bottles + jars

Jars + bottles galore! Oh and I'm loving having window sills in our new house for photography!

Just incase you were wondering what 140 jars and 80 bottles looked like...here they are in all their glorious clean glass glory! Top of my hairbrained-bride-ideas was what we were going to give as a favour to our guests, given that our whole wedding will be based around the farm, our rural location and lifestyle with a sense of home and harvest I thought it only fitting we give away some sort of food product. Mr M's lovely mum makes the best (I'm not kidding, it is the best) raspberry jam, and I really want to involve my future in-laws in the planning of our wedding as I think they are so often excluded and it's all about the bride. 

Jam jar favour inspiration, with burlap and twine wrapped lids

So decision made that I want to give jam, but after initially putting out a call to all my sisters/brothers/sisters-in-law to start collected 250ml IXL jars I realised that we kind of need to start making this jam now - if not yesterday! Berries will most likely not be ready by our wedding date, plus I didn't want a mad rush doing things leading up to the wedding. Mr M's mum assured me I could most definitely make the jam and keep until December. Right. So, upon calculation of one jam jar per guest we figured out we needed....THIRTY KILOGRAMS OF BERRIES!! Holy mackerel. With current berry prices pushing $10-$12/kilo I was starting to think this was just not a possibility within the realms of my budget. Sad bridezilla. 

Signature drinks inspiration, I'm thinking some sort of champagne/guava cocktail?

Enter super-Dad. You see my dad works in mysterious ways, ask no secrets, tell no lies kind of man. So after hearing me sulking in the office at work one day about my berry of a problem he put his thinking cap on. Two days later 30 kilograms exactly of delicious blueberries arrive at my office. Yup. Super-dad. Working in the produce industry has finally paid off! They came 'off the back' of a truck from a local berry farm one of our truck drivers frequents, we gave them potatoes, he gave us blueberries which he couldn't sell in the fresh market, but are fine for jammin'! After several phone calls to glass wholesalers and putting on a bit of a sob story so I didn't have to buy an actual truckload of jars I got 140 jars of about 150ml capacity. Perfection. Oh and just because I had to make it up to a certain amount I also got some little bottles which we are going to use in our pre-dinner cocktail hours with a 'signature Matt+Emma drink' (what that drink is yet I don't know...) Think red and white striped straws, custom sticker labels, little drink flags, roaming canapes, wine barrel bar tables, hay bales and a brick firepit and you get the idea.

So stay tuned for one hell of a batch of blueberry jam!!

P.S. If you are looking for jars or bottles, I got mine from Cospak who were super helpful and easy to deal with, only the don't post to regional areas and are only open from 9am-3pm so my sister couldn't pick them up as she works then, Mr M's brother doesn't have a car and Mr M's best mate was in Sydney for work!! So politely asked said best mate's girlfriend who was the champion of all champions and went and got them for me on Friday. Thanks Tracey!!!