The DIY Wedding - Confetti Bombs, Love Hearts and Silk Flowers

We celebrate our first wedding anniversary this week-end and by way of reflection, I thought I'd share a few pictures.

Ours was a small, family wedding with a registry office ceremony and then it was all aboard a 70 foot canal boat for a 6 hour trip of 3 hours in each direction - a moving restaurant with constantly changing scenery of the countryside and later, once the dining was over and the alcohol had started to kick in, the mood changed and it became more of a party boat.  

We wanted to keep things simple but fun.  It was difficult to think of wedding favours that would keep everyone happy, young and old, male and female.  In the end, we ran out of time but the last minute love heart bags (which also included mints) made good table decorations and went down well with most guests and fitted well with our blue and white slightly vintage, slightly Wedgwood theme.

I made bouquets for myself and my bridesmaids from silk flowers - we had a 200 mile journey the day before the wedding so it was so much easier to get the flowers sorted in advance - and we still have them a year later!

Again, to get around the issue of dealing with fresh flowers on the day (and dealing with a florist 200 miles away), the ladies wore "silk" rosettes in colours to match their outfits (these were multi-purpose, so could be worn on a dress, attached to a bag or even clipped into the hair).

The guys wore home-made buttonholes which co-ordinated with the stripes in the groom's jacket and reflected my love of working with beads and all things crafty

As a jewellery maker, I made my own wedding pieces, and included pearls from my late mother's favourite pearl necklace in my headband and bracelet.

We put "confetti bombs" on the tables for guests to throw and create photo opportunities when we reached the half way point of the trip and everyone got off the barge for a walk along the tow path.

One of the most amazing things of all though was the fantastic wedding cake that my very clever sister-in-law had created.  She's not a professional cake maker/decorator but has a wonderful natural talent when it comes to creating decorative cakes.  She took on board our requirements - blue and white with a touch of pink, spots (my dress) and stripes (grooms jacket), bunting (invitations and boat decor), lovebirds (invitations) and just a suggestion of flowers (forget-me-nots)