Our Handmade Wedding

Photo by Laura Ashman

One of the most fantastic events in 2016 was our summer wedding. Planning a wedding has been... Well, let's call it interesting. Being from two different countries with different traditions, what we imagined as wedding had been quite varied. There were moments when I worried about how will certain aspects of my personality that will project themselves into the wedding be perceived by the "natives" of the isles, I worried even more about how the English bits will be perceived by the non-natives belonging to my family (which is in itself a patchwork of Slovakian, Czech and Hungarian).   With the family flying in from afar and staying in our flat, it was sure to be a bit of a bumpy road, but all with a good old happy ending :) 

Wanting to not spend a fortune, we decided to do many things ourselves. Apart from many "me" touches to the wedding like the moss and fern, there were also many "us" touches. After all the wedding was not mine only. The wedding favours were one of these touches.

When we first met, our first conversation was about tea. In spite of being freedivers who generally stay away from caffeine, we both had a taste for black tea, which has brought us together. Therefore love tea favours were a must. Amazingly, we got all the little jam jars for free from a coffee and bagel shop where we both go so often that the owner knows us and agreed to save us these little jars. They are unbelievably cute (alnd also super expensive when you try to buy them in craft supply shops). I really enjoyed mixing the little sugar hearts into the tea.

 Childrens' wedding favours were slightly different - filled with gummy bears. Hubby did the brown paper tops and string tying. Proper teamwork!

Photos by Laura Ashman

Since hubby has hundreds of metres of brown paper in his workshop, I used a lot of it in decorating. The bunting was made by my sister-in-law and her die-cutter and I made the seating plan and table numbers myself, with help of one image from Shutterstock which we also put on our wedding invitations and order of service booklets at church.

Photos by Laura Ashman

I have been saving glass jars from absolutely everthing all year and spent many hours decorating them with hessian, string and ribbons. One of the drawbacks was that because of the fire safety regulations we could not use real candles, but we bought masses of the little electric safety tea lights. We still use them at home - romance at a flick of a switch! :)

Photos by Laura Ashman

The chairs and tables belonged to the village hall where we had our reception, the tablecloths, crockery and cutlery were rented but the flowers, jars and hessian were all prepared and set up by us (well, a dedicated team of groom and a team of helpful family members and friends who worked on it for ages whilst I was having my hair and make-up done).

My flower girl and maid of honor both received a special set of biscuits which I got on Etsy from CookieArtLondon.

Photos by Laura Ashman

The cake was a Christmas-like fruit cake baked by my lovely father-in-law. He had it professionally iced and made the cake toppers himself - a snail and a piano! It was his super secret wood-turning/carving project and there couldn't be anthing better to put on top of a cake for us - a piano technician and a trained malacologist. :)

Well, that was the first day of our married life and I dare sa it left us completel shattered, even though it only lasted until  10 p.m. We tend to be a bit spontaneous and agreeable when we make plans, but we have never planned an event of this magnitude and importance, which meant there were a couple of disagreements on the way, but I am so happy we made it all the way here. Seven years have gone since we first got to know each other, five since we started going out and the rest of our lives is ahead!  I bet it's going to be wonderful :)