Belle Amour: Wedding Ideas Less of the traditional. More of the original.

I definitely agree with ‘any excuse for a party’ and the royal wedding gave us a very good excuse! A few weeks ago I decided a neighbour’s drive would be a perfect place for partying: it was long enough for several tables and would create that street-party-look without the hassle of actually closing off the street! A lot of our neighbours have lived on the avenue for years, some before I was even born, and I’ve lived here for 28 years (with the occasional year or two away)! They are friends as well as neighbours. It’s lovely to live in a community that you know you can call on when you need a helping hand or to borrow a drive for a party ;)

It didn’t take any persuading to get the go ahead and so I set about creating an invite that night to send out the next day…

As it was my idea we decided to ask guests to pay a little towards the party and I’d do all the organising. I bought and made decorations (and my mum did an excellent job with the bunting), baked cakes including a ‘wedding cake’ complete with Will & Kate topper (very diasppointed Wills didn’t don his RAF uniform but did think the Irish Guards tunic looked better), went party-food shopping with Ingrid (the owner of the drive) and made up a little quiz for the day time and a couple of games for the evening.

I even created a cute little hair clip and watched the wedding in my Union Jack socks which were a fab gift from the Arcadia Group (thanks Rachel!)

In the build up to the big day I spent so long praying it didn’t rain I forgot to pray it wasn’t windy. And oh wow was it windy! With it being a drive way too it was literally like trying to set up a party in one big wind tunnel. Every time we got close to setting up plates blew off. I got cupcakes to weigh the plates down but the wind even sent them flying to the floor and then the wind knocked out vases of flowers, soaking the tablecloths leading to even more hassle. In the end we had to staple the plates down! Not what they were doing over at Buckingham Palace I imagine!

Wind aside it all went perfectly. Guests enjoyed cakes that had flag toppers which they could write their names on. These were then put in a box and picked to form their teams for the entire party. The quiz sheet for the afternoon consisted of games such as picture puzzles, name the film from the tagline and guessing a book by the cover and games for later were pictionary and cutting the clue from paper; I sat in a different room and they had to run to me to get the next clue. The scores were added up over the day and the winning team were treated to a Will & Kate mug full of chocolate and a ‘Wills & Kate are proud of me!’ badge!

And the guests of honour? Why Wills & Kate themselves of course! The cardboard cut-outs went down really well. Guests had fun taking pictures of each other with them, even trying out an alternative mode of wedding transport on John’s tractor (how handy it was blue and red?!) and the majority of the party guests assembled for a group photo with the happy couple in the middle of the street.

So I’d just like to say thanks to John and Ingrid for the drive, thanks to all the guests for coming and thanks to Wills & Kate for the excuse to party!

Debs

Tags: Royal Wedding