A War Time Wedding

As we always say, it's so lovely when customers we have worked with take the time to send over some pictures of the items we have created for them so that we can see how they were incorporated into their special event. We recently received some fabulous photos taken by The Owl and the Pussycat Wedding Photography from the lovely Janet and Richard, who we worked with a couple of months ago to create some items for their 1940s themed wedding held on 6^th July 2013.

Janet and Richard had asked us to capture the nostalgic, wartime romance of this era that they were styling their wedding around and so we set to work on their favour boxes, menus and lots of signage to display on the tables and around their venue. They also wanted to add a touch of swing, with some fun swing dance imagery to create this party atmosphere during the reception. So we had in mind a fusion of 1940s wartime romance, vintage style Union Jack bunting and swing dance silhouettes to create something special for this lovely couple. And that we did!

We created our Pillow Talk Favour Boxes for each guest, which are handmade using our treasured excerpts from a 1940s love letter, written by a girl called Anna to her soldier sweetheart Jack who was away at war at the time. The boxes were printed with a selection of hopeful and romantic words and these were displayed at guest's place settings.

We also made some custom freestanding menus using a kraft brown and ivory colour scheme for that vintage feel, featuring a swing dance image, union jack bunting and pearl heart embellishment. To compliment these, we created some signage for Janet and Richard's 'Postbox' and also a Candy Buffet sign which was displayed in a vintage style ornate frame.

Finally we absolutely loved creating some pieces for their vintage suitcase table plan which the couple put together themselves. They lined the inside of an old suitcase with black and white images of the 1940s featuring swing dance bands, movie stars and wartime sweethearts. We made them the tags to hang inside which displayed their table names and guests seating arrangements and embellished these with small pearl hearts to give an elegant, vintage feel. I think they did an amazing job putting it all together!

So we wanted to say a special thank you to Janet and Richard for sharing these images with us, it is so lovely for us to be able to see our work in context and provide inspiration for future couples planning their own weddings. A huge congratulations to you both on your wedding and we wish you all the very best for your future together!

Love Vintage Twee
xxx

Credits:

Photography - The Owl and the Pussycat

Personalised Party Picks are here!!!

Ok, so it's time for the next reveal in our line up of new products this summer! After many, many requests for customisation on one of our most popular products – the infamous party picks – they are now available on our website to buy with your own personalised text!

 

This bespoke service will enable you to create something personal for that special occasion, be it a wedding, birthday, Christening, hen party, bridal/baby shower or anything else your heart desires! They are also perfect if you own a cupcake company and have a special request from a customer or can be used as branding if you are exhibiting at an upcoming wedding fair and wish to promote your company. For example, you could have 'Claire's Cupcakes' printed to promote your business name!

Other fantastic ideas for customisation of these special party picks include printing them with the names of the food items you are displaying them in for a buffet or tea party, or perhaps going for something simple such as 'yummy', 'delicious' or 'help yourself' (not that I would need any encouraging to take my share from a plate of cherry scones..). They would also be ideal for anyone hosting a Christmas party this year and would like to add a touch of Twee to their display with a 'merry christmas'.

You could have your names, initials or wedding date printed on them, or a simply a lovely sentiment such as 'it's a boy' or 'mum-to-be' for anyone planning a baby shower to celebrate the arrival of their own little one during this year of the royal baby! 

They come in a variety of standard colour schemes and you can choose your preference for your cardstock and bow. As always with our cupcake sticks though, if you would like a certain colour combination to fit in with your scheme, please do just drop us an email and we will do our very best to accommodate you!

We have some information, guidelines and advice for ordering to ensure the process is made as easy as possible for you but if you have any questions at all, do just email us for help. We hope you enjoy using this bespoke service and we look forward to seeing your variety of requests.... (remember, keep it Twee please... ;)

xxx

Cupcakes by Cotton and Crumbs and The Clever Little Cupcake Company

Your Ticket (well, your guest's...) to Riches

We have so many new things to show you at the moment, it's actually ridiculous! SO the next few blog posts will undoubtedly be showcasing our new products which we have been working on the past couple of months.

First up! A fantastic solution to the forthcoming increase in lottery ticket prices which is making giving tickets as wedding favours virtually impossible for any couple on a budget.

Well, we like to think we can beat the system and make sure brides and grooms can still do this for their guests, despite the rising cost from £1.00 a ticket to £2.00 in the autumn this year. The answer? We have created two brand new designs which are both economical enough to ensure style and budget are met for the big day!

'Your Ticket To Riches' Scratch Card Holders are a perfect favour for both male and female guests which accommodate a standard sized scratch card. They are created from a recycled kraft cardstock for authentic vintage appeal and are designed like a travel wallet, making them ideal if you are having a travel themed wedding or event. They have been mounted with the image of an old ticket and tied with a twine bow. The best part of all (no, it's not the potential winning ticket inside worth millions of pounds..) is that they feature a lucky penny which is removable and can be kept by your guest as a keepsake!

They can also be customised with your wedding date or guest name down the side for a small additional cost to double up as place settings – even better for the budget! The standard design is priced at £1.25 which means you can swing your favours for just over £2.00 per guest once you have purchased your scratch cards to fill them with as well!

Our second new design is for people still wanting to give the traditional lottery tickets as favours but would like an economical yet stylish way to present these that doesn't cost the earth. Our new 'For Richerfor Poorer' Scroll Lottery Ticket Holders are perfect for this! 

They feature an image of a vintage crown with pearl embellishment and all you need to do is roll up your tickets and pop them inside the ring holder for a lovely, unique gift. These holders look beautiful placed on crockery at your guest's place setting and they can be custom made to your desired colour scheme. Priced at just 85p each, their affordability allows you to still give a standard lottery ticket as a favour should you have your heart set on it!

Both the 'Your Ticket to Riches' Scratch Card Holders and Scroll Lottery Ticket Holders are available to buy now through our website www.vintagetwee.com.

So all that's left to say is Vintage Twee: 1. Camelot Lotteries Ltd: 0.

We will be back with plenty more new things to show you soon! :)

xxx

A fond farewell to Auntie Edith

 
Today's blog post has not been an easy one to write but it was very important that it was, as it is a special tribute to the person who was responsible for a lot of Vintage Twee's inspiration. Two weeks ago my Great Auntie Edith sadly passed away at 94 years old after a long and difficult struggle with dementia and multiple strokes. We will say goodbye to her on Monday 25^th March in her home town of Halifax, Yorkshire, where she lived and worked as a proud nurse and Matron for 40 years of her life.

 This is not meant to be a sad post, but more a chance to give thanks for the childhood memories that Auntie Edith gave myself and my sister Emma, on those lovely Sundays when mum and dad would take us there to visit her. We would always arrive as she was in the middle of baking her homemade butterfly cakes and scones, Emma and I bounding into the kitchen to see if she'd waited as always so we could help her prepare the antique tea trolley. We would load it up with fresh sandwiches and cakes, as well as her best vintage china, and then fight between ourselves to be the one who wheeled it into the lounge to serve everyone! And so from an early age, I had always loved the concept of afternoon tea and Auntie Edith was the person who taught me all about good old fashioned hostessing from as far back as I can remember.

Like myself, Auntie Edith was a true business woman whose career meant everything to her. She had a very kind and gentle nature and used this to help as many people as she could, progressing through a very successful nursing career and having the honour of being the last Matron of Halifax General Hospital. I would often smile at the stories she would repeat about the 1940s nurses that would try to sneak out of the hospital with their uniforms on but she always caught them...Or how she found out from a 5 year old little boy on her Burn's Unit that whenever she was off duty, the nurses would use her 'bestest teacups, them with the roses on' to enjoy lengthy tea breaks in her absence!

 

The four sisters as children - Auntie Edith (far right) and her 3 younger sisters (Grandma Twee next to her!)

The four sister as teenagers - left to right: Auntie Georgie, Auntie Irene, Auntie Edith and Grandma - Elizabeth!

The four sisters together - left to right: Auntie Irene, Auntie Edith, Grandma and Auntie Georgie

 

Christmas parties held the funniest memories and the best being the year when I was 9 years old...I planted my pet hamster into a box of party poppers which my mum had trusted me to hand around, in the hope to play a trick on Auntie Edith...you can imagine the trouble I got in when my hamster landed on her tweed skirt! She would also be the last one standing at any game we played, her favourite being Musical Chairs to which she would fight all the children off for the last chair in the room to win her annual bottle of sherry!

 

 

As if the Christmas party traumas weren't enough proof, Auntie Edith was an extremely strong, determined woman and, even when she resided in a nursing home for the last few years of her life with little sight and no memory, she never uttered a word of complaint. Despite her lack of awareness, I would still take her a balloon and cake on her birthday – when I asked her how old she thought she was, I would always get the same reply: '21 and a bit. But you dont tell anyone the bit'. (something I may have to use this upcoming August for the big 30...)

 

Auntie Edith's 92nd Birthday Celebrations with me and Mama Twee!

 

Monday will be a very sad day for all our family who loved and cherished this woman. Auntie Edith was not just my grandmas oldest sister, but more like a grandma to us herself, who gave us some wonderful childhood memories that partly led to the inspiration behind the creation of Vintage Twee today. She was a true lady, business woman, role model, caring auntie and the last surviving family member from that generation who we will love and miss dearly. Vintage Twee will be closed on Monday 25^th March 2013 as we say our goodbyes and raise a cup of tea and a scone in our Great Auntie Edith's treasured memory.

Auntie Edith's big 90 4 years ago with our family

 

Lights, Camera, Action!

Vintage Twee has been so excited to share with you the unique items which we recently created for a fabulous (and local!) Bride and Groom, Lauren and Ben. We met the lovely couple when they were planning their vintage movie themed wedding last year and we were delighted to go along to meet them and discuss some ideas of how we could contribute!

Lauren and Ben's wedding was on 9^th March 2013 at the stunning Manchester Monastery (so we can now reveal the items we created without spoiling the surprise for the guests!). Being huge film fans, their theme was old Hollywood style with a modern twist...with the stationery being based upon a collection of their favourite films. Think timeless black and white for the colour scheme, tall candleabras with white roses and tealights for the table décor and black satin and pearl detail throughout. Imagine Vintage Twee's creative mind ticking over with excitement at the possibilities...!!

With placecards, table names, a table plan, Guestbook, Order of Service and Menus to create for their 170 guests, we set to work designing something unique and fitting for a classically elegant wedding of this theme. Lauren and Ben wanted to incorporate stills and quotes from their favourite films which were to feature on the Table Names and Table Plan. We came up with a design that centred around an old movie reel – the table names were featured inside this with a watermark of the still shot from the film behind. Names included 'The Goonies', 'The Usual Suspects', 'Jurassic Park' and '24 Hour Party People' to name but a few!

 The table plan was a super A1 in size to accommodate all their guests and mounted into an ivory ornate frame. The header included repeated watermark quotes from their featured films behind their names and wedding date (my personal favourite: 'I've fallen for you like a blind roofer' – guess the film??!!) and the guests seating allocations were mounted onto luggage style tags which were

embellished with small pearl hearts. 

To continue the old movie style theme, we created some retro ticket place cards to fit into clapperboard holders which Lauren and Ben had sourced themselves. These would have made any of their guests feel like a movie star when arriving at their seat! Finally we custom made the lovely couple a beautiful wedding guestbook, Order of Service cards and Menus along the same theme which, in all the excitement, we forgot to snap and therefore cant show you these today! Hopefully Lauren and Ben will have captured these for us and we can share them with you soon.

The best part of this order for us was being able to hand deliver it to the Bride and Groom to be as they are based just round the corner from Vintage Twee! It was so lovely to see them open everything and tell us that we had managed to capture the essence of their day perfectly – a true compliment to any designer. I would also like to thank them for being one of the most organised couples we have ever worked with – for such a large wedding with so many guests, it was impeccably organised and a joy to work on!

So hopefully this post has given inspiration to any brides and grooms planning an old Hollywood style wedding. There is however only one question left on my lips now Lauren and Ben's wedding has taken place....how did those guests react when they found themselves on 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly' table?!!!!

You can now purchase some of the Retro Movie Range items on our website! Take a look at our Retro Movie Place Settings and Retro Movie 'Your Ticket To Riches' Scratch Card Holders which make ideal favours for your guests! For any other of the items, please email us at joanne@vintagetwee.com with your enquiry.

Afternoon Twee with Laura and Toby...

After out last real wedding blog post and request for any photographs of Vintage Twee's contribution to your events, I received a fabulous email from one of the loveliest brides of last year, Laura, who sent me some fantastic pictures of our work in action! We were so pleased to see these (especially since Laura's wedding was the epitome of Twee...lace, pearls, cake and tea parties galore!) that we just had to share them to give this year's bride to be's some real life inspiration for the big day. Thank you to Nigel Gray Photography for these beautiful images (contact details at the end of this post) and of course, Laura and Toby who were married on 15^th June 2012 at Northbrook Park in Surrey.  

Laura and Toby ordered a variety of items from us which we created in their beautiful colour scheme which incorporated dusky pinks, turquoise and cream. They had touches of an Alice in Wonderland theme for their day, which meant lots of our infamous Eat Me Party Picks and Drink Me Tags - yey! We custom made these in a larger size for them to be tied around the necks of the wine bottles. We also adapted our popular Love Quote Flags to read quotes from Alice in Wonderland, and these were placed perfectly in vintage teacups provided by Teaspoon Events and stunning flower displays, created by Laura's friend Fiona Woolley.

 

We made some sweetie jar labels in dusky pink and ivory with a pearl heart embellishment and these featured on the jars of retro sweets on offer for the lucky guests. Our Doily Tags and cupcake sticks also decorated the delicious display of cupcakes, jammie dodgers (my all time childhood favourite!), biscuits and Victoria Sponge cakes, all made by Laura's mother in law Christine – and an amazing job she did!

Laura and Toby also had our Vintage Inspired Wedding Guestbook and Keepsake Box featuring on their guestbook table, which we customised with a special tag with their names and wedding date on there. Guests placed tags from their wish tree into the box which made a lovely keepsake for the couple and holds all their messages of love from friends and family. 

We so much enjoyed creating these items for Laura and Toby and these photographs from their wedding day illustrate perfectly how the smallest of details can add the finishing touches. We had to also show you photos of the little ones, Alfie and Charlie, who looked so cute in their Page Boy outfits with white plimsolls and socks – children at their finest :)

We loved working with Laura as she has an especially keen eye for design and details, having her own textile art business! Take a look at her website here: www.laurarosetextiles.co.uk

So a massive thank you to Laura and Toby for enabling Vintage Twee to add these special touches to your wedding day – we loved working with the colours so much it was one of those orders we were reluctant to let go of!!!! :)

Congratulations to you both on your wedding day!

Photography – Nigel Gray - nigel@grayphotography.co.uk

Venue – NorthbrookPark

Styling and Crockey – Teaspoon Events

Table Decor and Stationery – Vintage Twee!

Hair and Make Up - Sam Pearce

A Vintage Fairytale...

I wanted to write today's blog post as a special thank you to one of our lovely brides whose email made me smile from ear to ear when it popped into my inbox this week! Carla got in touch with some fabulous images of Vintage Twee's creations at her wedding, which took place last September with a vintage fairytale theme. It's not often we get to see our items 'in action' so to speak and so we are always grateful when people take the time to show us just how they were incorporated into their special day. So this piece is a massive thank you to Carla and Michael, who were married on 22^nd September 2012 at Warwick Castle. All images are by the fantastic Steve Gerrard Photography, and I think you'll agree that they are simply stunning!

Vintage Twee was lucky enough to create a number of fairytale themed items for Carla and Michael, including our Enchanted Fairytale Favour Boxes. These looked beautiful lay at the place settings of the guests, and fit perfectly amongst the gold and cream colour scheme of the day. The boxes contained little brown organza bags which were filled with special personalised M&Ms bought from Las Vegas on Carla's hen do – 22 of them to represent the date of the wedding, a beautiful idea! Carla also let us know that there were no boxes left on the tables at the end of the evening – music to our ears here at Vintage Twee! We love that people cherish our items as gifts, as well as décor, and take them home as a memento of the day.

We also had the pleasure of creating some bespoke lottery ticket holders for Carla and Mike, which incorporated the brown, gold and cream colour scheme and captured the magical essence of the day. These were placed inside bags and left at guest's place settings..unfortunately we didn't make any millionaires on the day but £30.00 between everyone was better than nothing!

Carla also requested some confetti cones to be created from the same fairytale paper that we made her other items from. These were printed with different sayings such as Happily Ever After, and Once Upon a Time and were embellished with a gold bow. They looked so beautiful placed in a basket for guests to take! Carla's mum also got creative with some additional fairytale paper we printed, and she made origami shapes for their wish tree and centrepieces! Each tree had a different shape to match the table name, such as 'Beauty and the Beast' which featured a rose and Carla displayed her table names in Italian to follow her dad's heritage. These are so lovely that perhaps Carla's mum would like a job here.... :)

Finally, Vintage Twee created our infamous cupcake sticks which were displayed in these beautiful cupcakes bought from Selfridges which looked absolutely delicious!

So a massive heartfelt thank you to Carla and Mike for sharing these photographs with us, they are simply stunning and all recognition goes to Steve Gerrard for capturing our items in such a fantastic way. And the best news for us?? Everything was so greatly appreciated that their guests made sure that none of the items were left behind at the end of the day, reassuring us at Vintage Twee HQ that our work is more than just a 'favour', it is a much loved keepsake, taken home and cherished as a reminder of a very special day.

Congratulations to Carla and Mike on their wedding and we wish you a lifetime of happiness together! Xxxx

Photography - Steve Gerrard

Cupcakes – Selfridges

Venue – Warwick Castle