My gothic graveyard wedding included dead flowers and bridesmaids in black
Beth Wilkes-Maxworthy, 29, is an embroidery artist. She lives in Lincolnshire with her husband Sam, 31. The couple married in August 2023 in an unusual Victorian and Gothic-inspired wedding in a cemetery.
Sam and I have been together since we were teenagers. We met at college when I was doing art and he was studying music. Right from the start, we encouraged each others' 'strangeness', whether it was our joint interest in vintage clothing and skulls, or bonding over the same music – at the time we liked emo bands like My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy. For the past 14 years, we’ve been each other's creative inspiration and have enjoyed hyping each other up.
The proposal
In late 2021, I was reading a book called A Tomb with a View: The Stories and Glories of Graveyards. I’d heard about it through cemetery enthusiasts on social media. As you can tell by my wedding pics, cemeteries are a huge interest of mine...
There was a passage about Arnos Vale, a heritage site and Victorian cemetery in Bristol that was about to get bulldozed and turned into a housing estate. But the community bought it back for a pound and transformed it into a unique wedding venue.
After reading the passage, I turned to Sam and said, "You can get married in this cemetery, how cool is that?" We were both sitting on the sofa when he turned round with the most serious face and said, "Well, let’s get married then."
I turned to Sam and said, 'You can get married in this cemetery, how cool is that?'
Even though I knew it was coming as we’d talked about getting married and I’d been measured for an engagement ring, I still didn’t expect the proposal. Sam took me on a surprise trip to Beeston Castle in Cheshire in February 2022, where he got down on one knee at the top of the castle, overlooking the beautiful countryside.
He was crying, and it was torrential rain – which hadn't been forecast – and I remember saying, "Of course I’ll marry you, now get up and stop blubbing!"
The big day
Our wedding was an amalgamation of all the things we love – Victorian mourning culture (a strict etiquette during the era which featured specific dress codes) and gothic, folky-inspired aesthetics.
We decorated the barn with a big deer head on the wall, surrounded by burgundy sheer fabric and flower garlands. Sam made bunting with 100-year-old fabric inherited from my great-uncle, and my bridesmaids and I decorated the table with candlesticks and dead flowers we’d picked up from a car boot sale. It looked like the 2019 horror-mystery film Midsommar.
We had a handfasting ceremony (a Celtic ritual that involved us binding our hands together with multi-coloured rope to represent our commitment to each other), a pagan broom jump which symbolised our new relationship as husband and wife, and a traditional ring exchange.
Sam and I walked down the aisle to the theme song of our favourite show, Detectorists, a black comedy about metal detectorists. It’s by Johnny Flynn and we picked the fiddle version. For our first dance, we chose Work Song by the Irish folk and blues musician, Hozier.
I made my bridesmaids wear black so it looked like I was haunting them and they were mourning me.
My mum, who is also a dressmaker, helped me to make my dress. I wanted to look like the main character in the horror film, Crimson Peak, who wore a voluminous nightgown with huge 1890s sleeves. I made my bridesmaids wear black so it looked like I was haunting them and they were mourning me.
I also wore my great-grandmother's wedding ring – she was a character! I never got to meet her but I’m obsessed with her. She was a spirit medium and would hold seances – my mum remembers being taken to them as a child.
We decided not to have a sit-down dinner, as we wanted our guests to experience what Sam and I like to do as a couple. So, we opted for afternoon tea with finger sandwiches and vol-au-vents. In the evening, we hired a pizza van, had raspberry mojitos, served beer and cider out of a wheelbarrow, and booked a ceilidh band.
Some of the comments we got from guests throughout the day were, "This is very you isn’t it?" and "You couldn’t mistake it as anybody else's wedding."
The honeymoon
We honeymooned in the Isle of Skye in Scotland because we were skint after the wedding. It was beautiful though. We stayed in a small shepherd's hut near the fairy pools, which are a series of natural pools and waterfalls in the Highlands. Folklore goes that a local man married a fairy princess, which is how they got their name.
Our honeymoon was in a small shepherd's hut near the fairy pools – a series of natural pools and waterfalls in the Highlands.
On the way up to Skye, we made a few camping stops in the tent we brought with us as you’re allowed to wild-camp in Scotland. We stopped in Glenn Coe, where we pitched up on the side of a mountain with no one else around. After Sam had fallen asleep, I heard a mysterious voice whistling a tune – it sounded like a creepy nursery rhyme. Then I heard a noise as if someone was walking past the tent.
I woke Sam up and said dramatically, "We’re going to get murdered!" But when I peeked outside, there was no one there. Maybe it was my great-grandmother checking up on us…
Read more on weddings:
I saved thousands buying my wedding dress from a charity shop (Yahoo Life UK, 4-min read)
Bride who lost her sight asks guests to wear blindfolds so they can experience wedding as she does (Yahoo Life UK, 5-min read)
Our Met Gala-themed wedding cost nearly £500K (Yahoo Life UK, 10-min read)
