It’s Show Time

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Wedding Guest Hotel Welcome Pack

Everyone loves a good wedding…to see someone you care about so full of happiness, perhaps reunite with old friends or family members that you rarely get to see now you’re all spread across the globe.  A chance to get dressed up and dance the night away whilst surrounded by all the love, joy and hope anyone could ask for…

 

But you’re in a strange city, maybe even a faraway country, in a soulless hotel room, often at great expense – happily spent, but let’s face it, these are lean times.  As wedding guests are often travelling from far and wide for the special occasion, what better way to help them settle in and feel part of the celebrations right away than leaving a welcome pack for them at their hotel in time for their arrival.  This will let guests know that you really appreciate the effort they have made to share in your special day, especially when in reality the wedding day is so busy for you as newlyweds, it is near impossible to get around all your guests, let alone have the quality time you want to have with them.  So this is just a really thoughtful added touch to make them feel valued… particularly ideal if all your ‘key’ guests are in the same hotel, PLUS the packs can easily be personalised to the guest, your wedding location and your personalities.

 

Check out our ideas for a British-based wedding welcome pack…

 

 

Had a go? Tell us what you put in yours and send us your photos, we’re super curious about what you’ll put in yours!

 

—Bride Society

 

Eco-Warriers

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Autumn / Fall Wedding: Leaf Confetti

Don’t miss our bonus autumn video available over on YouTube now!  Perfect for an Eco-Wedding…

 

—Bride Society

Mrs by Brunch

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DIY Bride to Be Pyjama Top

It’s the morning of your wedding, you’ve got your bridesmaids coming over, your make-up artist, hair stylist, florist, photographer (yes, they take photos of you BEFORE you’re made up) and potentially room service all knocking on your door.  What do you wear?  Seems odd to get dressed in everyday clothes, but by the same token, you aren’t really feeling everyone seeing you, and photographing you, in your fav. Hello Kitty pj’s.  So here’s our solution, personalised pj’s!  In our “Mrs by Brunch” tee, it’s obvious you’re dressed for the occasion but you’re still comfortable for lounging around with your ‘maids sipping the Prosecco…especially if you make alternative versions for them to wear so you all coordinate!  Expert tip:  Make sure you pick a top with a wide neckline, similar to ours, so that you don’t wreck your hair or make up when you come to get changed into your wedding dress!

 

If you’re a maid of honour reading this…what a lovely gift for your dear friend which will make her feel special from the moment she wakes up.  Or maybe you’re the Groom-to-be and want in on the wedding morning action…why not change the text to “Grooming”?

 

We’ve got your step-by-step process of how to make this “Mrs by Brunch” pyjama top at home…if you’re feeling confident already, just don’t forget to flip the text before printing!

 

The plain white tee featured in this video was purchased from Primark.

 

If you have a go we’d love to see your photos of them in action.  If you enjoyed the video, please give us a ‘like’ and subscribe to our channel.  Thanks!  You’re the best!

 

–Bride Society

Yum Yum, Cake in my Tum

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Wedding Cake Trends for 2019-2020

Wedding cakes are a big feature of any wedding and are here to stay…despite the attempt of a hostile takeover by wheels of cheese!  I don’t have many strong opinions and you know I’m all for making weddings personal to the couple, AND I swear this isn’t just because I don’t like cheese, or even that I think it shouldn’t be an option….but you can’t replace cake with cheese, THAT’S NOT A THING!  Plus think of all those plus-one’s who know only the person they are with – THEY ARE THERE FOR THE CAKE!  I jest, sort of, but that said…

Whilst most of us still love cake at our weddings, it’s not ‘wedding cake’ as we traditionally think of it anymore.  Our in-house expert cake baker, Laura of Green Kitchen Cakes, gives us the insider taste on the cake trends she’s seeing come through for 2019-2020 (yes, it does freak us out slightly to think that far into the future too, but that’s the wedding world folks!).

Have you used any of the styles we’ve talked about in this video for your wedding? We’d love to see your photos!

If you’d like to know more about Green Kitchen Cakes, or even book their services, you can find them here.

—Bride Society

Rings of Gold

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Autumn Leaf Wreath

It may be November and our thoughts starting to turn to the C word, but we’re still embracing the season with this foraged autumn leaf wreath DIY!

 

 

Use it to add a splash of autumnal colour to your wedding venue, either on the front door or inside your reception space.

Customise by adding a text banner across the front of the wreath to let everyone know who’s wedding they’re attending!

If you don’t fancy going foraging for real autumn leaves, or would just like to keep your wreath year after year, why not use artificial leaves like these ones from The Works?

And if you want to get your glue gun out, you could even add other seasonal decorations. Pine cones, acorns and conkers anyone?

 

—Bride Society

Accessorize This

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Accessorize Wedding Hair Accessories

I feel like it’s programmed into women in our society/culture that everything adorning our bodies on our wedding days has to be £££££.  Whereas once upon a time, women did not wear a new, white dress for their wedding, but simply the finest dress they owned.  And whilst I’m not trying to take anyone’s childhood fantasy of wearing the ‘big white dress’ and believe things should feel ‘extra-special’ in some sense, I’m all for bringing back a bit of that mentality where a wedding does not have to cost the earth.   It’s not just the dress, it’s the jewellery, underwear, hair accessory…I have sometimes heard of Brides wearing jewellery borrowed or passed down to them by older female relatives, which is a lovely tradition, and of course handily covers of the ‘something borrowed’, this is a great start.

 

For my own wedding, although I wanted to create a fairly classically bridal look with my jewellery, I didn’t feel the need to spend big.  To be fair, I should note that my necklace had been a recent birthday gift from my now husband, but my earrings were simply from Accessorize and I think they matched my Swarovski necklace pretty well!  So when Laura and I started thinking about hair pieces for our latest video, we decided the High Street was a great place to start, namely, Accessorize.  Today we are bringing you a range of wedding-worthy styles to inspire your wedding hair look – clips, combs, bands, slides, we’ve got it all to give you a taste of what is out there. (Product links below where available.)

 

Top tip: Take your hair accessory along to your hair trial so you can ensure it can be incorporated into your wedding hairstyle in a way you’re happy with.  Or of course if you don’t have one yet, discuss what shape/style would work and what fastening they would recommend for your style.

 

Don’t forget to take a look at the Accessorize website here as I noticed they had some gorgeous pieces on there that were not available in store (or at least the store I went in to!).

 

Product links, (where available) in order of appearance:

1. Ciara Crystal Hair Comb £12

2. Feather Hair Comb £12

3. 2x Dipped Leaf Clips  £10

4. 2x Whimsical Feather Hair Slides £10 (full single feather slide featured in this video was not available on their website, this is the two smaller clip version mentioned in the video)

5. Delicate Pearl Alice Hair Band £8

 

 

—Bride Society

Pick of the Pumpkin Patch

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Autumn Wedding Centrepiece Ideas

If you’re planning an autumn/fall wedding you may be wondering how to incorporate some autumnal touches to your Big Day.

We’ve come up with a super simple idea for your wedding reception tables which include the cutest mini pumpkins!

We found these cute mini white pumpkins in Aldi and with the addition of a few fairy lights and some foraged conkers, have created a really simple, effective and seasonal centrepiece for your wedding reception tables.

Add some autumn leaves and pine cones to create even more of an autumnal scene.

Change up the colour of the pumpkins on different tables to create some variety, or keep them the same to create a unified look.

Don’t fancy including candles for your table numbers? Why not paint the number on to a pumpkin instead?

If you have a go at making the centrepieces, we’d love to see your efforts! Tag us in your Instagram photos or leave a link in the comments below.

 

 

– Bride Society

An Apple A Day

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Apple Place Cards

Fall has arrived and here at Bride Society we’re feeling all those autumnal vibes!  Pumpkin spice lattes, ankle boots, leather jackets, rich, red leaves on the pavement…I can get behind all that.  Whilst at heart I’m (Rebecca) a summer girl, and the hotter the better, I find myself embracing autumn more than normal this year.  Perhaps it’s because we actually had a more satisfying summer here in the UK and so the arrival of autumn doesn’t seem so cruel for once!  That said I still came down with a cold the moment the temperature dropped, and autumn can keep it’s dark evenings, so I’m not entirely thrilled!

 

We set to thinking about all things autumn for this wedding season and we came up with these Apple Place Cards – perhaps inspired by a combination of the gorgeous red tones and my cold (an unconscious desire for vitamins)?!  This is SO cheap to make and a delicious way of adding some colour to your tables, plus your guests can eat them afterwards!  I mean, a wedding is nothing without cake, but an apple or two can reduce that indulgence guilt.

 

We hope you like them!  Any questions or video requests let us know, we love hearing from you.

 

Happy Fall!

—Bride Society

The Bare Bones

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How to get legally married in the UK

You’ve been picking out your bridesmaids and dreaming about dresses.  You’re creating Pinterest boards every other day and you knew your colour scheme about 5 seconds after you said, “yes”.  But when it actually comes to the practicality of the getting married part, the bit that legally gets you from engaged to married, what do you need to know?

 

In this week’s video we’re stripping back all the luxuries and trimmings of a wedding, as much as we love them, to give you the wedding 101 in what you actually NEED to get married in the UK.  What that costs, what your choices are and what makes it legal – the bare bones.  *Serious face*

Watch this before you start planning as there’s a surprise or two in there where movies may have led you astray!  Hint: In the UK, you can’t legally get married just anywhere, anytime.

N.B. Please note that whilst all the information in this video is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of filming and on the date the video was launched, UK law in constantly evolving and for the most up to date information you should consult the government website here.

 

We hope you find this helpful!  If you have a request for a future video, get in touch!

 

— Bride Society

Taking the (Floral) Biscuit

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Edible Flower Biscuit/Cookie Wedding Favours

Summer might be just about over but you’d be mistaken for thinking it was still in full swing with these colourful, floral biscuits!

We’re getting our bake on again with some really easy biscuits/cookies, decorated with seasonal edible flowers. They’d be perfect for your wedding favours or a great addition to a dessert table.

They’re really quick to make, can be made a few days in advance (perfect if you’re making them yourself for your own wedding!) and have the wow factor.

Add your own twist by adding the juice and zest of lemons or limes, or how about a dash of vanilla or almond extract for a different flavour?

Make sure your flowers are edible, from a reputable source and know which bits of the flower you can eat! We bought ours from https://maddocksfarmorganics.co.uk/

Getting married in a different season? Don’t despair, as seasonal edible flowers can be found at most times of the year in the UK.

If you have a go at making the edible flower biscuits, we’d love to see your efforts! Tag us in your Instagram photos or leave a link in the comments below.

 

— Bride Society

Warning: Video Starts Pre-Caffeination!

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Get Ready With Me: Wedding Guest

It has been a glorious summer in the UK and I’m sure it’s made many Brides and Grooms very happy, as for once they have not had to contend with ‘inclement weather contingency plans’ that is the Brit norm.  Let’s face it, ordinarily you’d have to be crazy to plan a completely outdoor wedding here.  As standard we expect gale force winds and heavy showers – aka heavy rain, likely to cause minor flooding.  But no! Nothing of the sort!  In fact when the rain did finally return, I, along with many of my neighbours, all stood at our windows watching this strange wet stuff falling from the sky as if we were experiencing some kind of new, miraculous phenomenon! (Bear with me, I’m British, I’m supposed to go on about the weather.)

 

I hope you all got to celebrate weddings of loved ones in the sunshine, picking your outfits without having to factor in cover-ups or deal with your shoe heels getting caked in mud.  We too had a wedding or two to attend this summer, which as you may imagine, we really look forward to.  I (Rebecca) recently attended the wedding of an old university friend – we’ve spent the last couple of years chatting about his upcoming wedding and I know he’d been tuning into Bride Society, mostly to support my endeavours, but hopefully he got something helpful out of it along the way too, so I was really looking forward to seeing him saying his, “I do’s”, and to finally meeting his imminent wife-to-be!

 

So I thought why not include all of you at Bride Society in the excitement?  Join me as I get ready for my day as a Wedding Guest and take a sneak peek at the day itself…spoiler: it was super lovely.

NB. The weather had returned to British standard by then.

 

Any questions or video requests, let us know in the comments below – we get very excited when we hear from you!

 

Wedding Day Guest Outfit:

Dress from Reiss

Shoes from Mint Velvet

Make up mostly from No7 at Boots

 

—Bride Society

Get Your Bake On

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Bake With Us – Lemon Mini Cakes

The Great British Bake Off is back on our screens. Hooray!

So if it’s inspiring you to get in the kitchen and bake, we’re showing you how to make these cute mini-lemon cakes. A great alternative to cupcakes but still with the same convenience for serving.

Of course you can change up the flavours to whatever you prefer (Rebecca would have definitely opted for chocolate!) or why not have a selection of flavours so everybody’s happy?

If you’re making them for your wedding or event, create a tower of the cakes to make a real impact. Add a larger cake at the top of your tower and you have a cutting cake too!

 

 

— Bride Society

Blooming Beauty

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DIY Bridal Bouquet

Making your own anything for your wedding is a pretty big commitment.  Firstly, there’s the time it takes to do all things crafty (ALWAYS longer than you think!), time how long it takes you to make one and times it by the number of guests you have attending if it’s anything place setting / stationery related etc, and you’ll see what you might be in for.  Enlisting helpers is a massive plus…unless you’re a control freak like me (Rebecca) and so it just causes you more anxiety, but you’ll likely find people are keen to get involved.  I was big on, let’s call it, ‘quality control’ behind the scenes – which I feel bad saying as people were kind enough to give up their own time to help me, though that said, in reality it went better than I feared it might!  In my mind, my wedding was a representation of my husband and I, and therefore every detail a reflection of us – that said, I’m perfectly prepared to accept that this could just be my neurosis and you do not have to be that way!  Read; perfectionist.  My goal was always for my wedding to be as personal to us as possible, as well as to save money, therefore I made a lot of the details, but I wanted to do it without it looking ‘home-made’.

 

Which brings me to my second point that whilst DIY’ing your wedding can be great, it’s important to hone your skills, practise.  For example, the first time you ever painted something, brought it home and your parents stuck it on the fridge.  Probably not your best work to date!  You practised and improved to something that your parents maybe even liked having as part of their home décor! Maybe.  I am still on stick figures, painting is not my strength.

 

Today we are walking you through how to make your own bridal bouquet.  We’ve gone for a loose, hand-tied bouquet with a range of fresh flowers and foliage that were in season at the time of shooting and that complimented each other.  Have a play around to see what works for you, and bear in mind the shelf life of fresh flowers!  Whilst you can have a practise run to work on those skills, the final one will have to be done relatively close to the Big Day so it’s not wilting before the “I do’s”.

 

Any questions or video requests, let us know in the comments.

 

 

—Bride Society

Green Fingers at the Ready

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DIY Plant Pot Table Plan

 

If you’re looking for an alternative table plan, which you can enjoy long after your wedding day, our plant pot table plan could be the answer. Use plants or herbs to coordinate with your wedding style or colour scheme to really personalise this DIY.

For our table plan we’ve used white paint on 11cm terracotta plant pots with pink cyclamen.

Display your pots on a stepladder or on a pile of crates to complete a rustic look.

The plant pots could also be used as your wedding table numbers/centrepieces, without the name markers of course!

Don’t forget to take them home or give to loved ones as a lasting reminder of your special day!

— Bride Society 

Recycling Your Wedding

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DIY Wedding Centrepieces

If you want to keep your centrepieces simple and cost effective then why not try our latest DIY, which is also helping the planet by doing a bit of recycling!

We’re turning some glass drinks bottles (labels removed and washed out) into a wedding centrepiece, perfect for your rustic wedding tables.

Get your friends and family involved by asking them to collect bottles in the run up to the Big Day too and you’ll soon have enough for all your tables, without any added expense!

Then all you have to do is get creative and add your personal touches. We’ve shown you how to decorate the bottles with some twine and offcuts of ribbon, but you can tailor them to your own wedding theme! And for a splash of colour, why not pop in a few flower stems.

 

– Bride Society