Sunday 29 May 2011

Kids Favour Bags

I will be making the adult favours soon (waiting for green tomatoes to come into season - we were told the start of June by the Fruit Market so not long to go!) but have been working on the favours for the kids.

I have bought some bags to fill with a few bits and bobs to keep them entertained.  I got some some beautiful frosted bags with a damask pattern from a fab little online shop called The Wrapping Ranch.  This will let me keep them tied in with our theme and look pretty on the table.

I have used green tissue paper of course!

Inside, they will find...

Bubbles

Chocolate Hearts

Activity Book (Sea-life to go with our underwater table names)

Tin of Coloured Pencils

Super Hero Mask (DIY post to follow!)

Seed Paper Dragonfly (DIY post to follow!)

Hopefully that lot should keep them happy for a little while!


Saturday 28 May 2011

Nik's Grad Ball

We had a lovely time up in Aviemore for Nik's Graduation Ball last weekend.  I'm so proud of him, there's no way I could have gone back to uni to do another degree but he's really dedicated and determined to become a Maxillofacial Surgeon so has to have the two degrees!!

Us all scrubbed up

All the medics looking at the photographer on the roof for the group shot!

Nik, me and Nazlie

Nik's jacket keeping me cosy!

Butterfly shoes :)
This is also the dress which inspired my bridesmaid dresses and my dressmaker is designing them to be as similar as possible.  I love it so much I have it in two colours - if only they made it in Olive green as well!

Tuesday 24 May 2011

Ohhh Emmmm Geeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!

I am in LOVE with these....



And given the weather lately I feel I need to be prepared come wedding day, even in July!!!  How fab will these look poking out from under my dress in the puddles!!  And if I prepare for rain, maybe it will be sunny!  :)

I found them accidentally on ebay for just £22.  Maybe I can wear them even if it is sunny??  Oh and I also love that they are called green cupid!  The perfect wellies for my green wedding day!

Post Wedding Update: I did wear these on our wedding day, despite the glorious sunshine but I don't like any of the photos I have of me in them but I did get a couple at the studio shoot I did after the wedding...



And from the wedding highlights film:

Screen grab from our wonderful wedding highlights film by Cherry Tree Films

Monday 23 May 2011

Our Flowers

Most of my ideas for flowers came from Rock My Wedding (unsurprisingly!)  The first idea I had, however, was from the cover of Brides magazine showing green roses in a bouquet.  Other than that, I didn't know what style I wanted or what to have for ceremony/table flowers.  I went with my single idea to my local florist and after about an hour of discussion, we had a whole plan of many different flowers, big pedestals, big table arrangements, trailing flowers along the stage and bouquets.  Needless to say, when I got the quote I decided I needed to scale back and rethink!!



Luckily, RMW was there to help me decide what I really wanted - hundreds of flowers in big arrangements is not really me, I had just been getting carried away with the suggestions from the florist.  I saw this lovely bouquet of white, green and dusky pink flowers and just really like the wispy bits and jumbled up but simple look to it.  I'm not so keen on the perfectly ordered, perfectly round, tight posies of roses.  Rather than include the dusky pink (although I do love that wee injection of extra colour), I wanted to keep the flower palette to greens and whites.

Photo from Rock My Wedding

Another flower I love is the lisianthus.  I particularly love the twisty green buds and green middles and thought these would provide the wispy-ness I was after, having plenty of the buds sticking out.


Update: I spotted this bouquet below when looking for pictures to show my florist to get the idea of the kind of look I'm after and found out the amazing green collar is green celosia which IS in season in July!  I love that it looks like coral - it reminds me of diving!  I have asked them to include some of this, either as shown in this picture or more as a main part of it.  I love it!


Image Source

For the bridesmaids, the initial idea from the florist had been to do smaller versions of my own.  Then I saw this on RMW...

Photo from Rock My Wedding

Totally LOVE this idea and immediately started looking for the 3 flowers I would use.  I decided to use the lisianthus as they would have the green and white while still keeping the simplicity of using only one flower.  I also love the idea of them all wearing the same ring on different fingers/hands like the flower ring above so have bought them all one of my favourite sparkly dress rings each.

For their flowers I thought these green and white parrot tulips would be perfect for one...

Picture from www.arenaflowers.com

Unfortunately, tulips aren't in season in July - just a month or so too late :(  Neither are these anemones which would have made the perfect 3rd bouquet.

Photo from wholeblossom.com
I tried searching for other white and green flowers but couldn't come up with anything so decided just to keep them white/cream instead.  I will still have lisianthus for my chief bridesmaid and probably peonies for one as I love the big ball shaped buds and fluffy petals, although I might stick with wilder looking loose bouquets of freesia and alstromerias.

Peonies

Alstromerias
Freesias

Whichever flowers I do end up choosing I will incorporate a couple of each into my bouquet.  The flower girl will carry a small posy of 3 green roses tied with ribbon.  The buttonholes will be a green rose for Nik and white roses for the others, all with lisianthus buds and something extra which I'm keeping a secret for now :)

For the ceremony, we decided to keep one small pedestal for the stage to balance out Gwen's harp on the other side.  Also I wanted to incorporate green bloom chrysanthemums which I love but didn't want in my bouquet as they would take away from the green roses.  Instead of having an expensive row of flowers along the stage, I am going to make tissue paper pom garlands to hang across the front.

Green Chrysanthemum
Meanwhile, I had also discovered a gorgeous idea from a wedding photographer's website - one of their weddings had to most stunning floral display on a table of dozens of straight cylinder vases of different sizes each containing a calla lily submerged in water and wired to a pebble to weigh it down.  Each one then had a floating candle on top.  I'm not usually a fan of floating candles but loved the way they were used here!  It is really effective and simple and the wire round the pebbles was a lovely feature too, rather than them being weighed down into glass pebbles or similar - which again I'm not a fan of.  The pictures were by the very talented Blue Sky Photography and the flowers by Planet Flowers who have kindly given permission for me to reproduce the photos here.

Photo by Blue Sky Photography, Flowers by Planet Flowers

Photo by Blue Sky Photography, Flowers by Planet Flowers
I decided we could adapt this idea for our table decorations and have 3 on each table of varying heights.  We could also use them during our ceremony to decorate the window sills, then move them over to the tables once they are set up afterwards.  I also adapted it by buying green wire to wrap round the pebbles so it stands out (they had used gold but the silver I originally used to go with our colour scheme wasn't standing out enough).  Our florist has agreed to wire them onto the lilies if I have pre-wired the pebbles, leaving an end free to wrap around the stems.  A similar idea can be seen here.

My hard work - 42 lime wired pebbles!
It should look something more like this but less cluttered with only one flower in each.  
Photo from eHow.com
We have therefore now got a quote which is about half of the previous one from our same florist and the designs are much more simple and elegant and much more 'us'.  Even taking into the fact that we have bought all of the vases (42!!) the table centres are still cheaper than before (the hired vases and big floral displays) as we just need 3 flowers per table.  And we can try and sell the vases after - hopefully someone else will like the idea and want the same vases!

Post wedding edit:

I loved the submerged calla lillies but sadly our photographer didn't get a picture of them, luckily my friend Julie took one and sent it to me...

Julie's Picture of our table flowers!

And I managed to get a screen grab off our wedding highlight film...

I also loved the garlands on the pillars with my huge sequin butterflies attached (again, no photos sorry) and the flowers hanging in the little bubble vases out the back of the venue looked stunning!




I was a bit disappointed with my bouquet as the roses were yellow rather than green (the florist admitted they looked a bit 'lemony' and blamed the fact they were paired with white flowers on the shade appearing more yellow as it is apparently a 'green tea' rose which is classed as a green rose.  When I first asked about green roses, showing a picture I'd seen, I was told they were called emerald roses so perhaps they changed the type of rose.  It was pretty but not at all what I had in mind and I didn't think it fit in well with the style of our day.  The peonies in my and one of the bridesmaids' bouquets were also not what I planned as they were fully open and not as seen in the picture above with the ball shaped heads.  My bouquet was also a traditional looking tight posy rather than the wispier look I wanted and the celosia was hardly visible when I held it as it was much shorter around the collar.

As you can see, it didn't ruin my happy, smiley day but it's
a shame I didn't get the fresh green & white bouquet I wanted.



Grace's yellow roses
The best picture I have of the green part of my bouquet


My wedding band

I collected my wedding band on Thursday!  It's stunning and the engraving is lovely!

Green box!!  :)

Wedding band from Harold & Son

"Nikhil   3rd July 2011"

My engagement ring will be adjusted slightly to allow the band to sit under the stone flatter against the ring.

I can't wait until I get to wear it forever!!!

Post Wedding Update:






Screen Grab from our amazing wedding highlights film


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