DIY Distress

The one problem with deciding to make your own wedding invitations is the part where you realise that you have to send them out. And not just, you know, anonymously posted on the internet - you will be literally sending these things that you have spent months crafting, poured hours and hours of time into constructing, to every person you know and love.

Like that nightmare you had where you did something stupid in front of everyone you know and love.

When this realisation hits you - usually around the time you accidentally glue-gun one of the inserts slightly off-centre into one of the cards, or when you notice that the ink from the stamp has smudged a little around the edges, despite you hairspraying it twice for good measure - your stomach drops and you realise that maybe, maybe those things you've been working on since Christmas are in fact a little bit crap. And everyone knows you're making your own invitations because your mum has been telling everyone so proudly, but actually they're going to open the envelopes and see... these.

And it's too late to back out now because you'd never be able to get professional ones made in time, and of course because everyone knows you're making them yourself, they'll be really confused if they suddenly got non-homemade ones, so you'd have to answer questions about how it all went wrong, so it works out quicker if you just send out this trash and then people will be able to see just went wrong and will hopefully be British enough not to comment on it. Besides, it's not like there's anything you can do to fix it at this point.

Of course from there it starts to spiral.

What if nothing you've made for the wedding is any good? What if it's not just the invitations that suck, what if it all sucks?

And what if it's not just the stuff you made what if all the choices you have made, what if everything you picked for this wedding is going to look awful? What if once it's all put together it just looks like a hot mess of random colours and glue-gunned decorations, and everyone just sits there really awkwardly waiting until there's an appropriate point for them to leave so that they are no longer surrounded by all sorts of weird, poorly-coordinated things.

And then afterwards no-one will speak to you for a while, if ever again, because they've seen what's inside your mind and it wasn't nice for anyone.

And they're probably still all covered in glitter, even though you didn't use any glitter, but that's just the way these things always seem to turn out, with glitter stuck to people.

At this point you have to go and sit quietly somewhere and distract yourself in some non-alarming manner, possibly by watching a livestream of kittens, and take a lot of deep calming breaths.

After that you have to reaffirm yourself, it will be fine, people will like your things, and if they don't they will probably be too drunk to examine them too closely anyway, so it will work out either way.

Fun with Fruit

And yes, I checked. Botanically speaking, Pumpkin is a fruit, because it's got seeds in.

Because we are having an Autumn wedding, I was really quite taken with the idea of using a mixture of autumnal foliage and pumpkins to decorate the reception. Not because I want a Halloween-y wedding, as one florist seemed to think, going on to suggest that she had jack-o-lantern and spider-shaped table confetti that might look nice (maybe, but not what I was after); rather, I like pumpkins, they make me smile, and they're also I think a nice, classy little nod to Jon's half-Canadian background.

Pinterest, that most dangerous of websites, provided ample examples of nifty pumpkin-decorations, thusly:

(if anyone can provide sources for these, that would be great - I've tried searching but the pinterest links lead to seemingly unrelated pages, and image searching it only brings up... more pinterest pages)

But not only was I enlightened to the idea of stuffing flowers in these seasonal gourds, but to the full range of decorative carving which could be done! Martha Stewart offered these twinkly, and exciting examples:

Although she wanted to cheat and stick fairy lights inside rather than a candle. Whut, Martha?

There were some beautiful decorative carvings as well, which were very elegant!

 

Now, in the UK, Pumpkin isn't really a big thing. It's literally only available for the two weeks before Halloween, and most people wouldn't even consider doing anything but carving it, so trying to find pumpkins that would be suitable for pumpkin pie this year was a bit of a trial. This meant that we had a two-week window to get hold of some pumpkins to have a go at this carving malarkey and see if we were capable of doing anything more than leering faces. HOWEVER, Jon accused me of attempting to ruin Halloween if I didn't do some that were at least marginally spooky, so instead it became more of a practice at using stencils.

Tadaaaa! Here they are, in all their mismatched glory. I'll let you guess which ones were by Jon, and which ones were by me, the 'Halloween Grinch'.

I got very excited about the prospect of projecting an image onto the wall behind the lanterns, and experimented with this to a greater or lesser effect (with mixed success).

Whilst Jon challenged himself to a more complex spin on the traditional theme.

However, Jon also told me, whilst we were beavering away with our carving, that he didn't want carved pumpkins around the place because they'd look rubbish in the day time. 

It's like he hasn't listened to anything I've been talking about for the past year, honestly. Back to the drawing board we go! Let's hope we're on the same page this time, and that he's paying attention.