beefys-caricatures.com

You know that making sure your wedding guests have a great time at your celebration is top of your list, otherwise you would’ve ran off to Gretna Green to elope! You want them to have fun and remember your day for all the right reasons.

As much as you’d like to think your guests will love every single aspect of your wedding, the truth is you really can’t please everyone. Here are the 3 most common wedding guest gripes and what you can do to solve them…

In at number 3… “There were way too many speeches.”

I’m sure you’ve sat through a few of these yourself yourself to know that wedding speeches are great but you can definitely have too much of a good thing. Never-ending speeches full of too many inside jokes is quickly gonna get boring the majority of your guests.

So, how do you avoid it? Limit the number of toasts to three or four, and ask each toaster to keep their speech under three minutes. Encourage them to write everything down beforehand, and alert your DJ to signal a musical cue if it’s time to wrap things up, just like the Oscars. (Cue the music)

Number 2. “I had to sit with complete strangers at the reception.”

Figuring out where to seat everyone during the reception is definitely not an easy task, but creating a well-thought-out seating chart is very important. Imagine sitting at a table where everyone knows everyone else — except for you.

How to avoid this one? Try to make sure your guests are seated at a table with at least one person they know. Another idea is to have small envelopes at each place setting  which has a one sentence fact about each of the guests at the table – these can then be used as icebreakers and talking points to avoid those awkward silences

“So Dave, it says here you’re a nude model for your local art school… wow!”

And finally, the single most common wedding complaint is…”Too much time in between the ceremony and reception.”

All weddings have a little down time, even when your ceremony and reception are at the same venue. While you are out on the lawn having your photos taken, your guests are inside getting restless and bored. So how can you keep them entertained and make sure they’re talking about your wedding for years to come, for all the right reasons?

Well, this one is easy to solve – hire some entertainment to liven things up a bit. Hiring a caricaturist is the perfect way to liven up your lulls. They’re quick, fun and they’re entertaining for both the sitter and the spectators, and best of all, each person gets to take home  personalised gift from you both that they can remember your day by. They are also great talking points and icebreakers for anyone who might not know many other guests.

Now you might be a bit worried about your guests being up for having their cartoon portrait being drawn, but in the 20 years that I’ve been drawing at weddings I’ve never once not been rushed off my feet firing out caricatures. In fact here’s some of the things the guests have had to say at the weddings I’ve drawn at…

So if you’re based in Nottingham, Derby, Lecester or lincoln, why not enquire about your wedding date and make sure you fill your lulls with laughter! Just click the enquiry button below.

As most of you who follow along know, alongside drawing wedding and party caricatures, I also run a Level 3 Extended Diploma in Graphic Design at a local FE college. Every year we hand out the Graphic Design Student of the Year award for outstanding studentship.

This year the accolade was awarded to a fantastically talented student, Lewis. His attendance was exemplary and his attitude has always been professional, but the reason why he was the clear winner for us was the HUGE amount of progress he has made with his design skills. His work has transformed into highly professional level graphic design, and it is through his own hard work and determination to learn.

Along with the title and the certificate, Lewis also gets his very own framed caricature by Beefy! (Well worth the hard work I reckon!)

Well done Lewis!

Another lovely night drawing caricatures, this time at Dan and Sarah Birkin’s wedding. The reception was held at the beautiful Arkwright building at Nottingham Trent University and the bride looked absolutely stunning!!!

I even got my own caricature drawn by one of the guests! Ha ha – I can see the resemblance!!!

Sir Terry Pratchett, fantasy author and creator of the Discworld series, has died aged 66, eight years after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

Pratchett wrote over 70 books, had his work translated into 37 languages and has sold over 70 million books in his 44 year career. Recently he campaigned for the legalisation of assisted suicide although he died naturally at his home, surrounded by his family with his cat sleeping on his bed.

His death was announced on his Twitter account with a tweet composed in capital letters – which was how the author portrayed the character of Death in his novels – read: “AT LAST, SIR TERRY, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER.”

A fundraising site set up in Sir Terry’s memory to raise money for a charity that cares for those with Alzheimer’s has already raised thousands of pounds.

Here’s my tribute.

RIP Terry Pratchett

Wowzer! I’ve got 99 reviews on Freeindex and 97 of them are 5 stars (the other 2 are 4 stars!). Here’s my latest one from Colin Morris! I’m now sat at number 2 in the UK. Boooooooom!

I had a great night drawing wedding caricatures last night over at Swancar Farm Country House for Colin and Sam’s big day!

As soon as I was set up I was whizzing through the drawings – the guests were brilliant and really game for a laugh – it was great!

One of the highlights for me though, was one ‘friend’I made for the night… Isla!!

Isla with her caricature

I drew her pic early on in the eve and before long she was ‘borrowing’ my spare pens and paper and going off to draw – she’d come back every few minutes to show me her pics.

Eventually she came and sat down next to me and joined in with drawing the guests!! It was brilliant and she was so good! I even had other kids joining in too (I might have started my own army of kiddie caricaturists!!)

I even got my own caricature drawn and Isla signed it! It is definitely going up in my studio and will be my Facebook profile pic for a bit.

I got a lovely email this eve from the groom, Colin:

“Hi Mark

So sorry we did not get to say goodbye to you before you left but me and Sam just want to say a huge thank you for yesterday. Your talent, professionalism and friendliness was noted by all and the way you let the kids join in was lovely to see. We have nothing but positives to say about you and wish you the very best of luck and happiness in 2015 and beyond

Been an absolute pleasure

 Best regards

 Colin Morris”

All in all, a cracking night for a cracking couple!

Congratulations Mr & Mrs Morris!

Wowzer!!!

I had a brilliant afternoon yesterday drawing for Vishal and Rupal at their sanji celebrations (a part of their Asian wedding celebration) over at the Peepul Centre in Leicester. There were over 350 guests who kept me busy throughout, and I have to say, I saw some of the most beautiful and lavish sari’s EVER! Cracking stuff!

Got back from a brilliant booking last night drawing for Chelsee & Nathan Brown’s wedding at Sketchley Grange Hotel. The guests were brilliant, especially the best man and his brothers (Salmon Boy and Ed Sheeran ha ha). It was crackin’, apart from the drive home – 2 and a half hrs late due to the M1 being closed! Aaaaarrrgghhh!!!! Ha ha ha. Anyhow, here’s the pics!

A while back I drew caricatures at Nicola and Chris Wilson-Allott’s wedding reception and it was one of the most laid back and easy going weddings EVER! I have some great memories of this booking and asked Nicola and Chris to share their story – here it is…

We met during a Christmas night out at Rock City. Chris asked me if I would like to go on a date and we have been together for nearly 9 years!

After being together for 4 years, Chris proposed at the top of the Eiffel Tower during a romantic week in Paris. We celebrated by purchasing 2 glasses of champagne from the champagne bar located at the top of the tower. We saved the glasses and used them during a toast on our wedding day.

Initially we had no idea of where to even start when deciding what entertainment we actually wanted, all we knew we wanted something the guests could really interact with. We found the sheer variety of entertainment options to be quite daunting! We visited several wedding fairs and came away more confused than when we started!

A lot of the entertainment choices for weddings seem to be very expensive and ‘samey’; you don’t really get a ‘personal touch’. The theme that we had for the entire wedding was to be very down-to-earth, fun, laid back and relaxed. Quite a few wedding traditions, such as bridesmaids, best man and speeches, were left out to take away the more formal responsibilities and expectations so that everyone could truly relax and just enjoy the day.

We were very fortunate to hear about you through word of mouth, and on looking through some of your previous work we knew straight away that the caricatures would be a perfect addition to our entertainment. Not only was the caricatures something the guests could take away as a gift, we also thought it would be a fantastic way to get people interacting and having a laugh as they watched the pictures being drawn. The quality of your caricatures are outstanding and looking through some past examples made our decision to hire you a very easy one. The drawings appealed to us because they were both humorous and very accurate.

Contacting you was really easy and we found you to always be very approachable. There were no issues from start to finish and everything went according to plan.

On the night, you came across as being very professional but also very down-to-earth and you put all the guests at ease whilst they were being drawn. You clearly had a great rapport with the guests. One of our fondest memories of the whole day is remembering you with a big smile on your face, drawing the guests and then watching them giggle when they received the finished product.

“Everyone remarked how unusual and interesting it was to have a caricaturist at our wedding. Every guest was curious to see what was going on, and this helped to create a real buzz within the room.”

A lot of people have their caricatures framed on their walls, which we see when we visit them and this provides a cute reminder of our day! There wasn’t one person who said anything negative.  We cannot thank you enough for the great service you provided and more importantly the contribution you made to many great memories we have of our big day!

If you’re looking for something unique for your wedding day, just click the button below to enquire about your date!