The dance of the raspberry

The McFlowers Wedding Pavlova - Photo by the lovely Robyn

Why a dance? Well why not. I've been thinking muchly these few days about raspberries. They often enter my thoughts as a fresh fruit and particularly a raspberry pavlova is one of the few things that will get me all weak at the knees. In fact as you can see, we had a huge 16 egg one for our wedding cake, with eggs donated from a local friends hens and of course, raspberries.  For a decent pavlova you require decent eggs and decent raspberries. Indecent fruit or eggs will just not do, believe me I know a thing or two about these type of things, shady past that I've had. But decent ones perform better and a decent recipe never goes amiss so here's our 'family' one here, complete with secret ingredients.

Its approximately a month until we up sticks and head 'doon sooth' to Fife. Whilst that's sad in some ways in others, like decent eggs, its exciting. Why the eggs adding to the excitement? Well as much as I often visit the 'ladies' we've rehomed, I miss having chooks. They are the ultimate in 'garden pets' I think, most perfect household recycling machines and I am looking forward to having some again once we're moved. The garden I have always thought, should be a productive place, so that's the remit for the 'under offer' garden we're currently pursuing.

The other thing that's making me dance is the idea of a productive edible garden, my plants are forced to work hard for me and I reward them by scoffing them. Not much in it for them really, aside a happy well tended (short) life and a psychotic hungry gardener to hide from. Raspberries will form a good first attack contingent of this, so therefore, some dancing, Polka's or otherwise never goes a miss. People rain dance, I raspberry dance. And as my birthday looms, the children (trained well) ask for requests as they know I like a good fuss, and fussing soon it will be time for April is the best month for birthdays. So they ask what I want - the manchild has been 'selected' as their joint spokesperson for the birthday negotiation.

'Fruit' I say.

'Fruit you say mither dear ' - [Pauses] 'hmm, rasps, first of course - you're thinking pav?'

'Yes I am! Those will do nicely love'.

'Autumn fruiting or a mixture' - he ponders.

'Autumn I think love, thanks all the same but I'm a lazy type'.

'Never said a word' he quips, 'Lets just call you 'efficient''.

You've got to love a young man who not only knows what would be the first fruit of choice for a new productive garden guided by first pudding of choice. And, he also knows his raspberries, he's been well versed (brainwashed) and autumn fruiting types, who rather helpfully fruit on 'primocane' the newly grown stems**of this season, so don't need much in the way of staking or tying. Once established they need little management and if you're canny will crop from the old wood early prior to the 'proper crop' in late summer. Two crops, one season, no faffing, that will do nicely.  I've read alot of good things lately about 'Polka' (both a raspberry and a dance), the first, parented by my favourite 'Autumn Bliss' said to be a heavy cropper and very disease resistant with a good flavour. 

So dear reader we will be doing the dance of the raspberry thanks to my children. I may keep them a while yet, as long as the fruit keeps coming. In return I just grow the fruit, feed the (future) hens and maybe ask my son nicely to help make the first pavlova of the new kitchen. He's just mastered his aunty Claire's (tame family chef) recipe and he's rather good at it. Clever chap on all counts. Teaching your kids to cook (anything) makes for a life long love of food.

**main crop raspberries fruit on 2nd year growth so require more help by staking and pruning to get a good crop. They're fun but not in my opinion as easy for the lazy gardener like myself, so I buy autumn fruiting types and save myself a bit of work.

After all that means more time eating pavlova and, we'll need an 'anniversary pavlova' this year, so making it with our very own rasps and eggs is a must in the new garden. Just saying.

[As I'm dragging myself into the 21st century I've just created a Wind and Wellies facebook page - I wonder if you'll be so wonderful as to pop over and join me?]

When gardeners get married.

 Just like everyone else we pick our frocks (£20 charity shop) and our shoes (£10.50 reduced), our scarf (1.99 charity shop). Be assured the dashing wellingtons, (whilst cut at a killer deal), cost far more than the whole of the rest of my wedding outfit. Priorities and all that, the wellyboots will get well used again. We also have a good scrub as often as not, we're muddy. And we don't spend much money on finery as we need it for seeds and tools next year.

We kindly ask chums to gather and forage what they have in their gardens looking beautiful to make bouquets with....no one blinks and eye when asked for a bin bag of ivy or a bucket of berries. We just get it. We did indulge in a few red roses to set the tone, fair trade supermarket bunch for £10 for a large bunch. The only cost of our wedding flowers was £10. Quite happy with that, we didn't need them, but they added a lovely touch. If you work with the season you're in, frugal wonders can happen.

We ask their help to forage around their beautiful gardens and provide free seasonal colour for our tables, laid on old free recycled slate roof tiles cleaned and washed for the occasion.

 They also kindly take the time to lay it out and make it look radiant.

 We borrow the things we don't have like fairy lights, tea lights and improvise rustic peedie vases from 'Nutella' glasses from those who indulge in such decadence! . Table runners replaced table cloth hire, at £2 each, we paid £20 in total for those. Instantly an autumn country rustic theme is born. We added various bits of home made (by friends) bunting which just set things off beautifully

And nature doesn't let us down and it does its own thing and looks beautiful, like we know it always will. Simple, natural and celebrated is often better. The tops of free roof tiles point out the way through the forest.

So we go, nervously with our loved ones, in our recycled finery, our wellyboots and and take our vows.

 In the company of so many wonderful and kind friends who've helped in so very many ways. The old kitchen basket used last week to take veg to a chums house today is filled with song sheets and recycled dried petal confetti. This is our stuff, our family stuff and it played its normal back up role in our lives. A kitchen bottle filled with foraged elderflower cordial quenches our Quaich to welcome our guests.

How grateful we are for the friends that we have and the life that we have and those things that make life nicer from old guitars to baskets, bottles and bags. And how we laughed!

Be assured there will be more on this another time. Just wanted to tip my hat and say thank you for everyone who's contributed to a truly special spectacular day.  All of our friends worked hard to put this special day together for us whilst laughing and chatting and hopefully finding out how much we love them too. And due to their kindness, hard work and efforts, cost a fraction of what it might have. All the better for being hand made with love, a fair bit of charging around to see what we could scrounge and a few pennies.

Photographs here are almost entirely the hard work of my wonderful chum Robyn who I'm hoping won't mind me sharing a few the now.

 

Mr & Mrs McB
Gardener and Rock Legend, finally wed.

(more on that later.)

Frugal wedding malarkay - 1

Now this isn't the kind of post that will appeal to many people but some folks have asked specifics of what we're doing with 'Wellyfest 2013' to try and have a wedding celebration 'our way'.  So whilst its unlikely to be helpful - in the manner of reflection I'll lob a few wee snippets on here. Hmm well its ages til we do the 'I do' bit in beautiful forests - well at LEAST a week.

SO what on earth can I tell you about the experience so far? Before we went crazy with the planning we decided who we wanted along. Having debated long and hard about exactly who/where/why we wanted to celebrate our wedding. Then came the budget we could have done it little and spent a few hundred pounds - we wanted our closest chums and family so we bit the bullet and decided to go for it - we want to have a holiday at Xmas (as usual, this year we'll also call this a honeymoon) and hopefully look at buying a house next year - so we've considered £3k to be the region we'd be comfortable spending. (If you can ever be comfortable spending that kind of money on something as decadent as a party). We know we'll have to say - no we can't afford x/y/z but that's OK, we need to prioritise, and that's fair.

 

The main facts really are that we're attempting to have a wedding in a forest in Scotland, with c100 fab guests and a very fun party for a budget of £3000. We want it to be as paper free as possible, as waste free as possible and as home made as possible.

I had utterly no clue where to start, so I found a book. Well the dearest ex-cellist found a book, in the library. It was called  'Your wedding Your way.'  And thus the games began. And the book was free, good start. N'er a wedding magazine has graced this house, borrowed or otherwise. There are oodles of books in the library on wedding planning, who knew. I normally head straight for the cook book section. The one thing I would say about this process is if you want something a bit different stick your elbows out, give them a sharpen and stick to your guns. Its worth YOU and your DEARLY BELOVED making a list of what you DON'T want and what you do want and remembering to reflect on it often. The book helped me see that. It's so easy to get sucked into the frenzy. Yes, even I found myself fondling favours and telling myself how pretty they were. Step away my lovely, they're NOT on the list. Nice as they are you don't want them - remember? STICK TO YOUR GUNS.

 

So back to this list then, we decided what was important to us and what wasn't. Lots of the non-essentials were ditched, not to say that they'd not be lovely but they weren't as important to us as other things. So after deciding we'd like to have a moderately sizable celebration, along came some of the things we really care about.....and I've lobbed in some costs, these might be actual, estimated or totally unrealistic, but lets see how we do. There is a wee contingency, I think most people call the that kids uni funds but lets not kibble over which ISA it comes out of.

So current allocated spends are -

 

Outdoor wedding in a forest of our choice - cost £402

We 'could' have found a free venue - we chose to spend some of our money on an NTS venue which we both love - and that had a cost. Our choice, its a special place and after much wrangling with the poor warden I am ASSURED all the money raised in that venue is SPENT in that venue - good enough for me. We chose the autumn - forests look fantastic in this season, its my favourite season (aside the other three) so why not. And in a very frugal manner - you instantly have a very easy to bring into the venue theme. So our 'rustic' autumnal theme was borne of both love and frugality. Cunning huh.

 

A Humanist Ceremony - cost £350

We chose a Humanist ceremony as it suited our philosophy of life. So a standard ceremony would have been a less costly choice, but it wasn't for us. We've been to few Humanist gathering and find them to be deeply moving and very lovely. There is an additional legal cost on top of this, which I'll varies where you live.

 

A community venue - cost c£400 + all additional costs like corkage etc for the evening TBC

We wanted a community hall/venue to host our 'home made' knees up. Community venues around the country and often offer a unique space to have an event it. Feels nice to be using our chosen community's facilities and acknowledging their role in every village/town/city. Its often the heart of a community and we wanted to celebrate our event in such a place. The one thing I would say is shop around. Community halls often offer a really good money for value service whilst other establishments we've found quote very differently if you ring them for a 'wedding for X amount of folks' or email them about a 'conference for the same amount of folks'.........just saying. The W word seems to add a goodly amount to a cost in some establishments.

 

Grub - c£500- excluding toasts/wine

Well any frugal lass would smart at the cost of a 'shop bought buffet' and when feeding the combined McFlowers rabble a buffet is generally the best way to do it. They are prone to food fights. So having thought it all though before we started down this process I said to Mr McF to be - 'I think we should do the grub' - a firm nod from himself, 'Of course, best phone Aunty C then and see if she's free to take on the head wedding chef's job'. And she did. We'll go in to this bit a lot further in another post - grub and the making of a feast for a frugal amount, is a the subject of much head scratching and a post all of its own.

So before we've got dressed we're sitting on chairs wondering how on earth spends are already in the region of £1652.......

So far as of today's date the approximate allocated spends are around £2900/£3000 and we've got a couple of weeks to go. And, yes I know the above doesn't take count of all that money - a girl can't spill the beans on where all the money's allocated, in just one post now can she.

I'm away to put a flannel on my head and lie down - that's a lot of money isn't it and we're not even dressed yet.

A wedding in PJ's perhaps?

This isn't perfect - I'm sure we'll make a whole heap of mistakes but what's ever perfect about a marriage. Might as well start as we mean to go on, with good intentions and a canny eye on the budget. And we're having a lot of help with many aspects of it all - friends and family are being amazing, and for me that sense of love and friendship embodies who we are. Whilst its hard to sometimes ask for help of such a magnitude - I'd sure as hell do the same for anyone I loved too.