Chalkney Water Meadows
Chalkney Wedding Venue Guide
Chalkney Water Meadows is the perfect wedding venue for your festival style wedding. It’s part of the Browning Bros. site and I’ve photographed there plenty of times over the last few years. I think it’s a really special venue so I wanted to do this guide to help anyone who might be planning there wedding there.
It’s the perfect venue for you if you are looking for a relaxed approach, an outdoor setting with a festival atmosphere and a fun vibe. But you also want a proper team who can help you with your day and want accommodation on site. I also think it’s a great choice for couples who want a wedding weekend rather than just a day with everyone.
Essential Information
Just an hour from London, Chalkney Water Meadows is a wedding venue in Essex that embraces the outdoors and lets you have your wedding in a beautiful lakeside setting.
The venue is exclusively yours for your wedding. There are onsite yurts for you and your guests to stay in, a kitchenette, luxury loos and showers. The venue includes a large tipi for up to 180 guests and a stretch tent, which is a great back-up incase of rain or even to escape the sun. Unlike some tipi sites this means you don’t need to worry about sourcing a marquee etc and you know that you don’t need to worry about weather issues with marquee companies getting onto site etc.
Although the venue has a real festival feel, it definitely has more luxury than most festivals!! There’s some great onsite accommodation with the hidden lakeside cabins. These come complete with a hot tub and sauna, and make beautiful relaxing places to stay the night before or get ready on the day of your wedding. Alongside that there are the yurts which can be booked by guests so that can stay there the night before or after. There’s even a little getting ready tent.
The actual wedding site is right next to a beautiful lake and surrounded by woodland. It’s such a relaxing place to be in and makes a beautiful backdrop. There’s lots of meadows for you to go off to get photos in as well.
The team running the venue are absolutely lovely and bring all the positive energy and fun vibes to your day. They also help keep things running smoothly, which is sometimes a real issue with outdoor, diy venues but this team are really on it and will help you with all the logistics and supplier sourcing that comes with tipi weddings! You also have the massive benefit that it’s a site with a permanent tipi and stretch tent so no additional costs or hassle in having to source that.
The Wedding ceremony
The ceremony usually takes places on the decking overlooking the lakeside. It’s a great spot surrounded by trees and right infront of the tipi. Incase of extreme rain then it can take place in the stretch tent which just gives you that piece of mind when planning an outdoor wedding!
Benefits over a DIY Marquee wedding
To be honest I think the amount of people who say they’ve booked this venue after thinking about DIYing their own wedding speaks for itself. I know people think you could just get a tipi yourself but to be honest by the time you’ve found somewhere to put it, factored in the logistics, the extras like a generator, etc. most people find this is a way more cost effective way of doing things and a load less stressful. If anything goes wrong on the day you’ve got their team to help you out, the accommodation is on site and it’s all set up and ready to go!
Review of Chalkney Water Meadows
This really is one of my favourite venues. For me I think the team behind it really bring all the positive vibes. I love that it’s an outdoor tipi venue but you don’t have to completely DIY everything and things like the onsite bar, ceremony area, extra stretch tent etc. make things a bit more straightforward that if you were to do your wedding completely dry hire. Obviously you’re paying more to get those extras but if you want an outdoor wedding without the hassle of sourcing everything from scratch then this really does tick all the boxes. It’s also way more luxurious and well run that most of the dry hire venues I see. And you get the extra plus of having all the accommodation on site for you and your guests and a dedicated car park hidden away, which is rarely the case with tipi venues.
Chalkney Water Meadows Wedding Gallery
A selection of photos from weddings I’ve photographed there
Travel to Chalkney Water Meadows
The nearest mainline train stations are Marks Tey and Colchester, and there is a branch line running super close to the venue at Chappel.
Driving here is easy too with plenty of space for parking, including coaches. It’s about an hour from London and well connected to the rest of the country as it’s not far from the A12.
Accommodation
Browning Bros make this super easy with onsite accomodation. There are plenty of yurts for guests and 2 lovely lakeside cabins if you want more of a luxury stay! However if camping isn’t your guests thing and there’s not enough room in the cabins then there are lots of nearby places to stay. Here’s a couple but please ask if you want to know more. I know the area well!
Other
This area is lovely and there’s tonnes of activities to do nearby if you want to make a weekend of it. There is paddleboarding on the River Stour – check out the paddleboardcompany or head to one of the local woods if you fancy a wander. Chalkney Woods is beautiful! For food close by there’s the Swan Inn at Chappel or Riverside Spice is a great Indian down the road.
Need a photographer?
Let’s chat!
I’ve photographed lots of weddings at Chalkney Water Meadows and know the area well. I’ve also worked with lots of the suppliers here! It’s one of my favourite venues and I love the weddings I get to photograph here! If you’d like to know more, fill in my contact form!
