Janine will be marrying Paul on 26th July 2020 at Fasque Castle, Scotland, UK. Click here to read all Janine’s planning posts to date.
THREE FACTS: (1) Janine and fiance Paul met on Bumble. (2) The two of them are planning an interfaith Jew-ish wedfest weekend, to include everything from a whiskey tasting to mini highland games! (3) Janine is a member of Smashing The Glass’s Brides Club!
Designing my own stationery and other ways I’ve put creativity into my wedding
I’ve always been one to make social norms and traditions my own and I’m fortunate that Paul thinks in a similar way to me. In planning our wedding, we want the celebrations to show our personalities, and involve our guests in the ideas, to create an enjoyable weekend for us AND our guests. The last thing we want to do is to have an identikit London hotel wedding which was most definitely expected of us!
Fortunately, I run London Paper Crafts – a wedding and event stationery studio – so we’ve been able to design and print our own stationery. We wanted our stationery to reflect where we’re getting married as well as being able to have our guests’ input into the wedding.
In terms of design, the blue thistle (which will be part of our wedding flowers) has been a continued design feature from our Save The Dates and invitation suite and will continue in our On the Day stationery too.
Our Save The Date featured the blue thistles on a base layer fastened with an eyelet and a vellum overlay with the two fonts we’ve used throughout our stationery design. I especially love the italic-calligraphy style font which features leaves – it ties together the floral elements we’ve featured on our stationery design.
A Weekend of Celebration
With the finer details of our wedding weekend we’ve given our guests the opportunity to choose events they want to come to across the weekend rather than impose a full schedule on them. We feel that they should have the freedom to choose, rather than have events imposed on them. We’d hate to impose anything as this is totally against how we feel weddings should be.
We also want our guests to feel involved in our wedding day, so in the invitation we included a card in the shape of an old cassette for them to suggest their favourite song to dance to, which we can then request our band to play or add to the playlist for the After Party. That way they get to choose the music they enjoy and encourages them to join the dance floor!
Our wedding invitation is a dark blue soft-touch pocketfold, featuring our monogram in parts and was a triplex layered invitation. We hot foiled it with two foils – blue for the text, and a white transparent foil in the four corners with the hand-drawn floral elements which feature throughout our stationery design. The florals continue on the envelope liner – with the blue thistle again taking centre stage.
We included a number of items in our stationery, but it was important for us to get all the information across, as well as give our guests choice – with the menu choice card, RSVP for all the events across the weekend and the cassette designed Favourite Song To Dance To card. I have a real passion for detail, and we were both super proud of how the stationery suite turned out, especially as Paul is clearly very talented at hot foil pressing.
Embracing My Scottish Heritage
We’re keen to embrace elements from both of our cultures in our marriage and in the ceremony itself. To embrace my Scottish heritage, we’re including the Celtic tradition of handfasting. Historically, in Scotland, handfasting is the literal practice of the couple’s hands being bound together by one of the witnesses.
Usually with a ribbon or piece of fabric such as tartan sash and is believed to be one of the early origins of the phrase ‘tie the knot’! We’re “tying the knot” with a sash made from my family tartan – the ancient blue Wallace tartan which I had made by the incredibly knowledgeable House of Tartan.
Whisky And Highland Games
Given that we’re getting married in Scotland and having a weekend of events we thought that it would be fun for our guests to embrace the culture of Scotland. We’re doing this in many ways throughout the weekend, but in terms of events we’re inviting our guests to take a tour of the local whisky distillery which we have toured ourselves and to add some competitive fun we’ve hired an events company to run a Highland Games competition.
The whisky distillery is in walking distance of the castle. Founded in 1824, sitting in the grounds of the Fasque Castle estate, Fettercairn Distillery is steeped in history. Having once had illegal whisky makers as the stillmen and assisted in licensing by William Gladstone – British Prime Minister four times in the late nineteenth century – the story of the distillery alone is captivating. Couple this with their unique distillation methods and approach to whisky making, the distillery is a really interesting place to visit and enables our guests to embrace the local history and culture and really get to see the area they are visiting.
On the final day of the weekend, the morning after the wedding, a brunch and the Highland games will take place. Run by an events company, the games are a fun and casual event and a fun way to round off the wedding weekend. In typical Highland Games style the mini games will involve rolling the keg, throwing the hammer, sheaf throwing, tossing the caber and tug of war. We really can’t wait to see this come to life and our guests enjoy our first event as Mr & Mrs!
Without giving too much away to our guests, we’ve planned personalised gifts for them across the weekend which will include local delicacies and other treats. On the wedding day itself, on the brilliant suggestion of my Man of Honour Tom, we’re offering our guests a whisky shot for their toast drink. It makes sense to us to embrace local delicacies, of which Whisky certainly is one!
There are many more creative elements to our wedding, but some things will just have to be kept secret till the big day…
Click here to read all Janine’s planning posts to date.
Janine and Paul’s Wedding Vendors booked so far:
Venue – Fasque Castle
Bride’s dress – Lisa Carrington Couture
On the Day Coordinator – Rebecca Barnett
Photographer – Allister Freeman
Hair + Makeup – Athina Gregoriades and Samantha Cardno
Event childcare – The Event Nanny
Bagpiper – Rich Gordon
Ceremony music – The Aberdeen Wedding Pianist
Interfaith minister – Angie Alexandra
Flowers – Hay’s Flowers
Catering – Sinclairs
Cake – Laura Lane
Band – Highway
Highland games – Jomm Events
Stationery – London Paper Crafts
Whisky – Fettercairn Distillery
Tartan – House of Tartan
