Strike it lucky: the tradition of giving bridal keepsakes and my modern day twists

It’s often not until you start the research process for your own wedding that you suddenly start thinking about things such as lucky horseshoes and other bridal keepsakes.   But the tradition of giving favours to a newly married woman has actually been around for years.  So where did these traditions come from?  Here are some of the histories behind bridal keepsakes, and my modern take on the lucky horseshoe:

Wooden spoons

Although giving a wooden spoon may seem like a bit of a booby prize when it comes to wedding keepsakes, it actually has romantic origins.  The love spoon is a traditional gift of love in Wales and would be made by a man to give as a gift to his intended lady.  They would be carefully and intricately carved to show the recipient how much care and devotion she would receive from her beloved.  If the lady in question kept the spoon, the man’s love was returned; if, however, it was sent back, it meant that his love was unrequited.  Today, decorated wooden spoons are often given to newlyweds as a symbol of their love – let’s hope none of the spoons are returned! 

Lucky sixpence

Everyone knows the rhyme, “Something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue”, but did you know that the rhyme finishes, “and a silver sixpence for her shoe”?  As you’re probably aware, it’s considered lucky if the bride wears something to symbolise each of the components of the rhyme, and traditionally the bride’s father should provide a lucky silver sixpence to go in her shoe, to symbolise prosperity within the marriage.

Horseshoes

Horseshoes have a long history of being associated with good luck, and are probably the most well known of good luck charms to give to the bride and groom.  The Romans believed that the ‘U’ shape protected against evil, and there are also stories relating to mythology, such as iron being a good luck metal and a crescent moon shape symbolising prosperity.  Remember, a horseshoe should never be turned upside down in case the good luck falls out!

Modern twists of luck

In the run up to my own big day, I took up the craft of Fimo clay modelling, making my wedding cake toppers and also keepsakes for my two bridesmaids.  Having not been able to give up my new found love of this craft, my creations have branched into lucky horseshoes to give to friends on their wedding day.  My horseshoes are not just any old horseshoes however; they are horseshoes featuring the bride and groom (or at least a cartoon version of them!)!  These have been such fun to make, and I’ve enjoyed having different styles of wedding dress to create, different hairstyles and different suits!

Here’s one I made for our good friends Sim and Charlotte.  I especially enjoyed making the groom’s top hat for this one!

And this is my latest creation for our friends Louise and Dan, who get married this Jubilee weekend.  The ‘Cadbury’s’ purple ribbon is designed to match their wedding colours:

The beauty of the above is that they can be created to suit any bride and groom’s colours, themes and styles, so each one is different, and I like to think they give a unique and personalised keepsake – and hopefully bring a little bit of luck to the newlyweds along the way!

The Centre of Attention - Inspiring Wedding Centrepieces

There’s a reason that so much thought and attention goes into the table centrepieces at weddings.  As the name suggests, they really are the centrepiece of your reception venue decorations, and therefore hold the power to make or break your theme.  Bearing this in mind, centrepieces don’t have to be just about flowers – or at least not flowers displayed in the traditional sense – if you don’t want them to be.  Here are just a few ideas to whet your appetite on the road to making your centrepieces the centre of attention:

Tutti-fruity!
If you want an alternative to flowers, but still want to keep your centrepieces looking natural and organic, how about using fruit and vegetables for your centrepieces?  Bowls of lemons or oranges will look beautiful for a citrus-coloured summer wedding, and small pumpkins and squashes will add a touch of rustic colour to autumnal wedding days.  Small pots of herbs clustered together have a beautifully natural feel, and they have the added benefit of making your reception venue smell divine.  Even every day fruit and veg displays such as small baskets filled with multi-coloured tomatoes will work well – and they make delicious favours to boot!

The object of your desire
Often our wedding theme says something about who we are as people.  Therefore, why not think about tying your theme together with some strategically placed objects as your table centrepieces?  For example, if you’re avid readers, how about a stack of beautiful antique books covered in a paper to match your theme?  Or if your day will reflect the fact that you’re film fanatics, how about a centrepiece made from film reels and a clapperboard displaying the table number?  Centrepieces such as these will make your theme instantly recognisable to all of your guests!

Bowled over

The simple, yet effective, idea of filling a bowl or a vase with small objects is easy, inexpensive, and works with a variety of wedding themes.  Having a relaxed beach wedding?  Fill vases of different sizes with pretty shells.  Looking for an idea for a romantic Valentine’s Day celebration?  Buy tall, clear vases and pile up the heads of silk roses inside.  Having a rustic autumnal affair?  Load pine cones and horse chestnuts into large, shallow dishes.  Planning a sparkling Christmas celebration?  Fill fishbowls with sparkling baubles in your wedding colours.  The beauty of the filled-bowl centrepiece is that it can be made by anyone, days in advance – and yet the overall look is so effective and works with any number of themes! 

Real-life Bride and Groom Jess and Barry filled vases tall and small with cute button flowers!

Paper-chain

Although not a traditional material for centrepieces, paper shouldn’t be overlooked as inspiration for your centrepieces.  Colourful paper pompoms lined up in the centre of long trestle tables will add a cheerful look to a summer event, and vases filled with branches adorned with origami swans and cherry blossoms will really give your wedding an original look – and what’s more, you can use whatever paper takes your fancy and matches your wedding colours!

Light of my life
Don’t dismiss candles as boring centrepieces – there’s still original ways of using candles to light up your tables.  Think about using lots of long, tapered candles in a variety of colours that match your wedding colours, either lined up along the centre of long tables or clustered together in the centre of round tables.  Alternatively, how about using lots of tealights in a variety of vintage-inspired holders to add interest?

With a little imagination, you can create centrepieces which will really be talking points.  Who says your tables have to be traditional?  Your centrepieces can really reflect you and your groom – reflecting the fact that you’re the centre of attention on your big day!

The crafty brides guide: the top 10 ways to DIY your wedding day (but still keep it stylish!)

As every bride knows, weddings are an expensive business.  We all want our days to be filled with all the lovely things we’d like to include, but sometimes our budget just doesn’t stretch that far.  And yet so many things can be hand-made to keep costs low – without losing any of the style.  Here’s how you can add personality to your day by making easy DIY items which will be bespoke to you and lower the budget at the same time:

1)        Every bride’s favourite DIY project: Invitations!

Yes, there’s been a recent trend towards making rather than buying the wedding stationery, particularly when it comes to invitations, but this doesn’t mean that you’ll be jumping on the band wagon by joining all the crafty brides who have gone before you in making their wedding invitations. By designing and making your own, you’ll get exactly what you want: the perfect colours, the perfect fonts and the perfect embellishments.  Every piece of information you want included, can be.  They can be as simple or as complicated as you want them to be, but if you’re a first time crafter, sometimes simple is more effective – and also easier for you to produce!  However you decide to design them, you’ll be proud as punch when the compliments start rolling in after they’ve been sent!

Invitations are strangely satisfying to send when they have been DIY'ed!

2)        Take your seats please: the table plan

Whether you’re after the traditional frame-mounted plan or something a bit different, table plans are a great way to use your DIY skills, incorporate the theme of your day and add a bit of personality at the same time.  They can be made using anything that takes your fancy: old suitcases with lists of names mounted on them, hat stands with your guest lists hanging from them, vintage mirrors with the names painted on, twigs and wishing tags....the world is your oyster when it comes to DIY table plans!  And don’t forget that escort cards, as an alternative to a traditional table plan, are also easy to make.

3)        A gift to your guests: favours

Favours are a great way of letting your personality shine through on your big day.  Fancy treating your guests to mini pots of jam at your country garden wedding?  Go for it!  Want to hand paint baubles for your Christmas wedding favours?  What’s stopping you?!  Yes, there may be a lot of work involved, but your guests will come away with a memento of your wedding which will remind them of the effort and love put into your day each time they set eyes on it!

Homemade favours are an easy DIY project for brides!

4)        The little extras: sweetie buffets and photo booths

Ok, so your DIY skills probably don’t extend far enough to actually making the glass jars needed for a sweetie buffet or the camera and tripod for a photo booth (!) but you don’t need to leave these little extra aspects of your wedding day to the professionals.  Sweetie buffets are so easy to prepare yourself, by collecting antique vases, recycling large storage and food jars from your kitchen and sourcing vintage cake stands.  Make some pretty labels to tell people what’s what, stamp some sweetie bags with your wedding date and all you need to add are the sweets!  As a twist on this, how about a cake stall for a village fete themed wedding?  Photo booths are also relatively straightforward; once you’ve got your camera and tripod in place, collect large frames for guests to pose through, make moustaches and lips mounted on sticks and signs for people to hold, and raid your local fancy dress shop for cheap wigs – your guests will have hours of fun, and you’ll get some great photos!

A sweetie buffet is an easy way to add a different, but still personal touch to your day

5)        The centre of attention: table centrepieces

Centrepieces really do pull the theme of the wedding together, and you can really go to town with them.  Why not book a floristry course and learn how to make gorgeous displays to grace your tables?  Alternatively, you could think outside the box and create beautiful focal points such as stacked vintage books, stylishly adorned birdcages or a grouping of ornate frames to really generate a talking point amongst your guests. 

6)        Colourful crafts: confetti cones

Whether made from intricate lace doilies stored in a gorgeous wicker basket for a rustic feel, or made from colourful cones of scrapbooking paper held in a cupcake stand, confetti cones are such a simple DIY project – and making sure your guests are provided will lots of confetti will ensure that you end up with colourful photographs too!  Why not create personalised ‘newspaper’ on your home computer to make cones from, and then presenting them in a vintage suitcase?  You can even make the confetti by collecting the petals from your garden and drying them – something for true DIY brides to try!

7)        Bows, bunting and bouquets: venue decorations

It’s easy to dress up a bare wall with a string of colourful bunting, or a forgotten corner with giant bouquets of paper flowers.  Alternatively, why not pin up lines of photos of you and your groom from years gone by, and let them tell your story of how you came to be there, together, on your wedding day?   Strings of paper vines and colourful, bright paper pom-poms suspended from the ceiling can really jazz up a reception room or marquee, and create a colourful, fun atmosphere.

8)        Be our guest: guest books and other ideas

Instead of having the standard shop-bought guest book to record the messages and well-wishes from friends and family, how about having a go at personalising your own?  Buy a plain note book and embellish it with ribbon, bows, buttons, glitter....in fact, anything that takes your fancy!  Or if you fancy something a little different, why not think about creating your own wish tree from vintage tags and spray-painted branches, or record your guests with a hand drawn finger print tree?  Just leave some multi-coloured ink pads out for your guests to stamp their finger print on your hand drawn tree – simple but effective!  You could even create a signing frame from a beloved photo or even a hand drawn image framed on a plan cardboard frame – just ask your guests to sign the frame!

9)        Have your cake and eat it too: bake your own wedding cake!....

Your cake says a lot about your wedding: it will be in all of your photos, be a centrepiece in your reception hall and be given to all of your guests after the event.  And yes, while this does put pressure on you to perform, if you or someone you know is a great cake baker, why not DIY your wedding cake too?  Be it a stack of deliciously tempting cup cakes, mini iced cakes, or the traditional three tiers, a cake baked by you or someone special to you will go down a treat!

10)     ....And to top it all off: cake toppers

And to go with that all-important cake, how about a homemade cake topper?!  Whether you decide to go for an elegant floral display to adorn the most important cake you’ll ever eat, get busy with the polymer clay and create your own personalised figures, or even use little wooden dolls or knitted characters to top the cake off, you can add your own touch and personality to your wedding cake through your cake toppers. 

Homemade Cake Toppers

However you decide to DIY your wedding, being creative and crafty is a great way of adding that personal touch.  And it’ll keep costs down too – bargain!

What happens after the ‘happy ever after’?

The realisation that I was married hit me at 3am on my wedding night.  As my head swam with the memories from our most special of days, not only was I ravenous from the fact that all the mingling that goes with being the bride meant that I didn’t get to eat any of our gorgeous evening buffet (at least our guests tell me it was gorgeous!), but I suddenly realised, in startling Monica from Friends fashion, that I was no longer the bride. Forget the 18 months spent planning the wedding; this is where the real work would begin!

Never did I think that the two days between our wedding day and the honeymoon would be more stressful than the week leading up to the big day itself.  Boy, was I wrong!  Saturday morning and we awoke as Mr and Mrs for the first time: after breakfast with all of our lovely family and friends who had stayed over at our wedding venue (which I highly recommend!  It felt like an extension of the wedding day to relive the happy memories the day before!), I should have known that this leisurely start was lulling us into a false sense of security; by 11am the long-suffering venue staff were about ready to escort us from the premises, as we were still carting all of our bits and pieces away from the function suite, and they were valiantly trying to set up for their next wedding!

Cars loaded, off we went to set about our day’s chores.  This meant first rounding up the hired suits and returning them, my hired dress hoop and the cake stand, and then a little detour on the way to see friends who had recently become parents and were therefore unable to attend the wedding. 

Sunday dawned bright and early and while my hubby, in that blissfully ignorant way that our men-folk quite often have, was happy sipping champagne, eating wedding cake and opening the presents from our very generous family and friends I came down to earth with a bump!  It suddenly dawned on me that we were due to jet off to swanky New York and sunny Cancun for 10 nights the following day – and we hadn’t packed a stitch!!  After a bit of cajoling, I managed to persuade hubby that perhaps it would be wise to think about getting the suitcases out, and we sensibly packed for our impending honeymoon!   We maybe not so sensibly then decided to design and order our thank you cards and apply for Olympic tickets! Finally, at the end of the day we both collapsed with a slice of wedding cake, a glass of champers and the remainder of our wedding gifts to open.  Don’t bet on the days following your wedding being the calm after the storm; for us at this point, our honeymoon couldn’t come soon enough!

Enjoying the delights of New York on our well-earned honeymoon!