a few wedding details

After getting back from our honeymoon in early September, I had imagined that I would be writing a good number of blog posts to tell you about our wedding. For those of you who were there celebrating with us, it would be a reminder of all of the fun we had; for those of you who I have not had the pleasure of meeting, it would be a glimpse into our wedding day; and for me, it would serve as a visual & written record of some of the details I did not want to forget.

However, life seemed to come at us so quickly that I have ended up documenting the here and now far more than our wedding memories, in an attempt to simply keep up with all that has been happening. I like blogging for that reason - that it provides an outlet for day to day documentation that allows me to use both words and pictures to express my thoughts in a way that I could not with journalling, putting pen to paper. I still love the process of doing that, but I love the creative outlet that I have found in blogging.

So, if you will bear with me, I'd like to share with you a few snapshots of our day.

We had our wedding reception in a little village called Long Ashton. When our guests arrived, they were served Pimms cocktail from under a gazebo which had glass jars strung with pink & green ribbon (our colour scheme) all around the edge. Our wedding cake (which I promise to write about over here very soon) was covered in 150 white roses. These roses were removed from the cake so it could be eaten, then lovingly transported to the reception venue to find new homes in the beautifully hung jars.

 

I had wanted to have a vintage feel to our wedding, and Sarah resourced this wish wonderfully. We had piles of books, topped with flowers & jars of sweets, that Sarah had gathered from the university library - all of the books had something in their title which reflected our names, John's job as a wind turbine engineer, or love, and they all co-ordinated beautifully with the colour scheme.

I had chosen to have peonies in my bouquet and in the reception flower arrangements. They are my favourite flower, and the first flowers that John bought me were pale pink peonies, identical in colour to the ones you can see in the photo above. I loved having this detail that represented not only my favourite flower, but also John's incredible attention to detail when it comes to taking notice of the things I love. (He had read my blog entry about peonies, before I even knew that he had found my blog, taken note, then sent me a bouquet on our one month anniversary.)

A long time ago I came across Rebecca Thuss, a creative stylist, who did wedding photography styling for Martha Stewart Wedding for many years. I was so inspired by her work, and when I saw this, I knew that I wanted something similar at my wedding - it seemed particulary fitting as I am such a lover of cake, and didn't want to limit our guests to just one choice of cake! We used my collection of cake stands and some items that I picked up in charity shops, along with some of Sarah's glassware to present the confectionary.

The tables were laden with glassware & flowers & antique lace squares.

For the place settings we used pages from an old copy of pride and prejudice that I picked up for £2.50. We folded these around the napkins & fastened with the fabric left over from making the bunting, and tucked a sprig of rosemary or sage under the fabric. For favours, we had personalised miniature pencils made, which people used to write us a message in our guestbook - we had placed blank cards inside the envelopes with the guests' names on for this purpose.

John has made me quite a number of origami roses during our relationship, and Sarah took this romantic gesture and added it to our reception through making origami swallows and swans from the pages of an engineering journal and from the Songs of Solomon in the Bible. I loved that John had no idea that his romantic gestures had become inspiration for our wedding decor, and that the birds had hidden information in them that spoke of love & John's profession.

The ribbon tied around the vase says, 'To have and to hold from this day forward' and was purchased from Cox & Cox.