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!

The post Top tips for a handmade wedding appeared first on Hello! Hooray!.

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]

The post Tutorial: how to make a floral bouquet appeared first on Hello! Hooray!.

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The post Our amazing wedding cake appeared first on Hello! Hooray!.

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!

The post Our wedding day! appeared first on Hello! Hooray!.