A stencilled wedding no 3

In the early 1980's, before I was a stenciller, I wanted to be a wedding planner.  I don't think there was such a thing then. I had certainly never heard of one.  The business advisors, friends and family that I spoke to said "It won't work, every one wants to plan their own wedding or get their mothers to do it."  I listened and never followed up my idea. Now the wedding planning and styling industry is huge and does not include me!  I do love it when I am asked to help though, as was the case with the lovely Lee & Will.  The setting was a grand country house hotel in January.  Lee wanted the plainess taking from the tables.  The tablescapes were my gift to the newlyweds and there were a lot of tables so my budget was going to rely on imagination.  I bought masses of gold organza and cut a length to drape across every table.  The fabric was stencilled with sprigs of blossom to complement the colours of the bride's flowers. I used Liquitex paints for all the surfaces. The stencil was JA121    Bird and Blossom, without the bird.

  Several IKEA glass plates and bowls were bought to hold candles and flowers.  The intention was to stencil the underside of the glass and then gild it.  My gilding attempts were not my best so I stencilled then sprayed the underside of the glass with gold spray instead.  It blended beautifully with the gold of the organza. The picture shows the stencilling before the gold background was added.  This is something that can be done as a temporary decoration for special occasions, food and paint are separated by glass and the decoration can be scrubbed off afterwards.  I bought a proper church candle to sit on each of the glass plates and stencilled them with the same blossom along with the initials of the bride and goom and the date of the wedding. After firmly attaching the candles to the plates I poured water into them and floated flower heads.    Surrounding the cake were lots of matching small bowls all carrying a single flower head. It sat on top of more gold organza.  This time the stencil was JA47  but I stuck with the same colours.  

My contributuon to the decoration was simple but really added to the beauty of the day.  The hotel asked me if I would be interested in styling for them as part of their wedding package.  You bet!!!

  ...They never called me.

Rachel made a stunning job of the table tops at her sisters wedding, again a combination of stencil and organza was employed.  She mentioned it in her monogram post.   Stencilled monograms are great for a wedding and we get some very challenging ones to create.  When Chips and I got married Rachel stencilled cherry blossom over several England flags and hung them from the sides of the wedding tent at our reception. It only took her a couple of hours and made a world of difference to the setting.  The desert buffet was housed in a stencilled pavilion,  on the day it looked fab but got trashed by a wayward chocolate fountain and lives no more.

On a smaller but no less important scale, we often create stencils for customers invitations and their cakes, I shall look for pictures and customer permission then share them with you another time. Helen.