Vintage Cutlery

When I turned 21, my parents presented me with a perfectly adequate cutlery set. I can’t remember how many pieces it has, but believe me when I say that there were more types of spoons in there than I have fingers on my hand.

That being the case, I feel horribly ungrateful about the fact that now that I hvae ordered my new super cool dinner set (currently on sale at Peters of Kensington!) that I would really like some vintage cutlery to go with it. Or at least vintage styled cutlery.

While we were on honeymoon in Paris I found what I thought was the perfect set. Sitting at the breakfast table I stared at the markings on it, determined to remember it long enough to go back to our room and write it down so I could find it again.

Except I didn’t.

So I have resorted to searching for “baroque cutlery” on the interweb, and astonishingly there are some beautiful pieces out there. I have no idea how I’ve lived in ignorance for this long!

When I first chose all the accessories for my table (candle sticks, salt and pepper shakers, napkin rings) I decided to go with silver, because (or so I reasoned) all cutlery is silver, and if I have cold accessories, it’ll never be possible for everything to match.

But I was wrong!
Check out this lovely set from
overstock.com

Crown Royal Gold Cutlery Set

I think this set is my favourite

Mason Luxe Baroque Cutlery

from overstock.com

I’m also loving this mismatched look from Anthropologie

Anthropologie “Rediscovered Flatware”

But I’m worried it’ll be too much with mismatched dinner sets. And it’s quite pricey at $36/single person set. But if you’re after some vintage cutlery that’s also quirky, it’s a great idea!

Along the same lines is this set

Personalised Vintage Silverware

from Napastyle. They have a collection of mismatched vintage cutlery that they can send you in 20, 40 or 80 piece sets. And they can monogram it. I’m loving this idea!

And finally, there’s these

Baroque Cutlery

From Smarty Had a Party. They’re beautiful! But disposable (or should that read “and disposable” for when one doesn’t want to have to do the dishes after a dinner party?)

And just as a side note, does anyone know when and why they started calling it “flatware” rather than “cutlery”? I’m not quite sure I understand the reasoning!

Part of me wishes that I’d DIYed all the reception stuff (I’m still loving barn weddings. And outdoor receptions, with tables and chairs randomly placed in forested green areas.) Then I would have had an excuse to buy at least some of this vintage cutlery…

D-Day

D-Day (or should that be “W-Day”) has been and gone! And now that we’re back from our honeymoon, I’m able to get up and blogging again!

Hopefully soon I will have some photos to share with you all, but in the meantime I thought I’d post some links to pictures that I found after my wedding, and which made me wish I’d done a couple of things differently for mine. (It’s not too late to change my mind and have my wedding again is it? On a semi-related note, I think I’ve decided I want to create a job called “Wedding Design” and do that for a living. Watch this space, it may yet happen!)

Firstly, some amazing photographs from the talented Juliane Berry (who took photos for us when we were in Paris – AMAZING, by the way!).

This was enough to make me wish I had ignored the fiance, and gone with the bunting anyway.

Could that boutonniere be any more darling?

And the table, check out the table!!

And secondly, shots from a Mad Men inspired wedding (say no more, I love Mad Men!) posted on Wedding Chicks

This shot made me wish I’d stuck with my attempts to have a birdcage veil.

And this one here made me wish I’d gone with yellow as my colour. How fresh and cheery does it look?

I think for my own sanity, I should stop posting now, but hopefully you’ve enjoyed looking at them just as much as I have!

Printable Stickers and Rose Petal Cones

I apologise for the delay in updating here, but as the wedding rapidly approaches (and my PhD confirmation loomed) I found that I’ve had less time than I thought.

But, hopefully, all that has changed and I thought I’d share with you one of my latest (awesome!) finds: printable stickers!

They’re available from Just Something I Made and are AMAZING!

I decided to finally start putting together the rose petal cones that I mentioned earlier, and I’ve printed some of the wedding postage stamps to put on them.

Voila!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And, as an added bonus they would work wonderfully with the many travel themed inspiration I’ve posted in the past!

Vintage Dinner Set Patterns

I’ve spent the last few years alternating between wishing I could find the ultimately perfect dinner set pattern OR that I could be one of those people brave enough to pull off the quirky mismatched dinner sets.

After spending the last few nights scouring the internet for dinner sets that are IT I have concluded that while some come close:

Elizabeth Platinum by Royal Crown Derby

from Royal Crown Derby

Republic Dinnerware by Lenox

from Lenox
Really, there’s nothing that makes me go “that’s it!” and so I’ve decided to just BE one of those quirky mismatched people.

To this end, I shall be putting this (rather boring) dinner set on my ‘wish list’

Queens Plain by Wedgwood

And then I’ll be keeping an eye out for plates, cups, bowls, etc that have a scalloped edge, and so instantly match!

Just to give you an idea, here’s a few I’ve found courtesy of Replacements an online registry of discontinued patterns.

Just for fun, I’ve tried to keep them to just Wedgwood patterns (because trying to search all scallop edged dinner sets gave me something 40,000 results to wade through).

Chinese Teal by Wedgwood

from Chinese Teal at Replacements

Richmond by Wedgwood

from Richmond at Replacements

Empress Ruby by Wedgwood

from Empress Ruby at Replacements

Ashbury by Wedgwood

from Ashbury at Replacements

Floral Scallop by Wedgwood

from Floral (Scallop) at Replacements

Crown Platinum by Wedgwood

from Crown Platinum at Replacements

Eccles Bead Celadon by Wedgwood

from Eccles Bead Celadon at Replacements

Phyllis Purple by Wedgwood

from Phyllis Purple at Replacements

Burnt Orange Bridesmaid Dresses

One of my friends is engaged, and is frantically trying to locate burnt orange bridesmaid dresses. Turns out it’s harder than you think, so I thought I’d see if I could help her out.

So here’s some dresses that are close in colour for her (and you) to check out!

Available from Alfred Angelo

Available from Weddington Way
and Dessy

Available from Dessy

Available from Cynthia.Styling

Available from Dessy and Weddington Way

Available form Dessy

Available from Dessy

Available from Dessy

The wedding is due to take place in Autumn, and I think that those colours are going to look so incredible in some outdoor photos:

 

Autumn Leaves and Autumn Season

Image from OWIPS

Can you just imagine it? I’m a little bit jealous – is it too late to change the date for my wedding?

Essential Photographs

I’ve been trying to compile a list of “essential” photographs. Most of them are easy (dress, me in the dress, fiance looking at me in the dress, that sort of thing) but others are harder.

One of the harder ones is tracking down this idea I have in my head of a photograph of me getting out of the car. I think I saw it on an ad for Yellowglen sparkling wine. Or possibly Yalumba. Or possibly I dreamt it. This is possibly why finding a picture to use as inspiration is so difficult!

So far, these are the closest that I’ve managed to find:

But she’s a little too far out of the car, and not nearly smiley enough.

Again this is close, but the camera is in the wrong spot, and she needs to be looking up:

I think this is the closest:

But still, she needs to be still more in the car, with the camera angle coming up from beneath. The smile is definitely right, though!

If anyone can find photographs of what I’m after (or knows which ad I’m talking about so I can be sure I’m not going mad!) I’d greatly appreciate hearing about it!

Binding Invitations

It occurred to me that I really shouldn’t just lump my invitations, RSVP cards, envelopes, maps, gift registry information, anything else I can think of, all together in an envelope to fall out and attack the poor soul that opens it.

I’ve been trying to come up with solutions, from pockets (hard to self-construct and expensive to buy in the sizes I need), belly bands (which work momentarily, but that I suspect aren’t good long term options, split pins (but then my RSVP card and envelope have a hole in them!) and nothing seemed to be working out.

And then I saw an invitation collection held together with what looked for all the world like a heart-shaped paper clip. And then I googled and found this post at How About Orange that showed me how to make heart shaped paperclips.

And it looks so super-dooper easy that I can’t work out how it didn’t occur to me before!

It seems like it’s this simple:

Image from How About Orange

So I went off to Officeworks to buy a tub of black paperclips (whole other story right there) and have made my first mock-up.

Feel free to applaud the super-professional job I did of blanking out the fiance and my names!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It works!

Vintage Stamps

How amazing is this?!
I’ve spent months being jealous of all the vintage stamps that brides in America and the UK seem to be able to source, and finally someone in Australia has solved my problem!

Saint Gertrude, a design and letterpress company located in Melbourne, Australia, have brought out their own vintage-styled stamps that you can actually use on letters!

Saint Gertrude Vintage Stamps

At $2.50 for a packet totalling 60c worth of postage stamps, they’re a gorgeous way to bring yet another touch to a vintage styled wedding!

DIY Rose Petal Cones

As the wedding moves ever closer, I start to think it’s time to implement all the plans I had in my head way back when.

One of these many projects are some rose petal cones made from doilies. The doilies were purchased a-g-e-s ago, for the whopping huge price of $2 per packet of 20.

Instructions are remarkably simple: you can either just roll the doily into a cone and stick it in place with tape, glue, or a cute sticker, or cut the doilies into thirds and roll those up, sealing them the same way.

For speed, I’d be marking up one of the doilies, and then cutting a bunch of them at once with a craft knife.

And the end result may be something as beautiful as this:

DIY Rose Petal Cones

image from Martha Stewart.

Now I just have to check whether I’m allowed to scatter rose petals in the streets of Melbourne…

Camera Scavenger Hunt Template

As I’ve previously mentioned I was looking at having a camera scavenger hunt.

Camera Scavenger Hunt

Someone asked for a template recently, and I sent them to the link I had originally used, but something went wonky, whether it was the different fonts or the American versus Australian standard paper sizing I don’t know, so I’ve had a go at cleaning up the template so (hopefully) it now works.

Here it is if you’d like to use it:

Camera Scavenger Hunt Template

Original credit still goes to DIY Wedding Bee where I first saw it, and where I obtained the original template.