wanted to find a venue suitable for only a small number of guests, to ensure guests weren’t lost in the vastness of it. The Lost Village of Dode was the first venue we visited and we booked it almost immediately.

“The theme was ‘Bringing the outside in’, and this was predominantly reflected in the catering which included a living salad table runner, and canapés served in grass and flowerpots.

“For an evening treat, lollipops had been made containing small edible flowers, and I bought some large flowerpots and moss from Hobbycraft and presented the lollipops in the pots as if they were flowers.

“My mum had been great at helping with the DIY elements, including the creation of hessian bags for each of the guests’ favours. Thomas wanted to provide favours that were entertaining and selected practical jokes for each person, which were quite a hit with some of the younger (and much older!) guests. I decorated each hessian bag with metal keys and ‘thank you’ tags with bees printed on them, to match to the ‘outside in’ theme.

“We made our own placeholders by spray painting plastic farm animal toys silver, and green garden string was used to tie the menus into the napkins to continue the theme further.

“The bar area included numerous wooden boxes and ivy trails covered in fairy lights, and I concealed some paper mache bird decorations within the ivy.”