Take one potato ...

... a tub of kid's poster paint, some nice textured card and a bit of imagination, et voilà - one of the neatest (and cheapest) save the date cards we've ever seen!

They're a bit smaller than a postcard, details are handwritten on the back, and they have "Potato Print by Rob & Mary" on the front in the manner of a limited edition fine art print, which we thought was a seriously cool touch.

And in case you never watched Blue Peter, there's a beginners' guide to potato printing here

The Bit You Don't See #1

What we have here are four shots from a reception held recently at one of the better London hotels.

The top two were taken around 11am and as you can see, the cake's been delivered and set up, the florists have brought in what looked like (but obviously wasn't) half of somebody's garden hedge, and the hotel staff are about to start setting up the tables. That's the stage in the background of the second shot.

At that point, Ann was about to go up to the bride's room to start on the prep pictures while I cleared off to the synagogue to lie in wait for the guys.

The bottom two were taken about 9 hours later: the third shot shows roughly the same area as in the first, and that's the stage in the background of the last one.

And in case you've never been to a Jewish wedding, that Israeli dancing is seriously energetic and it's great fun ...

Snow and John Peel

That top picture was taken as we turned up early to check out the church for our last wedding of 2005, which happened to be near Ipswich.

Luckily, it stopped snowing well before ceremony time, and the sun came out, so our bride had no problems at all with that long walk to the church door. She would have done in heels, but very sensibly she walked from car to door in flat shoes before changing for the trot up the aisle.

And by the way, that's St Andrew's church in Great Finborough, round the back of which lie the remains of one John Ravenscroft, better known as John Peel. The Liverpool FC scarf is still on his grave, but when we were there on December 27th, the glass of wine which was apparently placed on it on Christmas Day had disappeared ...