I am really excited to bring you this wonderful craft-filled wedding from over the pond in Conneticut, USA. Our gorgeous couple live in Brooklyn but got married in Connecticut after meeting at university six years ago. Sarah the bride designed so many creative elements of her big day including her stunning wedding dress (with Modern Trousseau), a wonderful ‘papercut-style’ chuppah designed with her very talented mum, our very own Smashing Supplier Jeanette Kuvin Oren, not to mention the beautiful table decorations, and exquisite letterpress invitations. Feast your eyes on their gorgeous day and take in all their lovely DIY details!
VENUE – CONVERTING A SIMPLE SPACE INTO A STUNNING RECEPTION
Sarah, the Bride: We booked my synagogue as the ceremony/reception venue. Being a traditional Jewish wedding, this was an appropriate locale. But don’t be fooled by a “lack of pizzazz” if your synagogue’s social hall isn’t as ideal as you’d like it to be. I had a vision, and was able to convert a large, relatively simple space into a stunning wedding reception. No one recognised the room once the decorations and lighting were set up. We also picked this location since we had a large guest list, and many venues would force us to cut our guest list in half (that wasn’t going to happen!).
COLOUR SCHEME
The colour scheme came out through the process of seeing my likes and dislikes regarding dà©cor. I didn’t have a true vision until all the pieces began coming together. I knew I wanted neutral, timeless colours; so I stayed in the beige, tan, ivory genre. When I added gold to the mix, I thought we were set. It looked so beautiful and ethereal. Once I chose my bridal party dresses, the final colour came to be: “Dusty Shale,” a grayish seafoam/teal variety. It was a perfect medley of neutral, yet beautiful and timeless colours for a wedding.
How to unearth inspiration and ideas for your wedding day
Today’s post is written by the lovely Kate Shaw from Perfect Details. I’m a big fan of her site – she supplies the most beautiful wedding dà©cor accessories, hire wear and personalised details that together create some lovely finishing touches for your wedding day.
It’s really, really hot in everybody’s office this week, and any brides-to-be planning their wedding are finding their concentration slipping even more to table centre ideas, and where they can match a ribbon colour to their bridesmaid’s dresses…
But with so many places to research weddings, and too many people happy to give you their experience and opinion, where really is the best place to get new ideas for how you’d like the biggest day of your life to look?
PINTEREST
Currently the best way to lose hours at a time in our office… Careful it’s addictive. Use the menu top left to browse the whole wedding category, or use the search box to go more specific. Whether you’re looking for ideas for your dress, or you want theme ideas there are endless stunning images to inspire you.
Check out Perfect Detail’s Pinterest boards
Check out Smashing The Glass’s Pinterest boards
Find images you like and repin them to one board, or different categories such as invitations, table settings, hanging decorations…
WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER WEBSITES
A picture says a 1000 words? The better photographers have online blogs showing off all their best work, which is going to be capturing the magic and detail of other people’s weddings. You can find a photographer who has worked at your venue before so you can get ideas of how to specifically decorate that venue space.
Steven Brooks, a good friend to PerfectDetails.co.uk, is one of the best there is. His blog is full of gorgeous inspirational shots, giving you ideas not just on how to decorate your venue but also of the photos you’ll want to make sure you ask your photographer to get if you’re not lucky enough to have booked Steven himself!
Kiruna & Gareth | Wedstock Festival Theme Jewish Wedding at Holton Lee, Poole
This is such an awesome wedding on so many levels. First of all, Kiruna’s amazing couture wedding dress is made almost entirely from paper! (mostly with the pages of an old copy of Alice in Wonderland together with that of an erotic novel). Secondly with an actress and a comedian marrying each other the relaxed feeling and originality that shine through this ‘wedstock’ wedding is just fabulous.
Kiruna Stamell, originally from Australia, and Gareth’s paths had crossed a couple of times over the years but as is so often the case, the timing wasn’t right. When a mutual friend re-introduced them in 2011, everything felt like it was meant to be and Gareth proposed to Kiruna after just 4 months.
They meticulously organised a weekend Wedstock wedding that took place in September 2012 complete with a fish ‘n’ chips van, camping, tipis, chill-out tents, a fabulous cake competition, and lots of crafty and DIY details all made by the very talented Kiruna herself!
Kiruna, the Bride: We wanted a relaxed, bohemian party and Holton Lee, our chosen venue, delivered our festival dreams and then some! Our wedding lasted an entire weekend with guests camping onsite with us. Holton Lee is actually a not-for-profit charity so you’ve got these beautiful camping fields and wonderful facilities but also disability-friendly buildings right next door which was essential as we were hosting several disabled guests who needed accessibility.
THE VENUE + THEME
I wanted a pretty picnic lovely camping theme inspired by my experiences at English music festivals but with more of a civilised touch. I was amazed at how much discrimination I came across when I first started looking for a disability-friendly venue but Honeybells who supplied our romantic and chill-out tents came to the rescue with the suggestion of the beautiful Holton Lee and it ticked all our boxes.
We both wanted a ‘picnic festival’ even ‘Woodstock’ feel. We wanted to create a social / non-wedding / relaxing afternoon during daylight on the Saturday and then we would have this shift as the Sabbath went out at sunset on Saturday evening and it turned into the wedding element of the weekend.
The venue was a godsend and it was wonderful to know that the money we spent was going into their not for profit ethos.
DIY CREATIVITY
Paper was a massive part of my theme which is why most of my wedding dress was made from paper.
I love the nostalgic element of brown paper packaging and string and as well as collecting lots of it I asked my local cafe to save the coca cola bottles to be my vases on the table and saved loads of money by making all the flowers myself out of paper.
The brown paper was the starting point and I then started collecting recycled scraps of paper in different colours to make festival bunting, and other artefacts in the months leading up to the wedding. The table centres were newspaper-covered K’s and G’s that I also made.
