DIY Stationery - A Practical Bride's Guide

For those artistic brides out there, with the time and the creativity to design and make their own wedding stationery, we salute you! With it already taking around 200 hours to organise a wedding, this is a time consuming decision that need not be taken lightly. However, if this is the path you have chosen, we would like to help you with what needs to be included and we hope that this may save you time and certainly headaches from guests calling you the day before the wedding asking ‘where is the church?’ and ‘Do you need a new toaster?’

There are many items that go into the overall bundle of stationery. Some can be made later than others but they should all work together and be made as a set, and tie into your theme or style of wedding day.

Save the Date

Once you have fixed a date for your wedding, and scrutinised and double checked your guest list, let your chosen guests know! The earlier the better so they can work around holidays and other commitments. Your  method of announcement can be as simple or elaborate as you wish. An e-mail or phone call, a posted photo card or something a little creative like a message in a bottle or even a video should do the trick.

 

DIY Message in a bottle by Mint Design

Invite

The main item is of course the invite! On this, you need to let people know the ‘who, where, when and what’. Who is getting married (you!) and who is inviting them (You or your parents)? Where will the ceremony take place and what date and time? Where is the reception, and when does it finish?  It is also prudent to add a date by which guests must reply, ideally a month or so before the wedding, to give you time to make your table plan and confirm numbers to the venue/caterers/favour suppliers/furniture hire/linen/chair covers etc etc etc!

You will also need a slightly adapted invite for evening only guests – don’t mention the ceremony and consider when you want them to arrive. Before or after your first dance or speeches? (Also consider what will happen to them when they arrive. Will they be greeted with a glass of champagne and have somewhere to sit if needed?)

Invite by Crate Paper

Additional Details
Usually on a separate sheet(s) of paper/card, you need to provide all the details guests will need to help their day go smoothly and reduce guest contact with the bride! Of course you will be more than happy to hear well-wishes from your nearest and dearest but do you really want 50 phone calls checking who they should call for a taxi?

Details to include are:

Map – including full address for ceremony venue & reception venue. You could also highlight the local train station & suggested hotels

Wedding Map from Emmaline Bride's Blog

Transport timetables – If you are providing any coaches for guests, be sure to mention this as well as timings and where they can board.

Accommodation and taxi suggestions – You can usually block-hold rooms in a hotel for a discounted price, that guests can call themselves to book. Rooms will be released if not booked by a certain date so you won’t incur any charge. Make sure you check any taxi numbers you provide and it is worth warning them before the date so they can make provisions of extra staff.

Gift list – As well as the traditional gift lists from John Lewis and House of Fraser, you also have the option for more personal gifts from Not on the HIghstreet or perhaps contributions to your honeymoon. If you really don’t want any gifts, why not ask guests to donate to your chosen charity if they want to give. This will give you yet another reason to glow.

RSVP Card

Not a necessity but certainly advisable. A stamped addressed postcard can be provided on which all a guest needs to do is write their name (unless you decide to do this for them too!), whether or not they will attend (this could be a check box) and how many of them will be attending. Dietary & transport requirements can be added too, each with their own check box for idiot proof precision and to eliminate the  task of scrutinising illegible handwriting.

You can also give an e-mail address to which RSVP’s can be made. Not as exciting each morning when you check your doormat but an advantage to the modern guest who does not leave their computer or know where the nearest post box is.

RSVP card from Ruffled

Envelopes
An obvious one but a cost to consider. These need to be fitted to the invite

Stamps

Another cost to consider; especially now they cost a whopping 60p each! And you will need to double your numbers if you are supplying stamped addressed RSVP cards. A lovely, personal addition is to create your own stamps using a photo of you both or image related to your theme. This can be done via the Royal Mail website, just like Wills and Kate did!

Wedding website
It’s a good idea to set up a wedding website and include the address in your invites. They are easy to build and administer and are a useful tool for keeping guests updated of any more info or changes that might occur. You can set the mood for your wedding with a synopsis of your relationship so far and how the engagement came about, help guests with lift share pages and create an ‘audience participation’ feel with a Q&A section and song requests.

Order of Service

These are given out, usually by the ushers, as guests arrive to the ceremony. 
They provide a schedule of the ceremony, including words to hymns and readings and when the all important vows are coming. Afternoon and evening timings can also be listed. A well informed guest is a happy guest.

Menus

Although guests don’t always have a choice on the day, it is customary to provide a menu of the Wedding Breakfast, either one per guest or a couple per table.

Name cards

To be positioned at each guests table place and avoid a bum fight

Name cards by Carli Walker

Table Plan
A chance to get your creative juices flowing, get yourself a large A1 board to show everyone where they are sitting. Incorporate your theme and be as creative as possible! And if it takes people a while to find their names, who cares! That’s more time spent admiring your handy work

Table Names / numbers

A way of labelling each table so they are easily found, and another chance to incorporate your theme and be inventive

Table numbers from Martha Stewart

 A note on calligraphy
If your handwriting is similar to the trail made by an intoxicated snail, it would be well worth recruiting the steady hand of a bridesmaid or other close friend to inscribe the invites, envelopes and name cards. Having spent so much time lovingly constructing your wedding stationery, you don’t want to ruin it at the last hurdle.

A note on numbers

Remember, you do not need and invite PER GUEST. Many guests will live together as man and wife so can share an invite. This may seem like stating the obvious here but believe me, many couples have found themselves with double the invite requirements having not considered this point at the beginning. I should know, I was one of them! :-/

Stationery by Royal Steamline Alice Peto and Lucy Ledger 

And if all else fails, there are plenty of fantastic stationery designers who are able to produce that homemade feel. We wish you lots of luck with your projects and are happy to help if you need any advice.

Humanist Weddings - A Bride's Perspective

When planning a wedding, the venue selection can be one of the most time consuming tasks, and the one that you need to complete early before many of the other suppliers can be booked.

So what if you already have a venue in mind, one that you have always loved or visited, or maybe a family home that is not licensed for weddings but where you can see yourself exchanging vows? Fear not as it IS still possible to hold your ceremony in your ideal unlicensed location, under the watchful and often tearful eyes of all your nearest and dearest in a ceremony which is written to represent your views, values and love for each other.

Bride-to-be Anna from London is getting married in June 2012. She will be having a small civil wedding at the register office first, attended by just a few close family, then she will move on to the main event; her Humanist Ceremony.

“When we decided to get married, we really struggled to find a venue that was licensed for civil ceremonies that was affordable and able to accommodate all our guests. Registry offices usually seat a maximum of 50 people and a lot of the other options we looked at offered little flexibility with regards to catering, drinks & corkage and minimum spend. We really wanted all our friends and family to be there while we said our vows and when we found a venue that we fell in love with, we researched holding our own ceremony in the garden.

The British Humanist Association website was really helpful and you can search for the celebrants that are closet to you and view the profiles of those available. Our search took us to the website of a local celebrant who we met up with to discuss the wedding. She explained the humanist values and that we could have as much or as little reference to humanism in the ceremony as we wanted. She was really sensitive to the fact that many people have expectations and beliefs about weddings and that she would in no way challenge other belief systems and was happy to explain to guests that we hadn't 'converted' to humanism.

We completed quite an extensive questionnaire so that she could get a feel for the things that are important to us, what we're like as a couple and how we view marriage. We were able to include any readings, music or symbolism that we wanted and she provided a draft for us to review along with some lovely suggestions for how to personalise the ceremony.

Humanist weddings offer complete flexibility to include what's most important to you and allow you to make your commitment to each other in a location that works for you and your guests. It did take some time for family and friends to understand the set-up, mainly because it's not yet legally binding in the UK. In Scotland, humanist weddings are much more common because the law recognises them so I really hope that this soon becomes the case in the UK as well.”

At Esc Weddings, we love it when a bride and groom can have the ceremony that is perfect for them. Many prefer to play it safe but more and more are breaking the mould and opting for a humanist wedding, it’s their wedding, their way

Two Beautiful 'Blank Canvas' Wedding Venues - with 2012 availability!

Every so often we get to work with a venue that seems so obvious and perfect for weddings that it is almost too good to be true. Surely this venue would have been used for weddings for decades? Certainly there must be a queue of giddy newly-engaged couples banging on the door, having known that this was their dream location for years and now finally being able to sign the contracts. Without doubt all the summer dates will be booked for the next 2 years as with so many English historic properties that open their doors to marriage celebrations. It couldn’t be possible that only a handful of couples have been before, sealing their nuptials under these decedent ceilings, amongst such history-adorned ornate décor and surrounded by these original open fireplaces and quirky features.

But no, it is an exciting coincidence that this month, Esc Weddings have been lucky enough to start collaborating with not one but two such venues! We are so ecstatic at the prospect of being involved with them that we want to shout their names from the rooftops. We did think about keeping them to ourselves and being able to astound our brides with these hidden gems that they may never before heard mention of and that still have dates available for summer 2012. But that would not be fair as these are places that need to be shared with the world, or at least the wedding world (as that is surely all that matters) ;-)

The first is 45 Millbank. An Edwardian Grade II listed property built in 1907. This venue is easy to find as it is right next door to the iconic Tate Britain, on the bank of the river Thames. With its central London location, this setting fortunately doesn’t boast central London, excessive prices.

There are 2 entrances, one on Millbank, overlooking the river, and the second, quieter courtyard entrance just round the corner which houses an original Henry Moore sculpture. This courtyard is available for the use of weddings, and offers a more peaceful and serene arrival for the bride.

On entering the grand foyer you are greeted with a sweeping staircase leading from the marble floor up to the 3 reception rooms, all of which you are given free reign of for your wedding.

The space is a blank canvas, inviting you to put your personal stamp on it to create your dream wedding. High, open ceilings and wooden carved walls welcome you into the 2 main rooms, each of which are licensed for weddings and can seat in total up to 200 guests.

A particularly attractive feature to me is the balcony situated in the banqueting hall. This unusual addition can be used as you wish but reminded me of the first kiss for William and Kate – a chance to recreate the scene perhaps? Or an impressive platform for a harpist or even the speeches; for those who have a wedding party with nerves of steel! At the very least it lends itself to a feature floral decoration with trailing ivy.
Another bonus is the grassed outdoor space, available for a drinks and canapé reception on a clear British summer day.

As well as the attractive interior, the main selling points for us at Esc Weddings are the fantastic location, short and long term availability and the blank canvas opportunity.

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The second venue is Fetcham Park. A Queen Anne Mansion based in Surrey, near Leatherhead, this property lends itself perfectly to a stylish country wedding for up to 100 guests.

A family property which opened its doors to the public for wedding celebrations in October 2011 following the beautiful day enjoyed by family member and now venue wedding manager and custodian; Laura, in 2010.

The venue is everything you need; grand and stunning yet homely and unassuming. Mural scenes from classical mythology have been painted on the ceilings and staircase by renowned French artist Louis Laguerre in the early 1700s.

This staircase if a particularly striking feature and one which the super-savvy Laura correctly suggests all brides should arrive via, to afford them a grand and memorable entrance.

The fact that Laura is so insistent on this is just one example of her passion for the property and that all her brides experience its full potential. This is not a conveyer belt wedding money cow, churning out repetitive affairs that involve minimal input and maximum revenue. In fact, it couldn’t be more to the contrary. Laura has painstakingly and lovingly chosen a select list of preferred suppliers who are shared with her brides once a relationship is established. It is still down to the bride to work with whomever she wishes, as Laura wants the day be personal and perfect to each couple.

There is a beautiful, landscaped lawn to the back and side of the property featuring illuminated ornate fountains.

Adjoining the grounds is St Mary’s Church, a gorgeously quaint and picturesque church whom have offered to bless any wedding ceremonies held at Fetcham Park if the couple do not meet the requirements to hold them in the Parish. This adds to the appeal of this hidden gem which we are so pleased is on the wedding circuit and available to those brides lucky enough to find it.