Back to the daily grind

So...last time I blogged, we'd had our friend from Hungary staying with us and we were getting ready to go to a festival.  Did I mention that the new car had got 'pranged'?  We had hoped to go off up to Leicestershire in that, but as it was, it was stuck in the repair shop.  Initially we thought about hiring a car, but when we looked at the cost, it was pretty prohibitive.  Thankfully my sister-in-law (who was also coming to the festival) was not using her car, which has a roofbox.  A few grovelly phonecalls allowed us to borrow her car for the weekend. In fact, there was a whole troupe of us tat the festival: us three, sister-in-law, brother-in-law, niece, three friends from bellydance, and two of their friends too. We ended up with our own little 'village'.

Our 'village' at Barefoot.  Yes all those tents in a circle.

The pirate flag was courtesy of Debra, a fellow blogger & bellydancer.  You can't see our tent - it is behind the gazebo, which is where we stashed our cooking stuff,and the pram, and where we sat when the sun got too hot.

All in all it was a great weekend, although I didn't get to do as many workshops as I would have liked. Oh well, it's on again next year - we'll be back, with the village, and hopefully even more friends & family.

When we got back it struck me that we had a week until the wedding.  Panic stations!  Keeping in touch with the bride regularly I discovered there were a few changes to guests...and this continued right up to the last minute.  Fortunately I had printed out the bulk of things before I went camping so in between getting the washing from the weekend done, I was able to work my way through the various tasks.  

In all I made around 40 save the date cards, 88 invitations, 82 place cards, 41 menus, 41 Orders of service, 60 or so papers to go in with the table favours, 28 bars of soap, 8 table name cards, 2 pairs of earrings, one post box, one table plan, and one guest book.  Oh, and wrote the speech for the Father of the Bride as he had a sudden attack of nerves and realised (four days before the wedding) that he hadn't written anything and couldn't "wing it".

Here's a "during" picture.  I was in the middle of 'ribboning' the menus, placecards and Orders of Service.

And here are some pictures of some of the finished articles.

Outside of Menu

Inside of Menu

Placecard

One of the favour bags containing home-made soap.

Table plan

I was really pleased with the way the items turned out.  The invitations were made slightly differently by printing onto mulberry paper, but I found that because it was so thin, it got stuck in the rollers on the printer quite a lot, so although I did get finished items without too many problems, there was quite a bit of wastage.  For the remainder of the stationery I used the same pearlised card that the 'Save the date' and invites had been printed on, but used pearlised vellum cut & stuck on.  This made it much easier as the vellum happily went through the printer. The menus were constructed slightly differently - I was going to print directly onto the cards but then realised that would entail lots of sitting around waiting for ink to dry so I used pearlised paper printed and stuck in, meaning I could construct the front and hole punch them ready for ribbon whilst the ink dried on the paper.  It also meant I could print four 'middles' at once.  I used the same paper for the favour bag inserts, and on the post box and guest book.

The Orders of Service were again in a similar style but to make them easier on the eye for the actual ceremony I used ivory matt paper to print out the details for the inner, and stapled them.  They were constructed in such a way that one sheet of A4 paper held all the information, printed front & back.  Again this meant that I could have the covers ready whilst the 'inners' were being printed.

The only 'tool' I am lacking at the moment is a paper guillotine - ours has been loaned out.  I had to get some help from hubby to cut papers as I don't have a particularly steady hand.  He also helped out with some of the hole punching late into the night.

Overall, I was really pleased with how everything turned out.  I am trying to locate some pictures of the other items, so I'll post those asap.  I'll leave you with a shot of one of the pairs of earrings, and a couple of wedding photos.

Purple/lilac earrings with Swarovski crystals

Wedding hair - and it's all my own!

Bridesmaid with other pair of handmade earrings in a different colourway

Very handsome pageboy

The Bride & Groom

Me & baby

Cutting the cake