Wonderful Wedding Ideas

Wedding ideas can come from anywhere, and one of my secret spots for finding inspiration is design websites. Along with all the bigger items, like furniture and lamps, they also have fantastic finds, like the selection below. They're fresh from the new season's collection at Love, Loans & Linen. I'm going to be using the blackboards to label the buffet; Dig in!, Enjoy!, Yum!, the wildflower sticks as favours, and the luggage tags as placemarkers. Check out Love, Loans & Linen for more wedding ideas.

Divine Sweetness

Yummy! Don't these look incredibly edible? I'm a huge fan of French macaroons - I love their pastel colours, their crispy chewiness, and the fact they're super-chic right now. Add them to your big day for a touch of je ne sais quoi. But wait! There's a secret to these tasty treats. They're actually replicas made of polymer clay by the clever artist at Divine Sweetness. Perfect as place card holders and wedding favours, they'll act as a sweet souvenirs of your big day. Flavours include raspberry, strawberry, pistachio, lemon-meringue, bubblegum and cacao. Good names for your tables, non? *Update* Diving Sweetness have just offered 10% off their macaroons for Before the Big Day readers {fabulous!}. Just type beforethebigday at check out.

Lovebird Duo

These two belong together, aren't they the cutest! Just look at their gorgeous heart-shaped, feathery wings. I'd add them to a sweetheart table for a touch of rustic chic. Your guests could admire them as they added comments to your visitors' book, and then afterwards you could keep them by your bed where they'll lovingly look after your rings. Each little bird is unique and handmade by Elizabeth Prince. Check out her Folksy shop here and her blog here. Also loving the little heart dish, perfect for a ring-pillow on your wedding day.

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I'm A Little Tea-Pot

Perfect for a bridal shower, hen night or vintage-themed wedding, these gorgeous handcrafted tea pots are the cutest favour boxes I've seen in a long while. Handmade by Joanne in Manchester, and sold in her Etsy boutique Vintage Twee, they'd bring a touch of English tradition to your big day. Fill them with sweeties, lavender, or a handmixed tea-bag to make them your own, and sit back, safe in the knowledge you've added something truly original to your wedding.

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Homemaker Favours

Can you bake? I can't cook for toffee, and that's why I love this idea that's winged its way over from the States. The idea is that you ask all your guests to write up their favourite recipe, and leave it as a favour on your wedding day. Not only does it make for a gorgeous keepsake cookery book, but you and your husband have a future of fabulous meals together. Now all you've got to do is figure out who does the washing-up. All the letterpress cards below are from The Petite Press.

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Bee Mine

Is there anything sweeter than this honeycomb heart? I'm hugely passionate about paper cuts - there's something uniquely romantic about an individual, handmade piece of art. Made by Louveteau in her Idaho studio, you can choose whether you'd like this heart mounted on white card, or left as a stand alone curio for your mantlepiece. I reckon they'd make the perfect every-day Valentine present. Bee Mine?

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DIY Week #4 - Sweet Memories

http://www.marthastewartweddings.comWant to keep your guests sweet? Then give them home-made jam as a favour, and every time they spread it on their toast at breakfast, they’ll think of your wedding. Personalising jam jars is pretty simple, just print out the gorgeous free templates below, reach for the trusty glue and get sticking. Making the jam is a little harder, but if you want to buy jam and soak off the labels, I won’t tell if you don’t! For those of you with more talent in the kitchen, click here for a Martha Stewart recipe, and here for one from Domestifluff.

Product Credits - {top collage} Domestifluff, {middle top collage} Eat Drink Chic, {middle bottom collage} Martha Stewart Weddings {bottom collage} Merriment Design

Say it with Verse

You've said it with diamonds and the best Chanel, now give the gift of expression and say it with verse. Impressed? Unfortunately, it's not my own work, but that of the clever people at Poetry A La Carte, who compose bespoke poems for those of us who feel romantic, but don't know how to express it. All you need to do is fill in a questionnaire on their website about the subject of 'your' poem, pay them £150, and they'll put pen to paper on your behalf. Fantastic as a surprise present for your groom, or even as a wedding gift for a happy couple. **Hot off the Press** The lovely Mark at Poetry A La Carte is offering £25 off each poem to readers of Before the Big Day!

Eco-Chic Week #9 - Brilliant Burlap

Just because it's slightly rough and ready, doesn't make burlap any less chic. In fact, it's its naive rusticity that makes it this season's fabric of choice for eco-chic weddings. Made from vegetable fibres, it's often used to make sacks to transport coffee beans, and it's these bags that are super-easy to recyle into gorgeous accessories and favours. Perfect for a couple keen to be green on their big day. Don't miss the special offers for Before the Big Day readers - details below the pics.

Product Credits {from top left} - My Adobe Cottage, Heart Bag: Lilmissi, Napkin Ring: The French Nest Co, Ring Cushion: Ginie Lee, {from bottom left}, Heart Wine Bag: Lilmissi, Heart Bunting: My Adobe Cottage, Starfish Bag: Funky Shique

Product Credits {from top left}- Table Runner: My Adobe Cottage, Key Cushion: Styled Spaces, Bird Bunting: Funky Shique, Welcome Table Runner: My Adobe Cottage, {from middle left} Crown Lavender Bags: Home Spun Style, {from bottom left} Ring Cushion: The Blooming South, Bee Bag: The French Nest Co, XO Bag: Funky Shique

We ♥ Offers
15% off Lilmissi
10% off  Styled Spaces & Ginie Lee
10% off The French Nest Co

Eco-Chic Week #6 - Love Birds

One of the oldest wedding traditions, the wedding toss symbolizes good luck, fertility and prosperity. Whether it's confetti, rice or sugared almonds {ouch!}, you're going to want someone to throw something into the air as you celebrate your marriage. Personally I'm going for bubbles, but for the truly eco-chic bride, the best option is birdseed - as long as your bridesmaids aren't beak-phobic.... And if you're going for a love-bird theme at your big day, why not reflect it in your favours, with these cute birdseed letters and hearts. Nature Favors are even offering 10% off your purchases with the code Big Day - what's not to like?

Product Credits - Bird Seed Sachets: Sarah Shannon Designs, Birdseed Letters: 2 Birds in Love, Heart Birdseed Favours: Nature Favors

Eco-Chic Week #5 - Simply Wood

There's something fabulously tactile about wood favours, and if they're made out of off-cuts that would normally go straight in the bin, they're eco-friendly as well. Perfect for a forest wedding, or one where you want to bring the outside, inside. My particular favourite is the wooden tag Save the Dates. Recyclable as bookmarks, they're the definition of eco-chic.

Product Credits - {from top left} Wooden Bookmarks: Quotes and Notes, Wooden Heart Favours: Indo Bay Textiles, {from bottom left} Inspiration Blocks & Wooden Hearts: Palomas Nest, Customised Favour Tags: Quotes and Notes

Product Credits - {from top left} Clothes Pegs: My Adobe Cottage, Wooden Love Hearts: Aphrodites Canvas, Peg Figures for Personalising & Wooden Heart: Carmelos, Love Pegs: My Adobe Cottage

Eco-Chic Week #3 - Website for the Weak

This gorgeous website is fresh from the south of France, stuffed full of chic home accessories. In La Pomme you'll find unique home décor items, like embroidered pillows, hand-stamped lavender sachets, and plush fruit toys for grown-ups. Designer, Apol Lejano-Massebieau, is big on making her work low-impact on the environment, and she recyles vintage linen, cotton and lace in her work. Perfect for wedding presents or favours and Mother's Day gifts, her site is well worth a visit. Check out her blog too!

Eco-Chic Week #1 - Flowering Love

To celebrate the start of spring, the return of sunshine and the flowering of the daffodils on my roof terrace, I hereby announce that this week shall be Eco-Chic Wedding Week. Which means I'll be featuring a different eco-favour a day, plus any eco-weddings I can find. To kick us off, here are some fabulous flowering favours and an invitation, all made out of seed-embedded paper. Perfect for a garden wedding, these tags, boxes and pellets will grow your guests living memories of your big day. There's also all sorts of anologies with flowering love, but that's a bit too soppy for a Monday morning, even if it is sunny.

Product Credits {from top left}- Wildflower Seed Tags: Jenearjen, Pots of Love Favours: Nature Favors,
{from bottom left} Plantable Favour Boxes: Jenearjen, Thank You Seed Cards: Backward Prints, Plantable Seed Tags: Jenearjen, {second picture} Invitation: Artful Beginnings

We ♥ Offers
10% off all of Backward Prints handmade cards, all of which bloom into beautiful wildflowers.

Personalised Presents

Favours are fantastic when they're something unexpected. We're all used to receiving little baggies of sugared almonds (meant to encourage fertility in the happy couple), but it's much better surprise your guests. At a recent Italian wedding, my friends A & L, homemade a delicious lemon liquer called limoncello, and gave each person a commemorate minature bottle. It was the perfect present; personalised, original and unusual. For your own homemade favours, try these DIY ideas.
1. The first collage is from Twig and Thistle Store. You choose a colour, buy the patterns, personalise them and print them at home.
2. The second collage is from Miss Pickles Press, who will print preserve labels with names, event date and contents of jar. Or, if you're throwing a BBQ, use these bold cutlery packets to add a touch of USA vintage to your day.

Keeping it Green

Favours have become one of the major cards to play for a couple looking to make their big day stand out from the crowd. There are millions of ideas out there, and I'd recommend a virtual stroll through Etsy if you fancy a few ideas. That's exactly what I just did, and I stumbled across Ormolu who isn't just massively talented, she's also super-eco-friendly, as her favours are professionally printed on recycled papers with soy inks using wind-power. That's a whole level of green that I didn't even know existed! Each of the 26 alphabet tags have their own particular sentiment... my favourites are "D is for delight", "J is for joy", "R is for remember" and "U is for us".

Get into Caricature

Want to make your wedding stand out from the rest? Why not try an usual entertainer to keep your guests giggling during the reception? Josie Camus is a fabulous caricature artist - on the spot, she'll sketch anyone, and give them the picture to take away. How's that for a fantastic, personalised favour? And if you're hiring her for your big day, you could even ask her for a portrait of you and your husband to add to the invitations, or have made into a stamp to decorate paper goods like napkins. The possibilities are endless!

Credit Crunch Bride

Some of the gorgeous stationery out there is way over the budget of any credit crunch bride. When invitations are coming in at over £5 a pop, something's got to give. But it doesn't need to be your invites, you just need to get creative! Making your own stationery can be cinch if you're willing to do some printing, stamping and sticking of your own.What's more, it'll really make your big day your own.

The secret is to find a template. Thanks to the huge generosity of graphic designers out there in the web-world, there are simply hundreds of patterns out there that you can use. Check out The Wedding Chicks for a whole selection of templates (including those pictured above) and I Do It Yourself, one of my best web finds for while!

And it's not just stationery! Check out this template (pictured above) created by Rachel from Benign Objects. Originally designed for Christmas, Rachel very kindly altered it for The Wedding Chicks, so you can now use it to make your own personalised pillow boxes, CD cases and labels. Perfect for favours! Rachel also created the most amazing Save the Date hankerchiefs for her own wedding, click here for more.

Where to Sit?

Unless you're a party organiser, you've probably never considered the various weird and wonderful ways in which to tell people where to sit at dinner. But now it's your wedding day, and you want to make it stand out from the crowd, and make it unique to you as a couple.  So here are a few fabulous ideas for place markers - some with the added benefit of special offers for Before the Big Day readers!  And whatsmore, many of them have the double-function of acting as wedding favours - which for the uninitiated - are little gifts for your guests to thank them for coming.

ParDay are offering free shipping on all orders.

Orange 1 are offering 10% off orders of $15 or more until 01/01/10

Art Kitten are offering free shipping with code BIG DAY

Paper Acorn are offering free shipping on orders over $40 with code BIG DAY

Good Guest are offering 20% off with code BIG DAY

Paper Acorn are offering free shipping on orders over $40 with code BIG DAY

Interesting Additions

Wedding receptions can become a little predictable - the drunken uncle in the corner, the bridesmaids making a den under the top table, the ushers trying to do the Moonwalk.  Bring back a bit of brilliance to your big day with a few of these ideas, starting with a personalised picture booth.  Add a fancy dress box (fake moustaches, plastic lobsters) and you'll have them queuing out the door.

Give flagging guests a sugar rush with sweet treats like ice-cream and candy-floss trikes, plus the ever-popular chocolate fountains from Ideas Box.

Fabulous Favours

If you're thinking of using blue as your accent colour, take a look at these fabulous ideas for wedding favours.  We can't think of a better way to gift your guests!

Product Credits - Popcorn Stickers: Jessica's Design Shop, Personalised Fans: Baumbirdy, Ice Breakers: A Remark You Made, Calligraphy: Lisa Ridgely ; PinWheel: Shana Dreher, Enjoy Bags: Par Day