Real handmade wedding details

I am terribly behind for various reasons with my lovely Real Bride posts, so here is a post from Fern that she wrote in the run up to her August wedding sharing some of her handmade details like paper garlands, napkins, and table centre making. The photo of her little boy helping to paint the blackboards is just too sweet!

>> View Fern and Dominic’s woodland bird and country flower inspired wedding here <<

Over to Fern…

It’s all in the details

It’s less than five weeks to go to the wedding and I’ve officially turned into a crazy person. Not in a angry, bite your head off way, (ok only once) but in a running around the garden at 5.00 in the morning looking at pieces of wood and measuring how long my garlands are, and trying to work out which of my plants will be flowering in August kind of way.

I have had my first wedding dress fitting and we have all had our hair trial at the salon. So it’s all getting very real now. We are still working on lots of projects for the wedding so here are some sneak peeks, without giving away too many secrets.

Paper decorations

After making the envelopes for my invitations I was left with lots of strips of paper where I had trimmed the papers down to size. I was determined not to throw them away but find some way to use them to make something for the wedding. Then I found this idea (above) on Pinterest for paper garlands. I borrowed a die cutting machine and got to work changing all my strips of paper into little hearts and I have stitched them together on the sewing machine.

For the larger pieces of paper I have made some paper rosettes which, although beautiful, have required some deep engineering to stay in place.

Handmade napkins

I really don’t want too much of a colour theme at my wedding. There is some pink sneaking in to places where it counts, but I really don’t want it to be too “in your face”. I was really inspired by an idea for patterned napkins on Show Me The Pretty and decided to make my own for my wedding.

After some gentle nagging, I convinced Dom they would look so much better than white ones. It has been really good fun choosing the fabrics together and I have worked out I can make 3-4 napkins during one of Laurence’s naps. I’m glad that I don’t have a very large wedding party because I’ve got to 46 and run out of steam a bit with the last 5 still left to go. Here’s to pulling my socks up and finishing them this weekend.

Vintage books

We are very lucky to have a Healthy Planet free bookshop in Yeovil, so I have been able to check in here for beautifully bound books to add to our decorating, but I really wanted to share my vintage bird books. The Ladybird British Birds and their Nests books, besides having the most beautiful illustrations inside, two of these books have been in my family a long time.

My late grandmother gave these to my father, finding them second hand when he was around 12 years old. She kept them for years and gave them again to my sister and I when we were children. My Gran was an RSPB bird rescuer and she loved birds. Visiting my Gran as a child I remember seeing lots of different injured sea birds or garden birds having their short stays in washing up bowls with heat lamps.

My sister Natasha and I used to help my Gran to prepare food for them in her little kitchen, (but we let my Gran handle the live meal worms.) So these books hold some very special memories for me. I was so glad, a few years ago, to find the final one at a Vintage Book Market in Sherborne. My friend Isla bought it for me as an early Christmas present. The other books were also bought by us at the Book Market.

Men at work

As side from my wedding crafts, there is lots of hammering, sawing, sanding and planing happening by Dominic and my dad. Dominic had brought home lots of wooden rounds and off cuts from his work in the woods and he and dad have prepared them to be table centrepieces, a table plan and cake stand.

Dom has also been hard at work transforming old pallets into storage trays for jars of jam and glasses for our afternoon reception. I have also had a little assistant helping mummy to paint the chalk boards for the menus.

More work still to do making and painting our wedding signs. Fingers crossed the wood for these appear soon.

Hand drawn artwork

Besides wielding a chainsaw, Dominic is also very skilled at fine art and has hand drawn beautiful bird pictures for our table plan, choosing ones which visit the garden or we find in the fields around Montacute. However, he drew the line at drawing the long tail tits and swallows, feeling they weren’t right for table names.

I’m not allowed to show you the actual pictures which we will use at the wedding yet but I will share this beautiful tree pipit Dominic drew which is hanging in our hallway, to show how talented he is. The images at the wedding will be in colour rather than pencil drawing, but this gives an idea.

>> View Fern and Dominic’s woodland bird and country flower inspired wedding here <<

Images: (1 – 5) Brides own photos