{ my big sister's little big day }

Last week my sister got married.

I had offered to do her wedding flowers, but she insisted that I shouldn't make a fuss, that it wasn't something that she had thought about or felt was important...  So I did it anyway!

She had decided to wear the dress that she was wearing when she met her now husband.  It's a dress that our mother used to wear when she was younger, and we both used to fight over who had custody of it at the beginning of each summer.

The beautiful dress is black with bright coloured flowers and she had decided that she wanted to wear a traditional Polish flower garland from the Lublin costume in her hair.  She's a no fuss kind of a girl, so I looked for some inspirational images of relaxed bouquets on Pinterest.

I got up at 4am (up with the florists rather than the larks) and headed to the Covent Garden Flower Market.  I bought Anemones, Ranunculus (which I always have to look up because I always want to call them rambunctious!), Lily of the Valley, Eucalyptus and some other brightly coloured flowers the names of which I will have to ask my florist friend.

I made a bouquet for my sister, as well as a slightly smaller posie for my 10 year old niece.

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I had lots of flowers left over that I was going to use for the dinner.  My sister had already asked me to decorate the area in the restaurant that she had booked for the small dinner after the ceremony.  But she had just given me some white bunting which she had leftover from another event and some feather birds leftover from the set I built for her O2 performance last year.

Both she and her husband were overjoyed when they arrived and saw the transformation.  The restaurant helped us create one large table, my dad ironed the table cloths for me (good thing I always have my iron in my kit bag!), whilst I asked the mother's of the bride and groom (and her friend) to arrange some flowers for me.

The thing that really made the decoration for me, was the traditional Polish hanging decorations called Pajaki, which my mama has had for years and I have always coveted.  I also hung some simple paper pom poms and the bunting my sister had given me alongside the Pajaki.  I kept the theme going and incorporated some other Polish touches such as Wicinanki printed napkins and floral hair pieces from our Lowicz costumes as napkin rings.

My favourite part of the decorations was after taking them all down at the end of the dinner, I drove over to my sister's house and put a vase of flowers in every single room in her house.  I knew that it would help keep the magic alive. 

She texted me that night "Thank you again so much for the flowers all over the house, they are amazing and gasping me with wow! xxx" and again in the morning to say "Flowers are still so pretty and bringing so much joy!  Thank you Thank you Thank you!".

Remember that this was just the little big day.  Just 3 months to go before the big big day in the woods!!!  I'm looking forward to that trip to the flower market!!!