Your Hampshire and Dorset Wedding - January/February 2021 (Issue 84)

REAL WEDDINGS 45  I roped all my family and friends into collecting jam jars for our centrepieces and with the help of my bridesmaids we decorated them with twine, nautical knots, anchors or hearts. Our favours were personal to us. James made nautical knot key rings for every guest and in a nod to my job they also had a gin shot in a syringe with blackcurrant squash for the children. Our friend Lucille did a drawing of our venue for the invitations and designed a personalised logo incorporating an anchor with a nautical rope in the shape of a heart and our initials which appeared very faintly throughout the stationery. My friend Rosie is an amazing baker and she made our cake for us. The brief was fun, colourful with a nursing and nautical theme and my word, she nailed it! It didn’t only look amazing it tasted delicious as well. We had a guest book for our family and friends and the messages they wrote were hilarious to look back on after the wedding. Local florist Judith Searles did the flowers, including arrangements for the mantelpieces, our jam-jar table centrepieces, posies for the ceremony chairs at the end of each row, the bouquets and buttonholes. She was wonderful and we absolutely loved her work. We painted a big mirror and decorated it with nautical rope to display our table plan. Unfortunately it got smashed on the way in and our venue kindly found a replacement and I was none the wiser. We haven’t experienced any bad luck yet, but it’s a good job we’re not superstitious!