Wedding Inspiration Blog — Winter Berries

Well there's no snow outside (yet). I give up!!! But it's chilly. It's been frosty... and the sparkles on the pavement in the morning say it's time to blog this lovely wedding inspiration shoot!

Two posts - all about the shoot today, and an inspiration board to share with you tomorrow. If you're having a winter wedding, think of sparkly frost and crystals, red berries all shiny and light with a little snow on top... a little bit of white (fake) fur, and plenty of gorgeous sparkle. Hannah Webster (of Lifeline Photography) and friends are here to show you how!

Enjoy x

Wedding Inspiration: winter berries - the details

The shoot was photographed by Hannah from Lifeline Photography. "The more weddings I shoot, the more I fall in love with the little hand crafted details that make things feel so personal.

Back when my sis­ter got hitched a few years ago, we spent hours mak­ing the invi­ta­tions, jew­ellery, table dec­o­ra­tions and favours. They looked amaz­ing, my sister’s designs were incred­i­ble, but more impor­tantly, the process of mak­ing them will stay with me for­ever. Think­ing about the time and love that we poured into turn­ing my sister’s ideas into real­ity never fails to make me smile. The blis­ters, how­ever, I am happy to forget.

Any­way, after a sum­mer of shoot­ing wed­dings where one or two cute lit­tle crafty details made all the dif­fer­ence, I thought it would be worth putting together a wed­ding inspi­ra­tion shoot high­light­ing some sim­ple DIY ideas that could eas­ily be incor­po­rated into almost any style of wed­ding to add a lovely per­sonal touch with­out break­ing the bank. Because, let’s face it, pretty details usu­ally come with a not so pretty price tag. But with a lit­tle bit of imag­i­na­tion and ide­ally help from your friends, you can eas­ily add styl­ish fin­ish­ing touches and end up with the same proud feel­ing that I have when I think back to my sister’s big day.

Much as I’d love to be able to say that I am a craft­ing queen, it’s sadly not the case. I do try though. I made a bou­ton­niere using berries, twigs and feath­ers from my mum’s pot­pourri bowl (seri­ously) tied together with some ging­ham rib­bon (I love a bit of ging­ham rib­bon, me); I sewed some sim­ple red & white bunting using an old hal­loween cos­tume that I fig­ured I’d never need again (Red Rid­ing Hood really didn’t suit my per­son­al­ity); and I made berry topped cup­cakes and rib­bon tied candy jars to pretty up the sweet table…but whilst I can fol­low through on a few good ideas, I’m not so great when it comes to putting them all together. So I called in some local cre­atives to help me out. And a mighty tal­ented lot they turned out to be, too.

My good friend Sara of Monty Man­a­tee Designs is a Cor­nish artist liv­ing here in Not­ting­ham who designs quirky, colour­ful wed­ding sta­tionery. She put pen to paper and came up with a cute design based on our win­ter berry theme and our gor­geous venue in my home vil­lage, Thrump­ton Hall. She also talked two of her lovely friends into mod­el­ing for us. Susie and Tom aren’t even a cou­ple — but they were so sweet together on the day. I couldn’t have asked for a nicer pair to work with and Susie looked absolutely gor­geous in the frocks we were loaned by Grace Cou­ture, West Bridgford’s friend­liest bridal bou­tique. I was des­per­ate to try one on for myself, but sadly we didn’t have time. Ahem.

We bor­rowed a deca­dent choco­late cake from yum­mi­ness designer Danielle Gotheridge of Your Unique Day based in Nottingham’s trendy Hock­ley Vil­lage, hand crafted jew­ellery and head­pieces came from the lit­tle bun­dle of cute­ness that is Melissa of Pearls For Lily, Kelly B sculpted Susie’s locks and Laura Har­ri­son made her up to per­fec­tion.

Wed­ding inspi­ra­tion shoot — win­ter berries: the bride and groom

And then there was Chloe. Lovely Chloe Addling­ton of Adore By Chloe is a wed­ding styl­ist and a hand-crafter extra­or­di­naire. She worked her magic on our var­i­ous props, made flow­ers for the tables and bou­quet out of cup­cake cases (and posted a tuto­r­ial here: http://www.adorebychloe.co.uk/adoreblog/category/topics/diy-projects/) and made the whole thing look absolutely beau­ti­ful. I seri­ously couldn’t have done it with­out her.

And if any brides out there need some inspi­ra­tion for per­son­al­is­ing their wed­ding, ways of adding cheap and cheer­ful DIY ele­ments that make the day all about you and not just about the wed­ding indus­try, I highly rec­om­mend you take a peek at her site. She is utterly fab at what she does…from sug­gest­ing lit­tle addi­tions that com­pli­ment your theme to hand craft­ing items her­self for you — because, let’s face it, we don’t all have the time or indeed the tal­ent for such things *points at self*.

• Styling & DIY ele­ments: Chloe at Adore By Chloe — www.adorebychloe.co.uk
• Sta­tionery & Fin­ger­print Tree : Sara Bod­i­nar at Monty Man­a­tee — www.montymanatee.co.uk
• Cake: Danielle Gotheridge at Your Unique Day — www.youruniqueday.com
• Frocks & veils: Grace Cou­ture in West Bridg­ford, Notts — www.gracecouture.co.uk
• Jew­ellery & head­pieces: Melissa at Pearls For Lily — www.pearlsforlily.com
• Hair: Kelly at KB Wed­ding Hair Spe­cial­ist — www.kbweddinghairspecialist.co.uk
• Make-up: Laura Har­ri­son — www.lauraharrisonmakeup.co.uk
• Venue: Thrump­ton Hall on the banks of the River Trent in Not­ting­hamshire — www.thrumptonhall.com

… there’s an inspi­ra­tion board com­ing up tomor­row for all you cre­ative brides and grooms who are itch­ing to get your hands inside the pot pourri jars and rip up your red rid­ing hood cos­tumes. Don’t miss it — on Eng­lish Wed­ding blog in the morning!