14

Feb

2014

Diary of a Boho Bride – Alison and Joe, Entry 5: The DIY

diary of a boho bride

Happy Valentines day (again) how is your day going so far? Did you read this mornings post? I’d love you to have your say on the blog and give me your thoughts on valentine’s day and tell me how you will be celebrating!

This afternoon though it is time to catch up with Alison and Joe in this weeks Diary of a Boho Bride. Last time Alison told us all about the venue, meeting the vicar and their decisions on the reception area. Today it is all about the DIY and how all of Alison’s project have been going. It seems she has been busy and now with only 4 months to go things really are hotting up! The DIY seems to be under control though, so I’ll let Alison tell you what she has been up to!

Joe and Alison

I’ll pass the Blog over to Alison………..

It is now less than four months to go! I honestly do not know where time has gone. Unfortunately the last month has not been a particularly happy one. My great uncle has been battling cancer and things had got a lot worse since Christmas. I thought I would be spending these last few weeks jollying around starting to sort out wedding things when instead I found myself last week sat at the side of a hospital bed holding my uncle’s hand as he took his last breaths. I know it’s a cliché but it really does make you realise what is important in life and that you should enjoy it while you are here. Getting stressed about a few extra chairs needed at the wedding breakfast just isn’t really worth it. Joe has proved even more what a great husband he will make – letting me cry and snot all over him!

On to wedding things… We still have a reasonably lengthy to-do list but I’m not really worried about it and Joe isn’t as I don’t think he would be worried if he was buying his suit on the morning of the wedding. All the “biggies” are taken care of so there isn’t really anything major still to be done – it is all of the little things so I think as long as we keep sorting bits we will be fine. I have finally started getting to grips with all the DIY ideas I had and wanted to make. Joe was concerned that the wedding was going to end up looking like we were “tree huggers” when I had tried to explain about tree trunk table decorations with jam jars on top and the like (thank you Pinterest!). Now I’ve started making things he has started to see that we won’t look like “tree-huggers” as he puts it, but that it will hopefully look rustic/vintage and homemade. I’ve been trying things out and they seem to be going ok so far.

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I bought fabric for bunting a while ago now. My lovely sister has cut it all up ready to be made into butting. We bought different shades and patterns of purple to go with the colour scheme. As the marquee lining will be ivory it will be nice to add a bit of colour. We have also chosen a purple carpet for inside the marquee – we haven’t seen the exact shade yet, they just said they have purple – so as long as it won’t look too dark (or weird) we thought it could look nice. Alternatively we can always go for beige if we are unsure! I also liked the idea of hessian bunting so bought some quite cheaply and put white hearts on them using lino printing with white ink. I then used some lace/crochet edging to attach the triangles to. As mentioned we are planning to use tree trunk table decorations – it seems to be quite popular but can look really nice – and isn’t going to cost the earth. We’ve been saving jars and wine bottles for a while now – as I’m sure many DIY brides have been. I simply wrapped a piece of hessian around and then used the crochet trim to finish the edges.

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I have also started to make paper heart bunting. For the first few I have just used an off-white cartridge paper and some natural twine. The plan was to use old books or sheet music but I bought a couple of books for the job from the charity shop – an illustrated book of herbs and a Winnie the Pooh story book but now can’t bring myself to cut them up – another charity shop visit may be required or alternatively I could use some of the pretty papers that I have accumulated over the years for those “just-in- case” times. In the earlier stages of planning I had the idea to make all flowers out of paper. Not everyone seemed to think this a good idea and so I decided that I would use a florist for the bouquets and buttonholes. We plan on cutting the cost of flowers down for the marquee by having the jam jars and wine bottles as they won’t need too many in each – we can always buy those and arrange them ourselves the day before. I have to admit though after Sam’s blog last week about making paper flowers I feel the urge again – we will see how time goes…

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One of the next DIY jobs on the list is the invitations. I designed the Save the Dates a while ago now and sent them out along with Christmas cards. I am now looking at creating the actual invitations ready to send out in March. Designing for yourself when you are a designer is a lengthy process as there never feels like there is a deadline. It took a while to decide on a style as I kept trying out different things. In the end we went for a wooden look with some custom typography to make them unique! Hopefully they gave a bit of a feel for the type of day we are planning. So next job is to get the invites designed and printed as we plan to send them out in March. I am also going to illustrate a map as both the church and reception location are a bit out of the way so thought that would be nice to include a hand drawn map.

ALISON SAVE THE DATE

DIYing seems to be suiting our venue and our day overall so we are still happy to be going down that route. I’m glad I hadn’t left it any later to make a start on things though as I could imagine it could get a bit stressful trying to make a million things in a short space of time or making things that don’t turn out as you expected. I think we will carry on as we are, see how much we can comfortably get made and then look over what we have nearer to.

Last time I talked about location – here are the photos of the barn which will become our reception venue.

outside inside

We are planning to go and look at suits this weekend. We are still undecided as whether to hire or buy as the ones we have been looking at seem a similar cost. My mum will be starting work on the bridesmaids dresses soon too – alterations, adding netting in and changing the belt of the dresses we bought from Debenhams. So still plenty to do. But still time to do it.

Alison xx

 

 

 

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Comments

    Samantha

    Aah Alison the jars look great! Are you running out of space for them like me?! I’m glad I could put the idea of paper flowers back on the table for you – I’m loving mine and my mums started to put the bouquet together now and it’s gorgeous :)
    But you can get some beautiful and not too expensive real flowers, I would have gone with wild flowers if I wasn’t making them myself – and they go with the rustic feel too.
    Enjoy the rest of your planning!xx

    Reply
    Becki

    I can relate so much to a lot of things in your post Alison, the bunting, the copious amount of jars, hessian, decisions on flowers!
    Just wanted to say it all looks absolutely amazing so far, so pretty and I cant wait to see it all come together for you xx
    Becki xx

    Reply
    Alison

    Thanks for the nice comments.

    Samantha- I’m definitely going to look at paper flowers again and have a dabble! The only concern that keeps being pointed out to me is “what if it rains?!” If we don’t have them for the bouquets I might do something for the end of the church pews – they have handles where you can put a few flowers so maybe that’s where the paper will come in…. xx

    Reply

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