Vintage Wedding

Last week I attended my brother's wedding. A lot of thought and detail went into the decoration. They had some of the coolest things I have seen at a wedding. Unfortunately I only had time to take a few photos (it's hard work being a bridesmaid!).

If you are in the process of planning a wedding, maybe these ideas will give you some inspiration.

Personalised bridesmaids hangers to photograph the bridesmaid's dresses on the morning of the wedding.

The food was excellent, even before the day started we had a selection of mini pastries to choose from.

Lots of fairy lights, vines and artificial plants. Lanterns lining the path.

Mini milk bottles with homemade raspberry mojitos (sparkling elderflower for the mocktails) with funky retro straws. All dispensed from glass bell jars with little taps.

Bunting draped over a vintage suitcase for all the gifts.

Confetti boxes made from herb trays filled with cones to distribute to the guests, with printed plaques and ribbon.

Custom made wedding ring, courtesy of Christina Made It! A simple D shape sterling Silver traditional wedding band.

Artificial flowers placed in different colour and sized glass bottles with pearls draped across them for the table centre pieces.

It's obviously not a posh meal unless you have flowers in the dish. I can confirm the flowers did taste surprisingly nice.

Custom made chocolate lollipops in keeping with the vintage theme. Provided by Lulu's Lollipops.

I think it helped that the decor of the venue fitted perfectly with the theme. For example this grand chandelier in the main entrance. 

Overall it was a lovely wedding and the day couldn't have been more perfect. The food was excellent and the guests had a great time.

Gem stones

I had a custom request from a friend of mine to make a matching bracelet and earring set for his wife's birthday present. The bracelet was to replace one that had been previously lost, so it was important that it had similar elements.   

Working closely with the customer on the design, it was decided that we should include the blue gem stones that were in the lost bracelet and also the figure 8 shape that appeared in the links.

It seemed fitting to use the infinity symbol for its representation of eternal love. 

The links started as round wire, which was cut to size. The ends were filed flat to give a neat join and then bent into shape using pliers. This did take a bit of trial and error, but the great thing about silver is that you can reuse it - if it doesn't work, you can make it into something else and if you damage it you can usually polish it out.

The join was then soldered together using silver solder and a blow torch. I made ten of these; two for the earrings and eight for the bracelet.

All the links were then sanded down and polished to smooth out the joins.

The earring hooks are made from 0.8mm round wire which is the standard thickness that most people can fit through their ears. Again these were shaped with the round nosed pliers. The curve was created by wrapping the wire around a pen (or similar) which gave a neat arch.

This was my first time using gem stones so I had to research how to incorporate them into the jewellery and how to set them. I will admit I did panic slightly when I realised it was a whole different skill to silversmithing, but the general idea was a need for a kind of claw that can hold the stone in place which can then be adjusted to hold it securely.

The stone choice was topaz - a suitable option as it represents love and relationships. We originally chose the Sky blue topaz, but when they arrived they seemed a much more pale blue than in the picture. So we tried the London blue topaz instead which were a much closer match to the original bracelet.

I then added the various sizes of jump rings to join each of the links together as well as the clasp mechanism to the end.

Here is the finished bracelet:

And the finished earrings:

With the unused Sky blue topaz stones, I created some stud earrings. These also allowed me to practice how to set the stones before I worked on the real thing.