My Wedding Notebook Blog

Your wedding! Probably the one and only time you can go completely mad and get away with (just about) anything. Adding those final touches really makes a difference and is a lovely way to personalise your day. They are what changes a table setting from the initial ‘wow’ to the ‘oh, look at this and this and this – oh they have really thought of everything!’

On a quest to find inspiration we came across Pipii.co.uk – with an abundance of great and creative ideas from favours, flower confetti and stunning paper decorations to eco-friendly sustainable tableware, they are quite possibly the best eco-friendly wedding accessory and decoration destination online!

Here Are A Few Tips And Great Ways In Which You Can Personalise Your Day According To Pipii’s Founder Nicoline Falmer-Nielsen.

We just love weddings here at Pipii and hope that our products can inspire you to create a personal and completely unique wedding day. We have almost everything for those final touches which are so important and is what makes your wedding stand out and be different from the rest.

DECORATIONS

We love paper magic here at Pipii for all sorts of reasons: Honeycomb balls, bells, fans and garlands are real magic, the impact they have when they unfold, in wow factor, colour, pattern. They make a room come alive and you don’t need a lot of them to do this.

Honeycomb paper decorations from www.Pipii.co.uk

A few honeycomb balls over a table instantly changes the space, so if you have a few places that feel a little lost or has not been considered initially, add some honeycomb balls or fans in the colour scheme of your wedding, it ties everything together. Places that are often ‘forgotten’ such as for instance… once through the ‘wow’ entrance and heading towards the wardrobe, the toilet areas, a gift or card table are places that may need a bit of a lift and could all benefit from a little extra thought. Crepe paper streamers or colourful ribbons are another great and very affordable easy fix that add a real ‘Wow’ to a less important space.

Honeycomb garlands

For the honeycomb decorations, we always suggest uneven numbers and sizes hung or placed together. Use 3M Command hooks to hang them with, however, honeycomb balls also look fantastic just lying on a table or secured to a wall as semi-circular shapes. Half folded out with each half-moon secured to a surface with double-sided tape or similar. And of course, paper decorations are totally kind to our world, they can either be recycled or composted. Paper decorations are 100% biodegradable and so you can party without spending a fortune and leaving too many footprints. It’s a win win!!

Decorations for the main venue, the dining area, bar or dance space is usually considered as part of the overall look, but a venue can also benefit from the smaller individual spaces decorated with a few personal touches. A quiet area will often attract lots of photographs if this is well decorated. Laminated pictures of the couple suspended from streamers or small honeycomb balls over an area such as this is fun and will attract a constant flow of guests coming to look. Leave a few disposable cameras around and you will get some lovely spontaneous pictures of guests reacting to you and the setting. Make sure you throw a few surprises that will make your guest laugh out loud.

Table settings

It may be that you are designing a wedding on a small budget or would like to achieve a festival vibe or love the idea of an eco-friendly celebration which won’t cost the earth. You can design the most wonderful table settings using biodegradable palm leaf plates & bowls or white sugarcane tableware to set the table, they are 100% biodegradable. Sustainable eco-tableware is also ideal for a late-night buffet. Set the table with rustic jute runners, natural foliage & decorations, inter weave with candles & tealights.

Natural Table settings – sugarcane plates, centre pieces with natural grasses, ombre pillar candles, all available from www.Pipii.co.uk  (Image by Iain Douch @iaindouch).

Place settings

This is another place which just begs to be personalised. Using plain or coloured manila tags tied to napkins, cutlery or flowers is a way of moving away from more traditional table setting with place cards etc. We see people doing this more and more. If you are styling an eco-wedding, you can use grasses, flowers etc with a tag tie to it with biodegradable string like jute or raffia. Grasses and dried flowers are on trend, they are so beautiful, looks fantastic and they don’t wilt! Need we say more!

Credit: @not_your_average_i_do, @chafford_park_estate and @dandjweddingphotography

Round Palm leaf plate with Bamboo cutlery and Eucalyptus design napkins all from www.Pipii.co.uk

 

Create an Eco-friendly table setting; brown kraft plates, cups, straws, cutlery pouches, beautiful polished coconut bowls, wooden cutlery, jute runner & tealights all from www.Pipii.co.uk (Image by Iain Douch @iaindouch)

Elegant wooden Victorian cutlery looking pretty tied with grasses and bird tags.

Choose something that is personal to you or colours that you love, a little ‘saying’ on each tag, have a stamp made that is unique to you and your partner to stamp on each tag. You can then use the same ‘logo’ throughout the venue. Stamp it onto the menu. If you have a sweet or snack station’ you can use this again on brown Kraft bags, handheld kraft trays etc etc…Lots of companies will offer to make up personalised stamps and you can find companies online who will create a logo for you. Stamps are available in lots of sizes too.  Stationary is an important part of the day and if you start planning in good time you can make it all tie in together from sending out invites till the thank you letters afterwards.

 
(1) Various stamps available from www.Pipii.co.uk (2) Large selection of tags available from www.Pipii.co.uk (3) Sustainable tableware; each individual table setting with handwritten name tag.

Favours

Favours – Make them unique and personal. Why not choose something unusual that can make a great favour box, but which may also keep your guest guessing, w   e love using unusual boxes like the kraft soup cups turned into favour boxes. It is different and unexpected. You could have them ‘all ready and made up’ and then create a real focal point by stacking them into a large pyramid making guest wonder throughout the day and evening what these are…a fun element of surprise.

 

Fill with delicate and delicious chocolate or petit fours to savour the day after. Some of our most popular favour boxes are the mini PLA window boxes. All they need is a bit of ribbon or cute stickers. Why not create a fabulous flower installation with 100’s of hanging mini bottles with a flower in each and a little gift or chocolate tied to it. Not only will it look spectacular, it is truly unique & personal, and it would make the most fantastic photo backdrop and guest will have a lot of fun taking one home at the end of the day. Favours can sometime get a bit lost as something you just must have, a bit like party bags but if you create a masterpiece with this, it all part of the detail and will certainly be remembered. We also love the idea of something homemade: Honey, jam, chutneys, home-made bath bombs or soap etc. – it doesn’t get much more personal than that. Use calico or glassine bags from Pipii for items such as bath bombs etc and don’t forget to check out our bath bomb recipe whilst there.

Lights & Lanterns & Candles:

A ‘must have’ of course. Line pathways with lanterns, anything from candle bags to homemade jam jars. Spaces, paths, entrances or gardens lit by candles are simply spell binding and it is impossible not to be captured by the beauty of it all, so the more the merrier is our motto. You just can never have too many!!

Candles are an essential part of the table setting, it makes the table come alive, it works really well to use a variety of height candles. Pillar candles come in many different heights or just using different candles sticks will achieve the same effect. Jazz them up with some seasonal natural decorations, keep it simple to create impact. See our ombre candles with gold pine cones as an example. You can either use a mix of candle holders and candle sticks, as well as tea light or alternatively making the candles part of a floral display or centre piece as a way of displaying candles without candle sticks.

You could use oasis (floral foam) but it is not very eco-friendly, so an alternative is a ‘blob’ of clay of a plate or saucer or use a vintage teacup. Place your candle / candles in the clay first and then get decorating with flowers, grasses and greenery to create pretty table decorations. Alternatively, if your space or venue allows for this, you could hang lanterns from above. Jam jars also make great little vases and mixing it up is a cute look too.

 
(1) Hanging candle holders, hanging tea lights & jars (2) Ribbed glass tea light holder (3+5) Selection of tea lights (4) Ombre pillar candles. All available from www.Pipii.co.uk

Confetti

Another detail which you can easily get personal and creative with. Depending on the time of year of the wedding, there is plenty of eco-friendly growing options probably almost on your doorstep. Late summer and autumn see heather flowering, very pretty and beautiful or dried delphinium flowers as flower confetti or use leaves and a hole punch to press out seasonal coloured confetti. And while you are at it, keep some of the better leaves to use as place cards (or ring cushion as seen in the picture below). During the summer there are flowers everywhere that make great confetti or if this proves difficult to get to, buying dried flowers from a supplier such as Atlas Flowers or Shropshire Petals, dried rose buds and dried flower confetti available from Pipii.co.uk make it easy to pick something that matches a colours scheme and which might even be scented. But you could also use other things as confetti such as seeds etc. But it doesn’t just stop with choosing your confetti, next up is how to display it: Handmade paper or wooden cones, boxes, glassine bags, baskets or many other ways…My Wedding Notebook’s pin board is your best friend when it comes to getting inspired.

Natural confetti from ecoimpakt  

Heather confetti

Dried delphinium flower leaves from www.Pipii.co.uk

Leaves from huffing post.

 

Thank you Nicoline Falmer-Nielsen (founder of www.Pipii.co.uk) for sharing so many fantastic ideas with us!

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