Recently we celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary (yes, you’re right I really am far too young to have been married so long, thank you ). We debated for ages over what to do to celebrate, and eventually decided on a small garden party, on a grand scale, on as small a budget as we could manage.
We posted a few pictures online, and have had numerous messages asking how we got the look, and how much things like trees for the marquee cost. SO I thought we’d share a few details – see the rest of the stories here for details of everything from the marquee to the cocktails.
We wanted to keep the look silvery, without making it too ‘bling’. We were striving for sparkling elegance, with not too much formality.
So I scoured Pinterest for ideas, and we began to pull a plan together. To enable as much light as possible we had mirror table runners cut by a local glass firm. 6′ long and only 4″ wide, they were just enough to place the candles and vases etc on, without taking up too much room on the narrow trestles.
We nearly fainted at the cost of mirrored silver candlesticks and vases… and Mr LittleStuff took it as a personal challenge. He spent months scouring websites and monitoring eBay, and we ended up with a perfect array of mis-matched glassware which looked perfect. Nothing uniform, but all connected by the crackled silvered glass. White candles, of course, and he even managed to find a batch of silvered glass name holders which someone was selling form their own wedding.
The table and place names were all designed and printed on cream card stock by us, with a whimsical stick figure couple.
We had overlooked salt & pepper – I was inclined to not bother, but we decided it was probably the right thing to do to have it availble. A ridiculous amount of time was spent scouring sites for these – we needed them to be really small, and glass with a silver-looking top. Eventually we got them through a catering supplier (and I don’t thin a single person used them…).
We purchased wine glasses from IKEA, and water glasses from The Range – nothing special, just plain, simple (cheap!) and utterly unremarkable, which was fine; that way they’d be practical, but not detract from the look of the table.
The caterers were providing cutlery and crockery…
So the marquee was dressed, the tables were set… after a day’s solid work we were pretty much there.
Apart from the cocktail making, the laying out of the cocktail area, clearing out the kitchen for the caterers to move in… and getting dressed of course.
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