By The Beach Festival: Crafternoon and Makeables

This wedding was definitely a team effort with lots of people getting involved. This is my homage to all things 'made' at the many crafternoons and late night creative soirees that occurred. We're all fairly crafty sorts (in both families) and after drooling at things on Pinterest and Offbeat Bride (whose fabulous book and site inspired us to DO WHAT WE WANTED instead of what's expected - many thanks for that, and if you've never read that book, buy it!) we made quite a lot of things in the end.

Hangables

Woah but this was a big project. We did buy some from various shops but it's the made stuff that really raised the game of our decorations. My Mum worked for weeks on handmade puffed hearts (fabric ones with lace and ribbon, and ones made from old mapbooks), hand stamped card ones and my very favourite - a whole string made from old lace doilies and handkerchiefs. Alex's mum worked with gingham and pretty fabric (one bit had mermaids on!) and they all came together in a delightfully kitsch and vintage mix up of styles.

Alongside these we bought loads of different sized and coloured paper pom-poms from Deco Pom Poms (a cheeky nod to cheerleading there!) to hang from the ceiling, Many hands helped us to get these all fanned out beautifully and it was by no means easy. They were strung across the centre of the tipi's using fishing wire from one of my Dad's rods at the cottage, so they bobbed about in the wind too. They were just so cheery! We were never going to be able to nail down a proper colour scheme for everything, our world is bright and exciting and full of colour, and the decorations just made me happy!

The absolute icing on the cake though, was the incredible banner that my Aunty Dot made for us. She stitched and knitted and noodled and whatever else incredibly crafty people do - all the way from her home on Unst in Shetland to Runswick Bay! She was crafting on buses and ferries all over the North! We hung it up right above the dance floor and it looked amazing!

Table thingers

Probably the thing I had clearest in my mind, was how our tables would look. Shabby chic, vintage and kitsch all rolled into one. I picked up table runners every time H&M had a sale over the last year and a half, and we collected glass pots from all over (dessert dishes from vintage fairs, goblets from charity shops, low containers from Nu puddings, funky glasses and tea light holders from Ikea) to house a multitude of little flickering tea lights that looked like a sea of lighters at a festival ballad at night.  Oh my Mum stuck pretty lace and ribbon around all of the plain ones to beautify them, and at the end of the night my Cousin Jo, my Sister and I were drinking champagne out of the random candle dishes and goblets - mine was called 'The Chalice'... I don't know why...

We picked out interesting books from the ten-bob-barn at The Book Farm (some very funny trips with my Mum giggling at old book titles) and lace ribboned them into stacks for centrepieces, and then I used the vectors and fonts again to create our table name cards. These were all named after areas or stages at Bestival (our favourite festival ever!) and they were held up using some pastel coloured bulldog clips I got from ebay, with some lace tape stuck over the sides and the handles removed - it's super easy and looks cute, I think I saw it on Pinterest!

Instead of putting place-cards on each spot (I was worried if the wind blew through the tents, they'd all get scattered) we thought of putting tags on all of the chairs. We took brown label tags, the kind Harry Potter would put on his school trunk, used an acrylic stamp of lettering and music scores to loosely print onto them, scoured facebook and family photos for funny pictures of each guest (much mirth when everyone tried to find their seat) and stuck on tiny shells we got from the Rainbow Shells shop in Whitby, along with their photo and name. It took aaaaaages, but we knew they'd be fun.

These were the tags before they had the funny facebook photos and names stuck on them, I just used superglue for the tiny shells and nearly all our guests remembered to take them home which is nice!

Also on the tables was a floral handkerchief in place of a napkin, we used them to make a little pocket for the cutlery, a tiny flag and a paper straw each - everyone loved these and asked if they could keep them, expecting them to be fancy/expensive ones or that they belonged to the catering company, but actually they were another great ebay find! A few origami cranes I made also dotted the tables, in Japanese legend if you make a thousand origami cranes or 折鶴 orizuru, you may be granted a wish by a crane. I didn't make a thousand. I didn't even make a hundred. But I think they're lucky regardless!

The very best and most special things on the tables though, were the flowers. Yep, you heard me, flowers. My Mum painstakingly made hundreds of felt flowers so each table could have a beautiful posy in a little vase. Each one had a tiny button or pearl in the centre and some of them were even made from her own hand-made felt. They looked to me like the fields of wild flowers we saw on trips to France, they felt like memories and they were the first thing everyone mentioned to me. I love them.

Invitations & Branding

Yep, branding. I knew once I'd created the original images for our invitations that it would be easy to create everything in the same format, giving it all an identity. Whilst I don't much go in for matching stuff, this did make things easier. I just stuck to the same vectors and the same fonts across the board to make stuff like the table names, the lanyards and the wristbands.

Wristband design

Facebook banner

Invitation poster

Sticker/plectrum logo

So our invites were designed by me, but printed by John E Wright Printers in Leicester and the proper festival style tickets were printed by Hot Ice Printing, also in Leicester (they have proper tearable sections with foil on!) and we wrote essential postcodes and phone numbers on the tear-off section of the tickets so people could put them into their purses for the weekend. The card invitations themselves were from Pocketfold Invites and they have loads of colour/paper/size/orientation options, but we chose toploading pockets so we could put tonnes of info in. Again, Mum helped me get through all of these, even cutting all the info sheets down to size as they were a bit big for the pockets!

Info sheets (where/when/how/what to bring/hotels and cottages/gifts etc) Oh and our RSVP was a little Tipi, guests were asked to take a photo of them somewhere special or to craft up the tipi somehow and email it to us, at our Wedding email address. If you've just got engaged - set up an email account straight away! It helped us to keep track of everything and keep company contacts in one place, as well as providing a way for guests to contact us easily.

We used mini paper doilies for the front, along with a patterned paper slide printed with a key to hold it closed. Inside the papers were created to be different sizes so that only the top banners showed in the pocket, the 'poster' was stuck in the centre section and I turned printed plectrums/guitar picks (which were printed with the tipi logo above) into mini fridge magnets using a pack of cheap flat magnets from ebay and a glue gun.

I took a google image of the area and from it drew a cartoon map for the invitations as well, which doubled up for use on the back of the VIP lanyards. You can just about see it in the top left of the card inserts picture, but I won't post it here because it has personal information on it, sorry!

The table-plan board followed the same format as everything else for it's name cards, and my Mum & Dad created the board itself, using a picture frame and some pretty floral fabric - cool huh?

On our sweeties/cake table, there were also printed paper bags for putting sweets in (my sister went stamping mad on these as the thought of doing so many was hurting my brain) and I had cross-stitched a 'love is sweet' picture which was in a frame shaped like a beach hut. Rach also did all of our chalk boards, which pointed the way to the loos, what the schedule for the day was and various other things.

One other brilliant idea we got from some internet searching, is the 'finger-print guest-book' (we did have a normal guest book too, but having been to lots of other weddings, know that they don't always get filled in too well). We opted for a little couple silhouette holding balloons to be filled in with our guest's fingerprints, but you can get trees and other pictures too! I love that there's a tiny fingerprint from little Florence on there, so cute! Sorry about the picture quality - I took it on my phone and then it went through the facebook mangle as well, but the picture is lovely and sits proudly on our living room wall, reminding us of the most perfect day!

One very special section of 'made' things that I don't have a picture of, is the huge collection of hand-knitted blankets my Mum made. They are so beautiful and cosy - and they were put into our giant steamer trunk next to the dancefloor, so that if people got cold they could just cuddle up in a blanket and get warm again. Mum made loads of them in different colours and a really amazing white sewn one that had these rips in the front that show through rainbow colours!

Alex's Mum also made an awesome clutch bag for the day, which was silked and sewn and sequinned by herself - and it even had two A's embroidered on it for Anna & Alex! I was also given a really beautiful traditional lucky horseshoe at our ceremony, which my Mum handmade. It's covered in pearl and lace embellishments with touches of blue - you can see it best in this picture,

I'm sure there's more I've forgotten... I'll just add it to this post if I find more pictures!