lex-blog-2

Wedding Themes

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 13:48:01 +0100

After a glorious weekend it feels as if spring is finally here. I therefore thought I'd put together a couple of examples of spring / summer wedding themes. I love the idea of a country shabby chic wedding, it's a theme that lends itself particularly well to marquee and outdoor weddings. You can create a very dramatic / rustic impact without having to spend too much:

- Mismatched teapots filled with seasonal flowers make wonderful table centres. Why not visit your local charity shop or car boot sale and see what you can find.
- Candle lanterns are a great idea for creating soft lighting. www.gardentrading.co.uk have some lovely examples. If however, you're on a tight budget why not get friends and family to collect old jam jars / small glass bottles. Once they've been cleaned and labels removed they can then be used to hold t-lights.
- In keeping wtih the country theme why not consider giving your guests seed packets as their wedding favours. www.englishplants.co.uk offer a personalsed packet at £1.95 per favour (up to 50 packets).

Candy Theme
A candy theme means that you can incorporate both candy colours (such as baby blue and pink) and sweets! The colour palette is very soft but you can introduce splashes of brighter colours, such as bright pink.

- A lollipop table centrepiece makes a fun talking point and can also act as favours for your guests.
- Why not choose colourful cupcakes instead of a traditional tiered cake. There are numerous places where you can now order personalised cakes, at www.fancynancy.info you can order specifically designed fancies such as ice-cream cookies.
- To make an impact why not purchase a couple of brightly coloured tubtrugs - www.containerama.com and plant some seasonal flowers. Guaranteed to add colour to any marquee or garden wedding.

The inaugural Kempsford Literary Festival....

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 13:01:43 +0100

took place between Friday 12 and Sunday 14 March 2010.

The majority of authors spoke in the school hall, however there were a couple of talks over the weekend given in St Mary’s Church, (the church also housed an art display by a local art group). While the school hall and church were being utilised by the speakers, the village hall become the ‘festival cafe’ and home to the Waterstone’s bookstall. The village hall was totally transformed into a ‘cafe’ by a small team of volunteers who worked unbelievably hard across the weekend serving teas, coffees and delicious homemade cakes.

Day 1 - After weeks of planning and a few last minute changes, including the fact that I had to completely rearrange the opening ceremony due to a conflict in HRH The Countess of Wessex’s diary, the first morning of the festival was upon us.

HRH The Countess of Wessex opened the festival at 11.55am at Kempsford Primary School. As well as the creator of the festival, Tim Hastie Smith, the Headmaster and the Chair of Governors I was there to meet HRH in my capacity as Festival Director. Following these introductions HRH was then given the opportunity to interact with the youngest children waiting to greet her - they were dressed up as characters from their favourite books and waving Union Jack flags. After this slightly soggy start outside, HRH then moved inside and took her place on stage next to the author Sandra Howard.

Following the official opening by HRH, the headmaster then called upon a few of the children to read passages from their chosen books. This was promptly followed by a fashion parade of book characters and it was left to HRH and Sandra Howard to select a winner from each year. The press were present for the ceremony and took great delight in capturing an image of ‘Dennis the Menace’ (who was one of the characters in the fashion parade) poking his tongue out at HRH! The image went on to appear in the Saturday editions of both the Daily Telegraph and The Sun newspapers! Better coverage we couldn’t have asked for.

Upon completion of the opening ceremony Sandra Howard then made her way to St Mary’s Church to give the first speech of the festival, ‘A Matter of Loyalty’.

The remainder of the first day saw another 6 speakers participating in the festival; Susan Hill, Michael Dobbs, Joanna Trollope, Gyles Brandreth, Patrick Mercer and Chris Hunter. There was an excellent turnout for all speakers and everybody I spoke to coming out of a talk was full of praise for the calibre of speaker. I finally finished at around 10.30pm with the book signing by Patrick Mercer and Chris Hunter.

Day 2 - The second day of the festival commenced at 09.45am with a talk by the children’s author Elizabeth Lindsay. I have to confess that if there is ever to be another festival I will ensure that we have a wider selection of authors for children so that we can be more age specific for each of the talks (for example 5 – 7 year olds and 10 -11 year olds). On this occasion, due to the huge number of author’s that were signed on for the project when I became involved, there were really only 2 slots for children – Elizabeth Lindsay and the illustrator, Susan Keeble. That said we had a good turnout for both and it was lovely to have the local children involved in the festival.

The rest of Saturday continued on a very tight schedule with only 1hr 15minutes between each author. Again this was due to the fact that we had a great many authors involved but really only one location, (due to the lack of facilities at the Church we made the decision to try and keep as many speakers as possible in the school with the amenities it/the village hall could provide).

Once again we had a very good calibre of author’s on the Saturday including, but not limited to, Dame Stella Rimington, Nicholas Coleridge, Lord Hurd, Patricia Routledge, Felix Francis, Oliver James and Adrian Tinniswood.

The final event on Saturday evening was a QI style quiz which was hosted by Justin Pollard (author and script writer for QI). This event was held in the village hall and saw 80 people compete in teams of 8 while enjoying bread, cheese, wine and fruit and attempting to answer questions on a variety of subjects from the somewhat obscure to the practically impossible to answer!

Day 3 -The final day of the festival was much shorter with only 5 speaker slots. Anne Atkins was the first speaker at 11am and rather than talk about her books Tim Hastie-Smith interviewed her. This was therefore a slightly different format to the majority of speakers we had talking across the weekend. The remainder of Sunday saw talks given by Dr Anthony Seldon, David Faber and a fascinating ‘Women in History’ debate.

The final speaker of the day was the quite remarkable Camila Batmanghelidjh who closed the festival by speaking at St Mary’s Church.

All in all it was a very successful weekend and as you can see from some of the comments that I’ve posted on the ‘Testimonials’ page it was an incredibly well received event. Although we are still working on the final figures I am confident that we will have raised a not insignificant amount for the local community – the school, the village hall and the church. Not bad for a relatively unknown village somewhere near the M4!

I am now looking forward to my next project – a large summer party.....

Photos from the Kempsford Literary Festival

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 18:01:59 +0100

The inaugural Kempsford Literary Festival took place over the weekend of the 12 - 14 March 2010. I will be updating my blog with the full details over the next few days but in the interim period wanted to share some of the images from the event with you...

Kempsford Literary Festival

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:04:30 +0100

Since my last blog I've been busy recovering from the excesses of Christmas and New Year and am now focussing all of my attentions on the organisation of the Kempsford Literary Festival.

As I mentioned in my last blog this is the first time that the village has held such an event and there are a lot of complexities involved! Perhaps we'll make it a biennial rather than annual event moving forward!

Unlike the large festivals, such as Cheltenham, this event is being run entirely by volunteers from within the community. What surprises me most about what's happening is the fact that we've been able to achieve so much in such a relatively short period of time - the initial meeting to discuss the festival didn't take place until November 2009. Although the festival is in no way looking to compete with the larger events that take place around the country, we are hoping to show that smaller communities have something to offer too.

Due to the fact that I live in the village, and love books, I volunteered my time and seem to have inadvertently taken on the role of main co-ordinator. While this is great experience in a field that I would not normally have expsoure to, it has turned into an all consuming task. My days are now incredibly varied with tasks including, but not limited to; gathering information for the programme, liaising with the necessary authorities for licences, dealing with first aid requirements, ensuring that the authors have all of the information that they require, as well as organising travel and signage. I also came up with the brilliant idea of having a Skype line for bookings, so much cheaper than a BT line and every penny counts in a venture such as this, however this does mean that I've also turned into the booking line. 22 speakers and 150 tickets per speaker - it's going to be a busy February!

Thankfully I have a supportive husband, although he does confess to being somewhat baffled by the number of envelopes that are increasingly dropping through the door marked for my attention - we're not equipped to take credit card bookings so have reverted to the trusty cheque process!

The final list of authors is, I think you'd agree, very impressive for a small village located somewhere near the M4.
For full details it's worth having a look at our website - www.kempsfordliteraryfestival.co.uk

And don't forget if you'd like to book any tickets then I'm just a phone call and cheque payment away!

Alexis

HAPPY CHRISTMAS

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 09:25:05 +0100

I was full of good intentions about getting my blog up and running for the end of October but it would appear that my self imposed deadline has come and gone! I will therefore make it my New Year's resolution to ensure that my blog is updated on a monthly basis so please bear with me.

The past month has been a little busier than expected. Not only have I been trying to get all of the Christmas shopping and wrapping done (with presents going to such exotic places as Sydney, The Loire Valley and Bishops Waltham!) but I'm also helping with the organisation of a Literary Festival that will be taking place in my village next year.......

The Kempsford Literary Festival will be held between Friday 12 and Sunday 14 March 2010. It is the first time the village has held such an event and it's wonderful to see how many people, from within the community, are willing to give up their spare time to assist in the planning and organisation.

The Festival is set to run from 2pm on Friday 12 until the afternoon of Sunday 14 March and we have a good line-up of speakers confirmed - Joanna Trollope, Gyles Brandreth, Nicholas Coleridge, Lord Hurd, Oliver James and Camila Batmanghelidjh, to name but a few. There will also be a quiz taking place on the Saturday night which will be chaired by Justin Pollard, (historian and script writer for the television show QI). It's set to be a busy weekend but hopefully a successful one.

The aim is to turn the Festival into an annual event, (although I suspect we should see how 2010 goes before committing to 2011!)

Over the next three months I will update you as to how the Festival is progressing as it's a somewhat unusual event, and slightly different from weddings and birthday parties!

I'd like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Here's hoping that 2010 will bring with it positive changes as I know that 2009 has been a difficult year for many.

Best wishes for a happy, healthy and prosperous new year,

Alexis