A Simple Wedding - part 1

I am overjoyed to say that recenlty "I GOT MARRIED" wow I was confident I would never go there again but then I met Peter. This time is the third time (and the last) for both of us so we wanted to make it our day.

Sharing the planning, ideas and stories of the day may take different turns but keep watching and you will get the lot. Just so you get the picture I am starting at the beginning. Take from it what you want or leave it, the choice is yours..

My first marriage was when I was 17 and paid for by my parents as was the thing back then so it was very much 'Their' wedding with all of their friends and the relations taking up most of the seats around the reception tables,

My second wedding I was 29 and although we carried the cost ourselves it was still the thing in my close knit family to respect our parents wishes and invite the relations once again leaving very little room on the guest list for own friends.

Needless to say third time round at aged 55 and 62 with all parents now passed we were determined to spend this wonderous day with only the people that were truely special in our lives and that we knew would appreciate and cherish being part of our celebration so we shared our day at our home with our children, grandchildren and a handful of those special friends totalling about 40. It was absolutely the best day of our lives.

The most enjoyable part of planning and organising our wedding was that we did it all ourselves and we did it together, from cooking to making the decorations, even making my dress was a joint effort.

Initially we (or more accurately I) decided that as this was going to be the last wedding for both of us it had to be something different, something really special, really memorable and would also have to fit within our very strict budget.. With that aggreed we started to prepare.

The theme of windmills, whirly things and keys just sort of evolved as we went along but it all started with the initial idea of Lanterns that came about with an annual event as part of the Taranaki Arts Festival and the meeting of a woman who gave workshops, mainly to children on making lanterns for the lantern parade. With this theme in mind Peter and I went along to a Saturday workshop with dozens of children to learn the art of lantern making and after we had marched with our lanterns through the main street of New Plymouth in the parade we stored them away and went on to make 16 more for our wedding day.

I wanted to make our invitations different as well and loved the idea of 'key to my heart' but as well as that they needed to be different, not made of paper and quite gimmicky so armed with some PVA, woven flax mat, some plain brown wrapping paper that I cut to A4 size to fit in the printer, silver keys I got off Trademe and some string, away I went and came up with the a unique invitation. But that was not the end of it, It needed a sleeve to protect it before it went into the envelope so a piece of Lime green wrapping paper to co ordinate with the colour theme of our wedding, bit of Florist ribbon and a tiny paper windmill and it was done. We both loved them but just a note, if you are thinking of doing something different make sure you are aware of postage charges before you get too carried away because of the key attached and the large knots in the string each invitation cost us double postage. Lesson learned.

Click here to follow my adventure in A Simple Wedding- part 2... Giving Back