Fascinating!

My long-time friend, Lorna, got married yesterday to John, a guy we all knew in university. It was a joyful occasion attended by their children, siblings and best long-time friends. Most had been friends for almost 40 years or more.

When I learned that the wedding was going to be taking place, I knew I wanted to wear a fascinator for the occasion. You remember fascinators? They were the whimsical items of millinery we first learned of around the time of the Royal Wedding of William and Kate. Of course, my first research attempt was to try and find a good video on YouTube and to google "how to make a fascinator" for the instructions.

I learned that a fascinator is basically a clump of feathers, netting and silk mounted on a piece of felt and then attached to a hairband. There are lots of images here for inspiration.

I couldn't find any appropriate feathers at our local craft stores so last week when Skip and I were cross-border shopping I found the perfect foundation piece. I didn't get a picture but it was kind of like this without the clip, or kinda like this.  I then went in search of some black feathers to add to it as I knew I was going to be wearing a black dress. I found this, a feather floral trim that had some iridescent black wisps of peacock feathers.

I thought I had a couple of thin plastic hairbands at home but upon careful inspection, I realized I had tossed them out in The Great Bathroom Purge a few weeks back when we were emptying our ensuite bathroom for the renovation. So yesterday morning, Francey and I dropped into Shoppers Drug Mart to see if they had a hairband. They had a pack of several of them which were the right colour and thinness.

I got out my trusty glue gun and started fashioning my fascinator. Gluing the feather stem clumps onto the foundation piece affixed to the hairbands approximately where we part our hair. After some attempts, I achieved success. Francey was so intrigued we made her one, too. Didn't we look spiffy?

What impressed us about them was that they were very light, completely inobtrusive, and surprisingly, the hairbands didn't dig into our heads at all! We made quite the stylish impression at the wedding. We're keeping them to wear for other festive occasions.

Oh yeah, and the wedding was wonderful, too. (heart)