The Hungarian Wedding Celebration.

'Wow, it is very beautiful' - Everyone, to our faces

 We arrived back in Debrecen around 10:30pm, a little shaken and pretty tired.

Leonard Bernstein, the great American composer once said:

"To achieve great things two things are needed; a plan, and not enough time"

Now apart from his repetition of the word 'things' I love this quote, and it is by no means a stretch of the imagination to set it as the theme of our wedding week.

Vanda was busy over the few months leading up to the wedding with DIY decorations and cost-reducing ideas for the Hungarian celebration because, in case you don't know, weddings are expensive. The average cost of weddings in the UK has risen to £27,000 this year with London's average sitting at a whopping £38,000. Our wedding and the celebrations to follow were and are, of course, much cheaper than this as we couldn't even dream of affording such a thing.
Vanda is a vastly creative individual and once an idea pops into her head it is impossible for her to think of anything else until she has achieved it. This is great news for me, as it means that all I have to do is bask in her brilliance. I am the Sam to her Frodo. So with this in mind, I'll do a quick run down of what she managed to create for the Hungarian celebration:

Flowers in Baked Bean Tins, napkins wrapped in string, clothes pegs and seeds. Looks better than it sounds, no?

The Flower Vases were spray-painted Baked Beans tins. We had to devour quite a lot of this food of the Gods in the UK as they don't sell Baked Beans in Hungary (Just another reason to leave the EU eh?). In the picture above you can also see an almost complete Floating Candle which I will explain how to make in another post. Vanda had an idea for having the Menu placed neatly on everyone's plate as we were having a Buffet table. This meant that everyone could sit down for a drink and chat first then head to the food with the confidence of someone who knows exactly what type of salad-y gloop they are going to choose. She looked up on Youtube how to fold napkins, and after many different style choices we settled on this lovely little fold pocket design. One can also use this design to hold cutlery as well, if one is so inclined. The final little gift to our guests is a seed of an 'easy grow' flower. As we were having a spring wedding we decided to give everyone a flower to plant (with instructions, starting soil and a bio-degradable pot included for added sex appeal). All of this was designed by Vanda either by hand or with the help of Photoshop and we are extremely happy with the results.

Cake Trays, 'Piggy' Bank and classy Wedding branding

The Cake Trays made a welcome appearance and were just about big enough for the unholy volume of cakes that adorned them during the celebration. All of the different wedding accessories followed the same format, and we had two big posters made for the walls to fit in with the theme. In the centre picture you can see a sort of 'Piggy' Bank. In Hungarian weddings it is customary to give money to the newly-wed couple on their wedding to set them off to a good start in their life together. Usually this involves a little ceremony where everyone 'pays' to dance with the bride. We (somewhat sadly) didn't have this at our wedding as my Hungarian isn't yet strong enough to go through the motions of a traditional ceremony, but that didn't stop us from collecting our 'look at us, being all happy' tax from the poor guests, and that requires a money box. We also had Bunting made to fit in with the theme and the tables were littered with Golden paper cranes made by Vanda, a little signature of hers.

Bloody Lovely

The final DIY addition to our little celebration was a 'Polaroid' frame that Vanda's dad kindly built for us. This, with the addition of some novelty hats and accessories, led to much drunken hilarity, as showcased below:

There was drinking, there was dancing, there was more drinking and in the end there was a good time had by everyone. The next two days were spent basically sleeping, and now that this little part of our adventure has reached its conclusion, we are moving towards the beginning of our year in relative isolation by the river (with lots of Motorcycle adventures to fill the spaces between!). With two celebrations down, we have two more official and (hopefully) a big pub trip for all the London friends to go before we can truly say "OK WE'RE MARRIED NOW, IS EVERYONE HAPPY!?" But until all of this, I will leave you with a picture that sums up how that week of my life feels every time I look back to it:

'God I'm so tired, please just let me sleep'

- Puffer

Hand-made wedding decorations: Cake Stand

The Sauce has been frantically busy with designing and organising our second wedding out of a proposed four.

Let me explain. Our plan to have a small actual wedding and then celebrate in our respective countries morphed beautifully and monstrously into actually organising multiple weddings so that everyone can experience the joy of our special day(s). So for better or for worse we are getting married a few times. And to make matters even better, the Second wedding, the Hungarian one, is two days after our actual wedding.

You may be interested to know that Hungarians take weddings particularly seriously, even more so then us Brits. And Vanda, bless her crazy little mind, decided to hand-make the decorations, in order to keep our costs down and also add a personal touch to the second most wonderful day of our lives. And I, Puffer, decided to watch and photograph (amateurishly) her ideas and share them with the world. Lucky you, world.

So first up: Cake Stands!

Cake Stands...oohhhh ahhhhh!

These delightful cake stands are super easy to make and add a really nice vintage, retro and other blogging keyword feel to your reception.

THINGS YOU WILL NEED:

• Fruit boxes/ Display Crates
• White Acrylic Paint
• White Glossy Spray Paint
• Jute Ribbon
• Glue Gun
• Extra: Twine for added decoration to the legs.

You can find these boxes just about anywhere that there is a market or fruit/vegetables are sold, here is an example of some on our road (we would suggest getting them from shops rather than the street, for hygiene's sake!).

Look for Boxes like this, only with a bit less London road all over them.

After cleaning off the debris and splinters (would suggest some soft sandpaper for a really nice surface finish), Vanda painted the box with a simple white acrylic paint. After the first coat she waited ten minutes before going over it again.

The first coat, and magical appearing Yorkie.

Once it dried, the wood was still a little dull in colour. So Vanda took the box outside and coated it in a layer of shiny white spray paint to give it a glossy look.

Consider spray painting outside, so as to not paint any inquisitive Yorkies.

At this point the box was looking pretty wedding-y but needed some finishing touches. We managed to find and pick up something I would later find out is called Jute Ribbon which adds a lovely countryside feel to anything you wrap in it.

Pay no heed to the terrible lighting of these shots, the Jute Ribbon is what matters!

For the finishing touch, Vanda made a bow out of the jute ribbon to mask the area that glued the ribbon together and 'wrap it up nicely' so to speak. Once the bow was ready, she used a glue gun to stick the ribbon together, and attach the bow to it.

Make a bow, stick a bow, have a beautiful cake tray. Sorted.

Et Voilà! You have a very simple and stylish cake stand for all the sugary treats you will feed to your ravenous guests. If you'd like a little bit of extra decoration, you can wrap some twine around the legs of your box.

Twiney Winey Leggys

But there you go. Simple eh? And not just for weddings either, I imagine they would fit nicely at a summer barbecue or a summer barbecue themed Bar Mitzvah. More easy decorations coming right up, but for now, Hope you're all having a grand weekend!

Puffer