For those of you keenly following the TNWC Real Brides feature you may have noticed we skipped a week last week.  That’s my fault as I had become a bit disorganised following a rather nasty cold over Easter, and as such didn’t get ready in time – so apologies!  I am delighted that we are back on schedule this week and have two lovely guest posts from Myfawny and Sarah.

I’ve also made it easier for you to track down all your favourite TNWC Real Brides stories, simply click on their names and you’ll be taken through to all their guest blog posts: Emma, Nik, Myfawny, Sarah, Caroline and Stephanie.

Today Myfawny is sharing details about the designs for their tea towel invitations (how great do they sound!) and making confetti – the picture of Arthur their dog helping them stamp out confetti from old books is not to be missed!  Happy reading…

Easter has come and gone the season is upon us and our shop is now open six days a week until July and then seven days a week until we close five days before the wedding.  The realisation that we may have bitten off more than we can chew is slowly sinking in but we are not to be defeated!  So during the last month we have concentrated on invites and confetti.

Tea Towel Invitations

We wanted some unique invites – we had been lucky enough to win the TNWC competition for a personalised hand painted map of our day by the wonderful Pigeon & Quill.  Alex really was a pleasure to work with and the map is truly fantastic and incorporates all the elements of our day.

We’ve decided to colour copy the map to A4 (the original size is A3) for all our guests and print on the back info such as transportation, accommodations and parking etc.  I’d already bought the rsvp cards that matched the save the date cards we bought from A Dozen Eggs…

So we where missing the middle element, the wow factor invite.  I love Christmas, birthdays and of course weddings, I just love getting people gifts!  So I thought it would be nice if the invite was a sort of gift that people could use and keep.  I Googled lots of ideas and there really are some amazing crazy wedding invites out there, then I came across the idea!  Wedding tea towels!  All great weddings have a tea towel… right? Okay so mostly royal weddings and generally commemorative tea towels, but still why not!

I approached Tom with the idea who instantly thought it was amazing, and apt of course, after all we do own a cafe and we did send out tea bags with our save the date as we met with a tea.

There are a couple of websites that produce wedding tea towels but Tom suggested we ask our friends Dyf and Jen at Peris and Corr who run their own eco-friendly screen printing business.  So without making myself sound too crazy I emailed Jen – they were more than happy to do them and design them, phew!

They sent over some blank tea towel samples so we could decided on the actual tea towel.  Tom being practical instantly tried them out drying dishes!  I emailed over some ideas I’d seen, we wanted something pretty simple, just different texts/ styles/ sizes.  Within a few days they emailed me over a rough idea to see if it was what we where thinking.

This was the first draft…

It was.  A few days later we got this…

Great!  Then they sent over a printed sample…

I cannot recommend Peris & Corr more and it was great to work with friends to create something so personal, they where both great and I’ll be recommending them to everyone!

Here they all are folded in the box, can’t wait to get them sent out!

Confetti

I all too often go to a wedding with confetti and then leave it in the car by mistake!  So we have decided to supply our guests with confetti at the venue.

I thought I should check with Martin at our venue first in case he wasn’t keen on confetti, I explained I was planing on little envelopes one between two guests (we all know it’s the ladies who throw the confetti) and he emailed back saying I could have huge envelopes full if I wanted!  I thought maybe a bucket full!

I bought some small glassine envelopes from ebay which are similar to greaseproof paper or tracing paper.  I also bought some paper doilies, I folded these in half and stamped confetti on each… and then realised I’d spelt it wrong (dyslexia strikes again!) but then realised I’d spelt it the Welsh way, happy accident!  So now one side is English and the other side Welsh!  Phew!

Real petal confetti can be quiet pricey, which I obviously understand because of what it is, but when working to a budget and wanting confetti for 40 envelopes it can work out quiet expensive.  I bought petals from TNWC business Shropshire Petals enough for 20 envelopes.  I thought we could pad it out by punching little hearts from old books, a task that I set for Tom – it took rather longer than expected to fill 2 pint glasses!

His trusty companion Arthur lent a paw too…

We mixed it all together and placed it in the envelopes.

I punched a large paper star for each envelope for extra prettiness.  We folded the top of the envelope over and placed the stamped doily over the top sewing it shut on a sewing machine.

We’ve made 40 envelopes and placed them in a closed box, apparently the petals are okay if kept dry and out the sun for up to a year.

What next?  We might not get much done this month, we have three weddings to go to!

How cute is Arthur the Dachshund?!  Although he doesn’t look too impressed about being roped into wedding duties…  

On Thursday we’ll be back with the TNWC Real Brides to hear from Sarah who has been busy hunting for a country suit for her Mr-to-be.

Images: (1) Illustration by Izzy Burton; (2) Pigeon & Quill illustrated wedding map; (3 – 11) Brides own pictures