Little updates: bridesmaids and favours

The bridesmaid dresses arrive (super quickly!) and they are gorgeous! Only problem is, they don't fit. Fortunately, we were able to send them back to be replaced with the next size up so everything should be fine. The eBay seller that we ordered them from was so lovely and really helpful - and I really do think the dresses look lovely - even if they wouldn't fasten all the way up!

Excuse the slightly weird expressions on my sisters' faces - they did like the dresses, I promise!

I also bought the test tubes for our Damson Vodka Shot favours!

100 tubes, with caps for £15.99. Bargain!

I'm really excited about these - the plan is to make little cards to attach with ribbon, which will double as place cards. I think they're going to look really nice.

Damson Vodka favours - nearly done!

You may remember a while ago, I made damson vodka to use as our favours, which we will serve in test tube shots. Well that was about 4 months ago, so it was time to get around to straining the damsons out of the vodka!

Last time I showed you the vodka, it looked like this:

Day 1

Day 2

After 4 months, it looked like this:

Beautiful! So the next step was to strain the fruit out...

...and taste, to see if it needed more sugar.

It tasted gorgeous! Very strong, but then it is neat vodka. I added a little bit more sugar, then returned it to the bottle to sit, where it will only improve in taste and consistency, until we need it.

So there you have it! Our damson vodka favours are basically done - all that's left is to put the vodka into the test tubes, which we'll do just before the wedding.

Oh, I meant to say - I have used a plastic bottle, since it was the only one big enough I could find, but the experts so that you should use a glass one to stop the plastic taking any of the smell or taste away from the drink. Personally, I'm not that much of a snob about alcohol, so I wasn't too bothered (and I refused to buy a huge glass jar just for this purpose!) but if you have glass bottles big enough, you might as well use them.

Now I have to think of something to do with a load of vodka soaked damsons - I've heard about people drying them to use in cakes, or eating them in their porridge. Even dipping them in chocolate!

Badge Madness!

Ever since I saw this picture on Offbeat Bride, I have been a bit obsessed with badges.

Isn't that a really cute way to personalise a buttonhole? I really like it, and immediately started looking for a cute badge for Karl's buttonhole. Unfortunately, he is the pickiest man on the planet, and everything I suggested was shot down.

So I'm still looking and he is thinking about what he would like a badge to say.
I also think it would be nice to have a badge attached to the stems of the bouquets, so that the bridesmaids can tell who's is who's. I've since some really nice charms on bouquets, with the girls initals, but since 3 of my bridesmaids have names starting with K, this wouldn't really work.

Anyway, I found some really lovely badges:

Wedding Party Badges

I like the style of these, but don't think I would want everyone to have a badge with their role on it. I'm not sure why...

Source

 

 

These are from Folksy, from the seller Maushaus and are the cutest things I have ever seen! You can request personalised ones, and they are all handmade too. I also really like the ones that say "eek" on them, since that is exactly how I imagine I'll be feeling!

Source

While looking at all the badges, I started to think that it would be really cool to have a load of badges to give to the guests, as an extra little favour. I got very excited when I found some very cool pictures of couples who had done just that!

 

Like I said, I'm a bit obsessed! I even started thinking about what our badges could say and came up with a few designs.

We had loads of fun thinking of what to put on the badges! Some of them I am unsure about, since not everyone will get them. For example, the Gibbs badge, with WWGD? (what would Gibbs do?) - some of our friends will love this, since they are also big NCIS fans, but everyone else might be a bit confused. Same goes for the "Haven't you always wanted a monkey?" badge - this is a line from our favourite Barenaked Ladies song - I know my family will love this, but it won't be as funny for people who are not BNL fans.

I am loving the "Team" badges though - I would be very interested to see who ends up on which team!  I originaly thought about attaching a badge to the place cards, but then realised that that would mean choosing which badge to give to which guest - which I just couldn't do! Instead, I think we would probably have all the badges in a bowl for guests to choose their own - probably by the guestbook or something.

Unfortunately, these badges might never happen. The cheapest I can find personalised badges for is 70p each, which for 100 badges is £70! That's more than we are spending on our current favours! If these were going to be our main favours, I would spend that much, but we already have the vodka favours brewing. I even looked into a badge making machine, but they are about £150, so unless I can find someone who alread has one and is willing to let me borrow it, badges for the guests will remain just a fantasy :-(

However, I will continue to think of more designs for our badges, on the off chance that we are able to find them for cheaper. And I'd still like to have badges for the buttonholes and bouquets. Karl thinks that the Team Karl and Team Kayleigh badges should go on the buttonholes and bouquets, but I'm not so sure.

Maybe if we win the £112million on the lottery tonight, we could have badges for everyone!

Damson Vodka Day 2:

Just a very quick post to show you what the Damson Vodka looks like after about 12 hours:

At Start

the next morning!

Lovely! Just imagine what it will be like after 10 months!

And don't worry - I'm not going to update everyday with a new picture of the vodka!

Damson Vodka Favours

A while ago, I talked about our favours and how we'd decided to have Test Tube Shots, but hadn't decided what kind of booze to use yet. Well, we decided to make damson vodka! A friend of mine has a huge damson tree in her garden, and I'd tasted some of her damson gin and damson jam before and loved it. My dad mentioned making his own damson vodka recently and I suddenly thought "Why don't we have damson vodka as the test tube shots???". I don't know why it hadn't occured to me before!

Anyway, I went to my friends house and picked a load of damsons, then went and bought 3 70cl bottles of vodka. The best thing about damson vodka is that it is really easy to make.

All you need is:

70cl Bottle of vodka (or gin)
1lb of damsons
6 oz (170g) white sugar
A big, wide necked bottle (at least 1 litre) with a lid or stopper.

obviously, you need to multiply the quantities depending on how much you need to make. I need enough for about 80 shots, and I know from my days as a barmaid that a litre has 40 shots in it.
I ended up with 3 70cl bottles because they didn't have any litre bottlesin the shop, so I should have some left over (for me to..ahem...test).

Step 1: Wash the damsons and remove the stalks. Take out any that don't look too healthy.

Step 2: pour the vodka into the wide necked bottle and add the sugar. You can add the sugar last, or a bit at a time with the damsons. It doesn't really matter. I prefer to add it first so that I can see how much room is left in the bottle.

Step 3: Prick each damson several times and drop it into the vodka. I used a skewer, but a toothpick, drawing pin or fork works just as well. You don't have to do this step, but it helps. Some people prefer to put the fruit in the freezer so that the skins split.

Step 4: Continue pricking the fruit and adding it to the vodka until you either run out of fruit, or run out of room in the bottle.

Step 5: Put the lid or stopper on the bottle and turn it over a few times so that the sugar gets all mixed up. The sugar will settle back on the bottom relatively quickly though. Store the bottle in a cool, dry place for at least 3 months. Pick up and turn over everyday, to mix up the fruit and sugar.

After 3 months, it's ready to drink, but the longer you leave it, the nicer it gets (or so I've been told!). Ours was made today, and will be left until next summer, so it will have about 10 months! Yum!

The more sugar you add, the more syrupy the drink will be. You can always taste it after 3 months and add more sugar if you think it needs it. I have also been told that you need to keep the bottle somewhere away from sunlight, in order to keep the beautiful, deep colour. 

Next year, when it's ready, we are going to put a shot of the vodka into test tubes from here and attach a sticker around each tube. I was thinking something along these lines:

So that when the sticker is wrapped around the tube, there will be something on both sides.

Quick price breakdown for my favours:

Damsons: free
Vodka: £23.97
Sugar: had already
Test Tubes: £15.99
labels: free (hopefully!)

Total: £39.96
Total per favour: 40p

Do me a favour...?

I keep going through phases concerning favours. One minute I'm convinced that they are a waste of money because no-one will care if they get one or not, and the next minute I've changed my mind and decided that I need to have them as a way to thank the guests for coming.

I think we will have them, but only if we find something we really love and it is really cheap.

Some things we considered for favours:

Alcohol minitures. I really wanted tequila and then we could give everyone a lime wedge and some salt, and do a group tequila slammer as the toast! But lots of people don't like tequila, so I think it would be a bit of a waste.

Personaliseyourwedding.com

Chocolate bars with golden tickets. I love these! You can have whatever colour wrappers you want, with your names on etc, and then you choose how many bars should have a golden ticket in them and what they should say. I thought about having 5 or so tickets telling guests they had won a bottle of champagne or something. Unfortunately, at £1.50 a bar, they are a tiny bit more than I'm willing to spend on chocolate.

Retro sweets. We did consider having a sweetie buffet too, but I've sort of gone off the idea. I quite like these just married love hearts though.

I think we definitely want something edible or drinkable, something people will actually enjoy. Personalised candles and shot glasses etc are all very nice, but I think they might get overlooked abit.

I still really like the idea of everyone doing a shot though! I love shots and so does my fiancé, so I started looking into having shots as favours - and that's when I had an amazing idea...

Test Tube Shots! Oh yes! The best way to take a shot, ever! The official drink of student unions and very drunked nights out!

I love test tube shots - and I really like the idea of providing our guests with a drink on us. And surely a test tube shot is the most fun way to give a drink to someone?!

I found these on ebay: Test Tubes Direct where we could get 100 plastic test tubes with caps for £15.99

 And I figured we could fill them ourselves and then attach a little note of thanks to them. Really simple.

I'm undecided about what to fill them with though. I have a few options:

1. Flavoured vodka: we can make this ourselves, for next to nothing (except the price of the vodka, obviously) and it means we can make whatever flavours we want. We could even go down the proper student route and make skittle vodka! I was thinking maybe apple, vanilla, lime, strawberry? We could potentially make any flavour at all!
2. Cocktail shots: a mixture of a few spirts and/or mixers. The pro's for this idea are that the ABV % would be lower, as they wouldn't be pure vodka, and also, we could make them to match our colour scheme! lol
3. Ready made shots: for example, Jagermeister (yum!) or sourz or something. 

I quite like the idea of giving everyone 2 tubes, one for whenever they like and one to have as a toast. Although I'd have to check with the venue if they'll allow that as it would mean they would lose money on the toast drinks. Or should we have the regular champers toast aswell???