I am still in wedding mode even though it's been 52 days since our special day. I secretly miss creating all the little touches so I have decided to share them with you. Maybe it's because I am a perfectionist or even borderline control freak but I wanted everything to be perfect, from the folding of the napkins to the presentation of the food and beverage menus.
Personalised coat hangers
Hangers - bridesmaid dress’ we choose were from TopShop and came with black hangers. As black wasn't in our colour scheme I choose to make my own. I contemplated the idea of stitching rows of sequins around the hangers — gold sequins for the bridesmaids as they had gold shoes and accessories and silver sequins for me. I also thought about spray paint the hangers. In the end I decided against both as sequins would have been very time consuming and the paint would have been an accident waiting to happen!!!! So, I purchased four wooden hangers with gold and silver ribbon (from Mei Flower), and used some paint and silk screen letters I already had. I started by personalising each hanger with the first letter of the names of each bridesmaid in white paint in the centre. After allowing them to dry, I tied a bow around the neck of the silver hook to finish them off. I could have added some floral motifs along the arms of the hangers but decided to leave them simple. I found these were another great way for my bridesmaids to take a little of our wedding home with them!!
Hangers in action
Feathers - I knew for months and months before the wedding I wanted to involved feathers somehow. At the start I was convinced I wanted them on my dress...once I regained my grip on reality I settled on feathers accompanying our napkins. I bought 100 feathers from Amazon and gold sparkly spray paint. I wanted them to be tasteful and not over the top so with help from friends (a shout out to Ausilia & Indi!) we sprayed only the tips of the feathers. Unfortunately I picked a windy, rainy day in December to do this which wasn’t ideal; I highly recommend an open space with plenty of fresh air with lots of newspaper protecting surfaces. I left them to dry for around 15-20mins and placed them in a sealed clear bag ready for the big day. (I would suggest if you have the space and time, allow as much time as possible for the feathers to air to remove the spray paint smell.) The feathers were then placed in our folded napkins with our cutlery at the wedding!
Frames - I came across some glam picture frames from The Range which came in white, silver and black. I purchased two of each: two for the drink menus to place at the bar, and the other two for the food menus which would be placed on the buffet area. We then used some fancy font and printed the menu choices on card. This was so simple and cost effective, the frames were £3.99 each and we now have them to re-frame fab moments of the night in question!
Maple Leaf Wax Seal Stamp
Thank You Cards - We were lucky enough to have a friend take the perfect picture of us walking in on the night which we decided to use as our thank you cards. We used moo.com to print them. Moo.com were amazing, I would highly recommend! To continue the English/Canada theme we used a calligraphy pen to write our messages and ordered a maple leaf wax seal stamp to close the envelopes. The stamp came out amazing. It was ordered from a company in Hong Kong on Etsy, I also ordered gold wax to use. Neither Stephen nor I had used wax to seal a stamp before but it was very easy to do. Just ensure you have plenty of time and don’t rush the process. See below a step by step guide:
Tilt the wax to the side and drip
- Have a scrap of paper to hand and light the wick of one of the wax candles. Turn on its side and hover over the area you want it to drip and hold it around an itch or two above the paper.
- Once you have a blob on your envelope around the size of a £1 coin place your scrap of paper under the dripping wax and move away from the envelope. (I found this helped to avoid unwanted drips, which we experienced a few times) If you want more of a ring around the maple leaf allow more wax to drip.
- Place your stamp onto the melted blob of wax and press firmly and hold in place. The wax hardens pretty quickly so no more than 5-10 seconds is needed when holding down the stamp.
- Lift up the stamp and voila!!! A bonus with using this stamp there is no smudges (which you may get if you choose to use ink instead) and it really doesn't matter if they don't come out perfectly and the same, they look grand however they end up!
Press firmly and hold for 5-10 seconds
Finished wax seal