Every bride and groom wants their wedding to be a memorable occasion and with wedding season in full swing, now is the perfect time for budding brides to take notes on what’s hot and what’s not to help them plan their perfect day. With more than 20 years insuring weddings, the wedding experts at Ecclesiastical Wedding Insurance have more experience than most on what works and what can leave guests cold.

With venues offering similar menus and services and even readings, hymns, dresses and flowers becoming a bit ubiquitous, it’s a challenge making your big day stand out and ensuring that the effort and expense that you have gone to, gets remembered.

With the ‘make do and mend’ trend, vintage themes and growing interest in craft hobbies over recent years, it’s now more popular than ever to add little decorative, quirky and fun touches to the day to make the wedding personal to the bride and groom. This guide includes Ecclesiastical’s wedding team’s favourite personalised touches from this summer’s customers to give you a head start when planning for winter weddings or next summer’s nuptials:

Invites:

With many self-design services available online, you can let your imagination run wild and set a creative and fun tone for the day with your invitations:

• Music lovers – send out your invitations like festival lanyards, you can even get your wedding date and married name printed on the ribbon of the lanyard for that authentic touch!

• Gossip lovers – design the invitation like the front page of a tabloid newspaper or weekly gossip magazine – without the paparazzi photography!

• When posting your invites, why not go the extra mile and post it with a personalised stamp; available online from the Royal Mail website

During the ceremony:

• Having a civil ceremony means you have real freedom when it comes to choosing music – have your congregation sing one of the happy couple’s favorite love songs during the ceremony!

• If you are particularly musical, how about using favourite song lyrics as a reading?

• Getting married in church? Many church organists will know ‘songs’ rather than hymns and even if you can’t replace hymns during the ceremony, you may be able to have these songs played when you are signing the register or walking out of the church

The wedding breakfast:

• Offer guests a personalised cocktail, named after the bride and groom, on arrival. Many venues are happy to either rename one of their own cocktails or make you one with your favorite ingredients

• Inject some fun into the meal time, by having a vintage fish and chip van or ice cream van serve your guests

• Several websites offer you the option to design your own labels that you can then glue onto the wine bottles for your tables

Decorating your venue:

• Bunting is hugely popular and easy to make yourself. Making it yourself also means you can match the colours exactly to your bridesmaids dresses

• A colourful, creative and eye catching alternative to flowers is fruit. Buy huge plain glass vases and fill them with one type of citrus or exotic fruit and dot around your venue for a summery or exotic theme – for a winter wedding, make your own richly scented pomanders by decorating oranges with real cloves. Gently push the stalk of the clove directly into the skin of the orange and tie up around the venue with matching satin ribbon

• Get your guests bonding during the meal by putting newspapers or comics from the day the bride and groom were born on the tables

• A British seaside theme can be brought to life by giving guests favours of personalised rock with the bride and groom’s name running through the middle and their picture on the label

• A sweet table in the reception areas where guests mingle while the photographs are taking place is a great way to show your personality – let guests help themselves to huge jars of sweets. Children love picking and mixing and adults love reliving their youth with chocolate tools, cola cubes and flying saucers!

Entertainment:

Get friends and family involved where you can, not only does it take the pressure off the bride and groom, but also adds a real family atmosphere to the event:

• Create a vintage and quirky feel by playing bingo – with a grandparent or great aunt or uncle as the bingo caller!

• Hire giant board games for guests to play outside a summer venue and challenge different families or hens against stags to games of giant connect four or snakes and ladders!

• Encourage a crowded dance floor by asking each guest to nominate their favourite dance track on the RSVP. A playlist full of great dance tunes is a real floor filler!

The most important aspect of your day to personalise, however, is your wedding insurance. More than 70% of couples neglect to insure their big day and when you consider that the average wedding costs £22,000*, it’s a big risk not to get any financial protection. Ecclesiastical Wedding Insurance from www.ecclesiastical.com/wedding enables you to pick and choose policy specifics and levels of cover to exactly match your big day. So whatever personal touch you choose, make sure you protect your special day.