Firstly, the flowers... I found a fab local florist (Bobo, in St. Leonards-on-sea) who turned a few words of mine (I think I waffled on about bright colours, no white, quirky, unusual, relaxed) into the most amazing bouquets for all of us, plus headdresses for the younger girls. Here's Kaitlyn proving that she can look angelic.
She even did flowers for Felix sticking out of a brown paper bag, but the little madam lost them somewhere along the line and I don't seem to have any pictures!
For the table decorations and the mantlepieces, we came up with the idea of using mismatched vintage items, and somewhere along the line, I decided that artificial grass might look pretty cool. Bless her (thanks Marcie, for accommodating me!) Marcie the florist actually did a happy dance at the idea and even suggested that she wire the odd flower directly through the grass - for the crazy meadow effect! Anyway, I couldn't have been happier with the result, and since I sourced all the containers from charity shops and IKEA, I could give them all away :)
On to the menus and the table plan - another charity shop idea. We went out looking for any small vintage picture frames, and I printed out the menus in cool fonts on Photoshop and then put a different frame on each table.
For the table plan, we mocked up a wall using chipboard and vintage wallpaper (that I cheekily stole out of someones recycling box!) and then hung the frames randomly on it, with a table list in each frame. I designed the scribbled sketches on photoshop at about 3am a couple of days before the wedding!
Talking of walls.... the idea above came to me because we already had "a wall". I'd asked my dad to make me one that people could stand behind to have comedy pictures done (having been inspired by Jo, plus others!), and he came up trumps! There's an ornate picture frame, skirting board and coving, plus that fab vintage paper, and we left a box of disguises around to help people "unwind" :)
I think the wall is currently serving another wedding in Cornwall - go wall!
For the table favours and place settings, we ordered sticks of rock that had guest names on them and Ceri (heart) James through the centre (corny eh?!) and we also handed out gift wrapped Stroopwafel (those circular waffles with caramel in the centre that you can warm on top of your coffee) - just because I love them.. oh and popcorn in cinema boxes for the kids, which I bought from a wholesaler in huge bags that I just wanted to dive into!
I owe a huge thank you to a number of my friends and family who helped me make paper decorations to hang in the ballroom we used. I found excellent tutorials online for the tissue paper pom-poms, and in total I think we made 25 in various sizes and colours. Very easy to do, and if you go large, they are stunning too. I added three cheap as chips red illuminated hearts from IKEA and there you have it!
And lastly, but not at all leastly, there was the CAKE. Made by my brilliant Mum, who only had one instruction - not traditional! And this is what she came up with...a marvellous surprise!
A Mad Hatters tea party with all the main players (Felix is in the teapot). There's a rainbow at the back with pots of gold, George is the Mad Hatter and Kaitlyn is the Queen of Hearts. Even my dress and James' cravat are featured, and there were cupcakes for all the kids too. It was blooming brilliant, and went down a storm...
Thanks Mum!
Right, I really do promise the next post will be sewing related - thanks for reading :)
x
PS Huge thanks to Sarah, our photographer, who took some of the fabulous images in the last two blog posts :)
