Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Kitty Boo Boo Handmade Wedding - The Accessories

We made so much for this wedding, many of them the tiny details like the necklaces, the bouquets, the clutches, the ring dish, the place cards, the table toppers, the wishing well, etc etc.

What we couldn't make we had made for us by our crafty friends or other handmade small businesses.


Our rings we bought from jewellers as we couldn't afford bespoke pieces. After looking for nearly 12 months for a second hand vintage band I finally found a replica, very affordable and just down the road at the local shops! Pete found his ring online.

I made the ring dish from air drying clay. You can't see the detail but I used a doily to 'etch' a pattern into it.  I will add a tutorial if there is any interest!






All the girls wore a necklace. Our accessory colour was silver so we all had silver swallows with a string of 5 pearls (to represent Love, Patience, Grace, Kindness, Respect). each one was handmade by me.



Peter bought me a bracelet made by a local artisan from The Swich Contemporary Art Space in Ipswich. It is made from some vintage spoons and a pearl. Absolutely gorgeous. I'm fairly sure the spoons themselves are over a hundred years old.

We sourced the swallows used as boutonnières from the UK. They are Victorian replicas made from pewter signed by the maker AR Brown. I also made these into mini fascinators in all the girls hair. Every member of the bridal party had a swallow as did each one of our parents. Very easy for people not familiar with our parents to locate them on sight!




I embroidered the swallows for the clutches onto silver satin and my friend Belinda from Sybella turned them into beautiful clutches!



Kim and I bought flowers two days before the wedding. We bought them from Northside Flower Market We picked bunches of seasonal that matched our colour scheme and I made the bouquets on Friday night. I had originally wanted to use snap dragons but they are so fragile there is no way they would have lasted and made the trip to Tamborine. We used dusky pink roses, wax flowers, silver suede, and I can't remember the name of the yellow number! I made 5 bouquets and the flowers cost less than $80. Win. We tied the bunches together and wrapped wide lace around the stems. Then I used a ribbon in the colour of the bridesmaid around the centre of the lace so each lady could find her bouquet.





We had a minor crisis with the centrepieces. The ones we selected from the venue became unavailable so Pete and I decided to make our own as the others seemed too tropical. I used my collection of doilies and stitched them together to create the table toppers. We hired some lanterns, I bought some faux aloe vine from a small local business and we cut, moulded and assembled the flowers for the tables.







I used some decorative scrapbooking tags and some sheets of sticky back gems and made the table numbers. We used tiny little silver birds to hold the cards.

We decided to give everybody plants as bonbonierres. We served desert with the meal and we had cupcakes for our guests (we kept the cake to ourselves YUMMO) so we used Rosemary and Lavender (virtue, love, loyalty, fidelity) and I was quite surprised how well people too to them!



I painted a tree on a canvas and we used leaf shaped stamps for our guests to use as a guest book.

We also had printed some postcards which we asked our guests to use to give us their well wishes or advice.




We dressed up some bird cages for our wishing well.







Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Kitty Boo Boo Handmade Wedding - The Boys!

Well the boys were super handsome! Dressed in hire suits from Spurling they rocked it! We bought my son Sam's suit for a wedding we went to a few years ago, lucky we bought that bigger size!


All the boys wore swallow pins instead of boutonnières. The swallows were a link in the chain of our mish-mash theme. I sourced these from a jewellery maker in the UK.  I'll post about all the swallows later!


The boys were great on the day, they kept our glasses full, held clutches and sunglasses, parasols and wraps, watched the kids and held dresses. 


Pete's brother Mark was one of the grooms men, the other two have been friends for many years. Steve was at school with us both and Brad has been a friend for going on 11 years.





 

Kitty Boo Boo Handmade Wedding - The Dresses

Some of you know that I made the bridesmaids dresses, my daughters dress and my mum's dress for our wedding. I decided not to make my own dress as I just didn't have the time, let alone the desire to deal with all the heartbreak if it didn't work out!

It was a tight stretch as I waited until a few weeks out to measure the girls and then Therese was away for nearly a week in FiJi at another wedding, Ange was in Scotland for a trip and Kim lives in the UK. None of the dresses were finished more than 6 days out from the wedding and I didn't finish Kim's dress until the day before the wedding! Talk about pressure! Not to mention the fact that we had a chiffon emergency ... I was hand washing out the chalk marks when the chiffon pulled out from the seam and frayed! Some added lace and ribbon did the trick but it was horrifying there for a while.

Our colour scheme was vintage pastels so I chose a soft gold, dusky rose, silver blue and mint green.

My bridesmaids have been close friends for so much of my life. Therese in Pink - 20 years, Ange in mint - 17 years, Kim in blue - 14 years. I also had the pleasure of living with both Kim and Ange. Such awesome girls!

I drafted the patterns myself and made each dress a different style.

My dress was a Wendy Makin, I fell in love with it when I saw it, though after a few dramas in regards to sizing and alteration I must admit I was a little over it but  it is quite pretty and I wanted something simple and flattering.

Without further ado ...