Colourful & Heartfelt Sri Lankan & English Fusion Wedd

Welcome to the heartfelt and super colourful Sri Lankan and English fusion wedding of WWW followers Ellen and Ramesh. It was all so very beautiful!

Their day was not only a celebration of their heritages but they had a great party with informal style. Held at Moor Farm in Gloucestershire, their day was a real DIY effort. Loved ones contributed to their celebrations and they organised everything due to the dry hire venue.

I adore Ellen’s embroidered wedding dress of dreams, the colourful decorations and the wild-style florals. What a stylish couple and a very happy day indeed!

Patrick Partridge Photography, thank you so much for sharing your stunning images with us.

Ellen and Ramesh on WWW

I followed WWW about two years ago I think. I loved the feature of real, diverse, colourful weddings that I could relate to and get ideas from.

Sri Lankan & English Fusion Wedding

The Proposal

We went on a camping trip to California – Yosemite, Sequoia and Joshua Tree national parks and the West Coast.

At Joshua Tree we had a little Air BnB in the desert. It was too hot to go outside in the daytime but there was a fire pit, festoon lights and an outside bar in the back garden of the Air BnB.

One night we had lit a fire, Ramesh went into the house saying he needed the loo. After a very close encounter with a scorpion, he came back and knelt down in the sand and asked me to marry him! I forgot to say yes for a couple of minutes as I processed!

The Vision

We wanted to throw a big party for our friends and to celebrate our love for each other in front of all of our loved ones. We had to postpone the wedding from June 2021 and actually got officially married at the registry office then, but knew we still wanted to have the big knees up!

We were working to a small budget and wanted an informal, collaborative celebration anyway. So, having found a working farm with a wedding barn, we pulled in lots of favours, and got down to organising a wedding that reflected both of our backgrounds.

My English countryside upbringing and Ramesh’s Sri Lankan roots. My Mum made our cake, my best friend did all of the décor, a family friend did our table flowers and we had masses of help setting up and packing down from all of our friends.

Budget

£15k

The Ceremony & Music

Our very dear friend Harriet agreed to be our ‘celebrant’. We had already been officially married (our venue doesn’t have a wedding license) and celebrants cost a lot of money!

It was SO lovely to have a friend ‘marry’ us as she’s known us both from before we were a couple and has seen our relationship blossom from the start. She was totally amazing and had everyone crying!

We were very keen on finding a really good band for our party! When it was announced 10 days before when our original wedding should have been that no dancing or singing was allowed (because of Covid) we knew we had to cancel.

Our original band couldn’t do our new date but we were so so happy with The Rivers. They really brought the house down and had everyone singing and dancing the night away.

The Venue

Moor Farm (comes up as Featherdown Moor Farm on Google).

Moor Farm is a working farm. A calf was born on the morning of the wedding and they called it Ellen! It’s in the very beautiful Cotswolds and surrounded by fields. It also has, as our photographer Pat and I dubbed it, the ‘avenue of dreams’ (the tree-lined avenue leading up to it!).

It is a total dry hire so we got in all of the chairs, cutlery etc ourselves. I believe Moor Farm are stopping offering the space for weddings.

The Styling & Decor

My amazing best friend is an artist and she was able to take a completely bare barn to a colourful, Sri Lankan meets British, colourful dreamland!

We had pops of citrus colours, peach, cerise, and orange. White paper garlands represented strings of jasmine and orange streamers represented marigold flowers. It was amazing. She also did the signage.

Amberley Meadow did our table flowers. Vicky is a family friend and she was so amazingly helpful and giving to our day.

The Lily Pad (Stroud) made my stunning bridal bouquet (again, inspired by hot, tropical accents mixed with British florals) and our amazing flower arch. Lovely service.

Also, big shout out to The Mango Hub for our South Asian buffet with tasty starters, amazing curries, parathas and even Sri Lankan-style sweets to finish.

My Mum made our cake 😊

Your Outfits

Ellen’s day dress – Needle and Thread. I always wanted a bohemian, slightly unusual wedding dress type. I’m not the meringue type!

Ramesh’s day outfit – Called a veshti (the long cream wrap, the shirt doesn’t have a name that I know of). Is from a shop called Venisons. Ramesh wanted to wear a traditional Sri Lankan outfit as his parents are Sri Lankan.

Ellen’s evening outfit – is called a lehenga. From a online shop called Omsara Fashion. I wanted the chance to wear an amazing lehenga and we liked the idea of having mismatched cultural outfits.

Ramesh’s evening suit – Burton. Ram wanted to wear something other than traditional black. I loved the maroon with my green Lehenga!

Your Photographer

Patrick Patridge. Patrick is an utter legend – we had our previous photographer cancel on us very late minute and I’m so glad we actually ended up with Patrick.

He felt like another guest at our wedding (I got emotional when he left!) and his golden-hued photographs perfectly capture the essence of our day. His service is flawless and he makes everyone so at ease.

He’s amazing fun and we would recommend him to anyone!

The Honeymoon

As we have a two-year-old we weren’t able to take a honeymoon! But we did have a honey-afternoon!

When he was at nursery the following week we went into Bristol and had the most amazing seafood lunch with oysters! And played pool in an old pub afterwards. Short but very sweet!

Memorable Moments

The Ring Game! My amazing cousin-in-law wanted to recreate a party game that often happens at wedding receptions in Tamil weddings. She brought along a vase and a gold ring.

You fill the vase with water and have the bride and groom stand at either side of the vase. Both have to reach into the vase to find the ring, which is hidden in leaves, and the first one to find the ring is apparently the one to ‘wear the trousers’ in the relationship (obviously it’s a lie because Ram won 😉).

Advice For Other Couples

• Call in help wherever and whenever possible.
• Use a reliable wedding website for RSVPs – ours got all muddled when we had to reschedule and it was a nightmare!
• Spreadsheets are a must, especially if you’re doing it all DIY.
• DIY is a lot of work but saves, I think, more than £10k at least.

Wow, such a special day. And I love the sound of their honey-afternoon – genius!

Ellen and Ramesh, thank you so much for sharing your Sri Lankan English fusion wedding story.

Further Reading