It’s been a surprisingly productive week in terms of wedmin. After the worrying, dithering and indecision of my last post I seem to have acquired a sudden decisiveness that’s most unlike me. On Tuesday I fell in love with some shoes for my bridesmaids, realized they were in the sale and about to go out of stock, and by Wednesday, after a mad dash around London by my bridesmaid Chantal to find the few remaining pairs, 6 sparkly pairs of heels were purchased. After months of going back and forth over where we’d spend our wedding night, we had a new idea, and had it booked and sorted within the week.
Back home my Mum’s cracking on with the decorations team. She had her group of ‘Stitch and Bitch’ friends over for a bunting sewing day, resulting in an enormous pile of over 500 bunting triangles! The jam jar pile is steadily growing, and we’re almost there with the vintage china collection.
Ta-da!
The next job on my wedding to-do list is sort out lighting, and gosh there’s a lot of choice out there. I feel like lighting really is one of the big things that maybe we should have thought more about already. Firstly, for practical reasons, we’re going to be outside. The garden gets dark, and we’ve got a marquee with guy ropes. If we don’t get this one right we’ll have guests groping their way to the loos in the dark. We don’t want any disasters. Blood and wedding dresses don’t seem like a great combination… Secondly, for the more exciting reason, I love lighting. When I first started scrolling through Pinterest for wedding inspiration, some of the images I was drawn to straight away were off beautiful lighting displays, bare bulbs hanging in clusters over tables, tea light jam jars hung from trees, walls of fairy lighting twinkling into the night. I love the warmth and the atmosphere the right lighting creates.
As much as my decisions will be driven by what’s pretty, I’m trying very hard to keep in mind that whatever lighting we string up around the garden is going to have to be connected to a power source. That means we need to hire generators. I, like I’m guessing the majority of brides in my situation, don’t have the first clue about hiring generators! Apparently you can also wire up strings of fairy lights to much more discrete car batteries, so I think planning that is a job that’s getting handed straight over to Andy or to my brother. Both far more technically minded than me! Any tips, hints or general ideas on this one are very much welcome!
Our marquee comes with a standard lighting package, which means simple up or down lighters from the main poles. Other than that we don’t have anything so far. Everything else we’ll have to add in, so now we come to the fun part – lighting inspiration! This is what I’ve thought of so far.
Fairy Lights
First up, the classic – fairy lights. If I had my way, there would be fairy lights all over the house, all year round. As it is, Andy won’t allow much more than a string around the headboard of the bed. I’m thinking fairy lights are a must for around the poles of the marquee. They’d also be pretty wrapped around some of the trees in the garden to make everything glow once it gets dark.
Festoon Lighting
Ah festoon lighting, my newest love. There’s something really quite romantic about festoon lighting. I’ve seen pictures of the tent we’re having covered in festoon lighting and it looks absolutely stunning. I think there’s going to have to be some kind of lighting feature wall made out of either fairy lights or festoon lighting.
Lanterns
I’m a little bit in love with lanterns (can you guess a theme to this post!? ). Here in Hong Kong, we’ve just celebrated Mid-Autumn festival, which is a festival of lanterns. On mid-autumn night, children take their lanterns out onto the beach or into the park to gaze at the moon. It’s a hopelessly romantic festival, with the only light coming from hundreds of coloured paper lanterns. I would love to bring some lanterns into the day. I’m thinking of unlit ones perhaps hanging in the roof of the marquee, and maybe some lit with candles deeper into the garden.
Candles
A Pinterest obsession of mine at the moment is candles; Candles in jam jars hung from trees, candles in paper bags lining pathways; Tall white pillar candles on tables; the list goes on!
Disco Lighting
As we’re (probably) not having a DJ or a band, this is another area that won’t just sort itself out. Do we want any sort of disco lighting? I’m not really sure. On the one hand, strings of festoon lighting are much prettier than swirling techno colours all over the ceiling, but then on the other hand, is it really a party without them? If we do decide we want them, then where on earth do we go to hire them? It’s not the sort of thing stocked in the pretty vintage hire companies we’ve used so far!
Fire Pits
I’m not sure this really falls under the category of lighting exactly, but I would love a fire pit. I’ve got visions of cozy blankets for the evening, a roaring fire and plenty of toasted marshmallows.
So that’s it, lighting ideas so far. It’s all so pretty I have absolutely no idea how to choose. Would it be over kill to just have it all!?
Jennie x
