Once we had all the major logistics for our wedding day sorted, we had so much fun thinking through the smaller details to make the event unmistakably “us”. Here I’ll count down our top 10 favourite extra special little gems.
1. Wedding guest BINGO!
Many of our guests had never met one another before and had come from different hobbies, social groups, and even different continents! We wanted to have an (optional) icebreaker to help people mingle. We came up with a version of “wedding guest bingo”, where the challenge was to find a guest who matched the description in the boxes, complete a row and, eventually, the entire card.
Without wishing to “out” our friends too much, we had lots of fun drafting our clues, which included:
- Has crossed the Pacific Ocean under sail
- Has competed in a live game show against adult entertainers
- Has been shot
- Has been a DJ on the radio or at a nightclub
- Has fallen into a burning ring of fire
- Has held a Guinness World Record
- Has customised a motorcycle
- Has made a video game
- Has written a book on funicular railways…
Yep, our loved ones are certainly eccentric and are just, THE BEST!
We printed out game sheets, distributed them with some pens, and announced the “rules” in our welcome speeches before the meal kicked off. It was so much fun hearing “BINGO!” being shouted between courses at the wedding breakfast and pretty much everyone was out of their seats getting involved. So much so, that the staff at our venue said that it was the most noisy and active wedding they’d ever hosted (in a good way!).
A lucky BINGO prize winner!
The prize for achieving BINGO was a pin badge that my husband had made with a logo representing our initials (more on this later), and the grand prize for the first person to complete the whole card was a private audience with our cat, Sterling! We also had a “results” session just before we cut the cake, where my husband read out the clues and guests could voluntarily “own up” if they matched the description– there were a few surprises in there, too!
2. Photo-framed memories
To aid further with ice-breaking and to decorate the tables, we selected some fun photos featuring our guests from our archives. We printed these and displayed them in photo frames we either already owned or sourced second-hand from a charity shop.
Photos being discussed
The idea was to bring back some memories and start conversations: “What exactly is going on there!?”. We also encouraged people to pass around the photos or visit other tables to see their shots. It was a lovely detail and we gave some away at the end of the meal to anyone who wanted to take theirs home.
3. Byzantine wedding rings
My very clever husband designed bespoke medieval wedding rings for us. Using reference images of signet rings from museums and design conventions around Byzantine monograms, he designed an image intertwining both of our initials, set in a gorgeous medieval ring design. A jewellery maker friend of ours then created 3-D printed moulds to get the fit correct, then produced silver casts of the rings. We absolutely love them!
Avery modelling his actual antique medieval ring (left), and his own Byzantine-inspired design (right)
4. Cake Topper
Our cake topper was a 3D-printed Funko Pop-style figurine of us in medieval garb, complete with Sterling the cat! This was not originally meant as a cake topper: it was a gift from a friend (thanks so much, Poppy!) around the time of our engagement, but we immediately thought this would be perfect for the job! It was also nice to have another medieval element at the wedding.
A pretty good likeness!
5. DIY wedding flowers
Because I’m crafty (and a glutton for additional stress, apparently!), I decided to make the flower decorations for our wedding. Due to our tour concept, I knew we would have several occasions where we could reuse our flowers, so I decided to go with artificial arrangements.
My starting point was our wedding accent colour: a luscious dark red, perfectly exemplified by the velvet-like petals of red roses. The choice of this colour was mostly because I love red roses for their vintage glamour, and I could coordinate it with my lipstick and nail polish- perfect!
Gorgeous tones of deep red
I used several different types of roses: some made of velvet, some foam, and some “silk” with multiple red tones, to give a more realistic and textured effect. I chose eucalyptus (plain and some with little white flowers), ivy, willow leaves, and dark red huckleberry leaves as foliage. I had fun adding in our tertiary accent colour, black, via some cool black eucalyptus and pampas grass. I even managed to incorporate some pearls! I learned that you need far more foliage than you’d think to cover up the bases and fill out the arrangement. I chose to include more roses than in arrangements I’d seen ready-made online, likely as the flowers are the more expensive part (I used a total of c.134!).
I watched several YouTube videos for crucial tips on how to create the arrangements, although I did already know some of the basics from watching my Mum flower arranging as a child, plus my two whole weeks of work experience at a florist when I was 15, lol! I made one big arrangement to serve double duty: on the table behind us during our ceremony and then to look fabulous sitting in front of us at the breakfast. I made six smaller versions of this arrangement, distributed on the three long guest tables amongst our other decorations.
The wedding breakfast tables looking rather splendid
I also made my own bouquet. I knew I wanted a mass of red roses in a neat and contained bouquet with minimal foliage. I initially bought a bouquet “base”: a plastic handle with a cage containing foam to insert flowers into, but didn’t use this in the end as I found clustering the stems together, just as you would do to create a bunched arrangement with “real” flowers, worked really well. I created the bunch in my hand, incorporating two special, luxurious large silk red roses, alongside the same blooms used in the table decorations, with a little foliage and some pearl sprigs. Once I had the look I wanted, I wrapped the stems first in florist tape, then covered this in a lovely red velvet ribbon, with some dress pins to secure it. Done!
Red rose perfection!
I kept account of everything I spent on the arrangements, and while they weren’t cheap (just over £400), they were certainly less expensive than buying real flowers for our wedding day, plus we re-used them at our London and Manchester parties. We now have a house full of red roses, so do get in touch if you’re in the market for some!!
6. Bouquet photo charms
All of my grandparents have now passed away, but I wanted to find a way to honour their memories at the wedding. I sourced little bouquet charms from Etsy which included a small photo of each of them to attach to the handle of my bouquet. My family and I loved this meaningful little detail.
A very special detail
7. Wedding favours
Coming closer to the wedding, I was creatively exhausted and at a loss to think of wedding favours. I didn’t want to commission something that would just be thrown away and I didn’t have time or inclination to make anything else crafty. Then a solution came out of nowhere: the week before the wedding, I was in Lush buying shower gel and happened upon little disks of solid hand cream at the till. I was impressed that the proceeds from this packaging-free product go to charity, and thought it would be perfect as a favour- who doesn’t need ethical hand cream!? They even had an option with a little paw print pattern so I could say they were gifts from our cat. Cheesy but cute!
Ethical hand cream? Yes, please!
8. Wedding tour merch
No rock n’ roll tour is complete without merchandise, right!? OK, so this is a little unusual for a wedding, but we had a t-shirt designed for our tour by the incredible artist, Vince Ray. I described how this came about in my post here, and it was brilliant to see this art come to life. We set up an account with an online print shop that will make-to-order and deliver anywhere in the world, so our guests could also have a shirt if they wanted, with any profits donated to charity. We even have a pet t-shirt available in the store!
Our custom wedding art by Vince Ray
9. Our “guest book” motorcycle jackets
Fully embracing the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle, we picked up leather battle jackets to customise with souvenirs collected along our adventure. We bought biker-cut leather jackets from a sample sale and set about customising them for our wedding tour; initially with our Vince Ray wedding art on the back, then with pin badges and patches that we picked up at our tour stops.
Our wedding jackets in action in Las Vegas- more on this to come!
One of my favourite details was to have guests along the tour sign the lining of our jackets as our wearable “guest book”! As my jacket is a tiny cropped cut, I soon ran out of space, so Avery’s larger jacket has become the official guest book for most of the tour. I’m happy to report that it’s full of signatures from well-wishers!
10. Guest of honour: Sterling, the cat!
While our giant Maine Coon, Sterling, was not at the actual ceremony (that would have been CHAOS, for sure!), we did have him with us on the trip so we could share parts of the day with him. To make him feel really included, we got him an adorable white tie outfit for the occasion (actually meant for a dog, but he’s so big, it fit him very well), and, of course, his very own battle jacket!
A very distinguished (and unimpressed!) gentleman.
I sourced a baby-sized white denim jacket from Vinted, which fit him perfectly. We cut off the sleeves to make it more of a vest for easy dressing and set about customising it. We’ve included pins from the tour stops he participated in (Oxford, Devon, Manchester), and Avery has added some tiny studs. I can’t say that he enjoys wearing these outfits, but he tolerates our silliness pretty well! Follow @sterling_kitten on Instagram for more!
Battle jacket in progress!
These details made the event shine for us and it was well worth all the planning and creative effort. These were just some “best bits” of the very start of our wedding tour- I’ll update you here soon with highlights from the rest of our celebrations and adventures!
Thanks for reading 🥰 Hit Follow to receive brief notes letting you know when I’ve posted a new article, and in the meantime, check out my Instagram and YouTube channels for more (Un)Popular content!
