wedding details...

the last time i wrote i was about to attend the wedding of one of my best friends (and then jet off to a little week of sun with my family...)

anyone who knows me, or who has read old posts on here, will know im a sucker for a bit of decor. home decor and especially party and event decor. i still follow style and wedding blogs back from when i was planning my own wedding and the love and back- catalogue of ideas has just grown.

my friend's wedding was a perfect example of rustic prettiness with cute and colourful touches that really showed off the brides creative and fun personality. set in the beautiful North Yorkshire countryside, the service was in a little church literally down a dirt track and the reception afterwards in a stunning barn style building connected to a popular golf club just outside of York. 

i wanted to share a few of the details and touches... 

the groom's family are farmers and the happy couple are just about to move into their family home, complete with fields and sheds and cows. so the farming and country living influences were clear to see...

hilariously, and very much what i would expect of my friend, she had no idea who designed her dress. but it was beautiful. traditional to an extent, so so pretty, and pure bridal. she looked a million english pounds. the groomsmen were simple and modern in deep blue slim fit suits with pale blue ties. the look definitely worked for men more used to wearing overalls than a suit...

beautiful headpiece...

sandburn hall is famous locally as the perfect venue if you are looking for rustic simplicity where you can put your own stamp on the room... the bride made all of the decor herself...

simple, charming features on the card table...

love a letter light to mark out the disco area from the seating area...

and the most important of these is love...

samuel's big day...

over the last few weeks i have been busy designing and, with the help of my lovely creative assistant (aka Mum, creating decorations for a little boy's christening that went ahead this bank holiday sunday just gone.

what made this event extra special is it is the first one I have done for someone not friends or family, purely though word of mouth and the samuel's lovely mum spotting my work at a friend's birthday party. so special, but scary.

after initial chats I put together two mood boards with themes chosen by the client, thomas the tank and ipswich town. as is the case with a lot of my ideas, there was an element of the vintage and/ or nature to them, with features such as hessian table runners and old school colour pallets. not only is this typical of my work but it also compliments the venue, the local village hall. the ipswich town theme was picked and I set to gathering further ideas and prices.

the general idea with this theme was to stick to the team's colours as apose to emblazoning their logo everywhere. anyone can go out and buy a football team table cloth and napkins, what makes something special and unique to your party is creating something new and bringing together a range of ideas, or getting someone else to do that hard work for you.

so with old school royal blue and white stripe material and red material here and there, we created bunting to hang down the two lengths of the hall (keeping costs down) and a table runner for the cake table to add a splash of colour. bunting really is a tried and tested great way of decorating a party venue, it's traditional yet fun and it adds colour to otherwise drab walls. and especially with this colour pallet of red, white and blue, it oozes good old fashion British fun.

an initial idea for the table centre pieces was to attach a big perfectly spherical ballon to a little tin bucket filled with sweets. but to keep costs in line we changed the idea to little flags made out of surplus bunting material with a little ipswich town logo attached. flags are sinonimus with sport and football and again have an old school, childhood memories touch. the tin buckets were sprayed royal blue to bring colour to the tables and then filled with little chocolate footballs.

for the cake table with its stripy runner I hand painted a wooden toy tractor (for those not in the know with ipswich town their nickname is the tractor boys) in team colours for an additional feature and designed a framed sign with sport style font to direct people where to leave their cards. finally, we created additional bunting with samuel's name hand stitched on. this hung above the cake table and made a nice focal point. one great thing about going that extra mile with your decorations is that, if well planned, you can re use for further dos or use in your home. the name bunting might be something nice to hang above the cot maybe?

as ever, you could always go further with these things, the possibilities are limitless but I was really pleased with what we achieved and I left a happy lady. later that day I received some positive feedback and today a lovely thank you email. hopefully this event will translate into some more word of mouth recommendations and I just might be able to run with this...