Tom and Ellie have been together for eleven years, after meeting at Uni and ‘never expecting it to last this long!’. Well we’re happy it did, because now we get to hear all about their wedding. Ellie told us about their unconventional celebrations, and their newly-patchworked sofa:
How did you two get engaged?
I made it clear to Tom that I was never interested in getting married. He made it really clear to me that he was very interested in getting married! He took me on a surprise weekend to Bath to stay in the Queen Charlotte’s Orangery boutique bed and breakfast and asked me to marry him after a day of sightseeing at the Roman baths (fitting as we both studied classics together at university).
What kind of wedding did you plan?
Having never been the kind of little girl that dreamt of her wedding day it was really important for the day not to develop a life of its own and become too big. We tried to reconcile Tom’s desire for a massive party and my desire for as low-key an event as possible. In the end we got married in a registry office with just our parents as witnesses. Then the week after we had a massive bash in a pub with 150 of our friends and family. We kept it relaxed but used the wedding traditions that we liked (the speeches, the dancing, the booze, the cake, the flowers) and dropped the ones that we didn’t like so much (the ceremony, the first dance, the top table, the photos). Our wedding wouldn’t have been for everyone but we had a great time.
Why did you choose Patchwork for your gift list?
It has always felt a bit meaningless for people who have been together for years and lived together for half of that to ask for new toasters and sandwich makers. Replacing perfectly good home appliances with brand new ones felt wasteful and extravagant and just didn’t appeal to me. But Tom’s family felt that asking for money would be rude. So Patchwork seemed like the perfect alternative to allow us to buy something we really wanted (and would never normally have been able to afford).
What did you decide to fund?
We asked for our family and friends to buy us a new sofa and a piece of art for our living room. At the time we knew that we were having a baby (but no one else knew yet) so we wanted to get presents which would fit our new life of spending a lot of time at home watching boxsets and eating sorbet on the sofa.
We ordered the sofa straight after the wedding and it felt great. Every time someone comments on how comfy it is we tell them that it is our wedding sofa funded by family and friends and it reminds us every day how much everyone cares about us.
What was the best bit about using Patchwork?
The best bit was how fun all of our friends and family found it. The Patchwork team helped design the graphic of the patchwork for us and all of our friends and family loved it! So many people came up to us on the day and said that they thought the patchwork idea was really fun and how impressed they were with the website. Many said how relieved they were that they were contributing to something that would last us for decades.
I’d recommend doing a patchwork to any couples who don’t want new stuff just for the sake of ‘new’.
Thanks Ellie & Tom. And a double congratulations from Team Patchwork!
If this has inspired you to make your own wedding sofa patchwork – or anything else you can think of! – just customise one of our readymades or create one from scratch.