A Quick Tip: Favours

If you want to give favours at your wedding then try and make them meaningful, something that represent you as a couple: perhaps you both love gardening, how about giving some cute packaged seeds or even little potted plants. Favours you’ve made yourselves, especially food based ones are always great too-homemade jam with personalised labels is always a big hit and it won’t get left behind.

Photos by Gideon Photography via Green Wedding Shoes, here

Real Wedding E-shoot: Anne and Seb

While the world may be looking forward to a certain Royal Wedding at the end of the month here at Always Andri Wedding Design my focus has definitely been on one of my lovely couples Anne & Seb whose wedding we have been planning together since last summer and are getting married the next day in London.

Anne and Seb live in Canterbury so their photographer Shella of Shell de Mar Photography popped down there last month for their engagement shoot. Here are some of the photos from the day, for the rest of the shoot take a look at Shell's blog here

 
Photos courtesy of Shell de Mar Photography

A Quick Tip: Engagement shoots

If you are at all uncomfortable about the thought of having your photos taken on your wedding day then ask your photographer if they can do an e-shoot for you. It’s a great way for you to get used to being in front of the camera and get to know your photographer. You‘ll also end up with some great shots of you as a couple that you could even use on your wedding day, for example in a guest book or as table numbers.

Photo courtesy of Shell de Mar Photography

London Wedding Venue: The Forge in Camden

So it was my birthday last week and I had lots of treats, as well as going away to visit some very good friends over the weekend to go out dancing I also got to have two very yummy meals out one of which was at a wedding venue so I thought I should let you know all about it.

As a wedding planner I regularly get invited to various venue events from breakfast mornings, lunches to evening canapés and last Thursday I was invited to The Forge in Camden’s open day brunch. The Forge is a small music venue but is also available for private hire and would make a lovely space for a small wedding reception. It’s a flexible space with folding walls that could be used in a variety of ways allowing you to open the areas up for different parts of the day. For example you could start with a drinks reception as you walk into the glazed courtyard, which has a lovely high ceiling and a living wall, and then open up the dividing wall into the Forge itself to reveal the room set up for the reception.

The Caponata restaurant which is at the front of The Forge and can be hired with it, again giving you further options of how you use the space, provides all the catering for events and going by the canapes at the open day brunch and the lunch we had after is delicious.

All photos taken by me on my iPod showing the lovely bunch of Anemones I was given for my birthday and of the delicious food we ate; I had the scallops followed by a rather scrummy chocolate pudding with homemade sparkling lemonade. Do take a look at The Forge's website for images of the venue itself, the ones I took really didn't do it justice so thought I'd stick to just my food shots.

 

Photos by Always Andri Wedding Design

The Wedding Sanctuary: In Pictures My Table

So for my last post on the Wedding Sanctuary here are some images of the table I designed. You can see the design board here.

Cutture designed the fabulous plate menus for the table based on the idea that the couple who had chosen Somerset House to marry in were lovers of beautiful architecture and travelling, so as well as the wonderful city skylines on the menus we also has little laser cut planes in the glasses and as an extra little detail laser cut place card initials…

Cutture have also posted a lovely little write up on their part in the event which you can read here

All photos courtesy of Julia Boggio Photography except final two by Cutture

A Quick Tip: Flowers

You can get all types of flowers at most times of year if they’ve been imported but for the best quality and price stick to seasonal flowers from the UK; they will be at their finest then and look better for it. For a great guide to what flowers are in season, when, take a look at the Flowers and Plants Association website here.

Photo by Always Andri Wedding Design

The Wedding Sanctuary in Pictures: The Inspiration Zone

As I’ve mentioned before one of my planning jobs with the Wedding Sanctuary was to coordinate the look of the Inspiration Zone. Five fellow UKAWP members all volunteered to design a table in the Zone so I asked them all to come up with a few ideas for me to choose from so they could then each develop the idea further and provide me with a design brief. It was these mood boards that I took to the Somerset House and Table Talk, the caterers- who were sourcing all the tableware for us via Well Dressed Tables and Amanda Austin the florist who would design all the fabulous table centres.

Here are 4 of the 5 table designs from the inspiration Zone (thought I’d save my design for its own little post)

Perfect Polka with bespoke Stationery by Sugalily. Cake pops by Zoe Clarke

Spring Yellows with stationery by Ivy Ellen

Cherry Blossom with stationery by With Love Wedding Invitations

Asian Peacock with stationery by Ananya Cards. 

Peacock feather favour cookies by Zoe Clarke

As well as the 5 tables I also thought it would be great to have a guest book style wishing tree and dessert bar with cakes from Zoe Clarke’s The Cake Parlour- after all I do love my cakes and I think this is such a fab idea for a wedding.

Wishing tree available to hire from Amanda Austin.

Paper flowers and laser cut wishing tags by Cutture.

Cakes, cupcakes, cookies and cake pops all by Zoe Clarke at The Cake Parlour

Flowers by Amanda Austin.

Tableware availableto hire from Well Dressed Tables.
Linens available to hire from Just 4 Linens

All Photos courtesy of Julia Boggio Photography