I had my own little adventure, travelling from Manchester to London to photograph Rozie & Doug’s unique wedding at Islington Town Hall. From our first video call, I instantly clicked with Rozie & Doug, bonding over our shared nerdy interests and hearing all about the whimsical “cosy cottage-core” vibes they had in mind for their big day. Imagine Hobbiton meets a magical forest, with plenty of board games for good measure!
Their wedding was anything but traditional, which suited their personalities (and their dog, Dobby!) perfectly. I began the day by meeting them at Islington Town Hall, where they held an intimate legal ceremony with their closest friends and family. Afterward, we hopped on the tube to their charming Airbnb on Columbia Road, where I captured getting-ready shots before heading out for portraits in the quirky streets nearby.
The celebration continued at The Arcanist’s Tavern, an immersive board game café, where Rozie & Doug had a more personal and creative ceremony for the rest of their guests. Rather than a traditional sit-down dinner and disco, they opted for a fun and interactive buffet with quizzes and games.
This Islington Town Hall wedding was filled with creativity, fun, and lots of nerdiness! Making it an absolute joy to photograph.
A few words from Rozie & Doug:
How did you two meet?: Through a friend, I know a classic and unexciting story! I, Rozie, met up with a university friend for dinner and he said I would like his flatmate. Doug and I met at their house party, he made Han Solo in carbonate chocolates and was very smiley and friendly. I started to spend more time with the group, attending their various themed parties, we knew of each other for a while and became friendly acquaintances. I hung out with Doug and eventually his flatmate said ‘I think she’s here for you!’ and he finally clocked that I liked him. After that we pretty much became inseparable and it’s now been over 10 years!
Describe the proposal!: Firstly, Doug and I love puzzles, escape rooms, immersive theatre and quests so for years we have been making each other treasure hunts. It started with ones in the house, and they got more and more elaborate. One year I turned our lounge into an escape room with locks and puzzles all over. Then another year I designed a text hunt around London, where him and a friend had to follow clues, got given quests from bartenders and enter crypts under London churches. Doug always makes me little quests when he goes away and leaves me with treats to enjoy when I solved them. All this to say we go big when it comes to this sort of thing and so him making a quest for me around our 10 year anniversary meant that I didn’t really clock it was a proposal. I think anyone else would!
To sum it up Doug created this sprawling quest from our home to Crystal Palace and all around the park. There were QR codes hidden all over it, boardgames to win, puzzles to solve, and a mystery puzzle box to open! Doug dressed up as a wizard and often ran off with the dog and left me to solve a puzzle to find him. The funniest moment was when I looked through the trees and saw him wearing his wizard outfit, he said ‘come quick, there is a family here and people are looking at me weird!’
Dobby our dog got involved of course, he is a part of everything we do and he had the key to the box on him all along! In the end I ended up on a bench in the park that actually was labelled as a proposal bench which was cute! Doug proposed and the box opened to reveal a majestic silver ring with 3 frogs hiding under a leaf on it. It was lovely. In the evening we went to Kew Gardens to see the Christmas lights, something we do every year for our anniversary, to celebrate.
What is special about your venue?: It is a boardgame tavern! It’s the most special venue! It was new this year and I was invited to come check it out on one of their launch nights because I review boardgames and London hotspots for games. As soon as I saw it I thought this could be our wedding venue. We have always wanted to get married in London, and we wanted an immersive vibe to match our love of immersive games and theatre.
The venue has a cosy tavern space, with the staff in appropriate fantasy attire, boardgames are stacked on wooden shelves and there is thematic food and drink. If you head downstairs, past lantern-lit hallways you find secret booths for playing roleplaying games, all set up with tables and lighting. And then there is a big space for people to play larger tabletop games, and this is the space we will have our dancing.
Any details of note about your big day?: We aren’t very traditional people, there are no bridesmaids, groomsmen, speeches or sit down meal. I mean we are having a hag do instead of hen and stag dos! The theme of the wedding is ‘cottage core’, and we want the vibe to be like you attended a hobbit party, but without the movie references. We have made a lot of the elements of the wedding ourselves. I am a trained model maker and crafter, and Doug works in layout and production editing for magazines so we are pretty good at cobbling things together.
One of the key things we want to include is our love of immersive puzzles and quests so we started including this from the get go. For the wedding of course there will be a quests – guests will be given pocket passports, with four challenges in, each one connected to one of our parents. When they solve one they go to the relevant parent, show they achieved it and they will get a stamp in their book. When they have completed all four they come up to me and/or Doug and they get a prize! It’s a fun way to keep people moving around and busy whilst the food is being set up. Plus means we should get to say hi to everyone!
I have designed a sigil for the wedding, it includes a lantern, frog, bee and an arrow. Lanterns are something very us, we use them at home to light up our boardgame nights. Frogs represent the ring and so we included them in the wedding a lot. I added a bee because I’ve always loved bees and the arrow is a Doug things because it comes up a lot in his tv interests along with DnD characters too. This sigil is in wax seal, stamp and other forms at the wedding so something to keep an eye out for!
For the decor there will be lanterns of course, bunting up and lights around. The venue is already pretty set up in terms of look so we just have to make it a bit prettier. We are having a sprawling charcuterie buffet so people can eat whenever, and mulled wine and apple juice as we love winter markets and drinking mulled things!
Venue: https://www.sayidoislington.com/town-hall/ & https://arcaniststavern.uk/
Person #1 outfit details: https://hausdahlia.com/
Person #2 outfit details: https://www.darcyclothing.com/
