I'm getting married this year and though it's going to be small in comparison to other weddings, there are still some expectations that mean it's not exactly going to be the wedding we want. However, we still want to have a wedding that represents us as much as possible and we also have a budget we need to try and stick to. The budget has meant that we've needed to do a lot of the things ourselves to save money. So, this is the plan.
Guests
With things being the way they are at the moment with Covid we've decided to just have family who are already based in the UK coming to our wedding. For everyone else, we'll be streaming the ceremony so that they can watch it from the comfort of their own home. This will hopefully mean less disruption if we have to return to more restrictions. It also means we are having a smaller wedding more in keeping with what we want and it reduces the travel miles connected to our wedding.
For our smaller wedding, we wanted to make the wedding invitations ourselves to add a personal touch. The cross-stitch pattern is a Pictish design that I've had for a while which comes from the area of Scotland we first met in. The thread I used is from cross-stitch projects I've been doing since meeting my fiance. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to make invites for everyone so to add a personal touch to the other invites I hand wrote them and made origami hearts to send with them.
Clothing
I'm planning on making as much of my clothing as possible, which includes the skirt, overskirt, petticoat (I was looking for this in charity shops, but unfortunately haven't been able to find anything), off-shoulder top, shawl, matching face mask, and I'm borrowing my Mum's veil. I will be using some fabrics I've never sewn with before and I'll have to make up some of the patterns, but I have time and I think I'm going to enjoy the challenges these are going to bring. I'm wanting to use second-hand fabrics whenever I can and have already been able to source some good pre-loved cotton sheets for the main body of the skirt and top. I'm still looking for some net curtains or table cloth to make the overskirt with, but hopefully, I'll find that soon. The plan is to write blogs about each garment so look out for those.
For my partner, we've gotten him a suit that's made out of recycled plastic from Moss Bros. We're still looking for a shirt for him, which will hopefully be a charity shop find, and I'm hoping to make him a tie that matches my skirt and a face mask to go with his suit. We'll have to see how much time I have first though.
Food
We didn't want anything overly fancy for this as that's not really our style. So a nice pub lunch at a lovely pub in a beautiful location is the plan. We've got a table or two booked at the relatively local Hope and Anchor Inn, which has locally sourced food and drinks.
My Mum is wanting to make a traditional wedding cake for us, but we're also ordering brownies from our favourite bakery - Dammn Good Bakes. The brownies are a really good size and they're connected to a date we had.
Flowers
I was in two minds about whether we should have flowers or not, especially with the negative environmental and poor employment practices connected with the mass flower production we have now. However, they are a beautiful thing to have at a celebration so we had a search around to see if there were some sustainable options. We did actually find quite a few companies in the UK that had more sustainable practices, but we were lucky to find a company that was just down the road from us that sources flowers from local suppliers and is woman-owned, called Wildflower Floristry. (Side note: the flowers photographed aren't hers. Just flowers I brought because I wanted some in the flat after all the flower research.) Best of all they use wildflowers (funnily enough), which are my favourite type, and I'm looking forward to having a bouquet that looks like a wildflower meadow. For that very reason, we haven't asked for any particular colour scheme for them, apart from as much blue as possible.
They also normally offer vase hire for the table settings, but we've decided to do some charity shop hunting to buy vases so that our guests can take them away with them at the end of the meal. Lucy, the owner, was really lovely and it's definitely been one of the best, and least stressful, parts of the wedding preparations.
Wedding Gifts
This is a pretty standard one. There isn't really anything that we want, at least that we can fit in our flat and that is affordable for other people to buy for us. So instead, we're asking people to donate to charity. We've set up a Go Fund Me page for this very purpose which has the charities we would personally like to support.
Favours
This is similar to the wedding gifts in that we wanted them to be a way of supporting charities. So the favours we brought for everyone are badges from RNLI (with one of my favourite pictures) and wildflower seeds from Wildflower Favours to support the Bat Conservation Trust.
Wedding Day Activities
A day that's all about us and is a big party is not really our thing. We're also having the wedding in the morning, which would make it a very long party and who has the energy for that. So instead, we're doing things that are much more us. This includes a walk along the coast before lunch (weather permitting) and a beach clean afterwards. We got in contact with Surfers Against Sewage to set up our own beach clean for the day and they have very kindly sent us a beach cleaning kit for everyone to use.
So that's hopefully going to be our wedding. There are still a few things to organise and work through, but that's most of it done. Even though this is meant to be an enjoyable occasion I've actually found most of this quite stressful, which is unusual for me - possibly because the idea of being the centre of attention all day is quite off-putting to me. However, now that I mostly just have to worry about making my clothes I feel that things will get a lot more enjoyable. At least with that, I get to be creative.
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