It’s nine o’clock the next morning. Your guests are gathering outside their tents, lured by the promising smell of bacon rolls from somewhere close by, mugs of steaming coffee in hand, going back over the best bits of the night before.
This is the real payoff when organising bell tent glamping for your wedding night. Not the tents themselves, lovely as they are, but the joy of the morning after. Everyone still there. Nobody rushing for a taxi or a checkout desk. The wedding not quite over yet.
This guide covers the details of what wedding glamping involves: what’s typically included, how many tents you need, when to book, and the real pros and cons of choosing bell tent accommodation for your wedding.
What is a bell tent village?
Let’s start with the basics.
A bell tent is a round canvas tent with one tall pole at the centre, so the inside is spacious and uncluttered. You can stand up straight and move around easily, all in a vintage-inspired space that looks stunning at any celebration.
A bell tent village is a cluster of these tents, set up within the grounds of your wedding venue. They are typically used as overnight accommodation for your guests, each tent sleeping two to five people.
Your chosen supplier brings the tents, beds, bedding, and décor to your venue. They erect the whole village on site, ready before your guests arrive.
Quality varies enormously between suppliers, more than most couples expect going in. Some provide airbeds and basic furnishings, closer to a weekend camping trip in a nicer-shaped tent. Others, including me, provide proper beds with sprung bases and memory-foam mattresses, layered soft furnishings, and boutique hotel-style finishes inside.
Both get marketed as ‘bell tent hire’. They are not the same product, and the difference is worth understanding before you compare quotes on price alone.
How wedding glamping works
If the venue allows it, I like to erect the tents the day before the wedding. That means everything is dressed and ready in good time. As soon as your first guest arrives, their tent is ready for check-in and they can explore the grounds.
I typically position your tents adjacent to the main wedding reception area, just a short stroll from the festivities at the end of the night.
Pack-down depends on the site. Some venues need tents cleared early the next morning which means an early guest checkout. Others, particularly those on private land such as a family farm, allow a more relaxed collection later in the afternoon, or even the following day. From a guest’s point of view, checkout is simple either way: zip the tent closed and leave the rest to the crew.
What’s included in a bell tent glamping package?
Package structures vary widely. At an entry level, you can choose to simply hire a set of empty tents for guests to crash in a sleeping bag. The next tier adds basic furniture and lighting, though guests still sleep on an airbed and supply their own bedding.
Here at Cambridge Bell Tents and Tipis, I believe in treating your guests how I would a visitor in my own home. So, every bell tent village I create starts with a proper bed. Not a camp bed, floor mattress or airbed, but a sprung base with hotel-quality bedding. Add insulating floor matting and a statement central pendant light, and that’s my Classic package: a clean, beautifully finished foundation for your wedding accommodation.
My Signature package layers in everything that makes the interior of a bell tent feel genuinely special. Soft-underfoot rugs, bedside tables with hurricane-style lanterns and pretty accessories, scatter cushions, extra blankets, bunting, and soft festoon lighting to guide your guests to their beds after dark. It’s designed to make your guests feel like they’ve just checked into a boutique hotel. The portable storm lanterns turn out to matter more than they seem, particularly on the early-hours dash to the facilities!
“The tent was lovely and the beds were super comfy and the bedding was 5 star luxurious too! Would definitely recommend – if all camping was this bougie I’d do it more than once a year.”
— Cris (Wedding Guest)
When comparing quotes from other suppliers, be aware that the headline price often leaves out bedding and delivery charges. Some suppliers even list the bed choice separately, so be clear on what’s included in a package before comparing on cost alone.
Bridal Suite Tent
Many suppliers also offer a honeymoon tent: a single upgraded bridal suite for the couple. This is dressed a level above the rest of the village, often with a better bed, finer linen, and small touches like flowers or a bottle of fizz. I once had the groom’s mother peek inside one of mine, and she told me it was almost worth getting divorced so she could remarry and spend the night in there! That probably says everything you need to know about what a well-dressed honeymoon tent looks and feels like.
Toilets and shower hire
One essential, rarely included in a bell tent glamping package: toilets and showers. Sometimes a venue has a permanent toilet block close enough to the camping area. But often you must arrange this separately through your venue or a specialist welfare unit supplier. Build it into your planning from the start rather than assuming it’s covered.
How many bell tents do you need?
There’s no single formula, because it depends entirely on how your guests naturally group themselves. Some weddings are mostly family units: two parents and one to three children sharing a tent. Others are mostly couples, each wanting their own space. And some have well-defined friendship groups: the football mates, the university housemates, or the book club, happy to share a tent.
As a rough guide, a wedding with around 40 overnight guests typically needs 10 to 15 tents. The most reliable approach is to ask your guests directly, early, how they’d like to be grouped, rather than guessing from the total headcount alone.
When to book your wedding glamping
First, secure your venue and a firm wedding date. Check that the site has space for a glamping village and that its vendor time restrictions fit your planned schedule before you commit to a supplier.
From there, you have two routes: if covering the cost yourselves, book tents directly with your chosen glamping supplier, using your best estimate of tent numbers. Alterntaively, ask your supplier whether they can set up a guest booking link, so each guest reserves and pays for their own tent directly, taking the admin off your hands entirely. Not every supplier offers this, so decide upfront whether you’ll need it.
Whichever route you choose, aim to reserve your tents around a year ahead. From my own experience, booking confirmations for summer weddings cluster heavily from the previous December through to February. The busiest Saturdays, particularly the May and August bank holiday weekends, sell out fastest.
Final tent and guest numbers are usually adjustable closer to the date, but terms vary by supplier, so check this before you sign anything.
Wedding glamping pros and cons
Cost is the first thing to get straight, and it can go either way. Fully styled bell tents for couples can end up more expensive than rooms in a block-booked budget hotel. Equally, a simple village for guests willing to share is often cheaper than housing the same guests at scattered B&Bs.
Either way, decide early who is paying: the couple, their families, or the guests themselves. Some glamping suppliers, including us, offer a direct booking link so guests pay directly without the couple chasing money afterwards. As a middle ground, some couples subsidise part of the cost rather than covering it entirely.
Pros
- Nobody needs a taxi, and noone is saying rushed goodbyes at eleven-thirty because their hotel locks the doors at midnight.
- The couple get to enjoy their last dance uninterrupted, without half the room checking the time.
- Everyone is still there the next morning, relaxing outside their tents with a mug of steaming tea, going back over the best bits of the night before. It is one of the loveliest ways to round off a wedding.
- It solves the accommodation gap left by rustic venues that were never built with bedrooms in mind.
- Bell tents photograph beautifully, and styling can be matched to your wedding colour scheme.
Cons
- Cost per guest can be higher than a budget hotel block, particularly for fully styled tents.
- Bell tents aren’t en-suite, so you’ll need to arrange toilets and showers separately. Budget for decent facilities rather than basic Portaloos: your guests will notice the difference. As a minimum, plan for one toilet per 15-20 guests, and add showers if the wedding runs over a full weekend.
- Rain itself is rarely a problem. Canvas tightens when wet and becomes more waterproof, not less. In fact, more than once, a rainy night has turned out to be a bonus. One group told me afterwards that lying in the dark listening to rain on the canvas was one of the best parts of the whole weekend: genuinely atmospheric. The real risk here is soggy ground. If the forecast looks unsettled, we position tents with drainage in mind so guests can reach them safely.
- Cold overnight temperatures can be an issue on an early or late-season date. Upgrading to include extra blankets is worth it. And a personalised hot water bottle as a guest favour is a small touch that solves the problem properly.
“We used Cambridge Bell Tents for our guests’ accommodation at our wedding and everyone said how amazing they were.”
— Nathan (Groom)
What to look for when choosing your wedding glamping supplier
Not all bell tent hire is built the same way.
Before you book, here’s a helpful list of questions to ask each supplier:
- What type of beds are included: proper beds, floor mattresses, camp beds, or airbeds?
- What’s included versus what’s charged as an extra? Bedding is often an add-on.
- Is delivery included in the price quoted?
- What is the damage deposit, cancellation policy, and payment terms?
- How close to the wedding date can you still adjust guest numbers?
- Do they have any recommendations on toilets and showers, or is that left entirely to you?
- How many glamping villages have they delivered, and what do past guests say?
- Do they already know your venue, or venues like it?
A supplier who answers these clearly, without hesitation, usually has a track record of successful wedding villages.
Glamping village styling and inspiration
A bell tent can look entirely different depending on how it’s styled. Some suppliers keep it simple. Others style every tent to match a couple’s wedding colours down to the last cushion.
At the simple end, a tent is dressed with flooring and a bed: functional rather than photogenic. At the other end, each tent is styled inside and out: layered rugs, cushions, bedside lanterns, bunting, and festoon lighting threaded between the tents, with colours and textures chosen to work with your wedding palette rather than fight it.
Step inside a well-dressed bell tent at ten on a summer evening, fairy lights catching the canvas walls, your bed already turned down, and it doesn’t feel like camping. It feels like somewhere worth having stayed.
“By the time our guests arrived the next day they were gobsmacked at how beautiful and luxurious [the tents] felt. We had nothing but lovely comments about them and would HIGHLY RECOMMEND them for your wedding.”
— Clare (Bride)
There is no single right answer, only the one that feels like your wedding rather than someone else’s.
Frequently asked questions
It depends on tent numbers, styling level, and add-ons, but for a wedding of around 20 guests staying in 10 tents, couples typically spend between £2,000 and £3,500 on their glamping village.
Not usually. Arrange facilities through your venue or a specialist welfare supplier and confirm this early rather than close to the date.
Bell tent canvas is waterproof and tightens when wet, so rain itself is rarely a problem. More than once, a shower has turned into a bonus: guests have told me that lying in the dark listening to rain on canvas was genuinely one of the best parts of the whole weekend: atmospheric, almost soothing. The bigger practical consideration is ground conditions. If the forecast looks unsettled, position tents with drainage in mind so guests can reach them safely.
Around a year ahead is a safe target, particularly for peak summer Saturdays and bank holiday weekends, which book up fastest.
Often, yes. Many suppliers, including Cambridge Bell Tents and Tipis, can set up a direct booking link so guests pay individually, rather than the couple covering the whole village and reclaiming money afterwards. Couples may also partially subsidise the cost if they wish.
Realistically, probably not. Most bell tent suppliers, including us, run a spring-to-autumn season and do not offer tents through the winter months. It’s possible you might find a specialist supplier to help. But if your date falls on a winter month, I recommend planning for indoor accommodation as your main option.
Bell tent glamping for your wedding in Cambridgeshire
If you are exploring wedding glamping in Cambridgeshire, I create bell tent villages for weddings at venues and on private land throughout the region and surrounding counties, from delivery and styling through to collection the following morning. You handle the invites. I handle everything else.
Explore packages and pricing →
You can also download my wedding brochure or book a 30-minute call to talk through your perfect glamping village.
