In the course of wedding obsessing planning, I’ve come across some truly beautiful images. They all serve as inspiration to me, and here they are to inspire you too!

I just love the whole nature thing!

And I know the “Wishing Tree” concept in lieu of a guestbook seems to be all the rage these days. I’ve to say though, that it could potentially alleviate the signing table crush we often see in weddings. When Abby’s Mummy got married, our brother had to run intervention at the signing table because people couldn’t move forward until they signed, and yet they couldn’t sign because someone else was doing it still! There was a huge bottleneck at the entrance, people were getting a touch irritated, pens went missing/dry, all-round chaos!

I love the idea of a “Blessing Tree”…where guests are given a prepared card and a pen, and they can bless you in weird & wonderful ways, such as “May you always find each other as interesting as you did when you first met!” or “May your cup be always full to overflowing, and may you look pretty always!” or “Fatt Choyy!!!!” Or they could give advice on marriage, like this wonderful eg here:

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to collect stacks of advice from people who have gone ahead of us in marriage?

If the inspiration board looks a bit disjointed here, it’s because I’m planning 4 events with slight variations in theme: (1) Pre-wedding reception in my house for 400 guests – areas used: the garden, tentage. (2) Tea Ceremony & Breakfast on the morning of the wedding for 50 guests in my house – indoors; (3) Wedding ceremony & brunch reception for 120 guests – The Shangri-la, Hibiscus Room which is a glassed room overlooking the sea & garden; and (4) Evening reception for 500 guests – Ballroom at the Shangrila.

Maybe it’s time to do a post on “Finding the right wedding planner.”

So I heard about Melangerie today. I really adore there Wedding Tree Genealogies.

However not so much the price :-/ I’m thinking of creating my own using an image similar to this…

Now I just have to figure out who to include… clearly all 300 guests would be too much so maybe just our very large family? What do ya’ll think?

If you’ve attended a wedding and didn’t sign a traditional guest book, you probably signed the couple’s large engagement photo frame or wrote a note on a card and dropped it in a wishing box… OR hung a note on a their wishing tree.  Today I’m blogging about how to make your own wishing tree!   I borrowed the tree (branch) from my best friend’s wedding and changed all the colors to match my theme.  Here are the materials and instructions you will need for this fun and easy DIY project:

Materials needed:

1. Bare tree branches (e.g., manzanita, mitsumata, etc. – about 3 to 4 feet in height) – look in your backyard for some tree branches, too!  You can use one large branch or several smaller ones.
2. Tree planter (vase, box, or pot large enough to hold the branche(s) and goes with your wedding theme)
3. Craft cement. If you are using a glass vase, then you can use clear or colored  marbles/rocks as the anchor.
4. Floral Foam (for stuffing the tree planter. Foam not needed for glass vases). 
5. Blank business-sized note cards
6. Thin ribbon - for haning the note cards
7. A nice tray to hold the blank wish cards AND pens
8. Fresh flowers - 1-2 bunches of flowers for flower bed covering (depending on type of flower you are using).
9. Clear fish wire or glue gun (optional) – if you want to attach a few flowers to some of the branches.
10. Colored cardstock (in your color theme) and glue stick (optional) – to make a Wish Tree instructions sign.

 Instructons:

1. Place branch(es) in planter or vase.
2. If you are using clear vase, then fill the vase with heavy rocks, marbles, etc.  Make sure the branches are stable.  You can lean the branches diagonaly on each side of the vase for better stability.
3. If you are using a solid planter, fill a quarter of the base with cement to set the branch in it’s position.  fill the rest of the planter with floral foam, leaving about 1-2 inches of space from the top of the planter.
4. Fill the planter with water to ensure floral foam soaks up the water.  Do NOT fill water all the way to the top of the planter, as you will spill the water when you transport it.
5. Cut your fresh flowers down (at an angle) leaving about 2 inches stem.
6. Stick your flowers into floral foam, covering the entire base to make the flower bed.
7. TIP:  Water your foam everyday to ensure foam has water to feed your flowers!
8. Cut colored paper into business size cards and punch hole on left side.
9. Cut ribbon about 14″ long and tie around punched hole. You can tie the loose ends together or have your guests do it when they hang their card.
10. Optional – If you would like to add flowers to branches, cut flower down to it’s base and simply glue or tie single flowers onto branch with glue gun or fishing wire. Do this as last as possible, because your flowers on the branch will not have any water source and may wilt by the end of the day, depending on the type of flower you use!
11. Optional - To make your Wish Tree instructions sign, print out the following message (you can change wording if you’d like) on your cardstock and glue onto another cardstock of your theme colors.

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Wish Tree

Please use the provided tags to leave a note for Bride name & Groom name.

Then hang your note on the tree!

Need some inspirations?
- Words of wishes
- Marriage advise
- Memories of your wedding
- Draw a picture

Have FUN and don’t forget to sign your name!!!

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Here is a photo of my wish tree, used at the receiving/gift table:

Branches sprayed silver metalic; wooden planter sprayed jet black; ribbon around planter was two-toned grey; ribbon on note cards were light grey; mustard yellow note cards; white hydrengea & yellow english rose flower bed.

Closeup of Wishing Tree base, instruction card, and blank notecards on tray

If you’re thinking of a sweet way of celebrating your families on your wedding day then look no further!

Great idea from Jesse and Deanna’s wedding.

“We wanted to do something to honour our parents’ and grandparents’ weddings and although I loved the images of other weddings with tables filled with framed photos, I’m kind of obsessed with garlands.

To make these, we scanned in each wedding photo (or a photo of each couple from around the time that got married if they didn’t have formal wedding photos taken), cropped them, transformed them all into black and white files, and printed them on glossy photo paper. We then designed the frames in Photoshop and added name plates so that all of our guests would know who they were looking at. We printed the frames on cream card stock and cut out ovals with an exacto knife. We folded the frames in half like a top-folding greeting card and taped the photos to the interior with double-sided tape. We made two loops out of thin rectangles of card stock which we glued to the back of each frame and then threaded pink ribbon through. Since we weren’t allowed to nail or tape anything to the walls of our reception site, we tied the ribbon ends to two lamps that were jutting out from the wall above our beverage table.”

Or how about this layout with photos? Can’t remember the source unfortunately but love the way it looks

I haven’t said much on this blog about the look for the reception but what we what the room to have the feel of an enchanted forest …or something along those lines! My fiancé’s creative Dad is making tree trucks to frame the entrance to the room. I thought it might be a nice idea to copy the wedding photographs of our families, write details of who’s in the picture and wedding dates on the back, laminate them, punch a hole on the top and then attach them to the branches of the tree with ribbon. A REAL family tree!

This is a great idea too from design company Melangerie via Junebug

You could design a traditional family tree in your wedding colours to display to guests or even better how about a wedding guest tree which maps out all of your friends, family and wedding party and how they’re related to you and your fiancé?

I mentioned this idea to my fiancé and he said that Adrian Mole, the hero from Sue Townsend’s series of books, had also drawn his own friends and family tree:

Now I just have to route around for photos of our families weddings…wonder how far back through the generations we can go through?