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
x
I have an app on my phone called 'WeddingHappy'. I downloaded it after watching this PopSugar Video on Best Wedding Planning Apps. It's not an app I use religiously but it is useful. It creates a personal timeline of tasks based on your wedding date. It has a great 'countdown to the wedding' function (which is useful for titling blog posts) and would be handy for brides-to-be on the go to keep track of supplier details and appointments. You can even add a certain number of your own tasks and deadlines on the free version. Once you've completed a task you mark it 'done' and it drops off the list.
Top of its list of things I should have done by now is 'Book Florist' which is way past it's deadline and is now marked, in bright red letters as 'Complete as soon as possible'.
So...I guess it's about time that I share with you some ideas we've had on flowers and foliage for our wedding.
When Jim and I lived in
Belfast we didn't have a garden. We did have a 'beautiful' communal
alley, full of bins, which overlooked a train line but this surprisingly
didn't inspire us to be particularly horticultural. We did grow a
chilli plant indoors, but as we lived in an end terrace there was a
ridiculous daily ritual of moving the pot from the front of the house to the back to maximise its time in the sun!!
Jim has always been more
interested in gardening than I have and, ever practical, he grew lots of
vegetables in a local community garden - mostly potatoes and red
lettuce as the slugs seem to leave those alone.
Out the back of our new house
in Leicester we have a little paved sun trap which means we have no
excuse not to grow something! This year, alongside some particularly
vigorous mint (for mojitos obviously) I planted some freesia and some
gladioli. The freesias never appeared (Jim's mum informed me they are
quite hard to grow) but at the end of August these beautiful pink galdioli appeared.
At the weekend I spent some time weeding some of our flower beds and I've planted some
heather in what I hope will become a sort of wild flower bed.
With most other aspects of our wedding I feel completely comfortable but I know next to nothing about flowers and floral arranging. So although WeddingHappy (and I) felt a post on flowers was due, I have really struggled to write it.
I can definitely appreciate beautiful floral arrangements and have a few favourite flowers but because we would prefer to arrange the flowers ourselves I'm searching for the right place to start.
So far we think we'd like to avoid anything too formal or arranged, preferring the natural, more hand picked arrangements. I love gypsophila (Jim also likes this as he read somewhere that it is pretty cheap!), lavender, white and green hydrangeas, and peonies.
I'm really lucky to have Jim's mum to advise on what's in season and recognise all the random flowers I photograph and send to her.
We like the idea of mixing potted plants in amount the arrangements and where possible sourcing in season flowers from the local area rather and than shipping in a million frozen tulips from Amsterdam.
Our spare room currently houses our extensive recycled glassware collection and a few friends and family members have also started a similar collection on our behalf. We'd like to use as many recycled and upcycled pieces in our wedding decorations as possible.
Below are some pictures from our floral mood board.
So although we're not totally decided on what flowers we will, writing this post has definitely helped and has shown us that maybe, we have more of an idea of what we would like that we thought!
*Haughty Culture...Horticulture lol
** some pictures my own, others from magazines or online searches.
