12 Crafty Wedding Ideas
Expert advice on how to bring a unique touch
to your wedding day…
OLD FASHIONED CHARM
Free up little flower girls hands by swapping the traditional posy for a circlet of flowers and foliage worn on the head. The simplest way to make a circlet is to measure a length of gardeners wire around your flower girls head and create a round wire hair band. Cut and trim the flowers and foliage that you wish to use and pierce them with a length | | 
|
of wire or wrap wire around the stems, leaving some excess wire to attach to the
main frame. Attach the wired flowers and foliage to the hair band, making sure
that any exposed wires are tapped down.
From Creating Beautiful Wedding Flowers, Ryland Peters & Small
FLORAL ICE CUBES
Serve your guests drinks with stunning floral ice-cubes. Ice-cubes with small flowers or flower petals frozen within them are a really simple but effective way of giving a summer drinks reception the wow factor. All you need are some ice cube trays, water and fresh, edible, organically grown (non-toxic) flowers. Rose petals, geranium petals, or small pansies are ideal choices. Fill the ice cube trays no more than half way with water. Place non-toxic petals or small flowers into each cube compartment. Place in freezer for several hours, until frozen solid. Remove from freezer and top up each ice cube compartment with enough water to fill each compartment. Freeze until ready to use when you simply drop them into your guests glasses, or fill your punch bowl with them.
CREATIVE CAKES
Individual fairy cakes are an increasingly popular alternative to the conventional wedding cake and can be iced with colours and motifs to suit any theme.
Basic recipe for fairy cakes (makes 24 mini cakes)
• 4 free-range eggs
• 225g/8oz sugar
• 225g/8oz self-raising flour
• 225g/8oz butter, melted
| Put 24 pretty paper cases on a baking tray. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Whisk together the eggs and sugar until light and fluffy. Gradually add the flour and the butter, folding the mixture together gently. Pour the mixture carefully into the fairy cake cases. Bake the cakes for 10-15 minutes, until golden on top and a skewer carefully inserted into one of the cakes comes out clean. | |  |
Allow to cool for ten minutes on a wire rack before removing from the tin. Once cool, ice and decorate.
From Creating Your Perfect Wedding, Ryland Peters & Small
BE-JEWELLED
Choose plain napkins for your tables and accessorise them with individual ties to compliment your colour scheme and set off beautiful china, this silver bead and diamante tassel is the perfect foil for a delicate silver edged plate. | Scour haberdashers, furnishing departments, charity shops and car boot sales for trims and tassels that can double up as quirky napkin ties. Look out for old necklaces with pretty beads. Take the necklaces apart and rethread the beads onto some gardening wire which can be wrapped around your napkins. From Creating Your Perfect Wedding, Ryland Peters & Small | |  |
JAMMY SOLUTIONS
The flickering flames and soft shadows of candlelight can add a wonderful air of enchantment and intimacy to your wedding reception. With a little glitter and glue, glass jam and food jars can be easily transformed into glamorous, sparkling tea light holders.
From Creating Your Perfect Wedding, Ryland Peters & Small
NIBBLE ON THIS
Edible favours always go down a treat. Coloured
icing and a fine nozzle were used to pipe names
onto these rectangular biscuits, giving them an
extra role as edible place cards. Here they have
been arranged around a table number made from
blue glass beads threaded on to florist's wire and
bent into a ‘5'. Delicate bows to match the icing
add the final touch.
From Creating Your Perfect Wedding, Ryland Peters & Small
MEMORIES ARE MADE OF THIS
Once the day is over, all you'll have to cherish are pictures and memories, so make the most of any memorbelia you can find. Gather up those once vital check lists, swatches, tear sheets, samples, jewels and trimmings and preserve them in a scrapbook,
box or file. Better still, turn them into a piece of nostalgic artwork. Here rows of luggage labels have been glued to a plain Stretch canvas and used to display tiny photos, beads, buckles, dried flowers
and ribbon samples by tying them on to the strings.
From Creating Your Perfect Wedding, Ryland Peters & Small
SEED FAVOURS
Give an environmentally friendly gift in the form of seeds. Simply buy some large quantities of seeds from your local garden centre - you may want to choose your favourite flowers, a flower that features on your wedding day or a seasonal flower or vegetable. Divide the seeds up and pour into a container - you can use pretty silk, organza or tulle fabric bags, small brown envelopes that you can paint or decorate to reflect the contents or tiny terracotta flower pots.
Wrap with some coloured ribbon and thread through a small name card or luggage tag onto which you can write the persons name and some simple care instructions for the seeds.
A FINGER OF FUN
Keep children amused at your wedding reception
by giving them gifts of finger puppets. Make them yourself using some coloured felt pieces, buttons, thread and some imagination or buy them in a local
toy shop or craft market, wrap them in bright tissue paper and fasten with a pipe cleaner.
From the Art of Giving, Conran Octopus
GUEST'S WELCOME PACKS
Put together a thoughtful welcome pack to place in the hotel room of guests who have travelled from afar to join you on your wedding day. Some things you might like to include would be a map of the local area and information on different sights and attractions they may want to visit during their stay; some local jam/sweets or other delicacies; toiletries for the lady; some tea and biscuit (always appreciated after a long trip); a couple of drink miniatures from the local brewery (eg Bushmills) and maybe even a gift voucher for a treatment at the local spa or beauty salon.
From Weddings, Kyle Cathie Ltd
PICTURE PERFECT
Have fun with your place cards. Here traditional paper place cards bearing each guests name have been replaced with photographs. These can be taken at a previous event (your engagement party for example)
or you can raid your photo album for pictures from
the past. A great ice breaker at the table.
From Weddings, Kyle Cathie Ltd
MADE WITH LOVE XX
Kissing balls are a great focal point for a wedding reception party as they encourage your guests to mix, mingle and have some fun. Traditionally made of mistletoe around Chrstimas time, they can be a feature throughout the year if you use different greenery or flowers.
The easiest way to construct a kissing ball is to use a round piece of Oasis (you can buy this from any florist). Soak greenery to be used in water overnight. Insert evenly sized sprigs of the selected green into the oasis until it is completely covered. If you have difficulty inserting the sprigs, make a starter hole for each with a metal skewer. Make the evergreen sprays form an even, well-rounded ball. After the ball is completed, decorate it with ribbons, berries, mistletoe or whatever else you wish. Then fasten a long piece of wire to the ball so it can be hung from a chandelier, doorway, or window. WJ
|
Reception 
I posted 4 photos on Facebook in the album "Bridal inspiration from Cannes...." 
Comments
RSS feed for comments to this post.