Diary of a Boho Bride – Carys and Aaron, Entry 6: Four Weeks To Getting On That Plane…Time To Get Crafty!!

It’s Friday afternoon, and as we speak I am busy putting together last minute preparations for Nat and Steve’s Wedding in Oakham who are getting married today! Got to love a Friday wedding! Today on Diary of a Boho Bride we meet up with Carys again as she is busy preparing for her Greek Wedding. It’s now only 4 weeks to go before she Fly’s off to Greece, so as you can imagine there is lots going on! Today Carys is telling us all about her hen night, her Wedding DIY as well as a few little bits and bobs she has planned for her wedding guests out in Greece.

I’ll pass the blog over to Carys……………

I’m really not quite sure where the time has gone since my last diary entry but all of a sudden August is upon us – the month when I have my final dress fitting, I leave my 20’s and turn 30, and yes we actually finally fly out to Greece for our wedding!!

The Hen Night

With the big day racing towards us we have certainly been very busy getting everything prepared and organised.  Since I last wrote about my bridesmaids Catie and Kirsty and their Grecian inspired looks for our wedding day, they have been very busy throwing me a beautiful hen weekend which was so much fun…even if it is now a little bit of a cocktail-induced blur!

Following a sunny al fresco lunch with Team Bridesmaid and an afternoon drinking champagne whilst being pampered, for my hen night itself we hired a cool cocktail lounge at one of my favourite places to go – Bar 44 in Cowbridge, a superb local Spanish tapas bar where they helped organise for us an evening of cocktail masterclasses and stunning tapas treats.  Having finally had a summer this year, my hen night was held on what turned out to be the hottest day of the year so far – so it was definitely authentic in preparing me for my Greek wedding!  My Mum had decorated the room at Bar 44 with very funny photos of Aaron and I as children and there were lots of little tables set up with gorgeous tapas dishes and a variety of perfect ingredients to make our own signature cocktails, including my favourite, a White Russian.  I really cannot thank Sophie, Rhys and all the team at Bar 44 enough, along with my amazing friends and family for giving me a night of sophisticated glamour to remember.  I loved it – it was perfect!

Having eventually recovered from the hangover, the past month has seen me turn from Health Professional in the day to the Master of Arts and Crafts each evening, with our house now resembling a Grecian elf’s workshop!  I have found myself looking for bits and bobs for the wedding wherever we go.  Even a walk along the beach sends me into creative overdrive and this weekend I have been shopping around for little Welsh touches to add to our Greek wedding.  Over the past few weeks each list of ‘things to do’ that I have written has been superseded by an even longer list of more elaborate ‘things we absolutely must do’ – please tell me this is normal!?!

The DIY

Our biggest DIY project so far has been making all of our invitations by hand.  As we are having a small and intimate wedding in Cephalonia we could afford to pay to have some beautiful bespoke wedding passport style invitations made by Marianne at Ditsy Chic, which we adored.  For our evening party on our return from Greece however we are inviting many more people so I decided that making all of the invites by hand would be more cost effective.  I really love the look of recycled brown card and I wanted to create invitations that would be rustic and quirky whilst linking in with the theme of travel and the colours of Greece, hence the addition of the mini luggage tags and the blue ribbons on the front of the cards.  I have only recently realised that all of those Saturday mornings spent in the library as a child watching the librarian stamp the books that I would soon spend hours hidden away reading, has developed in me a need to stamp anything and everything!  I have therefore invested in lots of lovely little East of India stamps to accessorize our invitations, with the notion of drinking champagne (or ouzo!) and dancing on the table being a recurrent theme!

For the guests travelling out to Greece we have set up our own wedding website with details on the island of Cephalonia, accommodation, flight options etc to make planning their trips a little easier.  We are aware of how much effort people are making to spend our special day with us and so we want to make it as relaxing and as fun for them all as possible.

Along with the website I wanted to give our guests a little something that they could pack away in their hand luggage and read through on the plane to get them in the holiday spirit.  Therefore I have put together a simple little guidebook with information on the top twenty things to see and do on the island along with some Greek phrases to help them get the most out of their time in this beautiful country.

I’ve also been busy making all of our guests their own luggage tags for their suitcases so that the minute they close their cases and attach their luggage tags, they are ready to start their Greek adventure!

A final DIY project that I have given myself the next week to finish (well it is on the list of ‘things we absolutely must do’) is our Order of Service booklets which I want to make in the style of fans for anyone struggling in the heat in Cephalonia.  I have been experimenting with different designs and asking Aaron to cast his style eye over them, but with Aaron now away in Singapore with work it’s down to me to stock up the fridge with Robola this weekend and get them finished!  Whilst DIY elements and personalised craft items do take time and create more work before the wedding, they are always the little things that I love the most about the weddings that we have been to and I’m hoping that the little personal touches will be the things which people really enjoy about ours.

Does anyone have any travel inspired craft projects or things that they have made for weddings abroad to share for inspiration? I’d love to know your ideas.

Love Carys

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