July 20, 2012

Wedding inspiration _ Alternative confetti

I wanted a personal way to store the confetti at our wedding (as you might've seen by now, I want everything to be personal at our wedding). I was looking for a way to personalize the typical paper cone where guests can put their confetti. I soon had the idea of using the pages of an old book to make the cones. I wanted the meaning of the poems or book to be special to us and also have an important meaning. But that wasn't such an easy task. At one point I thought about taking the easy road and buying an old Shakespeare Romeo & Giuletta book, but then started cringing at myself for its banality. After a while it came to me and I was surprised I hadn't thought of it earlier....
When I first moved to Rome, dad used to send me a new poem about every month. Some were dedicated to me specifically, others were about all kinds of other subjects. When he passed away 3 years ago, I decided to put together a book which I then gave to each of his siblings and other friends of his. So I decided to use these for the cones. I printed them out (6 per page) on an A4 piece of paper. Each square was about 10cm (10,5 x 9,3 to be exact).
This way, dads poems to me have been integrated into our wedding and we could include him in a way without making it way too teary.

The cones will then be presented in a lovely wooden box (which I love) and 3 white paper bags filled with 3 types of confetti: Rice, Lavander, and paper confetti. The guests can make their own mix.



I made about 60 despite we have 90 guests, because I have also made 60 small white flags for people to wave, so I gathered that some people will just have to have one or the other. 

 The photo above is from the lavender that I dried. I picked quite a big bunch and then it only turned out to be enough to fill about 10 cones. I wanted to go and pick more (wild lavender grows along the roads here) but a few days later the council gardeners had cut them all down. :-(
 I also bought this cute wooden calender at the "1 euro store". I'm sure I'll use it as a decoration somewhere. 


How to fold the paper in order to get the best looking cone. 
* cut out your square pieces of paper. Mine are about 10 x 10 cm.
* turn your piece of paper so that a corner is pointing up
* Take the top corners and place them together, pinching the bottom corners together with eachother too.
* Fold the bottom corner to avoid any holes for the confetti to fall out from.
* Put two staples: one in the bottom and one at the top of where the two corners meet like in the photo below. 


The display of the cones filled with lavender, the wooden box and the wooden calender. Cute hey?