Gooood morning, gorgeous people!

...And a very happy Hump day to you all! Now, just to warn you guys, I will inevitably be green with envy for the duration of this entire post, as this concept is right up my street and how I wish I known about it when we got married!

Allow me to introduce you to Patchwork, the most amazing, totally customisable and all-together lifesaving gift list alternative!

If y'all already have a fully furnished home, or if you'd just rather fund a honeymoon, or maybe you need help buying a home, or even a hand at the wedding itself... Well, my friends, Patchwork can help facilitate that!

'But how?!'

...I know, sounds too good to be true, right?! Let me hand you over to the oh-so-lovely Olivia to tell you more about this rad concept...

My name's Olivia Knight. I live in Brockley in South East London with my husband Laurie, our two children Vera and Emmanuel, a cat, two rabbits and a few chickens. And I run Patchwork.

I haven't been to Glastonbury since they stopped letting you tunnel under the fence. And now that we have kids I prefer festivals like Green Man. But if I could go without children I think I'd have fun at Coachella and it'd be good to have guaranteed sun.

Patchwork allows people to get together to contribute money, time and skills to help make something amazing happen. So it's perfect for organising a hen do, planning a DIY wedding or using as a honeymoon fund.

In the beginning we pretty much designed Patchwork for our own mates. Creative, resourceful couples approaching marriage who already live together, don't need a department store gift list, and instead want to ask friends and family to chip in towards the one thing they really want - like a honeymoon, work or art or nice piece of furniture.

But in the last three years we've seen people use it for all sorts of occasions to fund anything and everything from handbags to house deposits, new cots to second hand cars, circus lessons to tattoos.

And to ask people to contribute time and skills to help with party planning too.

If you're organising a festival wedding this summer and want friends and family to help make it happen Patchwork is the perfect platform. You just put together a collection of images to show everyone your vision for the big day. Then they click around your patchwork to choose whether to make a cake, do the decorations, buy some booze, or promise to DJ.

If you're looking for ideas to steal you can browse our readymade patchworks and customise one to make it your own. Or if you're feeling creative, you can make your own patchwork from scratch using your own photos or images from our beautiful gallery.

Creating a patchwork is like creating a Pinterest board. Except that each image or 'patch' that you add has space for a title and description. And you can either set a price if it's something you want to fund, or label it as something you want people to Make or Do.

You can keep track of the things people choose to fund, make and do in your account. Cash contributions go direct to your PayPal for you to spend when and where you like. And you can send messages and thanks when you're ready.

Oh so many! Lots of couples use our site to fund the deposit on their first flat and so I always love those stories. And we have lots of people with kids funding family-moons, which always make me smile.

Practical patchworks include help doing up the kitchen or giving the garden a makeover.

I think my favourite wedding Patchworks would have to include funding a joint tattoo, buying some woodland and going on a Rupal Drag Queen Cruise.

You don't need to sign up or pay an upfront fee to start creating a Patchwork. So I think the best thing is for your readers to just have a play around on patchworkit.com to see if they like it!

If you use Patchwork to collect cash we take a 3% fee on any funds you raise, but if you use the site to ask friends to contribute time and skills then it's totally free.

But don't take our word for it, here's some words from one of our Patchworkers:

"We knew that the wedding we ideally wanted was likely to cost more than we had in the bank, but hated the idea of asking friends and family for monetary contributions. So Patchwork was the perfect solution! We used the site in place of a registry to provide suggestions for those who wanted to contribute. We included a mixture of wish-list wedding services such as a DJ, wedding flowers and honeymoon car hire, and also asked for people to pledge their time and skills to contribute to our mostly-DIY wedding day. It worked a treat."

- Liz and Gary

You can read more about those guys and their awesome wedding here!

My advice on gift lists is to have one. Your friends and family love you and they want to show it! If you don't suggest a gift, they will choose one for you, and then you'll be left with a load of stuff you probably don't want or need, but feel compelled to keep forever!

The nice thing about Patchwork is that you can use it to fund absolutely anything! And if you don't want cash gifts towards a specific gift or experience then you can ask people to give their time or skill instead.

It's your wedding, and with Patchwork you can do it your way.

I would sing it if I could, but I guess my truth is that "I get by with a little help from my friends." I think that sums up patchworkit.com too!

...See this shade of green I've turned?!

However, I feel like discovering Patchwork is probably a pretty valid reason to throw a party, so at least I'll get to Patchwork that!

We think Patchwork's the freakin' bomb! Such a brilliant concept that allows the modern day couple to receive the gifts/help/funds they genuinely want and need to kick off married life... We LOVE that.

Tell us, what do you plan to Patchwork? A chilled honeymoon to Bali? A glossy new kitchen? Or maybe it's that VW camper you've always dreamed of seeing the world in? We'd love to hear your ideas, let us know!

Peace + Love

Clare XO