We had a general theme for the wedding called “sweet peas”.  I did at first intend to have sweet peas everywhere.  This soon developed into a colour scheme of  green and purpleish nuances.

As for the sweet peas, my mother planted some in early April, kept them in the greenhouse, nurtured them and talked to them and of course they blossomed three days after the wedding.

Oh well, they were lovely shades of green on the wedding day and it all helped decorate the tent anyway.

Table decorations

For the decorations I had a vision, inspired by the book ‘Simple Stunning Weddings’, where one of the ideas was a collection of old vases with different flowers.

This idea appealed to me because it looked simple and elegant and could be done with minimum effort on a budget. We made a deal with the local florist that she would get flowers from the market in the right colours. This way we got what was in season at a very reasonable price. For the vases we used what my mother had lying around and topped these up with vases from local charity shops.

On each table we put a single flower stem in a high narrow vase, a little bouquet in a medium height vase and a little bouquet of a green herb (different one for each table) in a low, small vase.

We also had three tea lights (soy candles) on each table in glasses of three different heights for when it got dark.

The wedding bouquet

I also had the idea of having a simple, tight bunch of lavender as a bouquet. I would then wind around the stems the ribbon from my grandmother’s wedding bouquet from the ’40s.

Unfortunately, my mother’s lavender died before the wedding, causing another worry for her. 

It did not faze me, however. I just made a lovely bouquet of the leftover flowers from the decorations and tied my grandmother’s ribbon around it. I was very happy with the result.

Flexible flower arranging

At the end of the day I was really happy with all the flowers at the wedding. We used very few seasonal, cut flowers for the decoration and bouquet and mostly decorated the tent and garden with potted plants and flowers.

I think the flowers reflect the rest of the wedding preparations. I would get an idea, which we would use as a guideline. But we never made any plans set in stone, which meant that nothing could really go wrong. We had the most perfect wedding because we never tried to force it to be perfect.

Henriette
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Before our wedding I kept stumbling across three things every wedding guide/book told me I shouldn’t do.

It may be that I noticed these things because we had long since decided that we were going to do all these things!

Here is the list and how it went on the day:

1. Don’t just plug in an iPod or laptop for the music, get a professional to play or DJ!

We broke this rule and it was great.  Instead of having a DJ ruining the flow of dancing we just had a playlist, which we had spent quite a bit of time making.  It turned out to be wonderful.  We knew we had a lot of potential dancers coming and would have the dance floor full if we got the music right.  We did! From the moment we had the first dance / bridal waltz till we went to bed we were all out there dancing and having a great time.

Having said that the creation of a playlist was not without its issues.  We soon found out that all the music we had was unsuitable to dance to! Luckily, one week before going to Denmark for the wedding some friends of ours who were married last year mentioned that they had done the same thing and still had their playlist on their computer.  Perfect! We borrowed their music and had a wonderful time with it.

2. Don’t leave all your photography to amateurs. Get a professional in or you will regret it!

We had no professional photographer but had instead asked one person to be in charge of photographing the official portraits and another of filming.

Then we asked all the guests who had a decent digital camera, which they felt comfortable using, to bring it and take as many photos as they wanted.  They all did this and we ended up with 2250 really good photos from the wedding.  A great success!

The best part was that one of the guests also went around with our Lego-themed toppers and took pictures of them in different situations.

3. Last but not least never never cater your own wedding

Also here we decided not to listen to the profs. My mother was at first sceptical, but we soon had her convinced.

We had John’s parents, sister and best friend come over and stay at my parents’ house and we then spent the Thursday setting up the tent and finishing off the wedding cake and the Friday cooking all the food.

It was all down to good planning (yes, I had made a spreadsheet!) and choosing food which could nearly all be made a day in advance.

After the ceremony we had a light Asian style lunch for which we had made sushi, satay chicken, crispy noodle salad and lots more. It was all buffet style. We then had a bbq later on with roast pork, beef, lamb and chicken. The salads where all made or prepared the day before.

We had two lovely girls in the kitchen on the day to throw the cut veg together as salads and put stuff out on the buffet and tidy up. It worked very well.

All the guests were very impressed, especially with the Asian buffet, which was not what they were used to. And as an added bonus it brought our two families really close together. There is in my opinion no better way of getting to know someone than by working together.

I am not saying that everyone should cater for their own wedding.  For many people it would probably end in tears. I am just saying that it is not impossible and it can be rather fun. We only had to cater for 40 people but you still have to be very organised and have family/friends who are up for it and you should really choose food that can keep at least a night in the fridge and/or can be easily assembled in the morning.

Also I think it was very important that we had the two girls to help in the kitchen on the day so that none of us had to get our hands dirty at that point!

But for us it was a great success with food far better than we ever would have been able to pay for if we had hired caterers. And it was a lovely thing for our families to do together.

Henriette
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We will not be using rice (as is traditional in Denmark) as John is a great bird friend and they are not too happy about raw rice.

We will not be using confetti either as this is just downright bad for the environment and my parents’ lawn.

Smokey and the Bandit video

However, we have found inspiration in looking at the tradition as it was, and not as it has become over the last few years (we are both archaeologists so this is to be expected).

download life begins for andy hardy buy Mio nome è Nessuno, Il

Historically it was neither rice nor confetti which was used for this purpose but instead grains or peas. The old Greeks used to shower with figs, dates, nuts and small coinage.

We will be providing our guests with bags of perishables which will make the birds happy (e.g. grains, seeds, nuts) and if they want to throw coinage at us they will be more than welcome.

Henriette & John

Photo courtesy of zimpenfish on Flickr

• Frank release

But I decided to keep it and be happy about it since it is beautiful, suits me perfectly, made my mother-in-law cry and is from Monsoon.  Also when I found out that Monsoon apart from doing lovely clothes also have some very good ethical policies I was convinced.

Furthermore, I got a chance to visit the Oxfam Bridal store in Southampton and found myself a really nice pair of shoes there.

To go with the outfit I have bought a lovely natural coloured hemp rayon pashmina from Braintree Hemp who I think make some marvellous clothes.

I have several blouses from there already and my father swears by their men’s shirts.

I have also crocheted my own retro bridal gloves, which I hope will become a family heirloom.  I got the pattern off Hook Yarn and Needles and I have blogged about it elsewhere.

For him

John’s suit is not very eco-friendly either and he told me not to check Next’s ethical profile. I did however, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that they have an ethical trading profile and support projects in Africa.

It would of course have been wonderful if he could have had a locally tailored suit made out of some fair trade or organic material but it was out of our price range.  On the other hand he will be using his new suit for a long, long time, which makes it worthwhile.

One thing he did find was a very nice white shirt from Braintree Hemp, which he will wear with the suit.

He also ordered a waistcoat from Spirals of Abundance made from nettle fibres.  It was great but we had to send it back because their smallest size, which looked like it had the right chest size, was made for a much shorter and wider man.

At the end of the big day…

The two main considerations here have been style and money with the ethical considerations coming in in third place.

I have for the last couple of years been dreaming about a Monsoon wedding dress. They are so perfectly simple and stylish and cost a fraction of the average wedding dress.

We have also tried to source certain things from ethical shops like Braintree Hemp, but I was very disappointed to see how few fashionable ethical clothes there are out there for men. It is mostly a market for babies with more and more stylish clothes coming through for women.

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seroquel and snoring

I never really imagined being proposed to. For me marriage was always something two people could agree on. Maybe one of them could bring it up and then they could discuss it for a while and reach a decision. I know, not very romantic, but then I am not a romantic really.

However, it was not meant to be like that for me since John likes doing some things traditionally. So no matter how much I thought we could just discuss the matter and agree, I was met with a boyfriend who was having none of it.  In the meantime he was busy planning a romantic surprise for me where he got down on one knee in front of both our parents on the day of my graduation.

I will admit afterwards that I did enjoy it. It was really thoughtful and nice. He even asked my father for permission and my father who is a very untraditional Dane was very surprised.

The green inspiration

Whenever we talked about the kind of wedding we wanted we always agreed that it should be a fun and relaxed BBQ. Well actually I first talked about eloping but was vetoed and when it comes down to it I do enjoy the idea of having our families and closest friends surround us on this special occasion.

However, neither of us wanted a big or expensive party. The amount of money which could be blown on one wedding party makes me really uncomfortable to think about. I know many people will say: but it is the biggest day of your life, but frankly I don’t buy into this. As John said the other day: “No, the biggest day of my life will be the day our first child is born.”

He is a soppy romantic, but I will agree, for me there are bigger days. Of course I want our wedding to be a great occasion and an awesome party, where we can have fun with our family and closest friends. But I don’t want to be princess for a day.

Also, living together we have both come to appreciate green living and especially organic food more and more. I am very interested in animal welfare and am a firm believe of voting with my purse. In other words I believe that we can make a bigger difference for animal welfare by supporting the farmers who do a good job and care, and by making sure there is a market for local, organic or free range products.

Of course, we soon realised that the whole green wedding can take over and become an obsession, making especially me feel really guilty if everything was not eco-friendly. It seems like most of the brides and probably also some of the grooms on this website have been down this path.

This is where I felt that this website was extremely helpful. We have now come to the conclusion that it is OK if everything is not eco-friendly or organic. We are at least doing something!

My parent's house where the BBQ / garden party will be held

The bi-national part

As I am Danish and John is British we had to choose between having the wedding in the UK, Denmark or somewhere totally different. This was not a difficult choice as I really wanted to get married in my parents’ garden.  They have a really nice, big garden and since we wanted a BBQ / garden party this was the obvious choice.

Also having it in Denmark will mean fewer air miles for the guests since my family is about 4 times the size of John’s. It also meant that we could borrow loads of stuff from my family and thus keep our costs down.

The downside of having the wedding in Denmark is that it is a much smaller and much less diverse country. Where we could easily find good organic, local meat for the BBQ and local drinks in Hampshire where we live, it is just not that easy in Denmark.

Part of my mothers kitchen garden a couple of years ago.

Of course it exists but it is less common and there is less variety. But it is a challenge and we have decided not to let it get to us if we have to compromise on this. Having said that, there is one very big green advantage to having the party in Denmark and that is my mother’s garden. She has always grown loads of veg and flowers and even though the wedding is in late May we should still be able to take full advantage of this.

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