Erin Layla Garton finalises her Wedding Details!

Every bride and groom wants their wedding to stand out, whether it going crazy with the flowers, choosing a spectacular or different venue, or picking a theme that you can really go to town with, but remember it’s your wedding, YOUR being the operative word. As long as the day reflects you and your partner and everything that you are together that’s all that matters. James and I have always had a different style to our friends, sometimes I think that we were both born in the wrong era, we are both heavily into classic décor, vintage finishes and anything oldy worldy! So I was sure, with me being a DIY fanatic and both of us loving spending our time trawling antique shops and Ebay that our wedding was going to have lots of ­­­­intricate details personal to us. Below you will see a few DIY details personal to my wedding that I am working on. I have included simple instructions in case you want to achieve something similar.

Napkins

We are keeping our floral decorations really simple, they are going to be white but a variety of different flowers, because of this I was really worried that by having white flowers and white table linen it might not fit with our theme of vintage rustic chic. So I decided that to inject some colour onto our tables that I would make napkins out of different vintage floral looking fabrics. This has turned out to be quite time consuming but I really cannot wait to see them all finished and folded nicely on our tables.

5 easy steps to make your own napkins:

Step 1 – decide how big you want your napkins, mine with seam allowance are
Step 2 – draw lines on the wrong side of all four sides of your napkins, 2 thirds of your seam allowance in. I have allowed 3cm seam allowance so I am drawing lines 2 cm in.
Step 3 – Iron the outer edge of the fabric inwards so it runs level with your line, press down firmly with the iron
Step 4 - Now fold along the drawn line and press down.
Note – Do step 3 and 4 on opposite sides of the napkins first and then do the other 2 sides.
Step 5 – Sew a straight stitch along all four sides, making sure to keep as straight as possible and to sew on the fabric you have folded. After sewing all four sides snip of any lose threads, press the whole napkin flat, and voila you have yourself a napkin!

Decorated bottles

As James and I are doing our own flowers we also need something to put them in, we will be using some vases that we have collected, but we also wanted to bring something different to our centrepieces. So we have also been collecting vintage bottles, nice liquer bottles and then also just some plain glass bottles that we are decorating, because I love the vintage feel and look of lace and pearls, so that is exactly what I am going to use to cover my bottles.

Step by step guide to decorating bottles:

Step 1 - First find the type of bottles you want to cover, I used sparkling wine bottles and sparkling elderflower bottles, they both have that champagne look to them.
Step 2 – Remove all labels, and wash to get rid of all the residue. This may take some work depending on the labels, but soaking them in hot water with washing up liquid and scrubbing them with a scour pad I find always works. Then make sure you dry the bottle throughly.
Step 3 - Heat up your glue gun and get your pearls ready, I got my half pearls aftering seacrhing the net, make sure they are half pearls (domed on one side and flat on the other, there is no need to get hotfix ones). With my pearls I bought the majority in white or ivory but I also got some golds, silvers, lilacs, pinks and greens to give it some extra lift, I also bought them in a number of different sizes. And think of your design, I personally go with what I am feeling at the time.
Step 4 – Start glueing, just place a spot of glue on the bottle and then place your pearl on top and press down firmly so that it is securely in place. You will have glue strings across the top of your pearls but don’t worry.
Step 5 – Once all your pearls have been stuck on, take out a oft toothbrush and brush away all excess glue and glue strings, and then sit back and admire your work.
Note – you can use lots of amazing haberdashy items to decorate bottles, like pearls, ribbons or for an edgy look how about buttons, I used gather lace, see picture below. Happy decorating.

Introducing Erin Layla Garton, our brand new bridal blogger!

James and I met working in a club in Manchester, he was at University and I was at Dance College, I was 17 and he was 20 and we fell in love. After 7 and half years together, in which we have both changed careers quite a few times, relocated down to Reading and bought a house, he finally proposed on Christmas Day 2010. It really was the best day ever and to this day people are always commenting on how unique and different the proposal was. You see James didn’t have it easy, everyone kept asking him when he was going to pop the question and I kept wrecking every chance by always putting my big mouth in it. For example, we went to see Michael Buble for our 7 year anniversary and I made the comment to him and to friends,” ooh wouldn’t it be romantic if James proposed , whilst Michael is singing our song!”, well suffice to say it didn’t happen. Instead he waited till Christmas Day and it was perfect.

There was no getting down on one knee, which he knew I did not want, instead he arranged for us to stay in the front room of his dad’s house, in the Cotswold’s. We had already had a perfect Christmas Eve with great food, company and presents and that night we went to sleep on a blow up mattress in front a roaring fire, a gorgeous Christmas tree filled with fairy lights and snow filling up the windows and French doors. I then awoke on Christmas Day at about 5am and noticed something very different; there was something on my finger. You see I am a very heavy sleeper and because of this James was able to slip the ring on my finger without me even stirring, he then spent a very unsettled night keeping the fire going, trying to get little bits of sleep, keeping his nerves in check and also making sure I didn’t hit myself in the face with my hand. The funny thing is that I noticed straight away that I had a ring on my finger but it took about 30 seconds for me to able to focus properly and see that I had the ring of my dreams; A vintage inspired ring with a centre diamond and 28 more diamonds adorning the shoulders and band. It was designed by the exquisite Cry for the Moon jewellers in Guildford, with the all-important diamond being picked by James.

The Wedding.

So we set the date of May 12th 2012 for our wedding, which also happens to be our 9 year anniversary, after 9 years together we really didn’t want to start counting from year 0 again, plus we loved the added romance of getting married on the day we first got together. From there it was onto organising the rest of the day and boy was it stressful at first. We had it in our head that we only wanted to spend a certain amount of money on the venue, but everything we saw that came within our budget was either not what we were looking for or was for venue hire only and with added catering costs it took us well over our budget. So in the end we thought we would go on an inspiration trip to The National Wedding Show in Birmingham, and we are so glad we did. Thanks to The National Wedding Show we found our venue, photographer and tailor for the groom’s suit.

The Venue; is the stunning Wroxall Abbey Estate (http://www.wroxall.com/), where we managed to get a great deal due to our wedding not counting as in their peak season. The venue is just what we wanted, it has beautiful grounds and the inside as an old regal feel to it. What is great is that the whole wedding is taking place there, they have an onsite cathedral which is where our ceremony will be held and then we have hired out the mansion on an all exclusive basis meaning we have all 48 bedroom for our guests plus no-one else apart from the wedding party is allowed in the building, perfect seclusion for everyone to enjoy the day.

The photographers; are the wonderful Anna and Michael from Two of US (http://www.twoofus.eu/). One piece of advice I would give to couples visiting an event with so many stalls, is try and talk to as many people as possible (it may be exhausting but it’s definitely worth it), and if you don’t get to speak to everyone at least pick up leaflets, half of them you may throw in the bin but you will have some gems in there. James and I spoke to at least half a dozen photographers on the day, we asked the same questions to all and got a lot of different answers and a lot of variances in prices, by the end of the day we were exhausted and still didn’t quite feel that we had found our photographer. So at the end of the day there we were sitting in the demonstration area resting our tiring feet, where we saw a photographer stand that we hadn’t visited, we had actually passed it quite a few times in the day but we thought the photos were too good to be real and also looked way out of our price league but decided to get one more leaflet to add to our already huge pile to go through. That last leaflet turned out to be the photographer we went for, they were exactly what we were looking for, quirky, well shot and personal pictures, at a great price and to top it all off Anna, who we arranged to meet 3 days after the show, was so friendly and genuinely did it for the love of photography, we warmed to her instantly. We got an amazing package with more on offer than all the other photographers we saw and at an amazing price, including 2 photographers for the whole day, Anna who will follow me and get the brides perspective and Michael who will follow James to get the grooms and also he will be snapping away getting all the quirky action shots, 2 photo albums, full copyright, full photo editing and an additional shoot for the bride and groom after the wedding. This additional photo shoot is something we had never heard of before but apparently it is very popular in Europe. Instead of the bride and groom going off on the wedding day for an hour or so and missing the chance to mingle with friends and family at the drinks reception to have pictures taken, they only take you away for 20 mins and then the next day you get all dressed up again and go on a photo shoot to different locations to get some amazing pictures together. We already can’t wait to see the pictures and they haven’t even been taken yet.

The suit has been designed and made by specialist tailors Clements and Church (http://www.clementsandchurch.co.uk/). We were served by the owner Aaron, who could not have been more helpful, and boy does he know his stuff, his expertise really put James at ease, even when he was told he wore the wrong sized shirts. After trying on a few suits, we picked a stunning 3 piece with a difference; it really has that vintage look we were going for and just happens to be the first one we saw when we walked in. We were originally going to get one tailor-made for James, but in the end there was no point, the cut was so excellent, that an off the peg suit worked perfectly, with a few minor adjustments it will look like he has had one tailored made without the paying that extra cost. James then picked a stunning tie that incorporates our colour scheme and the same fabric will also be used for the back of the waistcoat, I really cannot wait to see James in it on our wedding day.

So you can see for James and I, a trip to the National Wedding Show was invaluable.

Now a year has passed since we started planning and we still have a lot to do. One thing I have not mentioned so far is that I am a full on DIY bride and I don’t just mean invites and décor, I am intending on going as far as making not only MY wedding dress but also my 6 bridesmaid dresses. On my blog posts you will be able to follow my progress during the next 3 and half months till my big day and I will be including simple instructions for my DIY ideas and progress pictures on my dress.