Intimate Chimney House Wedding | Sheffield Wedding Celebrant

Becoming a Sheffield wedding celebrant is the best decision I’ve ever made; but there’s one thing they don’t tell you about in the training: you want to become best friends with all of your couples. That’s totally the case with Nicole and Shaun, who had a dreamy Chimney House wedding in the late summer! 

Celebrant ceremony at Chimney House wedding venue

Of course, I was super excited about Nicole and Shaun’s wedding from the off. But as they actually booked me before they’d even chosen a venue (which is always such a huge compliment), I was even more jazzed when they told me it was going to be a Chimney House wedding!

The industrial chic decor is Sheffield at its very best, and manages to create a luxe, cosy vibe that you’d probably think is impossible in a factory-style space – until you saw and felt it in real life. It can be left perfectly as is, or added to, like Nicole and Shaun did by sticking super cute Polaroids around the walls.

Plus, the Chimney House wedding team is a dream to work with, making everyone feel so at home – basically, it’s very worthy of its place in my round up of top Sheffield wedding venues. 

An intimate wedding day 

Nicole and Shaun chose to have an intimate wedding with just their family, so there were only 15 guests in total (plus their 2 dogs, who joined the fun immediately after the ceremony finished so they could be included in the photos).

Shaun greeted guests as they arrived at the Chimney House wedding venue, and then when the guests were seated upstairs, he waited at the door to meet Nicole as she arrived too. These two are such a tight knit team, it makes complete sense that they took some time together before the wedding started. After a few sneaky snaps outside, the ceremony could begin!

Creating a meaningful ceremony

Nicole and Shaun are total opposites – she’s very fiery and he’s more measured – so creating a ceremony that celebrated them both as individuals and as a couple was a real treat. 

(It was also just a treat to work with them generally, and a barrel of laughs from start to finish: from meeting them at a wedding show to seeing Nicole’s timeline on the day, which had a space at 6:30am-8:30am reserved for “Existential Crisis / Try not to cancel wedding”.)

Nicole’s family are Scottish and we included some lovely nods to this throughout. For example, the Yorkshire Piper piped Nicole and Shaun in, which was a surprise for guests. Nicole was excited to see her mum’s reaction, and I’m happy to report there were tears (in a good way!)

We also included the Scottish tradition of toasting friendship and love with a Quaich in the ceremony. This custom involves sharing a dram of whisky from a special pewter cup with two handles, symbolising love and partnership. Nicole’s family brought the Quaich from Scotland and her Dad poured the whisky into it when it was time to drink, so it was extra special.

Now you might be thinking: Meg, hold on a sec. I thought non-religious weddings were also pretty non-symbolic? That’s true of registry office/civil ceremonies – because they have to operate within a certain structure and have limits on personalisation – but celebrant-led weddings can be as full of ritual and meaning as you want them to be.

Why work with me as your Sheffield wedding celebrant

To answer this question, you don’t even need to take my word for it – why not take Nicole and Shaun’s instead? Here’s the review they left after the day, which gives a really good idea of how I work with couples:

“We met Meg at the first ever wedding fayre we went to and we were feeling very overwhelmed at the whole prospect of organising a wedding. After a quick conversation about how overwhelming it was, our music tastes and what Meg does. Meg was the first thing we booked for when we got married - and for a reason, she was the perfect fit for us. I walked away from her and said to my partner- I want her to marry us. 

Meg was with us every step of the planning process. We had a "get to know you" meeting at a local coffee shop, a planning meeting "date night" after completing our "homework". Meg took inspiration from those meetings and the "homework" to write our wedding script. We wanted Meg to do most of the talking, and she did. She sent us a voice note preview of our script and we had literally no notes or additions. We feel like she really captured us as individuals and a couple.

On the day, Meg was there to help organise our guests and make sure everything was running smoothly (which is above and beyond what we were expecting). The ceremony was perfect and so so so personal to us. Some of our families had never been to a humanist wedding before and we weren't sure how they would react, but they loved it. During the ceremony, our families were laughing, smiling and nodding at the personal details she included about us in our ceremony. 

I will never forget my, sometimes quite serious, Grandad literally laughing like a school boy whilst Meg was talking.

I will never forget my, sometimes quite serious, Grandad literally laughing like a school boy whilst Meg was talking. We will always be grateful to Meg for how she conducted the ceremony because all of our guests still talk about it now, almost a month later with the same positivity they did on the day. Thank you Meg! 

Meg left us with a paper copy of the script as a keepsake as well as an emailed copy too which is so precious to have. We cannot recommend Meg enough. BOOK MEG."

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So, if you’re planning a Chimney House wedding and are looking for a exceptional ceremony, or perhaps you’re getting married elsewhere and on the hunt for a Sheffield wedding celebrant, I’d love to hear from you.

Get in touch here to tell me all about your wedding, and we can book a chat to see if we’re right for each other. (Just, fair warning: we might become best friends afterwards. Occupational hazard.)

Enormous thanks to Nicole and Shaun's photographer, Becky Payne, for the images on this page. Believe me when I say Becky is so hard-working, brings all the vibes, and also takes phenomenal photos.