Welcome back for Part 2 of Pippa and Bruces very chic wedding day at Le Manoir. Read on for Pippa’s info on how to make the most beautiful DIY bouquet and all her other planning ideas.

Once again, all the stunning images are courtesy of (and copyright of) Christian Keenan at CKP Weddings.

Forgoing Flowers for DIY Decor

I decided not to have flowers at all and instead made my own bouquet and table centerpieces. I wanted to create a wintery and christmassey feel to the day so I made a centerpiece for the ceremony room by filling large glass vases with pinecones and Christmas baubles in the colours of our wedding.

*Images are courtesy of (and copyright of) Christian Keenan at CKP Weddings.

I used baubles, pinecones and dried limes to make my bouquet. I used a variety of textures and sizes, glued the ‘blooms’ to florist’s wire and stuck them into a pomander base. I used some of the leftover silk from my dress to wrap around the ‘stems’ and secured it with some florist’s pins onto which I glued some olive green Swarovski crystals.

I also made the orders of service myself using some stiff card, chocolate silk and ivory silk ribbon. I made the embellishments by threading more swarovski crystals onto the green wire again and just wrapping it around the ribbon. This worked out to be a lot less expensive that buying embellishments and kept the theme running throughout all our décor.

*Images are courtesy of (and copyright of) Christian Keenan at CKP Weddings.

For the table centerpieces, I carried on the pinecone and candle theme and filled vases with them, then attached hanging tealight holders to wintery branches with coloured wire. I glued Swarovski crystals to the wire to give additional sparkle. Unfortunately, I could only find light coloured branches, so had an amusing afternoon spraypainting the branches to the chocolate colour I wanted (one day, I will look back and laugh!) I decorated the ceremony room with candles, and we lit the open fire to give a cosy and christmassey feel to the room.

I was aided and abetted by my fabulous Usherettes (and my groom and his best man in the end!) who assembled all the decorations – they really were such stars!

Passing on Tradition

We chose not to have attendants, The groom had a ‘best man’ but we didn’t really feel it was necessary for us. Bruce wore a Dolce and Gabanna velvet Tuxedo and just looked so handsome! He wore Paul Smith patent leather boots and a silk bow tie.

*Images are courtesy of (and copyright of) Christian Keenan at CKP Weddings.

Choosing the Perfect Photographer

We chose Christian Keenan and Andy le Gresley from CKP weddings and are just beyond delighted with their work. We had seen some of their pictures from other weddings that they had shot and knew that they would be perfect for capturing our day.



*Images are courtesy of (and copyright of) Christian Keenan at CKP Weddings.

Bride turned Baker…

I am proud to say, I made my own cake from scratch! I love baking, but had never attempted anything quite so ambitious.

The bottom tier was chocolate fudge, next one was Lemon, then Carrot cake and the top tier was a light fruit cake.

*Images are courtesy of (and copyright of) Christian Keenan at CKP Weddings.

I had a couple of trial runs (much to the delight of my neighbours who were called upon for taste-testing!) so managed to identify a few pitfalls (like gravity, for example!) before making the final version. I loved the idea of flowers between the tiers as I have seen on a few wedding cakes; as we had kind of substituted pinecones for flowers in the table centerpieces, I decided to carry on the theme with the cake. I threaded more swarovski crystals onto the coloured wire (as I did for the centerpieces) and used that to add a bit of sparkle to the cake.

Bringing the Chic to the reception…

We chose the Grove String Quartet from The Royal Academy of Music, as my Dad is a musician and studied there when he was younger and it was important to us to support the next generation of musicians. They exceeded all our expectations – anyone who can make ‘Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer’ sound classy automatically gets my vote!

*Images are courtesy of (and copyright of) Christian Keenan at CKP Weddings.

The tables were decorated with crackers from Cox and Cox. They were ivory and green and I removed the gold ribbon from them and swapped it for Chocolate organza to keep with our colour scheme.

*Images are courtesy of (and copyright of) Christian Keenan at CKP Weddings.

I also made the table plan myself…I dismantled two box frames and spraypainted them in a glittery green colour. I then ran a battery operated string of LEDs across a mirrored back board. I attached the individual tables to the LED wire using the green wire and a green Swarovski crystal. The table cards were backed with metallic green paper which reflected in the mirror. I used steel DIY brackets to hold the whole thing together and glued a chocolate brown frame onto the front.

*Images are courtesy of (and copyright of) Christian Keenan at CKP Weddings.

I made a lot of the details for the wedding myself, and am so pleased that I did…a lot of people thought I has lost my senses, but I persevered! It was a lot of fun, and I love the way that everything ties together, I don’t think we would have been able to achieve that if we had outsourced production.

Thank you so much to Pippa and Bruce for allowing us to share what was clearly such an intimate day with so many heartfelt deatils. And thank you to the amazingly talented Christian Keenan for allowing us to finally showcase his work – it really was a pleasure!

Yours Truly,

Rebecca
xoxo

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