Our own wedding decor

For our wedding in 2011, it was my first foray into the world of event design and invitations. The first thing we booked after we had got engaged, was our reception venue. For as long as I can remember I have been on walks through the grounds of Brocket Hall in Hertfordshire with my family and had always dreamt of what it would feel like to be lucky enough to get married at Brocket Hall, and to have your photo taken on the bridge looking back at the golf club and Brocket Hall. So when my parents said that we could have our reception there, I was completely thrilled. The golf club venue provides an absolutely stunning backdrop of a wonderful golf course.

I love all things vintage inspired, and desperately wanted to incorporate this theme into our wedding, especially as I had found a wedding dress with vintage style lace detailing. The venue did not lend itself perfectly to vintage style decor as it was a very light and pretty modern building, but where there is a will there is a way!

For my flowers, I was 100% inspired by Finch and Thistle Design. Rachel, who owns Finch and Thistle was in my form at school until her parents moved to America and I have watched her career and amazing skills with all things floral and decor from a far through the wonders of facebook for the last few years. I printed off pictures of bouquets that Rachel had designed for her brides and gave them to my florist so that I could try and explain what I liked as I have absolutely no idea what any flower is called - apart from maybe a rose and a peony!! The ladies that did my flowers were fab and they created the following bouquets for me and my bridesmaids. Thank you Rachel for your fab inspiration and for all the advice from a far!

At the reception venue we were going to tie in my husband's love of classic books into the decor, so we started this association through using books for the ring bearer to carry the rings on rather than a cushion. William, our page boy, did an amazing job helped by a bit of bribery from the best man (who was helped by William's mum!).

At our reception venue, we use the marquee part of the venue that formed the drinks reception area to set up some of our vintage pieces, which included a vintage typewriter for the guest book, an old suitcases that were used for our table plan and card box, and a photo booth. I found some small, blue, apothecary bottles on etsy and was thrilled that my florist used them!

 

 

 

The photo booth, and the best men, that carried the frames and camera around with them as the night went on, created some of the best photographs of the whole day. I love the one above of 3 of my closest friends!

Having spent many a wedding hobbling around once my feet start to ache from my uncomfortable shoes, although that's not as frequent nowadays that I'm married to a shorter husband (!) I also provided the ladies with flip flops for their tired feet!

For the tables in the marquee we had centrepieces of flowers in urns. You would not believe how far and wide my mum and I searched to find these urns but I'm so glad we found them as they really helped with the vintage vibe.

For the centrepieces on the tables in the main reception area, we really wanted to incorporate my husbands love of old classic books, along with use rustic centrepieces, so we alternated the centrepieces amongst the tables. My lovely friend Helen, who is an extremely talented baker, made my wedding cake for me and made these fabulous table name gingerbreads, which we tied with a tag that had a message from my godson, William.

 

Helen matched the lace detail of my dress to the detailing that she created on the cake - very clever and it looked and tasted great!!



Hope that gives you a flavour of the decor that we used for our special day. It would be remiss of me to write this blog article without thanking my friends that turned up in the pouring rain, the night before the wedding, to help us set up at 11pm! That really is beyond the call of duty and we were very grateful for their help.

I will leave you with two final photos - after 29 years of waiting - I got my photo on the bridge :-)

Back soon

L x

Wedding photographs courtesy of Spencer at Repartage

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello World - my first ever blog post!

Hi everyone, I am so excited to be starting a blog, as it will give me a great place to chat through where I get my design inspiration from and to show you some more examples of my work, that I can't always fit onto my website.

One of my closest friends recently got married and asked me to design her table plan for her. I asked her if she wanted a traditional card table plan or if she would be happy for me to design something a bit more unique. Fortunately she said I could design something more creative, and I could hardly contain my excitement. Sophy's wedding reception was going to be quite informal at at a restaurant that had exposed brickwork so I wanted to design something that would help complement that theme. I had seen some examples of table plans were people use old glass paned doors for table plans, like the one below.

 

I knew that this wouldn't work for Sophy's wedding though as there was going to be limited light within the venue. So I had an idea to rip out the insides of a vintage style picture frame/ mirror and interweave twine throughout it to create a mesh effect, that we could then attach the table plan to. So I searched for a mirror and found the perfect one. I then set about using my staple gun and some grey twine and created the mesh. I was really keen that the wording would help to reinforce the informal theme of the wedding, so decided to use the title 'bums on seats.' I used rustic kraft card to print the table details and found a font that worked billiantly to make it look hand written.

 

The table plan was to be a surprise for me friends Sophy and Tim, so I then anxiously waited to the wedding day to hope that the wording wouldn't cause offence but fortunately they loved it - phew! Take a look at the final results below. Hope you like it!

 

 

 

 

 

Since I published a photo of this table plan on my facebook page I have been contacted by several people asking me to design their table plan for their day which is great!! I am having a great fun thinking of ideas for their day and can't wait to show them to you on this page over the next few weeks.

 

Be back soon

 

L x