Oh I do like to be beside the seaside

Summer is here! Yay!! Kids are off school, the weather is (supposedly) hot and sunny and days out to the beach are in. So we think that an interesting theme for an August wedding would be “a day at the seaside”. For our table runners and chair bows we would be looking at a bright aqua blue sash, get people thinking seaside thoughts!

Invitations first. We love these sandy beach invites, and at only £37.50 for 50 including personalising of the front, that's a bargain! 

Next up, centrepieces. Picture a fish bowl vase filled with shells and stones finished with a tall candle in the centre. Simple but effective and completely accommodating a beach theme! We have found a picture below to help you picture it for yourselves!

Table name holders, essential for guests to locate the table they are to be seated at! We love these shell based stands, they come as a set of 3 for £6.95, bargain! And to go in these fab holders, how about theme friendly table names such as beach essentials such as bucket and spade, or seaside locations.

For name cards a personalised beach stone with the guests name printed on would make a lasting souvenir of your big day. Bags of stones can be bought from may hardware stores or garden centres but we found www.wickes.co.uk had a good deal with a 25kg bag costing just £8.49 in brown or grey.

Favours are an all important part of your day and we have a couple of ideas to suit varying budgets.

Our first idea is a personalised stick of rock for everyone with names of the bride and groom through the middle and the date your big day. These come in quite pricey at £210 for 50.

If you’re on a tighter budget how about a rock sweet instead, 40 for just £10.99 and still personalised! 

With a variety of colours and styles available for either, these favours are sure to give guests something to talk about!

Your big day wouldn't be complete without a book for guests to sign and leave their words of advice and congratulations. 

This beach themed guest book is just £13.99. Guest books create a lasting memory of your big day and are definitely worth including in your plans.

Just before we finish here are some extra ideas for your big day. How about organising an ice cream van to greet everyone at your chosen venue? A welcome ice cream to accompany your drinks may well be appreciated on a hot sunny August day and will keep guests going until your meal is served. Or maybe change your wedding menu and fish and chips with mushy peas as a more informal sit down meal!

We would love to hear any of your wedding plans, maybe you could inspire a future months blog. Get in touch with us on Twitter @WeddingBBF, on Facebook Crowhurst Park Weddings, on here in a comment below or email us on events@crowhurstpark.co.uk. Or why not follow us? It would be a shame to miss out on future wedding blogs from Crowhurst Park!

Love,

Your BBFs x

A Personal Affair!

With planning a wedding comes hundreds of decisions, and by the end you may just want to go with the standard just to make planning a little bit easier and to stop the cost getting out of hand! So here are a few parts of the wedding day to consider, making your special day both more personal and more memorable without breaking the bank.

Let’s start with the ceremony. Civil wedding ceremonies are much shorter than Church ceremonies, so a great way to add a bit of personality is with a reading. And this bit of personality is completely free! This can be a reading with some meaning to you as a couple, and is a great way to get a friend or family member involved in your big day, after all, you can only have so many bridesmaids and ushers!

While we are on the subject of the ceremony, let’s talk about the ceremony music. Most venues ask you provide a CD player and nominate a friend to play the music during your service *cough* Crowhurst Park doesn’t *cough*. A great alternative to this is a live musician, such as a guitarist. They will make popular music choices original too!

Sticking with the ceremony, if you and your partner have young children, and they will be walking down the aisle as part of the wedding party a fab idea is this cute little sign for your little one to carry (or wear!) Fun and cute, this is a great way to set a more relaxed tone in your ceremony. Can you hear the “awwws” already? 

Moving onto the wedding breakfast. You invited all your guests to your wedding as you want to share this occasion with them, and want them to be a part of your celebration. So why create hierarchy with table numbers? Instead, why not name your tables? At Crowhurst Park we have had some fantastic alternatives to table numbers, such as a groom with a love of all things Land Rover, with table names like Discovery and Defender. Or Marvel character names (again a theme chosen by the groom!) Just picture a beautiful room with comic book characters dotted around! “Such fun!”

Another great topic for table names we have seen at the Park was numbers… *“what!” I hear you cry, “You said no to numbers!”*… but these were numbers related to occasions. Such as the number of football matches the couple had been to together, or the number of days they had been engaged. These numbers worked really well, watching guests with a quizzical face of “there aren’t 374 tables here” to the chatter when they saw where that number came from.

And what is a wedding breakfast without food? If your venue offers you the chance of your guests having their own choice from the menu, then grab it! You may think it is more work in the run up to the wedding, I mean; you have enough to deal with, right?  Having to send menus with invites, and then write the menu choices on the inside of name cards sounds like a hassle. But it is a lot easier than worrying about your fussy Aunt, and letting that influence what you want to eat on your day. Plus, it creates such a nice feel during the meal. You want to look at your guests from the top table and see them enjoying the food in front of them, not pushing it around the plate.

Sticking with food, a personalised cake topper is a great way of adding a bit of sparkle to a wedding cake, it is there to be looked at as well as eaten after all. These cake toppers are great, and even better they are made from acrylic or clay so can be kept as a keepsake from the day. This is great for the budget savvy bride, why not buy a cheaper cake, such as from M&S or Waitrose, and make it special with one of these?

As mentioned above music can make the day more personal and fun, not just in the ceremony, but also during the evening reception. By getting your guests to pick a song or two for your evening reception, they have no excuse not to be up on the dance floor from the start of the night, it is their taste in music after all! You could ask them to choose their favourite song, or a track that reminds them of you. You want your guests to begging the DJ for “just one more song!” as they don’t want the night to end.

Time for one last suggestion… Photo booths are all the rage at the moment, and a great way to loosen your guests up. However, professional booths can be pretty expensive. A great alternative is to buy a polaroid camera, you can get these for a great price on Amazon, and even better they hold their price if you want to sell them on after. A polaroid photo corner can also work as a fab alternative to a guest book, with guests sticking the photos they take into an album, and writing a message alongside, much more fun than a standard guest book. 

We would love to hear your wedding plans, maybe we missed a few little touches. Get in touch with us on Twitter @WeddingBBF, on Facebook Crowhurst Park Weddings, on here in a comment below or email us on events@crowhurstpark.co.uk. Or why not follow us? It would be a shame to miss out on future wedding blogs from Crowhurst Park!

Love,

Your BBFs x