Friday 5 April 2013

Easy DIY Idea For Your Wedding: Blackboard Paint

Despite starting Before the Big Day before my own wedding, I still missed out on some fabulous wedding ideas. A particular miss was blackboard paint. It's without a doubt the easiest wedding DIY on the planet, and I just wish I'd stumbled on it when I was planning my own DIY wedding. You can buy it online in a huge range of colours {i.e. not just black!}, and paint it on to pretty much anything, from wood to glasses, plant pots and cork. I'm a huge fan of individually labelled jam jars at a rustic wedding, and this wedding back-drop {below} is amazing! Plus a blackboard menu will save you printing individual cards for each table. More chalkboard inspiration on my Pinterest page.


{Photo Credit} Amazing blackboard wedding ceremony backdrop by Jenny Jimenez via Style Me Pretty


{Photo Credit} Amazing hanging blackboard table plan by Michaels


{Photo Credit} Blackboard table plan by Holly's Home Crafts 2. Blackboard menu by Krista Mason Photography - full wedding on Hostess with the Mostess Blog


{Product Credit} Blackboard paint labels by Vintage Blooming


{Photo Credit} Shabby-chic blackboard table number {unknown}

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Thursday 4 April 2013

Real Fairy-Tale Dress Wedding: Kirsty & Michael

If you're dreaming of a truly princess-style wedding dress, you are going to fall in love with this bride's divine Ronald Joyce gown. The lovely Kirsty is something of a wedding dress aficionado, and had already decided on her designer of choice, long before her big day. She teamed her frothy Lola gown with simple Tiffany accessories, and a beautiful bouquet made of artificial roses and butterflies, a theme carried throughout the wedding. With a church service, and a soft-pink themed wedding reception at Albrighton Hall Hotel in Shrewsbury, you can see the care and time Kirsty and Michael put into their wedding day. Stealworthy ideas include Kirsty's Vivienne Westwood shoes {which smelled of blueberry!}, their pretty fishbowl table displays, and the bridesmaids Debut at Debenhams dresses - a great high-street find! Huge thanks to Kayleigh Pope for her beautiful photographs.



We got married on the Saturday 9th March, at St. Peters Church at midday, followed by our reception at Albrighton Hall Hotel near Shrewsbury. We chose Albrighton Hall because the décor inside and out was divine, and spoke a thousand words. The staff were friendly and their wedding breakfast appealed to us both. We went with a butterfly theme for our venue and throughout our wedding.


My dress was a Ronald Joyce 'Lola' diamond white dress. I was always going to choose one of his gowns as I love this work. He makes amazing dresses, with so much detail, and they definitely stand out from the usual wedding gowns. My shoes were Vivenne Westwood, and they were amazing. I received so many compliments about them - not only on their appearance, but on their blueberry scent!



My bridesmaids outfits were soft beige Grecian-style maxi-dresses from Debut at Debenhams.



My florist was a lady called Julie. I originally wanted my favourite flowers, which are peonies, but they weren't available in March. So instead, I decided to go for artificial rose bouquets with ivory, brown and nude pink flowers, decorated with butterflies, to fit in with our wedding theme. Choosing artificial flowers meant I could keep my bouquet to place on my Nan's resting place after our wedding day. 


My husband's outfit was a grey Lingfield morning suit with tails from Moss Bros. He teamed it with a cream cravat, waistcoat and matching rose buttonhole.


My veil was borrowed from my close friend as my 'something borrowed', as I wanted to add some meaning into the tradition. My accessories were my Tiffany necklace and bracelet given to me by my husband :). Also I wore Swarovski earrings which were also bought by my husband.


I loved planning my wedding so much I’m already thinking about planning our vow renewal! It's amazing putting all your time and effort, and seeing it all come together on the day. 


My advice to future brides would be to enjoy every moment of your wedding day, as it goes so fast. Always stick to your decisions, and remember it is both of your special day. Don't stress in the run-up, and enjoy your countdown. It’s the best day ever!





Our photography was Kayleigh Pope Photography. I was always going to chose Kayleigh as our wedding photographer, because I love her work and she is amazing with her camera. She takes pictures that tell stories, and creates memories that are unique.


For our wedding reception, we chose a colour palette of nude and pink colour, and the theme was butterflies.


I had a few DIY wedding projects. I did a DIY table plan as the one I originally bought got delivered with so many mistakes. I had a few minutes of bridezilla but swiftly moved on! I went out got all the crafts and spent an evening with my bridesmaid doing it which was lots of fun. I also made our wedding stationery. I bought place card templates decorated with butterflies, and wrote on the names.


Our wedding favours were chocolate truffles for the men, and the woman had butterfly candles wrapped in organza, with a thank you card. The children has sweetie cones and surprise lucky bags. 


We chose a four-tier wedding cake by Cakes by Kiki, with two square levels and two round. It was decorated with amazing peony-style detailing. Each tier was a different flavour - Victoria sponge, chocolate, lemon, and coffee. We chose Cakes by Kiki because we love their work! Their wedding cakes are stunning and so much detail goes into each creation.


More posts like this one:
Destination Butterfly-Themed Wedding
How to DIY Your Butterfly-Themed Wedding Cake

♥ Want to see hotel wedding ideas? ♥ Or how about more pink-themed weddings? ♥
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Wednesday 3 April 2013

Introducing Stuffster Wedding Lists

One of the most amazing things about getting married is the phenomenon of the wedding list. When we celebrated our big day we were stunned at how many people wanted to buy us wedding presents, and at the generosity of our friends and family. To make it easy for our guests, and to make sure we didn't get duplicates of presents {hello three toasters!}, we created a list with one company, but we found it really hard to choose one that stocked everything that we wanted. So I'm thrilled to introduce this amazing shopping website called Stuffster, as a fantastic option for your wedding list. Stuffster doesn't just enable you to create a list from any website you want, it also helps you {or your wedding guests} find the cheapest price. There's three super-simple steps to follow...


1. Create a visual wedding wish list on Stuffster {they call them StuffBoards} where you can add any product from any website in the world
2. Set a budget and a target price that you're happy to pay for each item
3. Send an email to all your wedding guests sharing your Wedding List StuffBoard with them
4. Sit back, and wait for a Stuffster email to ping into your inbox alerting you somewhere on the web the price has fallen to what you're happy to pay.


It's also a great way to organise everything that you need to buy for your wedding, particularly if you're planning to DIY a lot of the wedding details, and with the Target Price function it can save you a fortune. It's a completely free service, so definitely worth trying out! Before you know it, you'll be creating Stuffboards for everything you want to buy, and saving money on every purchase.

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Tuesday 2 April 2013

Amazing BHLDN Wedding Sale

One of my favourite interior shops of all time is Anthropologie, which you can find in London on the King's Road and Regent Street. So when the same company opened a vintage-style wedding shop called BHLDN a few years ago, I was beyond excited. Unfortunately it was after my wedding, so I couldn't directly benefit, but I never tire of telling brides about the amazing products they have on offer. So I'm exceedingly excited to tell you all about their April sale, which has just started. It includes massive discounts off their wedding dresses, bridesmaids gowns, accessories and wedding details, and you'll want to get clicking right away!



♥ Want to see bridesmaids ideas? ♥ Or how about more wedding offers? ♥
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Real Marquee Tea-Party Wedding: Holly & Jason - Reception Details

You're going to love the quirky, vintage wedding details from the reception pictures of this homespun wedding. With tonnes of DIY projects, and a colour theme based around vintage china, it's super-inspirational. With the help of Rosebud Vintage, who catered and styled Holly and Jason's wedding day, they created a detail-filled day, with tonnes of original touches. I love how they used vintage music-scores in their table stationery, and heart doilies for writing messages to their guests. Jason's mum hand-knitted a bride and groom for every female guest - a true labour of love, and their table plan was a grand, gold-rimmed mirror. Other stealworthy ideas include the luggage tag place-markers, the vintage china and old-embroidered table cloths, and the fun fancy-dress wedding favours. Huge thanks to Dominic Whiten Photography for his brilliant wedding photographs!


We chose Dominic Whiten as our wedding photographer. He’s amazing and we've had so many comments from guests about a) his presence being unnoticed, not bossy or demanding and generally being a great guy, and b) his amazing photos! 


When we were choosing our wedding photographer, we had an instant rapport with Dominic and his easy-going attitude, so we didn't bother meeting any others! We found him by looking at some of his work online. We knew we wanted something creative and arty, that would capture the day, and this is exactly what we got.


For our wedding theme, we wanted something really different and relaxed, so we set out with a mixture of ideas based on a vintage, quirky, fairytale, Alice in Wonderland type of wedding and came up with ours, which I suppose we’d now describe as a quirky, whimsical, country garden, afternoon tea wedding! 



We wanted it to be really visual, so we didn’t stick to one colour scheme. Instead we ensured we had a mixture of all colours, and brought in Rosebud Vintage to do our catering and wedding styling, which worked out better than we had ever dreamed.


For our wedding cake, we had 75 cup cakes on tiers, with a round cake on the top tier. My amazing cake-maker friends, Lindsay and Jenni made it for us. We wanted it to fit in with our vintage fairytale theme, so we chose yellow buttercream with more than 1200 cut-out flowers and buttons covering the cakes. 


The colour theme was blues, pinks, whites and yellows - our colour inspiration came from a 1920's vintage china plate!




We had lots of DIY wedding projects. I handmade our wedding invitations, even though it took months! I used a heart-shaped stamp and a butterfly-shaped stamp, and designed the invitations using colourful card and vintage music sheets. Each one was individual, and we hope to make a collage/canvas out of them all, as a special reminder of what was the beginning of our dream day and hopefully a colourful addition of art to our house!


We loved planning our wedding, and it was only stressful on a couple of occasions throughout the whole 10 months, and that was generally when Jason and I could not decide on the smallest of details! We loved visiting suppliers, getting inspiration from blogs, magazines, web sites and wedding fairs and also shopping weekly for all our vintage accessories from boot fairs and charity shops!



Our wedding favours were our pièce de résistance! The girls all had knitted bride and groom dolls that stood about 8 inches high, and were so detailed the hair alone on each groom doll took 2 hours to thread through!! We chose these as wedding favours because Jason's mum is a fantastic knitter and literally knits for England! She spent 5 months making these for us and everyone was delighted!



My advice to brides is enjoy every minute of the planning and don’t get too stressed! Easier said than done, but always remember that your guests have been chosen by you to share this special day and to celebrate your love. 


So if a table doesn’t have an accessory or the flowers aren’t quite as nice as you can afford, or any other detail is not quite right or going well, it is not be the end of the world and the chances are no one will even notice as they’ll be swept up in the ambience of the day!


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Real Marquee Tea-Party Wedding: Holly & Jason

One of my favourite wedding themes ever, is a vintage tea-party. It's the theme we chose for our London wedding, and it's quintessentially English! Holly and Jason wanted a unique wedding day that reflected their personalities, so they added an Alice in Wonderland twist to their vintage tea-party. With tonnes of DIY details, they truly personalised their big day, starting with handmade, individually designed wedding invitations for each guest! I love how Holly wore fresh flowers in her hair, and dressed her bridesmaids in vintage-style floral dresses. Jason looked seriously dapper in his high-street suit - would you believe it came from Zara? Along with Reiss, it's the go-to shop for well-dressed grooms. And as we struggle with yet another cold day, take a look at that sunshine! It was even warm enough to host the ceremony outdoors. It's almost enough to persuade me that it can be sunny in England! Huge thanks to Dominic Whiten Photography for his brilliant wedding photographs. Don't miss the reception pictures, in my blog posting later this afternoon.


We celebrated our wedding at Swarling Manor, near Canterbury in Kent on 12th May. We wanted a really beautiful venue that would firstly compliment the theme we had in mind and secondly that had a lovely garden to have the ceremony in but also a nice indoor alternative should the great British weather be mean to us!

My wedding dress was by La Sposa. My veil was by Pronovias, although it was actually a lovely soft, tulle long jacket that originally came with another dress, but my fab bridal shop, Bows in Ashford, got it made into a floor length veil for me. 


My bridesmaids' outfits were from Coast, but we customised them. I saw them and instantly knew they were perfect. They had a vintage look, with a large pale pink, cream and lilac rose print, but a great contemporary shape, so I knew the girls would like them.

We had the dresses taken up a little so they were a bit shorter than knee length, then my truly talented friend Jo {from the blog Mrs Day Makes} created a 50's style sticky-out net layered underskirt. The girls looked amazing!



Our florist was Wild for Flowers in Folkestone, and we chose peonies, roses and gypsophila. We met with Carol, showed her our ideal photos of flowers and bouquets, and explained we wanted vintage style flowers in certain colours. She then suggested all the flowers we could choose, and the looks we could adopt. So her advice, combined with being able to do everything we wanted {decorating gazebo, flower mangers, etc}, and the fact they were great on price, made our decision easy and Wild for Flowers the perfect choice.

Having spent numerous hours {14 to be precise} shopping around Bicester Village for a snazzy designer suit, Jason ended up getting his suit {blue, skinny fit with black lapel detail} from Zara! He also bought a gorgeous grey tweed waistcoat, and striped tie to go underneath it, so the Bicester trip was not such a waste of 14 hours after all!

Swarling Manor had the most amazing gardens, and a lovely barn which we could decorate if we needed an indoor alternative for the ceremony. Luckily we didn't need the indoor option!



My shoes were from Irregular Choice and my hair accessories were individual fresh flower {gypsophila and wild orchids} stems on wires.





We chose Dominic Whiten as our wedding photographer. He’s amazing and we've had so many comments from guests about a) his presence being unnoticed, not bossy or demanding and generally being a great guy, and b) his amazing photos! 



When we were choosing our wedding photographer, we had an instant rapport with Dominic and his easy-going attitude, so we didn't bother meeting any others! We found him by looking at some of his work online. We knew we wanted something creative and arty, that would capture the day, and this is exactly what we got.


♥ Want to see tea-party wedding ideas? ♥ Or how about more vintage wedding ideas? ♥
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Monday 1 April 2013

Modern Laser-Cut Wedding Place Cards

My wedding taste often veers towards the shabby chic and the pretty or rustic, but I couldn't help but fall for these fantastic laser-cut place cards by RTree Creations. Each sophisticated place card is personalised with your guest's name and table number, and you can choose the paper and colour to suit your wedding aesthetic and theme. Wouldn't they be the perfect addition to an urban wedding?


♥ Want to see place card ideas? ♥ Or how about more wedding stationery ideas? ♥
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