In most cases, DIY is the cheaper and more fun option. Do you really need any other reason to take up a DIY project? If you do, we’re giving you one. A DIY wedding bouquet is not only quick and easy to do, but it also adds an extra special personal touch to your wedding day.
Imagine walking down the aisle, seeing your love await you at the end. You’re already beaming with pride. Now, you get to add to that pride, knowing that the bouquet you’re carrying was hand-made by you!
If you’re considering building your bouquet from scratch, here’s how to do it:
– You have options, use them
While you may have to stick to one vendor for other aspects of your wedding, with flowers you can mix and match. This means you can go to your local market (or several markets) and hand-pick your bouquet flowers, which makes it all the more special. Choose the ones that feel perfect to you.
-Look for inspiration on Pinterest
Before you go shopping, be sure you have an idea of what you’d like. This will make picking the flowers much less overwhelming when you’re there. Also keep seasonality in mind.
– Prepare your flowers
Once you’ve got a hold of the blooms that will make up your bouquet, remove the foliage from the stems using your hands or a stem stripper. If you’ve chosen roses, ensure that you’ve removed the thorns. Next you’ll trim the stems to ensure that they are all the same length.
– Organise the bouquet
Choose about 4 flowers for the base of your bouquet, then wrap their stems together (preferably with floral tape). Ensure that you have left some exposed stem at the bottom.
– Add as you please
To create your dream bouquet, add more flowers around the base flowers. Keep things like texture and colour in mind as you add, and wrap with floral tape at each layer.
– Wrap and Pin
Once you have decided your bouquet is perfect, give it one final wrapping of floral tape and leave some exposed stem at the top and bottom. Next, using ribbon to cover the floral tape, wrap the stems once more and pin it when you’re done.
– Preserve
Once the bouquet is prepped and read, over it in tissue and store it in the refrigerator. This will keep it looking fresh until you’re ready to walk down the aisle.
Image: Pexels
If you’re planning spring wedding, take note of yellow. It looks like laughter. Not only is it bright and happy, it’s trending right now and we love it.…
While the ongoing pandemic has caused many a cancelled wedding and much disapointment, one thing is for certain: it has also brought out the creativity in many. A Detriot couple made the most of it by posing for a pandemic-themed photoshoot in an abandoned building to keep with the times.
Matthew Engelke and Lilly Ayrapetryan (now Engelke), tied the knot on March 20. Their orginal plan was to marry at a courthouse in April, but their plans fell through as the pandemic intensified.
Instead, they brought their wedding date up and teamed up with their friend, photographer Scott Sprague, to have a pandemic-themed wedding and photoshoot. Not even coronavirus could put a stop to their nuptials, and they even incorporated it into their ceremony.
Sprague did an amazing job of capturing their special day. Photos show the couple wearing real gas masks, looking eerie, but still loved-up, in the creepy building.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CAA2n3gjttC/
“My favorite photo is one with the gas masks and in between them reads a message that states, ‘What we need in the world is more love,'” said Sprague to the Daily Mail.
“I had this whole idea to pay homage to the American Gothic picture in my head, which has a couple wearing white and black, just like a wedding with a bride and groom.
“So we created this whole story with the wedding photos for art, saying this is where they now live due to the pandemic.”
Picture: Unsplash
While lace, silk and tulle often reign when it comes to wedding dresses, we cannot help but love satin. Satin is a type of weave that produces the…
For most of her career, the iconic, doe-eyed Audrey Hepburn was positioned as the antithesis of Marilyn Monroe. Despite this, the Belgian-born actress had just as tumultuous a love life as the bombshell. Hepburn had tied the knot twice times in her life, and was engaged three times.
Each wedding featured a stunning gown that has inspired many brides, including Megan Markle. We take a look at the Breakfast at Tiffany’s star’s love life that was just as dramatic as the characters she portrayed onscreen.
1952: James Hanson
A pre-fame Hepburn was engaged to British wealthy businessman Lord James Hanson while filming her breakout first major motion picture, Roman Holiday, for which she would later win an Oscar. However, the budding Hollywood star had her reservations, and ended up calling off the wedding. In later years, Hepburn explained that their busy work schedules were to blame.
“My schedule commits me to a movie here, then back to the stage, then back to Hollywood. [James] would be spending most of his time taking care of business in England and Canada. It would be very difficult for us to lead a normal married life,” she said in an interview.
Her mid-length, boatneck silk dress designed by the Rome-based Fontana sisters had already been made at the time the wedding was called off, so Hepburn had the designers donate the gown to a bride in need.
“I want my dress to be worn by another girl for her wedding, perhaps someone who couldn’t ever afford a dress like mine, the most beautiful, poor Italian girl you can find,” she had told them. Amiable Altobella from Borgo Carso in the Province of Latina won a radio contest and became the lucky bride to wear this iconic gown to her own farm wedding.
In 2009, the dress sold at an auction for $23,000.
1954: Mel Ferrer
Hepburn met her future first husband, actor, stage and film director Mel Ferrer at a party a year after her first engagement ended. Fellow actor and Roman Holiday star Gregory Peck introduced them to one another.
The twice divorced father of four was 12 years Hepburn’s senior, but that did not phase the couple.
For their big day, Hepburn stunned in a Balmain tea-length flared dress with a satin sash, a high neckline and balloon sleeves that she accessorised with elbow-length gloves. The pair married in Burgenstock, Switzerland in an intimate ceremony on September 25, 1954.
Their marriage, however, was not the stuff of fairytales. Hepburn struggled to carry a child and reportedly suffered four miscarriages throughout the marriage. The pair were also plagued by infidelity rumours, as both were said to have had affairs. Hepburn had a much publicised love affair with Sabrina co-star William Holden, who at the time was also married. In later years, Holden called Hepburn the love of his life, and tried to win her back after she married her second husband.
In 1960, Hepburn gave birth to her first son, Sean Ferrer. The couple divorced in 1968 after 14 years of marriage.
1969: Andrea Dotti
Heburn met and fell in love with Italian psychiatrist Andrea Dotti in 1968 while on a meditteranean cruise. The air married in 1969 at a town hall in Switzerland. Hepburn wore a pink woolen Givenchy minidress featuring long-sleeves and a funnel neck. She accessorised with white tights, white gloves, a woolen headscarf and ballet flats.
At the age of 39, Hepburn gave birth again, this time to second son Luca Dotti. She then took a break from Hollywood to focus on her family. However, she did not have an easy time. she would go on to have another miscarriage after her second son’s birth. Both Hepburn and Dotti reportedly had affairs throughout their marriage. Hepburn is said to have had an affair with Bloodline co-star Ben Gazzara, while Dotti garnered much publicity for his affairs with young women. The couple divorced in 1982 after 14 years of marriage.
Robert Wolders
Hepburn’s final love was Dutch actor Robert Wolders, who she met at a party in 1980. While she never married Wolders, Hepburn said in an interview with Barbara Walters that her time with him marked the happiest years of her life. Her relationship with Wolders continued until her death in 1993. On why they never married, Wolders explained it never felt necessary.
“I felt she had two unhappy marriages, it was wonderful the way it was,” he said in an interview with People magazine. “When Audrey would be asked, she’d also say, ‘Why mess with a good thing?’ I remember her saying to one interviewer it’s more romantic this way because it’s not another piece of paper, but out of loyalty to each other that binds us together. Had we been younger and wanted to have children, it might have been different, but that’s just not the case.”
Feature image: Pinterest
Static wedding venues are so last season. Why not get your marriage started on a journey literally with a wedding aboard a train! The Rovos Rail in Pretoria…
The fight for the legalisation of same-sex marriages has been a long and difficult one, one that is still ongoing in many parts of the world. Slowly, however, global support for the cause has seen an increase.
Same-sex marriage has been in legal in South Africa since 2006, making it the first African country to do so. However, this did not come easy.
In April 1994, the post-apartheid interim constitution came into effect. Within it was the Bill of Rights, which stated that “No person shall be unfairly discriminated against, directly or indirectly, and, without derogating from the generality of this provision, on one or more of the following grounds in particular: race, gender, sex, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture or language.”
This was the first bill in the world which prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Yet, it would be years before same-sex marriage was allowed in the country.
According to SouthAfrica.To, the country slowly became more accepting of members of the LBGTQ community. In 1999, immigrant partners of LGBTQ citizens were allowed to apply for residence in the country. Three years later, in 2002, the Constitutional Court made a ruling allowing LGBTQ couples to jointly adopt.
In the same year, on October 18, Marie Fourie and Celia Bonthuys launched an application, supported by the Lesbian and Gay Equality Project, for same-sex marriages to be legalised and registered. The application was dismissed by Pretoria High Court judge Pierre Roux on the basis that the couple had not properly criticized the constitutionality of the existing marriage law.
After much back and forth with both the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA), their appeal was finally heard by the SCA ,which handed down its judgement on November 30, 2004. The SCA ruled in favour of the couple, noting that the common law definition of marriage, at the time, was invalid as it unconstitutionally discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation. However, on a technicality, the court could not invalidate the Marriage Act, which meant that their marriage could not be immediately solemnized. This matter was then taken to the Constitutional Court.
At the same time, the Lesbian and Gay Equality Project launched a lawsuit which contested the constitutionality of the Marriage Act in the Johannesburg High Court. This was later heard by the Constitutional Court in conjunction with the Fourie and Bonthuys case.
On December 1, 2005, the Constitutional Court ruled that the Marriage Act was discriminatory and unjustifiable. Justice Albie Sachs said: “The exclusion of same-sex couples from the benefits and responsibilities of marriage, accordingly, is not a small and tangential inconvenience resulting from a few surviving relics of societal prejudice destined to evaporate like the morning dew. It represents a harsh if oblique statement by the law that same-sex couples are outsiders, and that their need for affirmation and protection of their intimate relations as human beings is somehow less than that of heterosexual couples. It reinforces the wounding notion that they are to be treated as biological oddities, as failed or lapsed human beings who do not fit into normal society, and, as such, do not qualify for the full moral concern and respect that our Constitution seeks to secure for everyone. It signifies that their capacity for love, commitment and accepting responsibility is by definition less worthy of regard than that of heterosexual couples.”
Thereafter, parliament was given a year to change the definition of marriage (which originally stated that the union was between husband and wife). Should they not complete the task in time, the law would automatically be altered to include LGBTQ unions.
In September 2006, many South Africans protested against same-sex marriage, as the Civil Union Bill had been approved by the Cabinet the month before. In November, a day before the final reading of the bill in the National Assembly, the Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota spoke in favour of it. “The roots of this bill lie in many years of struggle…This country cannot afford to be a prison of timeworn prejudices which have no basis in modern society. Let us bequeath to future generations a society which is more democratic and tolerant than the one that was handed down to us,” said Lekota.
The next day, on November 14, the bill was passed by the National Assembly. It was then signed into law on November 29. South Africa’s first same-sex marriage, between Vernon Gibbs and Tony Halls, took place days later, on December 1.
Ten years after the legalisation of same-sex marriages in South Africa, in 2016, the first traditional same-sex wedding took place, according to Insider. Tshepo Cameron Modisane and Thoba Calvin Sithol married and combined their Zulu and Twana traditions in their ceremony, reported the Huffington Post.
While same-sex marriage has indeed been legalised in the country, many still struggle with violence and acceptance. In 2011, GlobalPost claimed that South Africa was one of the worst countries in which to identify as LGBTQ+. They cited high rates of murder and rape as a danger to the community.
Additionally, at the time when same-sex marriages were legalised, an exemption was added in the marriage law to allow religious institutions and civil officers to refuse to conduct same-sex marriage ceremonies.
While Parliament adopted the Civil Union Amendment Bill in 2018, which repeals the allowance for marriages officers to refuse to marry couples, venues have still denied couples access on these grounds.
Examples of this have occurred as recently as this year, when a Western Cape wedding venue, Beloftebos, refused to allow a same-sex couple to hold their ceremony on the premises. Legal action was taken immediately and the court-case is still ongoing, with the venue recently filing a case for discrimination.
Clearly, the struggle of social acceptance continues in South Africa. However, should a same-sex couple want to get married, they are fully allowed to do so according to the law.
Find the full Con Court ruling for the Fourie case here.
Image: Pexels