Handfasting
Our Handfasting Celebrate Package - Just Handfasting Ceremony
2026 - £500 | 2027 - £550
Please note: These costs include the use of our enchanting woodland ceremony space for your handfasting ceremony only - Wednesdays only during the Summer months. These costs do not include the day/evening hire of the venue. If you are hiring the venue for the full day as part of your handfasting, the cost of the ceremony is reduced by £50.00.
Availability 2026
September - 26th September 2026
Availability 2027
May - FULLY BOOKED
June - DATES AVAILABLE
July - DATES AVAILABLE
August - FULLY BOOKED
September - DATES AVAILABLE
Availability 2028
May - DATES AVAILABLE
June - DATES AVAILABLE
July - DATES AVAILABLE
August - DATES AVAILABLE
September - DATES AVAILABLE
HANDFASTING AT THE OAK GROVE
The Oak Grove offers an enchanting woodland setting for couples seeking a more personal, symbolic, or spiritual ceremony. Among the most beautiful and meaningful rituals we witness beneath our ancient oaks is handfasting, a tradition steeped in history, connection, and love.
Visually striking and rich in symbolism, handfasting is becoming an increasingly popular addition to modern weddings, especially within humanist and spiritual ceremonies. The ritual can be fully adapted to reflect your values, story, and style, whether that means weaving in your own vows, involving family and friends, or choosing coloured ribbons with personal significance.
Rooted in Celtic tradition and revived with heartfelt meaning, handfasting at The Oak Grove is a powerful way to honour your union and celebrate your love surrounded by nature’s quiet beauty.
Planning Your Handfasting
We work closely with trusted celebrants, including The Oak Grove owner Sam Holland, who specialises in bespoke handfasting ceremonies. If you're unsure where to start, we’re happy to guide you through options, from sourcing locally crafted ribbon choices to ceremony structure.
Handfasting is a beautiful way to honour your bond and set the tone for a marriage rooted in intention and love.
Whether it’s part of your main ceremony or a private moment shared quietly in the woods, it’s always deeply special at The Oak Grove.
What is Handfasting?
Long before written contracts and formal ceremonies, the joining of hands was one of the oldest ways two people could declare their intention to walk through life together. Across Celtic lands — in Wales, Ireland and Scotland — cords or ribbons were wrapped gently around the hands of a couple as a symbol of unity, trust, and shared future.
The binding was never intended as a restraint, but as a connection: two separate paths choosing, willingly, to become entwined. Beneath the oaks, the ritual takes on an added meaning.
For centuries, these trees have stood as symbols of endurance and rootedness. In both Welsh and Irish Druidic traditions, the oak was regarded as a sacred tree — associated with wisdom, shelter, strength, and the quiet passing of time. Oaks grow slowly, but deeply. They weather storms not through force alone, but through flexibility, balance, and roots that hold firm beneath the ground unseen.
There is something deeply fitting, then, about promises being spoken beneath their branches.
As hands are bound together, the cords become a reflection of the grove itself: individual strands woven into something stronger together than apart. The act is both ancient and personal — not simply a binding of hands, but an acknowledgement that love, like the oak, is shaped gradually through patience, care, resilience, and trust.
Many couples choose colours or materials that carry their own meaning:
Green for growth and renewal
Gold for warmth and joy
Blue for loyalty and calm waters
Red for courage and deep affection
Some include ribbons passed down through the family. Others incorporate silk, linen, velvet, or natural fibres that reflect the landscape around them. And when the ceremony is complete, the cords remain — a keepsake of a moment held beneath trees that were themselves once left to grow in their own time.
The Oak Grove welcomes couples from many different spiritual paths and traditions. Some arrive with Wiccan celebrants, some with Norse Pagan beliefs, some with Druidic practices, and others with ceremonies shaped entirely by their own personal story. Couples are warmly encouraged to bring the celebrant who feels right for them, and to create a handfasting that reflects who they are.
This grove is not about prescribing belief, but about creating space for meaning.
As a Druid working here upon this land and among these trees, the oaks are never simply a backdrop to the ceremony. They become part of it. Their presence shapes the atmosphere of the ritual in ways both subtle and profound. Beneath their branches, the ceremony feels held — rooted within something older, quieter, and enduring.
The oaks of the grove were not chosen for the urgency of shipbuilding, but allowed to remain, widen, and endure. Today, they stand not as timber for journeys across the sea, but as witnesses to journeys of another kind.
Journeys rooted in love, in gathering, and in the decision to stay.