29 Days Married - DIY Flowers & Decorations

My Aunt and I came up with our wedding decor theme name very shortly after Jim and I got engaged over coffee in a John Lewis Cafe.  We were flicking through some wedding magazines and noticed similarities in all the decoration-y things I like.  It was what we affectionately referred to as 'Potting Shed".  I think it summed it up pretty well - Recycle/upcycled, rustic-y, lots of glass and pretty but handpicked looking flowers and no sparkly bits.

Flowers & Jars

We pretty much started saving Jam jars the moment we got engaged so after 2 and a bit years we had enough (with some to spare) to create all our table centres, window sill decorations and coffee table decorations.  

We spent a lot of time removing labels from jars (worst part of DIY jar table centres) but once they were all clean we began the upcycling. Through my excessive Pinterest-ing (is that a verb yet?) I had seen a few simple yet effective looking DIY jar tutorials, so with these in mind, I sourced some brown garden twine, vintage-y looking lace, ribbon and raffia.  We thought about buying a glue gun but instead decided to go down the less messy and extremely convenient route of double sided tape.  The stuff we had was super industrial and quite wide so worked perfectly - the jars only had to last a day after all!  I just applied double sided tape to the jars and then wrapped the different decorative bits and pieces round them, so simple!! I tried to decorate each jar slightly differently - the twine and the raffia ones where my favourites.

Once we'd decorated all the jars, we boxed them up for the long drive to N. Ireland.  Most survived but those that ended up slightly dishevelled were really easy to fix.

The Thursday before our wedding Occasions Floral Design delivered our flowers, plus some gorgeous pieces of foliage from Jim's mum's garden, to Riverdale. Sharon had brought a flower food type solution to be added to the water so the flowers would still look gorgeous by the weekend.  The flower had been perfectly conditioned to be at the peak for the wedding!   Sharon's advice and guidance had been invaluable.  As we had nice weather we sat outside at Riverdale to arranging the flowers and despite having no experience in flower arranging, I found it very relaxing and was pretty happy with the results. I'd written down some arrangement ideas before we got there, and thankfully they looked pretty good in the jars.

Our pre-decided arrangements were:
- Gypsophila
- 1 stem of Gypsophila, 2 soft pink carnations, 2 white Veronica and some foliage. (We had wanted Carnation Antigua but they'd not been available)   
- 1 stem of waxflower, 2 white Lisianthus and some foliage.  (The Lisianthus were absolutely gorgeous, I think this was my favourite arrangement)

- 1 Ornithogalum, 2 Pink spray Roses and some foliage.
- White/green Hydrangeas (these were huge and so beautiful!)

After we'd arranged these jars for the tables we created some other arrangements with the remaining flowers.

We started to arrange them on the tables along with our scattered hearts, (hand punched by my mum from old books).  Along side the mismatched cups and saucers we thought they looked great and slowly everything started to come together.

Wedding Arch 

Jim's mum and his brother had constructed the most beautiful arch for us to stand in front of during the ceremony.  It was made from twisted sticks withrustic style half barrel pots as a base. Once on site, the mums decorated it with some of the same flowers we were using on the tables.  

Table Plan & Other Bits

As well as the flowers we also painted some old pictures frames we had to dot round the venue with directions or instructions inside them.  I applied a base coat with some left over paint we had then my brother Richard finished them with some spray paint. Richard also got a bit crafty with some bottles, a glue gun and some spray paint (bottom central image below).

Our table plan (above) was an oldish shabby chic looking frame that we removed the back from. We then used some garden twine to create two lines to hang table plan details on.  Jim designed and printed these. Disappointingly the frame has disappeared and Jim and I really wanted to use it to create a wedding collage for our house.  We're hoping it turns up, it's not like anyone could fit it in their clutch bag!

Although I'm sad the wedding it over we now have some amazing memories that will stay with us for life.   I think I'll continue to post about our day, now that our plans are no longer a secret and as we have some lovely pictures from the day.  I think it will be lovely to be able to relive our day through through these blog posts.

Amy
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2 Weeks Married - Thank You!

It has been two weeks since Jim and I joined friends and family at Riverdale Barn for our wedding.  We still haven't come back down to earth after a day that was more than we could ever have hoped for. 

In the lead up to our wedding our families couldn't do enough to help finalise our plans, including last minute shopping, delivering bits and pieces to Riverdale, flower arranging and venue decoration. They gave tirelessly of themselves that week and the resulting day was perfect. :)

We were really lucky with the weather on our wedding day - it stayed dry and warm all day, with not too much sun, so hopefully I didn't squint in too many pictures.

The response to our ceremony has been completely overwhelming! Initially friends and family were unsure about what to expect from our slightly unconventional ceremony and some even felt that we should have just gone down the traditional registrar route, but we knew what was important to us and how we wanted the ceremony to feel.  So many people have commented that it was so full of love, so unique and so us. A resounding success if you ask me!!

A huge thank you to our friend Paul who agreed, with little information, to be the celebrant for our ceremony. It meant so much to us to have him there.

Our completely vegan menu was also well recieved and we noticed lots of empty plates going back to the kitchen after the main course.  The cupcakes and vegan ice cream seemed popular too! A massive thank you to my sister-in-law Fiona, who made our vegan wedding cake.  I didn't get the chance to sample any at the wedding, but made sure to get a few huge slices the next day - it looked gorgeous and tasted amazing!!

Lots of friends and family have commented on how relaxed the wedding day felt.  Riverdale was the perfect location for us, and other couples fortunate enough to have their wedding celebrations there are extremely lucky! Thank you to Oonagh, Davy & Diane for their part in our big day.

Our friends Aggressors BC very kindly agreed to play at our wedding party and opened the evening with Madness - It Must Be Love for our first dance.  It was perfect.  They played a mix of originals and covers - the dance floor was packed!  Thank you Marty, Patreece, Sauce, Steeky, Cormac, Dan & Elaine! We love you!! (Their album The Tone of The Times is available for download on their bandcamp site http://aggressorsbc1.bandcamp.com/album/the-tone-of-the-times-2  - I highly recommend checking them out!)

Lauren our photographer posted the image below the day after our wedding. Riverdale pretty much has no phone signal so I didn't have my phone on me all day, plus I have a really rubbish camera so this was the first picture I saw from our wedding.  Lauren was unobtrusive and very professional and after having this preview I can't wait to see the rest of the pictures.  She is extremely talented, very patient and vegan :).  She was an absolutely delight to work with.

Photocredit Lauren Rutherford

To everyone who helped with the organisation, attended our wedding, sent cards/gifts and well wishes - Thank you so much from the bottom of our hearts!

Love

The New Mrs D

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10 Days : Flowers #marriedmay

It seemed only fitting that today, as party of #marriedmay (a lovely hashtag created by Phoebe over at So You're Getting Married) I share an update on our flowers.

I share my favourite flower with Blair Waldorf - Peonies.

A few months back, I wrote a post about my struggle with all things floral for our wedding.

Thankfully my mother-in-law to be, Marie came to our rescue.

She recommended a fantastic florist and friend Sharon at Occasions Floral Design, who we met with at the start of March.

Sharon listened to our ideas for the wedding and was happy to make suggestions but ultimate take our lead on the flowers. I'd drawn some sketches of what I'd like the arrangements to look like, not the easiest way to select flowers for your wedding!!

As we really wanted to do the flowers ourselves, but we were going to struggle with executing this successful, so she agreed help us by doing as much or as little as we wanted.

We decided that Sharon (and Joan) would create some hand tied bouquets for Fiona, Jenny and I. These bouquets will be photographed a lot and we wanted them to look beautiful for the whole day.  They are also going to provide flowers for us to arrange on the tables. They've been a fantastic help at guiding my quantities and suggesting the best flowers to create the soft natural, hand picked looks we wanted. They are going to prep and condition the flowers for us and deliver them to the venue where we will still have the opportunity to arrange for the tables.

Some of the types of flowers we are using are;
Peonies
Roses
Carnations
Gypsophila
Wax flower
Ornithagalum
Lisinathus
Hydrangea
Veronica

I can't wait to see the final arrangements!

Amy
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