wedding: decorations

The Decorations:

(I'm eager to wrap all this up by Wednesday, so these wedding posts will be coming thick and fast till then)

When thinking about the decorations for our wedding, there were a couple of things we kept in mind:
1) we didn't have to do too much because the location spoke for itself
2) we wanted to enhance the location rather than distract from, or compete with it
3) we wanted to respect the environment (both immediate and overall), keeping away from the notion of luxury and excess.

Our aim? "Vintage, Rustic, Recycled." (And of course a good dash of handmade added into the equation too). We wanted an overall style, rather than a "theme" consisting of matching things.

The river, the trees and the flowers were the focus. But, as we all know, it's all about the details...

Mum and I made the table runners for each table from fabric either from my existing stash, or from second hand fabric I found at op-shops. They were all un-matching, some linen, some candy stripes, some satin. They looked great, and helped to break up the whiteness of the tablecloths.

We used lots of wood throughout the whole wedding. On the tables we had little chunks of wood. (Earlier in the year when the flood hit, it destroyed a few trees, so the timber came from those). We used large stumps of wood in the garden, and also one as a cake stand.



At the end of the night people took them as a memento. We had handed out sandalwood fans to the pregnant and elderly ladies before the ceremony, but other than that we had no "favours". So these little chunks filled in, and people loved them. Now everyone has a little wood chunk in their home to remind them of the wedding and their holiday. One friend insists hers is shaped like a heart!




On the wood chunks, on the tables, we had jars. Lots and lots of jars, all different sizes and shapes. Plus lots of vintage cut glass cups, sugar bowls, bottles, etc. Some held flowers, the rest had tealight candles in them. (The jars were from our own collection, or donated by friends, and cut glass was all from op-shops and the tip shop).










We also had jars with candles in them throughout the garden too, so at night it all twinkled.




Mr You and I spent the wedding night on the boat, so my sister and her husband made us a beautiful "just married sign". They stencilled each letter onto fabric, hung with little wooden pegs.






The lovely old wooden box, that belonged to Mr You's Grandfather, was a postbox for guests to put their cards in.






We hung vintage lampshades in the tress. I collected them all from op-shops and reconditioned them all. We also had some lamps inside the marquee too, so later in the evening we turned off the big lights, and just had the candles and lamps light the marquee. Outside we had fairy lights and had spotlights shining up all the trees.










There were some things that we originally wanted to have at the wedding, but didn't make it in the end. One of these was a photobooth (a spot set up with a backdrop and props, for your guests to take silly staged photo's of themselves in).

It turned out that, completely un-intentionally, we ended up having one, as friends took turns at having their photo's taken on the day bed under the lampshades. This is something we didn't even realise until after the wedding, as people started sending us their photo's. Almost everyone had a photo of themselves posed under the lampshade tree; some nicely posed, others funny and staged. Just another example of the nice surprises of the day!