Hen and Stag Party Organisation

James' brother (and best man) organised his stag party in its entirety with a little help from one of James' mates in San Francisco to coordinate those on the American side of the Atlantic. Since I wasn't involved in the organisation nor the event I can't really comment on it much but I know that they spent just under a week in Las Vegas and had a fantastic time.

Being the control freak that I am, I was going to organise my own Hen Party, despite protestations from my bridesmaids that I wasn't allowed. Then being in a foreign country and a very different time zone got in the way so I gave in and handed over to Polly (the organisation queen). I decided to keep it very small and only invited my 4 bridesmaids but even so they didn't all know each other very well and somehow also managed to be impossible to contact! So I found a date we were all free and then Polly researched where we could go and booked us (the best bargain deal of course!) the Girl's Night In package at The Aztec Hotel in Bristol.

The hotel itself is lovely, decorated in country manor style, and the weather was amazing as well - so warm we were sat outside in just bikinis, in April! They have a beautiful pool and spa and the deal was cheap enough that those of us who wanted could get treatments on top. I got a facial and a pedicure and my pedicure lasted the 2 weeks until the wedding :)

The package was great, we got an extra suite to gather for dinner and DVDs and they brought us champagne and tapas style food to our room and then chocolate fondue and icecream with a wide variety of dipping items. My bridesmaids also brought a massive selection of snacks and drinks from a list of my favourites.

Needless to say we didn't manage to finish them all (though we tried until we felt sick!) but we did keep most for the wedding day and got through most of the rest while we were getting ready!

The Wedding Ring

This is the beautiful and interesting solitaire ring my husband proposed to me with.Whilst it wasn't what I had imagined when dreaming up engagement rings, it was far nicer than what I had thought I wanted :)

Unfortunately, when I started looking for a wedding band to go with it, I began to question my love of the ring. Next to a straight, traditional wedding band it sits completely wonky so I started the hunt for a shaped band that would fit next to it.

Pretty soon it became clear that stores simply don't have rings the right shape, despite many of them selling engagement rings a similar shape to mine. I found curved rings designed to fit around other shapes that worked pretty well..

...and I found the exact right shape in H. Samuel in Shrewsbury in England, only to be told that the ring was only for sale alongside their matching engagement ring. I asked to try it on anyway and found that the ring was actually the mirror image of the shape I needed anyway.

I started searching on the internet and found several candidates but the problem was I couldn't try them on to see how well they fitted against my ring so I was reluctant to go for it and continued my search in shops.

Eventually, after hearing from jeweler after jeweler that I would have to get one made, we decided it was probably worth the money to get one that would be a perfect match. So, after getting some recommendations, we went to Union Street Goldsmith in San Francisco and got them to make a custom ring.

James, on the other hand, has always been self-conscious about his hands and has never worn any jewelry in his life so he decided he didn't want a wedding ring at all. I wasn't particularly bothered by his decision but it turned out to be quite a controversial one. The vast majority of our friends and many family members were shocked by his decision and we both ended up having to explain his choice on many occasions.

Wedding Accessories

The jewelry was the first part of the wedding that I thought of making myself. I had a clear idea in my head of what kind of headdress I wanted and I couldn't find one anywhere, thus decided to have a go at making one. From there it spiralled into me making all the jewelry for myself, my bridesmaids and my mum and eventually into me setting up a jewelry business! Buoyed by the success of my jewelry I gained the confidence to have a go at making many of the other things for the wedding, some of which are already described in previous posts.
I showed my bridesmaids pictures of the types of jewelry I could make and asked them to choose styles of pieces they wanted. I also gave them the choice of pearl, silver or blue, or combinations of the three, and hoped that the result would be fairly different styles which, nonetheless, clearly all went together.

These earrings and necklace were made for Laura along with a matching hair comb similar to the one I made for Lizzie. The necklace is on tigertail wire with silver and glass pearl beads spaced out along it. The earrings are made with the same beads and some delicate wire wrapping on the bottom pearl.

This 3-strand necklace and bracelet set were made for Joey and follow the same silver and pearl theme as Laura's. The slightly smaller glass pearls are set either side with silver beads and spaced apart with silver foil-centred seed beads.


The hair clip is much more decorated than the others, using pearl and silver seed beads to create flowers.

This very simple design was for Polly. The earrings and pendant are made with glass beads and blue and pearl seed beads. The bracelet is made with the same beads but simply arranged in a circle.







And this charm-style bracelet and necklace were made for Lizzie with blue glass beads in two shades and small glass pearls on a silver chain.






These hair pins and comb were made to match with the same blue and white glass crackle beads






After much deliberation over if I wanted pearls in my jewelry or not I eventually decided to stick to materials which would match my ring. Even with this decision made I still got through quite a few designs before finally choosing.

Finally I went for these earrings which are a cluster of swarovski bicone beads attached to a large jumpring, each with a round-ended head pin. The bracelet is very similar - a silver chain with a combination of different sizes of round and bicone faceted swarovski crystals attached along the length.
After testing out different tiaras and hair bands I eventually decided on a simple hair comb encrusted with more swarovski crystals to match the other pieces.



Once my mum had chosen her outfit (brown and cream with a hint of pink) she had a very clear idea of what she wanted in the way of accessories.

All the fascinators in the shops were far too large for mum's taste so I made her this, much smaller and very simple design from 2 different patterns of pheasant feathers.

 Mum also described to me a necklace she had seen in a shop which was perfect but too long. Freshwater, uneven pearls coloured with brown and pink simply strung into a single strand necklace and bracelet to match. The clasp and findings are brass so as to blend in better with the overall effect.





It took a long time and a lot of thought but I'm happy with the jewelry I made and it looked perfect on the day. Our photographer was very impressed with it all and took several pictures...

My wedding shoes were not handmade but they were a bargain. I spotted them in Next many months before the wedding for only 20 and decided to buy them even though there was plenty of time for me to find nicer ones (and regret my decision) before the wedding. In the end I didn't find any nicer ones, even in far more expensive shops, and I didn't stop looking at shoes either!

I'm not sure what to do with them now, though. They could be suitable for wearing to other people's weddings depending on my outfit. One of my friends suggested using them to display my jewelry on at craft fairs so I think I will look into that further!

The Cake

There were 2 main reasons why I did not want to buy a wedding cake from a cake shop: the difficulty I would have had in fitting in a consultation when I wasn't even in the country, let alone the area and my extreme reluctance to spend £300+ on a cake. I know, its an amazing, tiered and highly decorated cake but its still just a cake.

Of course I had another reason as well - the desire to decorate my own. Ever since I was a child and my mum discovered an amazing cake making and decorating shop in Reading cake decorating has been a hobby of mine. Every year I would decorate mine and my mum's birthday cakes and I did quite a few Christmas cakes and birthday cakes for my friends as well. However, decorating the cake was one thing, I didn't feel capable of making it as well which left me with a problem.

Marks and Spencer was my saviour. Whilst I briefly considered buying one of their pre-decorated cakes I still didn't want to spend £200 if I could help it.
So I bought several of their "Traditional Wedding Cakes" which can be bought tier by tier in different flavours. I bought a medium fruit cake and a large sponge cake to provide 2 tiers. Sadly they don't do a round chocolate cake so I bought 2 rectangular chocolate cutting cakes to be kept in the kitchen and served later.



The decoration was obvious to me as soon as I had my butterfly theme in mind. I wanted it to look as if several butterflies had landed on the cake.
I bought some butterfly cutters which also imprint veins onto the wings along with some flower paste (very fine icing paste). The paste sets hard so all I had to do was roll it out, cut out the butterfly and then prop the butterflies up so that they set with the wings at an angle.
Finally I used dusting powder to brush the wings and give them a bit of colour.

Since I only had 2 tiers for the cake stand I used the same decoration as for the tables on the bottom instead. I had also made lots of extra butterflies in case any got broken in transit and these were placed around the bottom for extra decoration.

The cakes themselves totalled £72 and I spent roughly £15 extra on the decorations, though I still have loads of paste and powder left if I ever want to make more decorations.

Flowers

I'm not sure how it started but somehow weddings just have to have flowers and from what I've heard from some sources, flowers usually makes up a large chunk of your overall budget. Don't get me wrong, I wanted my wedding to look pretty but there was no way I was spending £1000 or more on flowers.

Not only that but my colour scheme was blue and there aren't many  blue flowers to choose from. In fact, it turns out that in early May the only blue flowers (worth mentioning) in season are hydrangeas. I had issues with that because I wanted cornflowers. I also wanted (white) tulips but was told they weren't in season either. Maybe it was the especially long and cold winter we had but there were definitely tulips for sale the day before my wedding!

I got around the cornflower issue by buying some artificial cornflowers from Hobbycraft. I wasn't too keen on the idea of using artificial flowers for the whole wedding though so I started looking into florists. A quick google search brought me to the conclusion that wedding florists all charge pretty much the same. You can't do a true price comparison without having a consultation with each because the prices they quote on their websites are a guide only. The final cost depends on the types of flowers you want and the complexity and sizes of the arrangements.

As I had minimum time in the UK in which to have consultations I decided to just choose a florist recommended by the venue and go with it. So I went down to Bristol to meet this florist and have a chat about what I wanted. Since the only aspects I had in mind were the colours, this turned out to be a rather awkward conversation. I think I was expecting far more from her in the way of suggestions and ideas, rather than me reel off a list of what I wanted and for her to put together some numbers. We got along better once I had a look at her portfolio and suggested some styles I liked. I chose a small square vase arrangement for the windowsills which she announced at the end was quite expensive as it took a lot of flowers to fill. Why she couldn't have told me at the time so I could possibly have chosen an almost-exactly-the-same-but-cheaper (same size but round perhaps) style I don't know!

Anyway the result was a quotation for 4 bridesmaids bouquets, 1 brides' bouquet, 6 table decorations and a floor-standing pedestal arrangement for £600. It was a reasonable price and my mum thought I should go with it but my fiance thought it was too much to spend on flowers. I would have ignored him had it not been for the nagging control freak inside me suggesting that I could use artificial flowers for a lot cheaper and, most importantly, I could make the arrangements myself. Not only that but I have terrible hayfever and felt that artificial flowers were preferable to sneezing all day...

...So I provided Hobbycraft with a lot more business. Not just Hobbycraft either, I also bought flowers from Dunelm Mill, vases and glass nuggets from Tesco Extra and tin buckets from Homebase.

My venue was a country watermill so I wanted the flowers to be simple and reminiscent of an English country garden

I used 2 shades of cornflowers along with a single white hydrangea flower in the tin buckets to put on each windowsill. I also added a single white butterfly, made from feathers, to each.

The cornflowers were 99p for a stem with 5 flower heads on (3 stems in each bucket) and the hydrangea was £3 per flower, both from Hobbycraft. Buckets were 99p each and the butterflies were around £4 for a pack of about 12.

I wanted the table centres to be a little more elegant but still very simple. I was also very careful about which artificial flowers to use as some look much more realistic than others.

The table centres consisted of fairly large goldfish bowl vases with a handful of colourless, shimmery glass nuggets and a single artificial dahlia head in the bottom. I also used 3 strands of artificial grass around the edges of the bowl.

The bowls were £8.50 and nuggets around £3 a pack, only half a pack is in each bowl. Dahlias were £1.50 each from Dunelm Mill.

I wanted the bridesmaids' bouquets to fit in with the simple, country theme and, although gerbera don't really, these spider gerbera had just enough of a tousled look to be similar to cornflowers. Anyway I fell in love with them as soon as I saw them in Dunelm Mill, its the black centres that does it for me!

Each bouquet is made with 5 gerbera held together with florist's tape and then wrapped with a piece of cream ribbon, held on with 3 pins.

I did quite a bit of research into buying premade, artificial bouquets and discovered that the cost is the same as for fresh flowers. I wouldn't have minded if those companies had access to amazing quality, real-looking flowers but it turned out the flowers were no better than the ones I bought from Hobbycraft and Dunelm Mill.

Each gerbera cost me just £2, making each bouquet just over £10, a saving of £30 on the cheapest price I saw for real or artificial bouquets.

I also used some of my cornflowers with a single artificial leaf to make buttonholes for the groom, best man, ushers and dads. I simply tied the 2 together using florist's tape. One cornflower also made it onto a hairclip for one bridesmaid's hair.

My bouquet contained the only real flowers on display at the wedding. I was conscious that it would be in a lot of photos and possibly very close-up photos so I felt I should use real flowers. I would have done the same for the bridesmaids had I not seen those gerberas and fallen in love with them!

The day before the wedding I set off to Anemone a large florist in Bath to buy the flowers for my bouquet. However, I had got up very early and knew it wouldn't be open yet so I stopped off in Homebase on the way to buy a bucket to fill with water to keep the flowers fresh. In homebase I passed some beautiful blue hydrangeas and, knowing how hard blue flowers were to find, I bought the (fully rooted and growing) potted plant. I then stopped in Sainsbury's and spotted some bunches of  white roses for £4 so I bought them and headed back without every making it to Anemone. (Though Anemone did later provide us with some lovely bouquets to give as thanks to people)

I had a minor crisis with my bouquet because the hydrangea head I cut off to make the bouquet the day before the wedding had died by the morning of the wedding. However I just chopped another one off the plant and remade the bouquet on the morning, with some extra roses for added support.

The great thing about using artificial flowers for all these (apart from the fact I had full control over what they looked like) (and the fact that we saved several hundred pounds) was that we were able to give them away to our guests at the end of the night as keepsakes.