Our 1920s Gatsby Themed Wedding Party in Devon: Things We Did, Ideas & Inspiration

All the details of our Devon-based 1920s Great Gatsby themed wedding party 🪩

I can’t believe it’s been over a month since we got married! It really was the best kind of ‘bang’ to end 2024 with :)  I’m still not used to saying the word ‘my husband’ out loud… but here we are, and I wanted to share some of the details and things we did for this 1920s party because it was SO much fun.

(We mainly have just phone & polaroid pics of the party, so excuse the quality!)

First of all, why did we have a Gatsby themed party?

We both always agreed that we weren’t keen on having a big, traditional wedding. Even before we got engaged, we’d always spoken about eloping and then having a party with friends & family afterwards, and instinctively we both just knew it had to be inspired by the Great Gatsby parties! We both love the movie, and after my dad’s awesome Moulin Rouge themed wedding party a few years ago, we loved the format they did and the early 1900s vibe.

Here’s a little TikTok I made of our video clips:

@thecornishlife Because why not? 😍🪩💍 #gatsbyparty #1920sparty #gatsbywedding #alternativewedding #weddingtheme #themedwedding #weddingideas ♬ Bang Bang – will.i.am

Our Gatsby themed wedding invites and ‘save the dates’

We opted for sending physical paper invites, which I’m happy abut because they looked great and very ‘on theme’, but I’ll admit weren’t the most practical and cost effective way of doing things! A few of our friends/family have used the With Joy digital invites & RSVPs which I think are a bit easier to manage. But, I digress…

‘Save the dates’ inspired by the Great Gatsby

I took a screenshot of the moment in the Great Gatsby movie where Nick Carraway is handed the elusive invite to Gatsby’s party, and recreated the design in Canva.

1920s newspaper style wedding invites

I love a newspaper style invite, so I designed this in Canva and got ChatGPT to help me write the text in a 1920s style and wording!

^ Both were printed using printed.com. 

The wedding weekend format & ceremony

We actually got officially married the day before the Gatsby party; although we didn’t end up eloping, we did have a lovely intimate wedding ceremony in Devon with just our parents and our sisters (oh, and the dogs!) present on the Friday.

We booked Tree Top Escape for this – a beautiful micro ceremony venue in the countryside, looking out over trees and a lake in Devon. It was really magical, and I’m so glad we did this part with our little family group as I’d always been worried about being too anxious to do the whole thing in front of a big crowd.

For after the ceremony, we’d hired a big country house near Bideford for the whole weekend, where some more friends & family joined us to stay and have a delicious meal that evening (prepared by West Country Caterers at the house) on the Friday…

…and where more would join us for the Gatsby party on the Saturday night!

The party on Saturday started at 5pm, with a break at 7.30pm for some speeches (we had some BRILLIANT ones and this lasted about 50 minutes), and then carried on until 12am when most people got taxis back to where they were staying locally (while we and some friends/family stayed at the house).

The venue for our Gatsby wedding party (a Devon country house!)

We went to see a couple of country house style venues in Cornwall and in Devon, but I fell in love straight away with Hallsannery House! It was the perfect size, with a beautiful grand hallway and staircase, lots of different living rooms to host different activities, a games room, and plenty of bedrooms for our friends and family with gorgeous views over fields and the river (and also dog friendly!).

Opting for a house like this also meant we really didn’t need a huge amount of decoration! I’ll share more about what we did below, but the overall vibe of the house was perfect as it was.

The owners were absolutely amazing – so lovely and helpful throughout viewing, booking, planning and during the weekend. They suggested lots of suppliers for us which was really helpful, and I just can’t recommend it enough!

Food & drink at our Gatsby wedding party in Devon

A delicious hog roast outside

We hired North Devon Hog Roast to come and pitch up with their beautiful trailer outside to offer some DELICIOUS hog baps for our guests. This was SO tasty and went down a treat as a winter warming dinner, and best believe I thoroughly enjoyed the leftovers the next day too.

A hired bar inside

To avoid too much mess and chaos and tidying up of drinks, we decided hiring a staffed bar to set up inside the house for the night would be a good idea! We hired Gatehouse Trailer Bar, and owner Lisa was absolutely brilliant – she decorated the bar in 1920s style and even made some custom gin cocktails for us too :)

Entertainment at our 1920s themed party

DJ & musician

For music for the night, we hired a saxophonist to come and play a few sets, who offered DJing as part of the package as well. This really got our guests dancing and I’d definitely recommend a live musician for a party like this!

A hired Black Jack Table with croupier

We’ve experienced this at a few parties before and it’s always good fun, so we hired Creme de la Creme Casino to come with a Black Jack table, and they set up in one of the living rooms in the house. I was so busy talking to people and dancing all night that I never even went in this room to have a look or a play, but I heard it was great and my mum was very pleased at winning a prize.

Silent disco for the end of the night

We stopped the live music around 11pm and my dad had hired a silent disco set for us to carry on the dancing until later in the night. I bloody LOVE a silent disco, and this always goes down a treat at parties!

Other activities for our Gatsby themed party

A ‘Mystery’ treasure hunt with clues & a prize

I love quizzes, treasure hunts, and activities like this, so I used ChatGPT to help me come up with a mystery idea, write all the wording on the ‘newspaper’ and come up with all the clues (written in 1920s style of course!). I hid them around the house, and designed it so that the answer lead people to a specific person’s bedroom door with their ‘wanted’ poster stuck outside (see below). We announced the prize part way through the night when we stopped to do some speeches.

A baby photo board quiz

If you don’t know us, this could sound a little weird 🤣 but Alex and I looked IDENTICAL as babies (both very curly bright blonde hair), and so I made a big photo board with baby pics of us and turned it into a ‘who’s who’ quiz. NO ONE got it right (other than our mums)!

Bucket list notes & ideas with suitcase

Alex and I love to travel, and I came across this idea on Pinterest where people can write their bucket list ideas for you on luggage tags, and then put them into a vintage suitcase, and this worked well with our 1920s vintage theme.

Board games box

There was a lovely games room at Hallsannery House with a pool table and some board games already, but we also brought our own chest of board games too, for anyone who wanted to chill rather than dance the night away. My mum found the crate on an auction site (auction sites are her hobby lol), and some vintage games, and decorated it in an art deco theme for us.

Photobooth with polaroids

We had a photographer at our ceremony on the Friday, but opted for a videographer for the party instead (to keep costs down vs having both!), which is why we don’t have any professional photos from the Gatsby party night. However, we did set up a photobooth area in one of the rooms, with my sister’s polaroid camera and we have LOADS of cute and hilarious polaroids from throughout the night.

1920s & Gatsby themed party decor

Lighting & mirror ball

My dad and his wife run a laser/lighting business and were in their ELEMENT planning cool ways to add some fun lighting to the house for our party night. They did an incredible job, lighting the whole outside of the house so that when people arrived at 5pm (dark by this time at the end of November!) they would have this brilliant first impression, AND they even put a green light at the end of the garden – in true Gatsby theme 🥹

Inside was equally as awesome, as they rigged up a giant mirror ball (okay not 1920s themed but inspired by the Gatsby movie) and some other lights that made the whole hallway and staircase sparkle all night. It was beautiful!

Welcome sign in vintage frame

I found this HUGE vintage frame in a charity shop for £10, and decided to design a welcome sign with timeline to go in it to have at the entrance so that guests knew what was going on throughout the night. I borrowed my friend’s painting easel to prop it up.

Hired vintage props

I hired a few vintage style props from Out of the Ordinary Event Hire in Cornwall which was great, including a drinks trolley, neon sign and vintage suitcases.

‘Wanted’ posters for bedroom signs

As I say, we had a few friends & family stay in the house with us for the weekend too, so in order to help them find (and remember) where their rooms were, I designed these fun ‘wanted’ posters on Canva with funny ‘guilty of’ statements that were relevant ‘in jokes’ for each person or couple, had them printed, and also included this as part of my ‘mystery’ treasure hunt too.

 

While it did all take a lot of planning, I had SO much fun putting all these ideas together (with a lot of help from friends, family, and of course Pinterest lol) and we had the most amazing, memorable weekend!

Any questions, pop a comment below – I’ll be happy to answer :)