The official photographs

We were very excited to receive the official photographs on cd today. There are over 1200 of them so it's going to be extremely difficult choosing which ones to blog.

This is one of our favourites:

Reception flowers

Our flowers just arrived from the Wiggly Florist.

The button-holes contain sea holly, lavender, goldenrod, variegated greenery and pink carnations:

My bouquet contains goldenrod, lavender, pink carnations, sweet stock, snapdragons, allium sphaerocephalon, variegated greenery, kaffir lilies? and safflower (Carthamus tinctorius):

The table flowers for Otterton Mill are similar to the bouquet, but also contain statice and some non-variegated greenery:

Ceremony flowers

Mum arrived today with lots of balloons and flowers. The flowers are so lovely that we've decided to take them to the wedding ceremony to decorate the room. The setting is much more formal than our reception venue and so the lilies, roses and chrysanthemums will go perfectly.

Another Edwards

Helen and I knew straight away that we would like to share the same family name. But the question then was which one? It no longer seems obvious that the woman should take the man's name, and after a few months consideration I felt the most comfortable with changing my name.

Without seeking legal help (expensive!), no one was certain whether the wedding certificate alone would be sufficient for a man to change name, and so we took the recommended route and also prepared a deed poll which will be signed and witnessed at the ceremony in addition to the wedding certificate. The added advantage of using a deed poll is that I can acknowledge my roots by keeping Elliott as a middle name, this wouldn't be possible with just a wedding certificate without adopting Elliott-Edwards as a double barrel surname, and we both agreed that wasn't an option!




From Saturday 16th July 2011 I will be known as Ian Edwards with the full name Ian Elliott Edwards. It is going to take me some time to get used to being called Mr Edwards!

When is a moth trap not a moth trap?

In order to write neat place cards for the wedding, we bought a new fountain pen along with a refillable cartridge and brown ink. Each person's name was printed in Vladimir script onto an A4 sheet - but then we needed a way to trace the names onto each place card.

Since the card was quite thick, the only solution was to use a lightbox, but we didn't have one. Fortunately we currently have Helen's dad's moth trap - and so we managed to make a makeshift light box out of a lamp, plastic crate and the perspex from the trap.


This made the process much easier, and the place cards ended up looking really good.


The Bride and Groom place cards were written in Edwardian script.

Ian Edwards' Otter Cane

On Sunday 10th July, I received an email from Mark Davies (aka Country Sticks) to let me know that the hand carving of the head for my otter cane for the wedding is complete. The order was very last minute as I only saw his work for the first time last week. Usually he wouldn't take on an order at short notice, but he was very kind to take this on, and worked all through the weekend to complete it.

I created a mock up of the head with both brass and silver collars on a number of shanks, and then tested with the grey wedding suit that we're hiring.

In the end, the brass collar was the clear winner. The straight, shiny black cane will not be an option, but we've asked Mark to use the darkest shank that he has and it should work out really well.

I've requested the total height (from top of head to bottom of ferrule) to be 37.5 inches as this is the height of the umbrella that I most often use as a stick.


The next day, Mark sent through photos of the otter with brass collar mounted on the final stick. In the end, he made a special trip to his supplier to find this chestnut shank, and the finished stick just looks fantastic. The glue will dry over night, and then he will apply a final coat of varnish on Tuesday, before posting it out to us special delivery on Wednesday.

The cane should arrive by 1pm on Thursday, and I have to admit that I can't wait to see it!

I think Mark's work is incredible, and it is wonderful that the stick will be in our wedding photos. I'll enjoy the otter stick for many years and I hope that it will remain in the family for generations to come.

A walk in the countryside

Today we went for a walk up to the church at the top of Pinhoe village. We took our wedding rings and programmes to photograph in a natural setting.