1. Start collecting ideas and materials

There are so many ways to collect ideas for your wedding, but one of the most helpful is probably Pinterest. When we started planning I created a wedding board (which mainly consists of flowers and cake ideas!) and it meant that I could keep all of the things I liked in one place. It also meant that Tom was able to have a look too – from the start we planned things together, even though I did do most of the ‘making’ bit! The first thing we collected for our wedding was the paper to make the envelopes for our invitations, and then we designed the rest of the invitation around it (you can read more about them here). When collecting ideas, don’t be afraid to be selective – you might like a bit of that and a bit of something else. The beauty of putting something together yourself is that you can combine ideas to create the perfect thing for you, whether it’s your invitations, colour scheme, flowers or any other element of the day.

2. Make it personal

Making things for your wedding yourself will ensure that they reflect you and that they are totally unique – and it really is so much fun! When you start planning your wedding, you’ll realise that wedding stuff is everywhere! I remember that as soon as I changed my relationship from ‘single’ to ‘engaged’ on Facebook, I was bombarded by wedding-related adverts (and then, quite soon after, baby-related ones!). Although getting ideas from lots of other people and places is a great thing, I think it is really important to remember that your wedding day is your day – it’s about you and your husband/wife and the day should reflect that. There is a lot of pressure to do things in a particular way or have certain things, but you don’t have to at all.

I wouldn’t say that our wedding day wasn’t a traditional wedding, but we didn’t do things just because ‘that’s what people do’. So we didn’t have a theme or a colour scheme as such, but instead went for pinks, purples and creams in patterns that complimented each other. We kept the table decorations really simple, opting for simple name cards and lovely flower arrangements that Tom’s Mum put together on the day. We didn’t have the usual ‘line-up’ before the meal, we had a ‘first dance’ that wasn’t really a first dance as such and our guests joined in with us, and we didn’t have speeches except for a rather impromptu one that Tom and I gave in the garden! For many people those things are traditional and integral, and I’m certainly not saying that everyone should scrap them! But if you don’t feel comfortable doing something then don’t be afraid to leave it out – it’s your day and you want to be relaxed and enjoy every moment. Our wedding was just the most amazing day and it was a true reflection of us both, and I’m really proud that we planned it together.

3. Get your friends and family involved in the planning

I have played at weddings for several of our friends, and I always feel that it is an honour to be asked to do something special on such an important day. So no matter how big or small it is, get your friends and family involved in the planning! We are very fortunate to have very talented and kind family and friends who wanted to get involved with our wedding! Our friend Hannah made our beautiful wedding cake, and amazingly (with the help of her Mum) managed to get it from Stockton down to York in the back of her car! It made it there safely and Hannah has received so many lovely comments about her cake – read more about it here. We asked our friend Lee to provide the musical entertainment in the evening, so she brought along her PA and we hired some lights and did a brilliant job! We selected the songs we wanted her to sing and so the playlist for the whole night was very personal to us – I LOVE dancing, and I’ll never forget that wonderful night!

To decorate the venue we borrowed our family bunting that was originally made for Tom’s Aunt’s wedding a few years ago. When it was made, all the guests were asked to donate some fabric so that it could be made in time to be hung up at the reception. Since then, it has been used at several other weddings and family events – I always try to find my old pyjamas that contributed to it! If you would like to make your own bunting with your family and friends, follow my exclusive tutorial for The School of Thrift. It’s a great way to give life to old fabrics and get everyone involved in a special project!

4. Shop around

Weddings can get very expensive very quickly, so if you’re trying to keep costs down then you’ll certainly need to shop around. You can support local businesses by buying your supplies from them – we bought chocolates for each table at the reception from an independent shop in Alnwick (click here to read my post about them) and I bought most of my flowers from various stalls at York market! The main reason that I decided to make the bouquets myself was because I nearly fell off my chair when I started looking into the prices – £80 for the bride’s bouquet alone was an average estimate!

Whilst you may prefer to get your flowers done professionally, don’t rule out the possibility of doing them yourself. In my tutorial for The School of Thrift, I show you how you can make a beautiful bouquet – the flowers I used to make it cost me just £10! It is a really simple bouquet to make as it just uses roses and spray carnations, but even with just two types of flower in the same colour it looks beautiful. Once you have done a practice bouquet or two (which I would highly recommend!) you can get more adventurous with your choice of colours and flowers. For my wedding bouquet I used all of my favourite flowers such as peonies, roses stocks, freesias, gypsohila, and spray carnations in pinks, purples and creams. My bridesmaids had smaller bouquets with cream freesias, roses and spray carnations, and when they arrived the day before the wedding we made them in my Mum and Dad’s kitchen! We had such fun catching up and making the bouquets, and it is a lovely thing to do together with your friends.

5. Give it a go!

For many people (especially if you don’t regard yourself as being a crafter), the idea of a handmade wedding is very appealing but daunting. My advice is to not worry, but to just give it a go! You don’t have to make everything yourself, so you could start with something small and go from there – for example, you could make the buttonholes (see how to do that here). If there is something that you can practice before making the ‘final one’ then I’d always suggest doing that – and try to leave enough time to do it too! What you’ll probably find is that once you get started, you’ll get hooked and will want to make lots of things! I think that’s how I ended up making waistcoats…I asked myself many times ‘why am I doing this?!’ during the making process, but it is a project that I’m so proud of. I also made a stole for Tom’s Dad, as he conducted our wedding service. Everything that you make will become a special part of your day – no matter how big or how small.

Whatever you decide to make (or not) for your wedding, enjoy the planning process and the day itself, as this time will simply fly by. Everyone said this to us beforehand, but until it’s actually happening you can’t imagine just how fast it goes!

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To make a floral bouquet you will need:

Some flowers (I used roses and spray carnations for this bouquet)
Some floristry tape (not the waterproof one)
Sharp scissors
Floristry pins
Ribbon

Step 1:

Step 2:

Step 3:

Step 4:

Step 5:

You’ll need to do a few practice runs before the real thing – experiment with different colours and flowers and pick your favourites too This is my actual wedding bouquet – I bought flowers from various stalls on York market to put it together:

Here are a few final tips!

I’ll be doing one more post about wedding planning – look out for that this weekend! :-)[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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We went to Sardinia on honeymoon and stayed at the incredible Petra Segreta Resort & Spa. It was definitely a ‘once in a lifetime’ holiday for us and it was pure luxury. The food was the best we have ever eaten, the location was perfect and it was absolutely wonderful. If you’re looking for relaxation or a dream honeymoon, this place comes highly recommended. We booked through Sardinian Places, who also come highly recommended too!

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We had the most amazing chocolates at our wedding, which were from The Chocolate Spa in Alnwick, Northumberland. After deciding that we didn’t want to have individual wedding favours, we settled on having a box of handmade chocolates on each table. One of my ex-students once bought me a box from The Chocolate Spa and since then we’ve been hooked!

A few months ago, we went up to Alnwick and bought a selection of chocolates. One of my bridesmaids, Tiffany, had the very important job of helping us taste them – it was tough, but someone had to do it! My favourite was the wild forest cup (the purple one) because it was so fruity and creamy!

The only thing left to sort out was a box to put them in, and we came up with the idea of having heart-shaped boxes. But as is often the case, when you’re looking for something specific you can’t find them anywhere! My Mum managed to find some in TKMaxx but they were full of other chocolates (that we had to eat…) and they needed covering. So the next challenge was to find some paper to cover them, which we found in Paperchase. They have a fantastic selection of handmade paper, but we settled on this lovely heart paper. Tom did a brilliant job of covering them!

We went back to Alnwick a few days before the wedding to buy the chocolates that we wanted – it was a very hot day and the lovely staff were doing a great job of keeping everything cool! The chocolates certainly went down well on the day!

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Here are a few photos to give you a taste of Grays Court. Check out their website for more information – the restaurant comes highly recommended and they also do a fantastic afternoon tea!

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This year I’ve been working on a very special project for our wedding. Tom’s Dad, Keith, is a methodist minister and he took our marriage service, which was wonderful! As lots of you know, I made waistcoats for the dads and groomsmen, but wanted to make something extra special for Keith – so I decided to make a stole for him to wear during the service.

A few months ago, we secretly measured one of his stoles so that I could get the size right. I think the most difficult part was getting the angle of the neck just right, but thankfully Tom is good at that kind of thing! I made a template for the outer shape, pinned it onto some material (Macao in cream from John Lewis) and cut out two using pinking shears.

Then I needed to work out where the hems would be and a ‘safe zone’ for embroidery. I’d marked it out on the original pattern, traced it (in case I ever need to make another stole!) and then cut it out. This inner patter was then pinned on to the stole pieces so that I could tack around it to show where the embroidery needed to go.

At the bottom of each side of the stole, I decided to embroider a cross, as this is often part of the design. Tom suggested that I use the leaf design to match with the waistcoats to embroider the outline, and that turned out to be a brilliant idea! I used a dotted notebook from Leuchtturm1917 (which was very kindly given to me after I won a competition through National Stationery Day last year) to draw the design, measuring out the exact dimensions to be able to make a template.

Once I had finalised the template, I was able to trace it onto some tissue paper and pin it on to the material. This seemed like the simplest way to do it and it actually worked really well – I’ve also discovered that greaseproof paper is also very good for templates! I stitched short sections of the stems around the template first, before adding the leaves. I used split stitch for the stems and the leaves as I find that the easiest and quickest stitch to do.

The next stage was to work out what the rest of the design would be like. I wanted it to be related to the waistcoats and include some other little designs. We laid it out on the floor and used some wool to mark out a wiggly line where the leaf and branch motif would go. Initially, we thought that the spaces in between would allow for extra designs to be embroidered in, but when I had finished sewing I discovered that it looked great without it (and that I was running out of time anyway!)

When the embroidery was finished, I sealed the back with fusible interfacing before using tailor’s chalk to draw the outline of the ‘safe zone’ so I would know where to sew. Then I cut the back panels out of Duchesse satin in champagne (also from John Lewis) and made some little pockets for the rings, stay stitching them on to the back panels. The next stage was to put right sides together and then sew!

After turning the right way round and pressing, it was time to do the most complicated bit: the angle behind the neck. This involved Tom measuring with a protractor and me getting a bit stressed, but the end result was really good! I stitched the outer side on the machine and then finished the inside using slipstitch.

And this was the finished stole, complete with ring pockets!

I’m so pleased that Keith loved his stole – and that I managed to keep it a secret for so long!

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I’ve been so excited to tell you about our wedding day and have finally got the time to sit down (with a cuppa, obviously!) to write a post about it! As many of you already know, we spent lots of time planning and making various things for the day – there have already been several posts about my wedding waistcoats but I’m planning to do a few more about other things that we made too, so watch out for them over the next few days! It was important to us that our friends and family played a part in the day, so many of them helped out too – a huge thank you to you all

We went down to York a couple of days before the wedding to give us time to do some last-minute things, the first of which was to help my Mum decorate many cupcakes! Our wedding was a little different to how people often do it, in that we invited everyone to the service and a smaller group to the reception, and therefore we thought it would be good to have tea and cake after the service to give us chance to chat to everyone (and it also means that people coming to the reception could have a snack to keep them going!). This made even more sense because our wedding was at 2.30, so it was just like afternoon tea! A huge thank you to everyone who made all those yummy cakes!

The day before the wedding, my gorgeous bridesmaids arrived! We haven’t actually been in the same place for 4 years, so there was lots of tea-drinking and nattering going on before we got down to the business of making buttonholes and bouquets! The buttonholes were a little bit fiddly at first, but we soon got the hang of it. I decided to use pink gerbera, gypsophila and a fern from Mum and Dad’s garden, and I’m so pleased with how they turned out! This is my Dad wearing his as we’re about to leave for the church. Look out for a tutorial soon!

I was so pleased with how the bouquets turned out too! We bought a selection of flowers from various stalls on York market and some from Marks and Spencer the day before – including freesias, stocks, peonies, roses, gypsophila, carnations…it was hard to decide because all of the flowers were so beautiful! Because my bridesmaids all had different dresses, we decided that their bouquets should be all white, and I would go for a mixture of pinks, purples and whites. It got nature’s seal of approval when I got out of the car and a bee landed in it!

If you’d like to see my original tutorial, click here.

We had lots of wonderful music throughout the day, played by lots of our amazing friends! Thank you so much to Judy, Pat, Mel and Lee and to all of the other musicians who came to play too – it really made our day very special. One of my favourite bits of the day was walking out of the church to Glenn Miller’s In The Mood, played by brass quintet – it took me so long to persuade Tom that it was a good idea! And it was!

We had our wedding reception at Grays Court, which was the most beautiful venue (look out for another post coming soon!). We were incredibly lucky with the weather, which meant that we were able to spend lots of time in the wonderful garden there. And they even let us put up our family bunting too!

One of the things that we decided fairly early on in the planning stage was that we weren’t going to have an official photographer. This was because we didn’t want lots of posed photos and we wanted the more candid shots that are often captured better by people who are there. This turned out to be a great decision and was in keeping with the relaxed atmosphere of the whole day – and we’ve got some fantastic photos (don’t get me wrong, there are some dodgy ones as well!).

Our wedding cake was made by our amazing friend Hannah, and it was her first ever wedding cake! She did an absolutely incredible job, and all of the flowers are made from icing – even the gerbera! We have kept the flowers and I’m planning to take some more photos of them because they are just so amazing. Thank you so much, Hannah!

There are so many more things I could say about our wedding – it was just the best day ever! But I’ll leave it there for now! One thing I will say about weddings in case you are planning one, is that it’s your day and you should do whatever you like. Don’t do things for the sake of tradition, or because that’s what everyone does. Do what you want to do and what makes you feel happy and relaxed. And enjoy it – it really does go so fast!

I can’t leave without posting a picture of the men in their waistcoats – I’m so pleased with how they turned out! Yay!

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After months of planning and making, today I finally finished the waistcoats for our wedding! To be honest, there were many times when I didn’t think I’d get them done, and an equal number of times when I wondered why on earth I had decided to start in the first place…but today I’m so pleased that they have turned out better than I thought and that they all fit!

I must say a huge thank you to my Mum, Tom’s Mum and our lovely friend Hilary for all of their help – I really could not have done it without you! And also thank you to Tom, who has put up with me sewing at every spare minute since the start of the year, and also has been very supportive throughout (I’ve had many meltdowns over these waistcoats). He still wants to marry me, so that’s a good sign!

Super excited to see the men in them on the day! Less than 4 weeks to go now – yippee!

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Our wedding preparations are in full swing – only just over a month to go (which explains why I haven’t been able to blog as much recently!). I had set myself a deadline for finishing the six waistcoats by the end of June, which hasn’t quite happened but I suppose it is only the beginning of July! I have finished two of them though and I’m so happy with how they have turned out This one is Tom’s – he has an extra special one with snazzy buttons that I embroidered (I’ll do another post about the button-making when I’ve got a bit more time!). I’m really pleased with how they turned out, and the hearts, leaves and flower tie in nicely with the embroidery around the top.

I’ve also finished my Dad’s waistcoat – like the others, this has plain buttons made from the same fabric as the waistcoat fronts.

I’ve got one more waistcoat to put together and a few more bits to finish on the others, so I’m almost there! Yay!

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Tonight I started work on something that I’ve been worrying about – buttonholes! I put together a piece of practice ‘waistcoat’ with some scraps that were left over. I started sewing them by hand, but this proved more difficult than I imagined! I thought I’d be able to control it much more easily than on the machine, but it was really tough. So, having said that I wouldn’t try machining them, I thought I might as well have a go. It was actually easier than I thought and looks a lot neater. But I still need to do loads of practice before it’ll feel confident enough to do one on an actual waistcoat! Wish me luck…I think I’m going to need it!

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I’ve been doing some more sewing for our wedding today, and am pleased that I’ve finished waistcoat number four out of six (minus the buttons and buttonholes…still not been brave enough to start those yet!). I’ve set myself a target for the end of June to have them all done, so I’m right on track at the moment..let’s see how long that lasts…I made some labels for the hangers today too, because I was starting to get a bit confused about which waistcoat was which – so now I know Yay, super excited!

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Today was one of those days where I spent more time undoing mistakes than anything else! I’ve been working on Tom’s waistcoat for our wedding and eventually managed to get it put together after forgetting to leave an opening to turn it inside out and forgetting to sew the neck together (only realising having turned it the right way round). So now I’ve written a reminder on the pattern because this is the second time I’ve forgotten about the neck!

I’ve also started work on the buttons – you can see a sneaky peek in the first photo – I’ll be doing another post about them when they’re finished.

At the end of a long day, Tom tried his waistcoat on. It was the first time I’d seen one of them on an actual person, and I was so relieved that it fits and that they look better than I thought – I couldn’t stop crying I was so pleased! I can’t wait to see all the guys wearing them on the day

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I’ve got two more waistcoats cut out, and have started embroidering one of them, so progress is good! Better keep sewing…

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The pattern is a Vogue pattern (number V8048) which I bought in John Lewis, and you can make lots of different styles of waistcoat from it. Because there are six to make I wanted to keep it as simple as possible, so we’re making style C without the pockets. The material that I chose was also from John Lewis – the front is Macao in cream (£15 per metre) and the backing is Duchesse satin in champagne (£10 per metre).

So the first thing to do was to get our heads around the pattern, which was easier said than done! Thank goodness for highlighter pens, that’s all I can say!

Once we had done that, we cut out the relevant parts from the pattern. Because only two of the waistcoats are the same size, we traced the pattern for each size onto some dressmakers tracing paper, cut them out and then pinned them on to the fabric. The patterns were left on the fabric so that tailor’s tacks could be sewn on to mark the buttonholes and other pattern markings.

Just to check that we’d cut out the pieces properly, we tacked one together and asked Tom to model it!

By this point, it was quite late in the day and the light was fading. We also made the decision that I should do the embroidery before continuing to put it all together. We fused the interfacing onto the back of the front pieces so that I could embroider through both layers – I thought this would be tricky but it was surprisingly easy! So I travelled back home with my waistcoat pieces in hand, ready to get started.

In order to keep things as simple as posisble, I decided to just do a bit of embroidery from the top of the shoulders to the top of the first button. I designed a stem with leaves, making some of the leaves look like small hearts, but then decided to pin the ‘safe zone’ on the fabric and stitch it freehand.

Once the embroidery was finished, I could start putting the waistcoat together – mum came up this weekend and we made a start! I started by putting darts in the back panel and then moving on to the belt.

Can you tell what was wrong with the first belt?!

I have to say that the belt was a nightmare! It involved that crazy thing where you sew something fairly small inside out and then have to struggle to get it the right way around again without breaking it! Good job I had some knitting needles handy! Mum was really good at doing them – I get too cross doing anything like that! This is Mum helping out (she didn’t want to be in the picture!):

So here are a few pictures from the rest of the making process – I took loads so that I can remember what I’m doing when Mum isn’t here…

I didn’t quite get it sewn up before Mum and Dad had to go home, but Dad did try it on inside-out before he left!

I spent the rest of the afternoon sewing and managed to put it all together – hooray! After a lot of hard work (and a few times today when I thought about giving up) it was really good to see one almost done, and I’m really pleased with it. Hope the men like them! I need to press it a lot more (they’re quite poofy when they are turned the right way around) and do finishing up inside and put the buttons on, but that is for another day and another blog post!

A huge thank you to Mum, Helen and Hilary for all of your help so far, and also to Dad and Tom for letting me put your photos on my blog

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We have now completed the ‘outside’ of the invitations – hooray! And we’re so pleased that they look like what we had imagined! In my previous post – Making our wedding invitations (part 1) – we stamped the flower design onto squares of white paper and I finished making the envelopes. Now, we have stamped our names onto smaller pieces of white paper which are then stuck on the front. We stamped a mixture of ‘Clare and Tom’ and ‘Tom and Clare’ so that they’re all a bit different.

The stamps that I used for this are all really small and so it was quite difficult to get them all perfectly neat and tidy. At first I was quite frustrated by this, but then I realised that it was quite good to show the hand stamped quality so we just discarded the ones that looked really rubbish! If you’re interested in buying these stamps, I bought them from Pretty M on Etsy

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Now, the final step is to cut out and attach the inserts – hopefully we’ll get them done this weekend so we can get them in the post soon. So exciting!

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Please note: you can find a more up-to-date version of this post here (with step-by-step instructions!).

I don’t really consider myself to be much of a flower arranger at all, but I found a wonderful step-by-step guide by A Practical Wedding which is so clear and easy to follow. To make a bouquet you will need some florist’s tape, ribbon and a couple of floristry pins in addition to your choice of flowers. I also bought a pair of florist’s scissors which made removing thorns and trimming the flowers much easier in comparison to using my orange-handled kitchen scissors. I didn’t have a huge choice of flowers (because it is almost the middle of November), so I settled with white roses and spray carnations.

Preparing the flowers took about 10 minutes, and it’s really important that you remove all of the foliage and any thorns. It only took about another 10-15 minutes to finish the rest of the bouquet, and it was so much fun! Even though the bouquet is simple I’m so pleased with the effect, and the natural beauty of the flowers really comes through. Next August there will be a much wider choice available, and I’ll go down to York Market the day before and buy a variety to make bouquets – so the flowers will be seasonal, beautiful and I can support local traders too. Now I’ve done a trial run I can’t wait to make the real thing!

Post updated 24th June 2016.

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