The ultimate DIY wedding: Tipi Tent Reception

 

Sorry for the delay in sharing part III, but here it is at last! After the wonderful service we returned to Winstream for the afternoon's festivities. We were super lucky to have a journey back in the in-laws car through the Kent backlands! Our chauffeur, brother-in-law, was super speedy, so lucky I had a giant veil to use as a hair-scarf to keep my barnet in place!! :)

We were so lucky that were the night before had been soggy muddy ground dried out suddenly with the morning sun and that sunshine then continued to beat down on us all day! The boys in their tuxes may have been a little less impressed, but I for one was over the moon!!  And this is what the venue looked like bathed in the unexpected sunshine! What a welcome :)

We took a quiet moment, en famille, in the house to share a glass of champagne which was lovely and then we made our grand entrance across the bridge into the magical tipi field to celebrate with all our lovely family and friends.

Continuing the two wheeled transportation theme from the wedding stationary we pimped up two gorgeous Pashley bikes, on loan from family (sooo much more photogenic than our functional, sleek road bikes!) to frame the entrance to the venue. We decked them out in ribbons, baskets and hydrangeas until they looked too cute!

We kicked off with just a handful of formal photos, usual suspects: The family. :)

Isabella, playing gorgeous for the camera!

Fabulous fun photo of my lovely new family. I love the grins all round! :)

My and the official Wedding Goffer (aka Best Sister Ever!). Love you Iz!

The boys looking super dapper in their suits!

And some of my favourite photos of our lovely guests enjoying the bubbles, canapes and sunshine! These are my crowd of school friends, crazy to think these lovelies will soon have known me for 20 years, sheesh! Nothing you can hide from the people who knew you way back, when you were a spotty, swotty, silly teenager!

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Family chilling out on the bales. Love Rhian's facial expressions here (and her legs that go on for ever!)! We begged and borrowed blankets from all the family to cover the bales dotted around the field. Some of these are genuine woollen Welsh family heirlooms, so it was lovely to add them into our special day! 

Photo of a photo! And above, the general hub hub in the field. Love pictures like this that tell the story of all the goings on, rather than just who was there.

Some of the cute littles who joined us for the afternoon reception. What a smart little nephew in his mini-tux. Very dapper!

Boys with their toys! 

What a cutie-pie. Those eyes and those curls!

My Ma and Aunty chinwagging and setting the world to right no doubt! 

And since this is waaaaaay beyond the maximum advisory number of photos for a blog post, and you're probably all about starting to feel an afternoon snooze coming on, I'll take our leave with a big wave from the whole gang before we vanished inside for some grub! :) Woo!

Again, all photos in this post courtesy of the lovely Anushe Low Photography.

DIY Fantastic: Bunting Bonanza

Photo courtesy of Anushe Low Photography

You will soon see that our wedding day was Bunting Central. (Big un-subtle plug for the next instalment of the wedding photos, coming very soon. And a very sneaky peak of the decked out venue up above!!)

In the months leading up to the wedding, the bunting was the one (and only!) thing we did start early. As a result, we simply kept on going, literally churning out miles of the stuff!!!! By the wedding day itself we (another team effort between Chief Goffer, Mama, Leila and I!) had sewn reams and reams of bright and colourful bunting, enough to decorate the venue 3 times over!!!

This is testament to how straight forwards it is to make yourself. So I'll keep the steps simple, it's more about the theme you fancy, be it country florals, pretty pastels, circus brights or moody black and whites! We chose a series of bright pinks, oranges and corals as the base colours with a few yellows and blues thrown in for good measure.

First up, the ingredients:

• Fabric, we used a range of cottons and ploy cottons, cotton generally needs more care (eg ironing to look smart) but I find it easier to work with. Trade-off, you pick.
• Template - this is a straightforward triangle. Be it fat, thin, skinny, pointy, the choice is yours! Just remember your final flags will end up almost a cm smaller all round, so add on a small seam allowance of 1cm all the way round.  
• Cotton tape or bias tape - plenty of cheap options on Amazon or your local haberdashers, we went for simple white to offset the brights.
• The usual suspects - scissors, pins, sewing machine that does a simple straight stitch

So let's jump to it. Number one, iron you fabric so it's easier to use (we're going for precision here folks!) and use your template to start cutting triangles with your template. Keep going till you run your scrap fabric supplies down to the ground!

Step 2 - pair off your triangles...you can do matching, contrasting, go crazy kids it's up to you - I hinted this would be tough! ;) Place your paired triangles correct sides facing in towards each other and pin together.

Step 3 - next sew around the two long edges of your triangle to create the sharp point between them. Trim the excess around the inside of the point of your sewn area so that you can get a better point when you flip it inside out and then...yep you guessed it - flip it inside out!

So there you have your first bunting triangle and the next objective is to repeat ad nausium until you have enough to make your desire length of bunting or until you start seeing triangles floating in your sleep.

The final job is to sew them altogether. Iron the cotton tape so that it is folded in half. Trim the tops of all the triangles so you're working with clean edges and slot the unwed side into the folded tape and pin securely - step 4.

You can experiment with the distance between triangles, anything from 2 - 4 inches works well. Sew along the tape, ensuring you capture both sides of the tape and triangle within your sewing line.

Finally when you've attached all your triangles in this way sit back and admire your handy work...until you have to get the ladder out to put it up!!

Exhibit A - Mummy Jones sewing the final lengths of bunting at our Wedding HQ barn merely days before the big event itself! Super-Mom. And below, the never-ending bunting creating magic and making all the effort worthwhile!

Photo courtesy of Anushe Low Photography

We found thumb tack pins or some short bits of string the best way to fix it up. So far we've decorated an outdoor barn, the kitchen for a dinner party and the tipis for our wedding day so I'd say they've already earned their keep and I'm sure they'll get plenty more use to come...

The barn by day, and by night - magic! :) Yep, that is a hot tub. And it was epic.