DIY Painted Candles

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Decorate and paint some floral candles with us

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We’re jumping on the painted candle trend and showing you how easy it is to create your own unique candles to elevate your reception tables, dinner tables or even (fancy) picnic tables.

Lighting at weddings is something that is often overlooked, or often can be found at the bottom of the priority list, but candles can create a beautiful atmosphere at your wedding reception. Especially if the sun sets early in the evening, leaving your guests dining in the warm glow of candlelight. But why just stick to ‘normal plain‘ candles, when they can also become an integral part of the decor? This can be done so simply by painting your candles to coordinate with your colour scheme or general theme of the wedding.

We went floral with our theme and painted large daisies however any design you can think of will work brilliantly for this DIY.

Tip: Before you spend a lot of time unleashing your creative flair, check your wedding venue will allow real candles.

What you’ll need:

  • Candles – the candles we’ve used are the Green Dinner candles from Matalan
  • Surgical spirit or diluted white spirit (approx 60-70% diluted)- this prepares the surface of the candles and allows the paint to adhere better
  • Water based acrylic paint in the colours of your choice
  • Paintbrush/tools to create details

In order to get good coverage of colour, it might be necessary to add multiple layers of paint. Leave each layer of paint to dry fully before adding another layer.

It may be tempting to buy the cheapest, white candles you can for this wedding craft, however, if you’re thinking of painting the entire background of the candles a different colour, we would advise trying to find a candle in that colour to begin with (e.g. the green candles used in the video).

Having a go?  We’d love to see what you did with yours, simply tag us in your photos over on Instagram @bridesociety_uk.

Looking for more DIY ideas for your wedding?  Check out our YouTube playlist.

-Bride Society

How to Find YOUR Perfect Wedding Dress

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Helpful Tips & Hints to find the Wedding Dress / Outfit for you!

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This week’s video came at the specific request of our YouTube viewers; just how/where do you start with the overwhelming task of finding a wedding dress?  We hear you, we’ve been there!  So, here’s what we picked up along the way…

And let us start by saying, the right dress for you, might not be a dress at all.  Controversial?  Not so much these days.  You do you.  It’s YOUR wedding! 

We made this video to help you through those early stages of ‘dress’ shopping. (FYI, we have a whole other video focussed around tips for when you actually step foot into the bridal boutiques to start trying the outfits on, you can watch that here!).  We’re laying it out for you step-by-step, asking you questions to help get you thinking about what style, look & shape you should hone in on, how to work out which designers might have the right vibe for you, as well as where & when to get started.  And then of course deffo follow it up with that other video we mentioned of tips for when you’re ready to hit the pavement.

These tips may not guarantee you find ‘the one’, but they should help get you to a place of feeling confident and the most like yourself on your wedding day. (Whilst we hope you do get to experience that feeling of finding ‘the one’, we also wanted to normalise not feeling that too and quickly say there’s nothing wrong with you if you don’t!)

We hope you find our tips helpful, if you’ve found anything else useful in your process please drop them in the comments to share with other couples on their journey.

You can find even more content from us over on all of these platforms.  Come join the Society:

— Rebecca & Laura at Bride Society

Bridesmaid Trends 2023 – 2024

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Wedding Trend Predictions for your Bridal Party for 2023/24

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In previous videos we’ve talked about general wedding trends, wedding cake trends, and even wedding hair trends, but we thought it was about time to turn our attention to the wedding party and share our bridesmaid trend predictions for 2023-24!

Choosing your bridal party is a big decision and an honour, so it feels important to make sure the people who you’ve chosen to stand with and support you on your wedding day are happy and comfortable in the choice of outfit.

We’re talking what’s trending in the overall look of your bridal party, mismatched options to tailor to each specific person’s personality and style, colours you might want to think about and even the possibility of introducing prints. And more!

We’d love to hear if you’re including anything we’ve mentioned in our video in your wedding. Are you going for the mismatched look? Perhaps incorporating florals into the wedding party outfits? Or going full on glam with metallics? Let us know in the comments below!

-Bride Society

AI Wrote My Wedding Vows

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We challenged Artificial Intelligence: ChatGPT, to write wedding vows!

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The rise of AI!  We all know there’s been a lot of chatter about artificial intelligence lately…which of course made us curious…and a little bit scared (we’ve seen the movies)!  So naturally we logged in to ChatGPT to see what the hype was all about and test it out.

Writing wedding vows perhaps naturally comes to some easier than others.  Not that I’m suggesting some feel any more or any less for their partners, but that articulating your thoughts and feelings eloquently is a skill.  They are sentiments that should of course be genuine and from the heart, but sometimes it’s hard to put pen to paper (or more-so, fingers to touchscreens these days)…so perhaps a helping hand from a heartless-bot could get the ball rolling and the juices flowing, as unlikely as that sounds?

But is AI, or specifically in this case, ChatGPT, up to the challenge?  Can AI write vows that reflect human emotion, and sound genuine?  We first asked it to, “write 5 lines of sentimental vows” – watch the video to hear what it came up with.  Though naturally, vows that are romantic / sentimental are perhaps going to be the easiest to assemble from the internet as I would hazard a guess, they are the most commonly available.  So we then stepped up the challenge to see if it could convincingly handle a specific tone of vows, so we asked it to, “write 5 lines of funny wedding vows”, and well, it did!  Watch here to hear them!

Finally we threw the AI one more curveball…could it write vows specifically appropriate for a second marriage?  We wondered, could it adapt its language in such a way that would work for someone wanting to subtly reference their previous life experience & how it has informed their current path?  Take a look and let us know what you think?

What’s your verdict?  Would you have known an AI wrote these vows?  Whilst we’re not suggesting for a second that you simply lift what the AI spits out as your vows, arguably it could be a very useful tool for ideas, inspiration and structure.  S C A R Y !  Will you be saying, “I do” to AI?

Thanks for watching/reading.  We hope you enjoyed our AI challenge.  Any questions or video requests, please comment here or on any of our platforms, we’ll do our best to help.

You can find us in all of these places:

–Rebecca and Laura at Bride Society.

5 Bits of Unhelpful Wedding Advice to Ignore

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…and why.

As soon as the ring’s on your finger and you’re celebrating being engaged, it’s more than likely the wedding planning advice will start coming thick and fast. Everybody and anybody suddenly has an opinion on wedding planning and, more specifically, your wedding plans.

Unfortunately, it’s not always helpful or useful advice! So for this week’s video, we’re sharing 5 commonly given unhelpful wedding planning tips and why we think (for the most part) you should ignore them!

Whether it’s unsolicited advice about traditions, DIYs, who to invite or more, you’ll be ready to politely decline or redirect the conversations. Meaning you and your partner can plan the wedding that is memorable, meaningful and an enjoyable experience for you both!

We’d love to hear what you think about the advice shared in the video, have you been given unhelpful advice while planning your wedding? Let us know in the comments below.

-Bride Society

Personalised Ribbon with Cricut

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How to customise ribbon for your wedding bouquet, wedding thank you gifts, or of course ANY present for the ultimate finishing touch to the special occasion.

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For me, what I really love about any wedding is seeing all those personal little touches the couple have added.  Those things that aren’t necessarily ‘essential’ to the day, but ways they’ve found to incorporate bits of who they are, their story, what’s meaningful to them.  Those touches can show their personalities, their thoughtfulness, their appreciation to guests for taking the time out, or simply adding the wow factor.

And that’s where this week’s DIY craft idea really excels; personalised ribbon.  It’s a small thing, sure, but imagine how touched your MOH will be receiving a thank-you gift tied in a ribbon with, “Dear Alex, Thank you my beautiful friend. Love you always, Mrs Smith” or the FOB seeing the message, “Dad, Forever your little girl. Love Willow” as he unties your thoughtful present.  Of course this idea works brilliantly for any gifting occasion, not just the wedding day!

Or maybe there’s a line from a poem or a song that has special meaning to you & your fiancé(e)?  Add it to the ribbon tied around your bouquet so you can carry those words with you – a beautiful way to tie them into the day.  Plus, the choice of ribbon colour can easily be matched to your colour palette for the occasion!

Our Cricut tutorial brings you step-by-step instructions on how to personalise your ribbon, through creating the design using Cricut Design Space (Cricut Access not required), how to cut your design using the Cricut Maker and applying your iron-on vinyl (HTV) to your project using Cricut EasyPress, making this DIY wedding craft suitable for absolute beginners.  

Don’t need help with all of it? Jump ahead to the section you’re looking for with our handy time stamps in the video description box over on YouTube.

Materials we used (with product links if you need them!):

(* = Affiliate links: we get a small amount of commission from the retailer for the referral at no additional cost to you.)

If you’re in Canada, you can find the HTV here: https://amzn.to/3Vbm2Bf* , USA: https://amzn.to/3oFRviz*

NB. This video is not made in association with Cricut. Some materials listed above are affiliate links, these are clearly marked by an asterisk* where applicable. This means we get a small amount of commission from the retailer for the referral at no additional cost to you.

Got any questions?  If you get stuck, drop us a comment either here or in the YouTube comments – we check regularly and try to help where we can!

Thanks for stopping by!  If you’d like more Cricut content, check out our dedicated YouTube playlist of tutorials here.

For even more wedding content, join the society on our socials:

— Rebecca and Laura, Bride Society

Decorate a Retro Love Heart Cake with Us

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Kitsch Wedding Cake, Engagement Cake or Hen Party Cake Inspiration

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These vintage cake designs are everywhere right now and we thought it was high time we gave it a go. And what better day to try than National Tea Day?! So grab a cuppa and a piece of cake and enjoy! Decorate a pink on pink, love heart design with us in this week’s video. The key to the retro love heart cake decoration is ‘more is more‘! In fact, we may have even been a bit reserved in our efforts. You can go even further with adding sprinkles, cherries or how about mini disco balls?!

If you’re giving this trend a go yourself, use a variety of colours and different piping tips to create different effects on your cake. And don’t forget to personalise the top with a message to celebrate the occasion!

We used a petal tip to create the frills, a large shell tip to add the shell borders and a small open star tip to add some extra details.

Having a go?  We’d love to see what you did with yours, simply tag us in your photos over on Instagram @bridesociety_uk.

Looking for more DIY ideas for your wedding?  Check out our YouTube playlist.

-Bride Society

5 Easy DIY Wedding Craft Ideas!

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Our Beginner DIY Wedding Project Ideas

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Engaged?  Congrats!  If you’re thinking of crafting your way through your wedding planning, whether it’s to save £££ and/or because you really want to add that personal touch to your day, then you’ve come to the right people!  Bride Society is brimming with advice, inspiration, and tutorials to help you plan your big day.  No matter what your wedding question, we’re confident you’ll find the answer to it in one of our videos.  Trouble is, if you’re a beginner crafter and just starting to venture out into DIY projects for your wedding, where is a safe place to start?  We get it, you don’t want your first venture into the unknown to scare you off or require a big investment into equipment/tools when you’re not confident about how things are going to go.

So at nearly 6 years in to creating content for our YouTube channel, we have A LOT of ‘Wedding DIY Tutorials’ (147 and counting!) – here’s the link to the playlist on our channel: click me.  Then we got to thinking, if you’re just starting out, the sheer volume of ideas can be pretty overwhelming, so in today’s video we’ve handily rounded up five of our simplest wedding projects that we think you could get stuck into without, well, getting stuck!  These won’t break the bank in terms of tools, zero craft experience required, and bonus, the results will be noticed by your guests – for all the right reasons!

All links to featured videos can be found in the video description box on YouTube.

Got any questions or video requests?  Drop a comment below and we’ll do our best to help.

Looking for more content like this?  Check out our video on where to get started with your wedding planning here.

Join the Society!  You can become a part of the Bride Society by subscribing to this blog and joining us on our other socials here:

We’re excited to be a part of your wedding planning journey,

Rebecca and Laura at Bride Society x

Red Velvet Mini Cupcake Wedding Favours

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Bake with us: Pressed Flower Mini Red Velvet Cupcakes

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You can’t go wrong with an edible wedding favour, and as anything in miniature is cuter than its full size counterpart, these mini cupcake wedding favours are the perfect choice! Decorate with some pressed, edible flowers and you’re bang on trend too.

We’ve created mini red velvet cupcakes for our wedding favours. Bitesize vanilla and chocolate flavour cakes with a distinctive red colour. Perfect for eating in one (or a couple of bites if you’re being polite).

Our recipe will produce 50 mini cupcakes, plus a couple more in case you need a spare. So scale up the recipe if you need to bake a larger amount.

Another bonus to miniaturising your cupcakes is that they’ll bake in no time at all. Each batch bakes for approx 8 to 10 minutes at 160oC. Assembling your favour boxes will probably be the most time consuming part!

Red Velvet Cake Recipe:

  • 2 1/2 cups self raising flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 3 tbsp cocoa powder (plus water to form a paste)
  • Red food colouring
  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 1 1/2 cups caster sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 cup buttermilk
  • 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
  • 1 tsp white wine vinegar

Vanilla buttercream

  • 250g butter
  • 525g icing sugar
  • 2tsp vanilla extract

You will need: (Products marked with an * are affiliate links. This means we make a small amount of commission on any purchases made through those links at no extra cost to you.)

Pressed flowers were bought from Nurtured in Norfolk
Clear mini cupcake boxes*
Mini cupcake cases
Mini cupcake baking tray

Having a go?  We’d love to see what you did with yours, simply tag us in your photos over on Instagram @bridesociety_uk.

Looking for more DIY ideas for your wedding?  Check out our YouTube playlist.

-Bride Society

DIY Confetti Cones

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Easy to Make DIY Confetti Cones for your Wedding

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The confetti wedding-shot is always a great photo to look back on – it’s one of those very first married moments, everyone is having fun and joining in, and the petals fill the frame with so much colour.  It really is the perfect photo.  And whilst yes, in some ways it can be a slightly staged photo (maybe don’t let your photographer get toooooo OTT about getting this ‘just so’ with lots of do-overs, keep the magic folks), it also has that candid feel as you and your guests aren’t stood still, feeling stiff. 

So if you’ve decided you’re having that confetti moment – assuming your venue allows it, do check, then today’s DIY tutorial is where you want to be. How to make your own easy confetti cones! It’s simple, low cost, no fancy craft tools required and no crafting ability! All you need is some coloured paper (though of course you can make them snazzier if you’re feeling more adventurous, maybe with you and your partner’s initials.)

What you’ll need:

We’re using A4 coloured paper for this tutorial which makes 2 cones, so you technically only need 1 A5 sheet per cone, so don’t panic if that’s all you’ve got.  You don’t even need glue!

Having a go?  We’d love to see what you did with yours, simply tag us in your photos over on Instagram @bridesociety_uk.

Looking for more DIY ideas for your wedding?  Check out our YouTube playlist.

Join us for even more content every week across all our other social media channels:

–Rebecca and Laura at Bride Society

Wedding Favours Your Guests Actually Want

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We’ve all left weddings at the end of the night and spotted a sea of leftover or forgotten wedding favours on the tables. Which, is not only a shame, but also potentially a waste of money. Money which could have been used elsewhere in the wedding budget, or just for general day to day living!

So, we’re here to help. If you’re planning on giving wedding favours to your own guests, we’re helping you with some ideas of what your guests actually want!

And it’s simple.

We’ve broken it down into three categories:

  • Something to eat
  • Something to use
  • Something to enjoy

Follow these tips and the only favours you’ll have left over are the ones you’ve hidden for yourself because you didn’t want to miss out!

Check out our Pinterest board which accompanies this video for some specific favour ideas.

Are you giving wedding favours? What have you chosen? We’d love to hear your plans. Let us know in the comments below, or join us over on Instagram to share your plans.

-Bride Society

Mexico: Destination Wedding / Honeymoon Location Review

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Secrets Moxché, Playa del Carmen, Mexico

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If you’re looking for the taste of the exotic for your honeymoon, or even flirting with the idea of a destination wedding / elopement to escape the wedding planning stressors, then an all-inclusive, adults-only, luxury Mexican resort could be for you!  Let’s face it, we were couped up for a good couple of years there, and now we’re finally back planning and travelling with some level of confidence, so we’re thinking the appeal of long-haul exotic honeymoons and destination weddings are now stronger than ever!  Add to that the reality of UK weather, especially if you’ve not been able to escape it for some time, means most of us are ready to pack our suitcases and join you.  We suspect you might get a few more ‘heck, yes!’ RSVPs to your destination wedding than perhaps you would have done pre-2020!

So right at the end of 2022, we packed our bags and hopped on a plane (or two) to sunny Mexico to try out one of Secrets’ newer resorts, Secrets Moxché in Playa del Carmen to bring you a review / closer look at what they have to offer, and we’ll leave it to you to decide if this is your destination of dreams (spoiler: it was mine!).

We’ve done a few reviews of resorts around the Cancún / Playa del Carmen area in Mexico over the years (check out our YouTube playlist for those here) and our most commonly asked questions are always about the food, so we’re paying a visit to their restaurants in today’s review, as well as giving you a guided tour around this all-inclusive luxury resort, plus a look around one of their ‘Preferred Club Superior Junior Suite King Ocean View’ rooms!  Say that three times fast!

Thinking of visiting and have questions?  Drop them in the comments and we’ll do our best to answer.  And if you choose to go, we hope you have as amazing a time as we did.

For more content like this, don’t forget to check out our Destination Wedding / Honeymoon playlist on YouTube and find us over on all these social media channels:

— Rebecca at Bride Society x

Boho Wedding Ideas

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How to Create a Boho Style Wedding

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For the laidback, free-spirited couple, boho weddings never seem to go out of style. And while the specific trends within boho weddings have changed over the years, the look and feel of a boho wedding has stayed pretty constant.

In the first of our new series of wedding theme inspiration videos, we’re giving you a complete guide to creating the boho wedding of your dreams in 2023 (and beyond!). From the flowers to the outfits, to the decor and more.

For a closer look at some of the images we showed in the video (and more) check out our full boho Weddings Pinterest Board.

Are you planning a boho wedding? We’d love to hear all about your plans! Or if you’ve got a request for another wedding theme you’d like to see some more ideas for, let us know in the comments below or join us over on Instagram.

-Bride Society

Wedding Invitation Checklist

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What to Write on your Wedding Invitations

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We know there’s a lot to think about when it comes to planning a wedding, at times it’s hard to hold everything in your head and you’ll frequently wonder, “did I do that right?” and “have I missed something?”.  Well, today we’re here with a wedding invitation checklist so you can send them out with confidence that you included everything you needed to.  That’s one job successfully in the bag!

And if it didn’t already, once those invitations go out, it’ll start to feel like this wedding is really happening, so let the excitement commence!

All the things you need to include on your wedding guest invites, the extras that are useful to your guests, as well as when to send them out.  Peace of mind this way:

We hope you found that helpful & are feeling confident. Any questions, drop them in the video comments box and we’ll do our best to help.

Looking for more content like this? We have so many wedding advice, DIY and inspiration videos available for you over on YouTube that will see you through every aspect of your wedding planning, so come join us.

You can also become a part of our Society by joining us over on our social media channels here:

From Rebecca & Laura at Bride Society x

Making Mini Wedding Cakes

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As someone who does a lot of baking, family and friends often use that as an opportunity to gift baking related items. This Christmas was no exception and I was given a cake tin which produced individual, mini three tier cakes. I could see a lot of potential for using my new baking toy, but hadn’t had an opportunity to try it out yet!

Which is where this week’s video comes in! I used it as an excuse to try out the tin and see if we could recreate a couple of super popular wedding cake designs, in miniature.

This was the very first time we’d tried out using the tin, so it was definitely trial and error when it came to seeing how it would work.

Tip – if you’re trying it yourself, fill the tin with more mix than you think you’ll need as you need the cake to definitely rise above the surface of the tin to ensure you have the bottom tier intact.

It was also the first time using cake release spray so it was a huge relief when that worked and the cakes came out in one, perfect mini three tier, piece!

When it comes to decorating your cakes, the options are limitless. We opted to keep it simple to start with and create one of my most highly requested wedding cake designs – a semi-naked cake! If you’re giving this a go, you may find it easier than I did trying to ensure the decorating was on camera, but a couple of tips for this style:

– Soft buttercream will be easier to use when covering your cake.
– If you have a turntable, that will also make life a lot easier when you’re scraping the sides of your cake.

We added a couple of dried flower posies to this mini-cake. As with any fresh flowers, you don’t want any part of the stem/flower touching the cake. We wrapped the stems in floral tape and popped each posy in a straw before inserting in to the cake.

The second style, was pretty much the opposite of the first! And a style I’ve been wanting to try out for a while; the Lambeth style cake. This style lends itself to ‘more is more’ but I’m so pleased with how the first attempt turned out.

For this style, you’ll want to completely cover your cake with buttercream (no cake peeking through this time!). Then you can go wild with your piping. Colour your buttercream with the colours of your choice and have fun!

The cake tin’s linked below in case you want to give these mini-cakes a go.
(Products marked with an * are affiliate links. This means we make a small amount of commission on any purchases made through those links at no extra cost to you.)

*Chicago Metallic Cake tin

The size of cake the tin produced would be perfect for two people, so how cute would these be for a first anniversary cake?! Decorate it in the style of your original wedding cake to enjoy while reminiscing about your Big Day.

They’d also be great as favours or part of a bridal shower/engagement party dessert table.

We’d love to hear what you think and see what you come up with, if you give these mini-cakes a go. Let us know in the comments below or join us over on Instagram and tag us in your photos!

-Bride Society