Meet our latest Patchwork couple – Alice from Bath, and Edoardo from Rome. They had both been living in London for several years when they met in summer 2017 via Guardian Soulmates, (the original pre-tinder dating site!) As well as epitomising the “more love less stuff” philosophy behind Patchwork, this gorgeous couple had a wedding which you might say was “so nice they did it twice”! Read on to find out more about their TWO dreamy weddings and the very fitting venue they chose!
How did you get engaged?
Edoardo: We had just been separated for about a month while Alice was abroad in Germany. We both missed each other a lot and when we were reunited, we had a conversation about getting married over a pint in the pub. It seemed the most natural thing to do! No big announcements or proposals – just a decision that we made together.
What kind of wedding did you plan?
One morning Alice woke up with a flash of inspiration – so we looked up whether the Roman Baths in Bath hosted weddings. And they do! Perfect location for someone from Rome and someone from Bath to get married. We planned a nice evening celebration with friends and family which was due to take place in 2020. However, Covid messed up our plans quite a bit. We ended up having a small intimate sunrise marriage ceremony with family only in May 2021, and then we had a lovely evening ceremony at our one year anniversary in 2022. Both in the Roman Baths.
Did you have a first dance?
As our wedding had been postponed multiple times, we asked our brilliant swing band to play “Finally!” by CeCe Peniston.
What was your favourite part of the day(s)?
At both the events, we found entering the Roman Baths with the steam rising from the hot water was totally magical. At our sunrise wedding in 2021, we were overawed by the occasion and the small scale of it made us really savour the moment. During our evening party in 2022, 15 of our friends performed the “Humming Chorus” from the opera Madam Butterfly as we walked in, which was beautiful and very moving.
Why did you choose Patchwork for your gift registry?
We were looking for a website that offered us freedom to design our wedding registry and include different gift options. We browsed a bit and tried a few, but Patchwork was really good as we could design the page entirely and had the freedom to add different items to our list.
What did you invite guests to contribute towards and why?
By the time we got married, we had already been living together for a couple of years, so we really didn’t need or want any items. We instead chose three charities that are meaningful to us and gathered guests’ contributions to go towards them. We chose two local North London charities (a homeless shelter and a community farm) and a charity that supports migrants who get into trouble in the Mediterranean going into Italy.
What was your favourite feature of Patchwork?
Patchwork allowed us to create individualised items at different price points for each of the charities we chose. Also, having had to postpone our wedding a few times because of Covid, we found it really good that Patchwork allowed us to keep our page open and running for quite a lot longer than we first anticipated! Also family and friends could leave a message on our Patchwork after their contribution, which has been lovely to see and go back to.
What did your friends and family think?
We had some lovely messages from our family and friends. They all really loved the idea of supporting our chosen charities. We had also got in touch with the charities beforehand and asked them to share with us what different levels of contribution would go towards – which we then were able to add to our Patchwork for each price point. Guests really liked to be able to select something specific and know where the money would go. It was great to know that our wedding also helped contribute towards some very important causes. That was always very important for us and we were glad to have made this decision.
Do you have any wedding planning tips for engaged couples?
Give as much information as you can to your guests, whether it’s on your website or elsewhere, because people will have a lot of questions. You can lose sight of that when you’re totally immersed in the planning!
Another thing we really loved is that for our evening celebration we had a lovely humanist celebrant to create our ceremony for us . We got to write our own personalised ceremony from scratch and that was very special. So we would definitely recommend it as an alternative to more traditional ceremonies (and our guests loved it!).
Thank you so much Alice and Edoardo for sharing not just one but TWO beautiful wedding days with us. What a perfect venue for this gorgeous couple too. If you’ve been inspired to set up a gift list with a charitable element check out our wedding give list template or our 100s of other alternative wedding gift ideas.
Here are some of the amazing wedding suppliers that made Edoardo and Alice’s Roman Baths wedding day even more special:
Photographer: Michael Newington Gray
Dress: Pearl Legay-Clarke (gold dress only – however she doesn’t do dressmaking anymore)
Celebrant: Amy Lee
Music: Down for the Count
Venue: The Roman Baths and Pump Room
Cake: The Pretty Cake Company
Flowers: Alice’s mum 🙂
p.s. you can listen to Edoardo and Alice’s first dance song on our Spotify playlist, made up of lots of our Patchwork Couples’ first dances.