Gifts that people actually want - Wedding, Part Two

When you start considering ethical issues, gift-giving becomes an issue. Does this person want or need this thing? Will they use it? How wasteful is it if they don't? You have to think a lot about the individual and make sure you aren't wasting resources on a gift that will be thrown out or sit unused in their home.

So trying to think of a gift to give to 50 people that would not be wasteful was quite difficult.

One obvious choice is edible things. We ended up getting rainbow heart lollipops from Designer Candy. They were good value and a good company to communicate with, and they sent us flavour samples to try first. The lollipops also looked cool on the tables. Ethically, I'd call it a mixed success. Of course each one is wrapped in plastic, so not so great, and then I suppose that although it is edible, perhaps not all of our guests actually want to slowly work through a large lollipop. Since it doesn't have our names on it though, I hope that anyone who doesn't want it will gift it on to someone who will.

The lollipops were also useful to tie name tags to. I drew the tags myself, which was fun, although I knew as soon as I drew the pigs and whales that I was running a big risk! No one was too offended.

Then, as we looked at numerous gardens to be our wedding venue, we came up with our other gift idea - pot plants. What we loved about this idea was that we could buy some pretty plants, use them as table decorations for the night, and then people could take one home. This, in my opinion, was a complete success. There were no decorations of any kind wasted that night, nothing left to throw out. Not everyone wanted a plant, but there were plenty of people to pick up the slack. Those left towards the end of the night had a great time picking and choosing from the leftovers to add to their collection. We ended up with about six plants to take home, including a fern from the gardens where we got married. Let's hope I don't kill it.

Then Rhiannon gave me another plant when she came to visit this week - 'Blushing Bride'. Nice.

High-Pressure Crafting - Wedding, Part One

Some people were surprised that I didn't DIY more stuff for my wedding, but I focused on trying to reduce stress for myself, and it was a good idea for my sanity. I would need to keep that for all the twirling I would be made to do.

I had the dresses designed and made by Sandie Bizys and her talented dressmaker Amy. I knew from the start I wanted something fifties, but I had less classy ideas than Sandie and we ended up with something far more elegant than I imagined. She suggested the idea of searching for old family stuff that could be incorporated into the dress. Most of what my family has kept is more twenties and involves a lot of jet and other dark things, but I did find these little Brussels lace birds that Mum bought years before we were born. She said she always thought of them as bluebirds of happiness.

So the birds went on my dress at the back.

She does a lovely dress with swallows around the bottom and I wanted to do something similar based on these birds for my bridesmaids. We talked a lot about hand-painting but in the end screenprinting was a much safer idea. As it was there were plenty of moments of panic and a number of trial runs.

But I think they turned out ok.

More on the wedding later!

Oh no not another potential hobby!!

My most amazing bridesmaids, or "Matrons of Awesome" as I also like to call them, threw me a superfantabulous Hens party yesterday. We had a cupcake-decorating class at my friend's house, followed by dinner, and it was an inspiring way to spend a day. I love learning new things, and as always I got very excited by it and have lots of probably-doomed plans to do a lot more of this.

We each made a monkey, a lion, a zebra and a cookie-monster face. In my house, we have already eaten cookie monster!

This is my monkey and lion. My monkey's head was too small and his neck was too long, so I gave him a scarf. Scarves proved popular with several monkeys suffering the same condition. This is almost the perfect camera angle to hide the bad bits of my lion.

My zebra:

All four of mine, including a crumb-covered cookie monster:

Here are Rhiannon's:

Here are the rest that I got photos of:

 

Best Hens night ever!