Puss's Most Awesome and Amazing Wedding!

So, it's been a while! Apologies for my extended absence.

Essentially, I tried to do too much myself (appalled at the cost of things), my bridesmaids weren't being very helpful (I was trying to be subtle in my requests for help, and in their defence, I am not known for subtlety), started a new job, tried to keep doing a full time uni load, and the result was having a nervous breakdown back in March and ending up on anti-depressants (which made my attempts at slimming down impossible).

But! I am all awesome again now! Getting weaned off the anti-depressants as we speak.

So, the wedding was quite the extravaganza. Squirrel themed, with a lot of little touches. I started out with quite a large budget, and then, as I said, was appalled at the cost of things, so I made a tonne of stuff myself, but instead of then putting aside the money I had saved, I just put it towards other stuff, so that the wedding ended up being quite the production! I was really just trying to make sure everyone had an awesome time. I hate boring weddings!

Entrance to venue

Ceremony room

Reception room

Practically everything was hand made. What I (and my bridesmaids, once they realised I needed help) did myself was:

-hand made over 300 paper flowers to decorate the venue

-designed and made all of the stationery

-hand made the napkin rings (with leftovers from the stationery)

-hand made the menu towers for each table

-hand made the table "number" cards for the tables: 11 different types of squirrels. On the back of the card was info about the squirrel for the guests to educate themselves

-made the wishing well out of an old stump, lacquer, paint, and some wooden letters and ribbon

-collected a tonne of vintage tea cups to stack and use as décor

-created an "our story" board, with photos of both the groom and I, as well as various keep sakes. My stuff started on the right, his on the left, and we merged in the middle with photos of the two of us together and keep sakes from our time together

-designed and had made my wedding dress

-designed and had made the bridesmaids' dresses, and the bridesmaids' shoes

-designed and had made the mother of the bride's dress

-designed the menu for the venue

-took detailed measurements of everything at the venue (including furniture) so I could create to-scale floor plans for the layout (I like to know how everything is going to fit together!)

-organised Azalea bonsai trees to be created as centrepieces

-took piano and voice lessons from March onwards to learn to play and sing Regina Spektor's version of John Lennon's Real Love (I had no previous musical experience)

-collected various jars and bowls for use on the lolly buffet, as well as decorating mini suitcases with collected vintage post cards of all of our honeymoon destinations (and the groom hand made the blackboard heart tags, because they were really pricey on Etsy)

-hand made the lolly buffet boxes (unfortunately this pic is not the right way out, so you can't see the decoration on the front - scalloped paper with cute squirrel button and ribbon)

-went to dance classes with the groom to learn a hip hop routine to MC Hammer's You Can't Touch This

-searched long and hard for 6 pairs of Louboutins (start tall, and work my way down to flats!)

-purchased vintage 80s board games for the guests to play during the cocktail hour (which was actually two hours)

-hired a photo booth for the guests to amuse themselves in during the cocktail hour

-provided a range of bathroom products for guests to refresh themselves with throughout the night (there was a lot more than this photo shows! Everything you could think of, I had provided it)

-hired a Mr Whippy van to dispense ice creams for dessert

-provided flat shoes for the girls, so they could dance all night

-bought a range of vintage-style handkerchiefs, which the groom's grandmother embroidered with our initials. These were for guests to take and use at the ceremony if they needed to

-bought a bunch of glass jars for the venue to fill with home made lemonade for the guests to drink on arrival to the ceremony

-trawled Etsy for finishing touches, such as tiny felted squirrels, felted acorns, felted acorn & oak leaf place settings, squirrel buttons (for decorating), squirrel paper clips, hand crafted hair pieces, Star Wars lego cufflinks, ostrich feather signing pen, vintage-style paper straws, other wholesale craft things to create the décor

-trawled the internet and op shops for other things, such as vintage silver coffee sets, vintage books, tea cups, 3D squirrel puzzles for the guests to put together, acorn salt & pepper shakers for the table, squirrel table number holders, vintage-style easels for signs, and a billion other things!

-hand made the flower bouquets and buttonholes the night before the wedding

Other highlights included:

-an awesome string quartet

-the DJ playing Weird Al Yankovich

-the vintage Jags

-trivia cards for each guest, with whoever scored the highest at the table taking home the bonsai centrepiece

-people cutting it up on the dance floor

-everyone having a super awesome fun time, and many of the guests saying it was the best wedding they'd ever been to! They really appreciated all of the little details and things to keep them occupied.

There were only two small glitches. The photographer had us stand at the front entrance of the venue after the ceremony to do a "congratulations" thing (people are supposed to come and say hi before you dash off for photos). Unfortunately, it wasn't really the right space, and not many people came to say hello, because they couldn't see us. We should have stayed in the ceremony room.

The second was that I had put together a box of props for the photo booth, including hats, blackboard signs, moustaches on sticks, glasses on sticks, etc etc. When the groom and I went into the booth to take a photo, we noticed they weren't in there. I sent the event co-ordinator (my sister's husband) off to find the box, but he returned saying there wasn't anything. I knew that wasn't right, because I'd brought it to the venue myself. In any event, I let it go. Two days later when I went to pack up the venue, the box with all of the props was right there. So our photo booth photos of guests are nowhere near as fun as they could have been. Oh well.

So yeah, overall, it was a great day and night!