WEDDING DECORATIONS + DIYS

When you scour wedding blogs and Pinterest for ideas, everything starts to look the same. The more I looked, the more I simultaneously wanted to do all of the things and none of the things. In the end, I think we found a good middle ground. The pub was pretty enough that it really didn't need much in the way of decorations, just flowers and a bit of bunting. I was very chilled in the run-up to the wedding and then two weeks before I realised that I did want all of the things, and so began a round of frantic shopping, online ordering and quick DIYing.

Without a doubt, the flowers were my absolute favourite (decor) part of the day - Jo took SO many photos, I think they were her favourite too! Instagram was my favourite resource for flowers; I already followed loads of London florists (Petalon, The Flower Appreciation Society, etc.) who have a lovely, loose style and, in the end, Scarlet & Violet came out on top. We had an initial consultation a few months before the wedding and came away with a rough quote and then two weeks before the wedding, my Mum and I went back to nail down the particulars. They were so helpful advising on what would be in season and what would be most cost effective; at the meeting, I decided on all white flowers and eucalyptus and then I saw a photo on their instagram the week before the wedding and did a total 180 and I'm SO glad I did because those peach roses were just something else! They even supplied a few empty jars so the bridesmaids' and my bouquets could be dotted around the venue.

The mismatched chairs were one of my favourite parts of the room - I ended up ordering this plain white bunting from Amazon, which was cheap and did the job, and these gold stars from eBay. If you are having a pub wedding, dried hops is a must, imho. We ordered three garlands from here - two for mantelpieces and a third that went around a doorway and looks so pretty and rustic.

Literally two days before the wedding I realised we didn't have any table numbers. I found these lovely frames at Oliver Bonas but they were quite expensive for 6 tables, so I ended up using these smaller ones for the rest of the tables. I used a white paint marker to trace the numbers from my computer and they ended up being one of my favourite DIYs!

The animal place names were also a little bit of an afterthought, but once they were all spray painted I was relieved at HOW GOOD they looked! Seriously, easiest DIY ever. I bought these and these super cheap animals on eBay, spray painted them and then made an incision in the back for each name card. I liked the idea of them all sitting in a big group, so I used the American escort card format for people to find their tables.

The napkins were one of the original craft ideas I had - I ordered this personalised stamp for the wrap and Darren hand-stamped everyone's names onto the napkins. The napkins were 35p tea towels from IKEA - we looked a bit mental buying over 60 of them!

The other thing I forgot about was cake toppers! I bought some better quality plastic penguins to go on top of our main cake, spray painted them gold and found some scraps of ribbon to make little flags. The florist supplied fresh flowers for the cake so they were in keeping with the rest of the decor.  For the chalkboard sign, I bought a ready-painted A-frame from the place on eBay - they are well-priced and very sturdy. You might recognise the photo collage from this post :)

In lieu of a guestbook, I bought 100 assorted cookbook cover postcards (they've sold out and these are over double what I paid for mine, but if you search 100 postcards you come up with lots of varieties) - it was fun to see guests searching through the individual covers to find just the right one for their message. Actually, we haven't read them yet so we're now saving them for our first anniversary! The other thing I did in the last week before the wedding was a makeshift tattoo bar; Darren has lots of tattoos so it seemed fitting. I bought this tattoo transfer paper and just used a regular printer to print two free printable designs I found on Pinterest. They turned out to be a big hit - my Mum even put one on her arm!

I'm so happy we put so many thoughtful touches into our decorations. I've heard so many stories of couples crafting every night/weekend, but in reality everything together took us about one weekend. I think my friend summed it up perfectly; "for a wedding that was supposed to be 'hassle-free', it certainly looks like a lot of thought has gone into it!"

All gorgeous, wonderful, amazing photos by Jo Crawford.