Here and There

Since money for us is a little tight and I don't mind admitting that. We are literally paying for everything in the last 4 months before the wedding. (Jan - Apr)

So last night I decided to write down a list (yes another one) of what we still need to get and when we need to get it by. Through writing everything down I realised that we didn't have as much to buy as I thought and I also realised that we could actually pull this beautiful amazing day off with what money we have at the minute.

I'll tell you after the wedding how much it actually costs, but if we can do it on a tight budget then let that not be a reason for anyone not to get married. We have had help and a lot of things we haven't had to pay for. We got a little money from here and there but two thirds of the cost has come from us.

We still have a dilemma of where all the cutlery/glassware and crockery will come from but a few phone calls should hopefully solve that and if all else fails we will just use rectangle tables. Everywhere we look we have something to fall back on incase something else fails.

I must admit I do feel slightly jealous of those people who have parents to pay for everything for them, and at the minute Adam and I don't actually have a honeymoon planned because we haven't even thought of the cost but on the other hand I am glad we are paying for everything by ourselves (mainly) because then the wedding has more of us in it, like our blood sweat and tears through all the painstakingly long hours we have worked to get a table cloth :)

The Day After and Thanks

I have been checking over the dresses that me and a bridesmaid picked last night and i have come to the conclusion that there really is no point in trying to choose any dresses at all because there are always different ones on sale at different places so unless we have the money to get the dress here and now we are pretty much stuck.

I am buying the dresses online because they are cheaper and easier to access for all 5 bridesmaids because I want them all to wear the same dress but all 5 bridesmaids are from different places so buying online I can just send them the link and voila all good.

This thanks is for Bethany (my sister) for the 3am help when I was stressing and also for Amy my friend who has offered to let me borrow some things from her wedding; and they were things I really wanted to buy but were too expensive.

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Bridesmaid Dress Bonanza

We found the perfect bridesmaid dress. It was the right price but not exactly the right colour, but I didn't care because it was beautiful. Emily and Bethany loved it and I was just waiting for their measurements and money to come through so we could order the dresses and wait with baited breath as to what the finished product would look like.

I kept checking the website every now and again with the hopes that it wouldn't disappear.

Emily and Beth sent me their specific measurements today and so I went online fingers at the ready to start punching some numbers. I went to the website the dress was on and the WHOLE layout of the website had changed. So I scurried to my saved dress and there it was.

I scrolled down to the custom measurements part of the page. There were only four slots to fill in, not ten like we'd originally seen. And my bridesmaids are all sizes and all ages therefore I was very glad to come across a website that did very specific measurements so I was completely gobsmacked when I realised I couldn't put in the right sizes they had given me.

I went to the colours to see what the dress would look like in the green I wanted the other bridesmaids in, but I couldn't see it... I couldn't see any colour options at all, and there was no link on the whole website that I could see that took me to a colour chart (which there was before) so at this point I am about ready to cry...

I have no sizing, no colour and now apparently there would be no dress. This dress that the girls and I had been staring at for days had finally disappeared. Much to our horror and dismay.

After a bout of being slightly annoyed somewhat, I got my punching fingers out again and scoured the web in search of the dress. At least we had some idea of what it was we were searching for.

With the help of a bridesmaid we scoured the net through 2, 3, 4, 5 websites of dresses, deja vu kicked in. I had been here before, I had done all this and all my hard work had paid off for a week... yet here I was again right back at the beginning scouring the net for the dress... again.

This time I have chosen four dresses, 3 from 1 site and 1 from another but none are from the original website I went onto and they are all roughly the same price.

Moral of the story is: Be prepared if you are buying online to really BUY online, that minute, NO... that millisecond you find the dress you want, otherwise... you'll be left in deja vu land for another day or so with stress which is never really needed or wanted.

134 days to go.

The Favours & a Treat

December has been a busy and yet very slow month. I tore the ligaments in my ankle on the 6th of December and have been signed off until the 10th of January this has given me lots of time to sit around and plan my wedding and not really do much else, besides rest and knit lots of things like hats and scarfs. Luckily I have future hubby to help me buy all presents and through the mad dash on Christmas Eve we managed to get everyones presents.

Back to the favours. I wanted to do something a little individual but not something totally over the top and I saw an idea a few months ago online that I thought was really cute. It was this:



Yep, jigsaw pieces. We are going to ask our guests to write on a piece of jigsaw so we can put it altogether and get it framed. As well as the jigsaw pieces I saw online I also saw something else, we couldn't decide what we wanted as favours so in the end we have kinda decided on a bit of everything. Including this:


The organza bags will be inside the favour bags with a note inside saying "Fill me up at the sweets table" and there will be jars of sweets for people to fill up their organza bags with.



Then, finally, last but not least the favour bag will have a thank you card in it with Adam and I on the front and the date. It will be SO CUTE! We are actually having a proper guest book aswell, reason being is that some of the people coming to the wedding won't be able to come to the reception (as much as we want you all there) but we'd still love people to sign something for us.

The treat....


... MY VEIL CAME!!! And it is beautiful! Debbie at sunflowerbridal.co.uk sent it to me special delivery so I could get it before Christmas so now I'm going to have to try everything on together to see how it looks!

Next year is nearly here and it'll be a time of healthy eating, stressing out, DIY-ing and GETTING MARRIED!

0 invitations finished 70 to go
0 Favour bags down 140 to go.

Reception

After much deliberation with myself and my youngest sister Bethany we finally came up with the following for the Reception:

WARNING - Picture overload, but a complete necessity for you to get a real feel for what the reception will look like.

But first just a reminder of the colours for the wedding:


- lemon, rustic red & white flower center pieces
- flowers in bottles
- LED lights flowing around the bottles OR in a bottle in the middle
- Lemon table cloth on top of an ivory cloth
- table numbers in rustic red colour
- table numbers held with crystal holders
- crystals showering the middle of the table
- citron green napkins
- rustic red favour bags
- citron green organza sashes on chairs
- cutlery ivory & silver

And if none of that makes much sense please see below for some awesome brain inspiring pictures to get a good flow of the day :)

Lemon, rustic red and white flowers






Flowers in Bottles






LED lights in bottles or outside bottles








Lemon table cloths




Table Numbers in Rustic Red




Crystals on the table and crystal table number holders






Citron green organza chair sashes and napkins






Rustic Red favour bags





I know it is a lot of pictures to take in but believe me... without them, my brain was completely messed up and I just couldn't imagine what everything would look like but I know the pictures really helped me.

Tomorrow I'll be writing about the favour bags we came up with :D

Check List

As some of you may know, I suffered a stupid fall the other day on black ice and tore all the ligaments in my left ankle which has left me off work for initially two weeks but I still cannot walk without crutches and cannot put much weight on my left leg at all, the consequences of this are pretty rubbish, i.e. me waking up every 4 hours in the night because my pain killers wear off.


So, I've been going through my check list of what needs to get done for the wedding:

Date: Check
Venue & Reception Booked: Check
Wedding Party decided: Check
Speakers in Ceremony: Check
Wedding Music: Ceremony music chosen/ Reception not chosen
Invitations: Chosen not made
Guest List: Few tweaks
Food: List made, needs to be discussed in January
Wedding Rings: Not chosen, looking at these March/April
Wedding Licence: Getting these January
Registrar booked: Check
Wedding Dress: Check
Mens Suits: Getting these Feb/March
Womens dresses: Getting these Jan/Feb
Flowers: Being chosen Jan/Feb
Cake: Being chosen feb/March
Reception furni hire: To be done Feb
Reception Decor: In progress I have a few things for it
Reception cutlery: Need to make a few calls
Speakers in Reception: List made
Guest Book: Seen the perfect one
Blank Jigsaws: Know where to buy these from
Favour Bags: in progress

Reception:

I was talking to a trusted friend the other day about the Reception and they've been there and done that so I was getting some advice they seemed to think I have everything all covered. There are going to 150 people at the Reception inc. the 10 on top table. We have chosen round tables for the reception because we feel that people can talk to one another more and be closer to one another, so we're going to need 14 tables! I say this but I have no idea whether 14 tables will even fit in the room!


The table cloths will be ivory with lemon top covers and the sashes for the chairs will be dark citron green. All the plates will be ivory and the cutlery silver and there will be big glasses for the toast... The centre pieces for the tables will be different sized bottles with flowers in them, there will be diamantés spread over the table with green LED lights... I have no idea whether this will work but I am sure it'll look interesting and individual. HAHA either that or completely rubbish... please share your thoughts!

Bridesmaid Dresses

Picking bridesmaid dresses has been an absolute nightmare. At first we were going to go to a proper shop to get them because people could see what the dresses would look like on and see which colours would suit them. But when I chose the colour scheme we were having an extremely difficult time trying to find any dresses in the colours I wanted... not to mention the fact that all 5 of bridesmaids are in different cities joining up on the map like some kids dot-to-dot picture.

So, then I decided buying dresses online would be cheaper and all the girls could get exactly the same dress in their own size and in the right colour no problem...

... I came to the above conclusion at least 4-5 weeks ago. All this time, up until now, I have found great and amazing websites but the colours are wrong; or the dress size is wrong or I can't get the girls into a custom made dress. Then when I do find a place that sells custom made dresses and they are the right colour all I see online are bad reviews of everything, so that put me off even more.

Last night I messaged all my bridesmaids and told them we had to come up with a dress and proper colours before the end of this week, so I could at least tick one thing off my list whilst not being able to move anywhere.

Bethany and I, after posting and linking 50 million different dresses decided to come up with some proper criteria for narrowing down the search for the dress, we decided:

-satin/taffeta
- no organza coz thats what mine is, and A LOT of it. haha
- gathered waist
- add sleeves or jacket
- already has sleeves
- round, square, straight (ish) neckline
- custom sized and nearest colour possible

We posted between us 15 dresses that we liked and Bethany did all the pros and cons, Emily added some input too and I asked them to choose 5 dresses each, quite surprisingly they both chose 4/5 the same so I opened them all up in my web browser added up all the pros and cons, decided which one I liked most and told the girls we should get that specific one.

You'll have to wait until the wedding day to find out.

Useful websites were:

www.peridress.co.uk
www.dessy.com
www.jjhouse.com
www.weddingdressonlineshop.co.uk

I did look at a few others but now I am so GLAD that is out of the way... now we just need to wait until January to order them and fingers crossed... they'll get here on time.

Update - FYI!

I haven't posted in ages because I've been doing a million other stuff. I say everything is kind of coming together but there is still a long way to go yet and I still have a lot of phone calls to make, and for those people who know me... I hate making phone calls. I've decided I really should keep this upto date more often.


...Or rather when I slipped on the black ice the other day and tore all the ligaments in my ankle and have been told it could be at least 3 weeks before I go back to work, I've kinda had a lot of time to myself so I haven't really had much else to do besides prepare for the wedding.

So, what has been happening since the 27th November?

I rang someone re: food for the wedding. We're having a buffet.

I've asked people to start collecting glass bottles of any kind, which is good for those people I know who drink alcohol or anything in a glass bottle haha for my centre pieces at the wedding. (More on this later)


I have a lot of ideas in my head that I told a friend about the other day, I thought it was a rather large mishmash of ideas but they seemed to really like it. So I am going to see if it'll work.

We're having round tables at the wedding and organza sashes, which I have found online for quite cheap, but I can't decide whether to buy the material online or from the market in town for cheap.


I bought some templates for the invites which will be printed January and the flowers should be getting sorted in January, as is the cake and bridesmaid dresses. We're going to be buying them online because they're cheaper and custom made so they will definitely fit. I just haven't heard anything positive about online buying yet.

This post is quite long because I haven't been posting daily but since I am strapped up in a pot until who knows when I will post more often so I hope you can keep up with me :D

Invitations

I have always said that wedding planning would be so easy if only one person was involved and if only 1 person made all the decisions, maybe it's just my need to be in control or know what is going on all the time, but finally we are seeing some progress with the wedding invitations.

We have hopefully finished the layout, colours and size (possibly) so we just need to start ordering the card for the invites and the finishing touches. We're actually going with an idea that my mum believes is very American (as she can't find any shops that sell these types of invites over here). I can't really describe what they look like so I'll just post a few pictures.



I bought a bit of card from WHSmiths the other day to play around with once I've printed the invites and then we shall go from there.

We've mostly decided that the bridesmaids should buy the dresses online because:-

1. They are cheaper
2. They can be custom made directly to size
3. We don't get some snooty nosed woman looking down on us when we tell them the wedding is in May (for some reason this poses a problem to lots of dress places... which doesn't make sense because they NEVER have the dress in the shop until 6 weeks before you get married so technically you could go in 2 months before you got married, and it'd still get there on time).

My mum is trying to convince me to get my sisters in to the green dresses and the other girls into the sienna dresses because of the colour of my sisters hair, but we're going to play around a bit and have a bit of fun and see what colours go where... we have until January anyway so no rush *haha*.

THIS IS SOO CUTE!

Dress - check
Colour Scheme - check
Guest list - CHECK!
Bridesmaids - WiP (Work in Progress)
Cake - TBD (to be decided)
Flowers - TBD asap
Invites designed - check
Invites printed and etc - WiP
Food - TBD Jan
Men's Tucks - TBD Jan
Seating Plan - TBD Apr/May
Reception bits n bobs hire (cutlery etc.) - TBD Jan
Mini extras - TBD Jan
Photographer & list of photography - WiP
Drivers and Travel for wedding - WiP

Getting there. It all kinda gets done in the next couple of months :)
Going sample shopping tomorrow.

THE DRESS

We have finally got 'the' dress.
We have travelled far and wide and gone from as far as Newcastle to Radstock near Bath and we have finally found it.
'The One' (No not Neo)

At first wedding dress shopping was a nightmare. For one, they didn't have any dresses in in my size; they were snooty and very unprofesional but apart from all that I think all involved had a good time.

My mum told me the other day that I wasn't allowed to leave the wedding dress shop today without having made a decision on what dress I wanted to wear and where I got it from. So I was deterimed. I had VERY high hopes for this shop because it is owned by a Latter-Day Saint and I wouldn't get the rolling eyes and deep sighs when I told her my wedding was in May 2012, which was nice. I have looked on her website before and she handily sent me a list of all the dresses she had in that were my size and how much they would cost. I was searching through the site and found a beautiful dress that I adored! But when I check the price against the list she sent me I was dishearted, it was nearly... a grand. A GRAND!


So, I went to the shop today with another few dresses in mind and decided to try on all the ones that she had in my size and above. Sunflower Bridal is beautiful, friendly and very relaxed. We were met with a glass of shloer and a cute labrador called Maisie (which didn't come into the dress room).

The second dress I put on looked very similar to the beautiful I'd had my eye on online but the price was WAY different and in our budget. So I tried it on, it fit, it was beautiful and I was told that it was like it was 'made for me'. I felt comfortable, beautiful, safe, elegant and the dress is not like I was expecting at all! We tried on lots of different veils and decided on a 54" which is perfect.

(Not my veil)

Dad bought the dress today and so I could take it home today. It is now safely tucked away in its non-see-through WHITE bag so Adam can't see it and is currently hanging in my bedroom :D FACE IS BEAMING!! All I need are shoes and jewellery.

I've also finished designing the invites, filler pieces in the invites (it's a poem), R.S.V.P's and the Contact details information page. I cannot wait to get them printed and I am hopefully starting on them this weekend coming! My house is just going to be wedding central!

Extra's Day Out

On Saturday I went out with my mum to look for the little extra's for the wedding. Those little things that would add the extra mini pezazz and sparkle to the whole day. We were also looking for fabric and looking for flowers in my colour scheme, I just wanted to make sure the colours existed and that they went together in real life before I put my whole wedding scheme through the turmoil of changing theme again haha.

First we needed a mini break in Costa so we could get our ideas together of where we were going to go and what we were going to look for. We went to the flower stall in the Kirkgate Shopping Centre by the Poundland and looked for my colours and the woman on the stall had some really nice wedding flower arrangements. She had quite a few flowers in the colours that I was looking for inparticular the sienna colour I was looking for (since I haven't seen it used for weddings much).


They're not exactly the right colours, the yellow is too bright but the green and sienna are perfect; yes I know they look fake but these are just an idea of what I want. Then we popped over to the flower stall outside the Kirkgate Centre by Marks & Spencers, the flowers they did there were real but the pollen might get up some peoples noses. The colours were very nice and even the fake flowers looked real but for £85 a bouquet you'd kinda hope they would look real wouldn't you?


These flowers are real but I still liked the colours.

If we can't find the dresses that we need for the wedding mum was saying we should try and make them so we wandered up to the market to look for material that was the colours we wanted and we found some really nice colours but with money being tight until January we can't buy too much at the minute so we decided on buying ribbon in the colours that I want at the wedding and I'm going to be sending it out to all the bridesmaids so they have an idea of what we are looking for. I really like the colours so they're not going anywhere :D


So we got a little bit of this and a little bit of that for the wedding and all things have now been written down in my little notebook. The guest still isn't finished and I'm having to crack a few whips to get my invitations even started but hey we'll get there... Eventually :D

These pins are going in the flowers

Oh, and just under 6 months until the wedding peeps!!! :D WOO!!