Cool Wedding Planning

Ok, for starters, this is why it is so cool to live in London: the above picture was taken from our table at Strada this evening, just after sunset, in a restuarant with a panoramic view of the Thames River including City Hall, Tower Bridges, the Tower of London, the HMS Belfast, the Gherkin, and with glimpses of the Monument and London Bridge. We weren't necessarily there for any particularly special occassion, and it's not a particularly special: it just happened to be where we were at the time. It has nothing to do with our wedding planning, but still, sometimes it is so way cool to live in London.

In terms of wedding planning, this week's been pretty cool too. For starters, we bought our plane tickets to Dubrovnik for our honeymoon!! The tip jar savings (a.k.a. the Honeymoon 'Jar') are paying off and Alex and I were excitedly counting coins again last night; thank you restuarant job for the graciousness of your boss & customers. Honeymoon in Dubrovnik = way cool, and flights and accomodation sorted two months out is pretty darn good!

We also had my friend and classmate, Holly, over last week to talk shop on wedding flowers for the wedding. A children's literature nerd like me, her hidden talents just happen to include floral arrangement; I love it when that happens. We've got the number for a wholesale person we can use to get the goods so I'm thinking wedding flowers are definitely on the "Check!" list.

Via post, our Scrabble tiles & trays arrived! I tell ya, 200+ Scrabble tiles is not quite the pile you might expect, and yet, I think it'll work. More than that actually, we think it's gonna look super cool! Also super cool is what we've decided to do for our guest book. Check it out:


Postcards. We hadn't really considered a guest book until Alex's mum mentioned, and then we just kind of looked at each other in a daze: what to do? Well, the word theme kicked in again, the long-distance aspect of our relationship for a year, and our mutual love of postcards. We want to have a bowl/basket of random postcards for people to choose from, write messages to us, and be able to display, bind or use them later.

I had been trawling Etsy again for any great finds and then realized I had a huge resources right here in my own files! When I lived abroad before and first traveled with friends P & FF, I started collecting postcards, like they did, from everywhere we went; and I continued to do so from almost every place I have traveled to since. Given that each postcard held a memory of some trip, place or memory, I've carried these innumerable amount of postcards with me whenever I've lived, re-purposing them at every turn. From my collection, we've got about half the number we need. The other half we're keeping our eyes out for...

Letters to Our Hearts

You've seen our cake toppers of old letterpress stamps of 'A & E' and now I give you our table decorations: wooden Scrabble tiles! Words and wood: our developing theme for decorations for the UK reception. Words for all the letters, emails, phone calls, cards, poems, short stories, novels that have passed between us. Wood for my growing-up as a contractor's daughter, the oak tree in Fowey, the redwoods of Santa Cruz.

Unsurprisingly to me, I found exactly what we were looking for on Etsy, (and after a few days of searching) with XO Supplies: a whole lot of 200 Scrabble tiles and 4 Scrabble trays. Imagine little scrabble tiles strewn across the tables instead of rose petals or rocks or confetti, and trays randomly placed around for special messages. Plus, for the Bride's Cake (like the Groom's cake, but not!) a secret message scrawled across the top! Oh the fun to be had...!

Table Decorations - The Family Spectrum

The first two weekends of July brought much celebration for Alex's side of the family: her cousin got married in a beautiful Methodist church and her sister got a civil partnership in gorgeous Brighton Town Hall. Both were fab, and I have to say, Alex and I looked the part. The receptions were held, respectively, in a marquee behind a pub (much prettier than it sounds) and the Latest Music Bar with french doors opening onto the street; and being the ever-observant, now-wedding-planning woman that I am, I was taking notes. Mostly, on table decorations.

OK, I was taking notes on most things, but the table decorations are really what get my creativity bouncing. Ah, craftiness.

Cousin of the Bride, Reception #1: Vintage Tour de France theme; white, burgundy and pink (although I'm told UK weddings don't really 'do' colors...)

The bride wore a vintage veil and vintage-style dress, and the table decorations matched. The red (1) and white (2) wine, from California (nice shout!), had bicycles on the label; the menu was covered in vintage French ads; alongside the ice bucket sat a framed photograph of a participant of the Tour de France. Name cards had a French-themed stamp and every place setting had a red and white sweets bag: guests were invited to 'tour' the 15 tables and collect sweets from the mason jars on each of the tables (although some people insisted on trading instead of collecting...). There were pink flowers, table names of places visited by the bride and groom and a full set of flatware and stemware.

Thoughts: The decorations felt meticulously thought out and very sweet, but the table was a bit busy.
Favorite Touch: Name cards with themed stamps.

Sister of a Bride, Reception #2: The theme was simplicity and joy, perfection for J & E; blue and white (I think there are always color themes...)



A bit too caught up in all the tapas, good music and the Brighton Gay Men's Chorus, I forgot to take a photo of the tables. However, there were no seating charts or name cards so people got to move around freely. J & E decorated with blue and white striped Brighton Rock Candy (6 per table tied with a white ribbon, one for each seat; pictured above), two white flower stalks, white balloons, and white bubbles with two love birds on the cap. Their sponge cake even matched--and tasted AMAZING!

Thoughts: I loved the local sweets to flavor the evening and the different levels really worked for decorating a small space with lots of movement.
Favorite touch: local sweets with meaning.

And the creativity is off bouncing again: Ok, so, purple tulips, vintage vases, handmade napkins (purple and green), Cornish fudge or truffles from Middletons... Hmm, custom stamps or photographs... candles or no candles...?

New Napkins & Vintage Vases

I tell ya, right now, the ideas are flowing, and my thoughts on napkins and vases are my current favorite. Most days I check a few different craft blogs I admire and a few weeks ago, I found a post on The Purl Bee that made my fingers start to itch with excitement: hand-made napkins!

Ok, maybe the sound of it might not have the same effect on you, but check out this table setting:


Gorgeous. One of the ladies of The Purl Bee, Jen, used a variety of fabrics to make the napkins for each place setting at her wedding. The guests got to take them home as wedding favors if they wanted and she had enough left over to make a wedding quilt for herself. While the quilt seems like a lot of work right now, the napkins feel like they could be such an enjoyable venture! (Especially if I get my Y-town quilting ladies to help me.)

The napkins would add such color to the tables (right now we're thinking deep purple tulips would be perfect in the UK for April--maybe purple & green, a little pink for me?). Plus, I bet I could find the majority of the fabric at second-hand shops in Yreka (or gladly visit my fav quilt shop in Mt. Shasta, Sew Unique). I'm also thinking that my growing collection of clear glass vases (mostly from second-hand shops as well, or ones people I have known didn't want at one point or another) would be perfect for an ecletic mix of table arrangements.