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!!

Look at What I Just Found!!

AHHH!! :D Less than 200 Days!

Burnt Sienna, Lemon & Dark Citron

Are the colours.
The colours are these.
These are the colours.
The colours these are...wait?

Lol. I've decided and I think they look good and there are a lot of ideas that go with these colours. I love the green colour and the deep rustic orange colour. I have had a colour of um's and ah's and 'that won't look right'. But I think it looks lovely.

Yesterday I got home a little frazzled, the colour scheme was doing my head in so I decided to sit down and stare at my laptop until it came to me. First I went to google and typed in 'spring colour scheme', 'spring colour palette', 'which colours go with burgundy' and I got about 50 pages worth of information, my Firefox was in overload... seriously. I don't know how it didn't crash on me. WHOOP!

My mum gave me a lovely little handy notebook which is starting to get full of stuff so I put 'Colour Scheme Options' at the top of my page with a nice double line underneath, I wrote down all the colours I thought would go together and then went to my trusty polyvore website (honestly everyone, this website is literally saving my life these days). I took all the colour schemes I had come up with and made this beautiful collage of mess :D

Then I started looking at them all and decided with other colours would go well together from the ones I had on the screen and came up with a few brief ones that I liked but eventually came up with this:

I have now got to the point where my brain is so frazzled by everyone's opinions and decisions on the colour scheme that I really don't care if people don't like it, it is what I am having for the wedding. The colours will look beautiful in different flower combinations and they are SPRING! For some reason Adam thought they looked like the Ireland flag... please tell me if you agree but I don't think so :D

Anyway mini Bridezilla rant out now onto the invitations, flowers and wedding cake... next weekend it's all about my dress! I can't wait! :D

Sunshine Daisies, Butter Mellow...

...Turn this stupid fat rat yellow!!

Or rather turn these stupid colours into something that'll actually look good. I love burgundy on Emily and Bethany but trying to find colours to go with that, which would resemble my spring colour theme was seriously driving me round the bend.


Like literally, I must change this plan more than I change knickers!! (Just kidding) The only colours we could think of to go with burgundy were green and gold which are both Christmas colours, which are obviously winter colours so I wanted to shine a bit more colour into my scheme and then I saw this flower on google, can't even remember how I found it now or why I was even looking for it but it just made me realise that yellow goes with burgundy very well and... there are obviously flowers out there that will go with my colour scheme.




And, because I honestly don't hate my bridesmaids as much as they MIGHT think that I do, especially since I sent a couple of them a txt the other day asking if they wouldn't mind wearing light pink, I also realised that adding green in with the yellow and burgundy it looked a lot less like Christmas and more like Spring/Summer which is kinda what May will be. Oh and because I'm not letting them wear yellow shoes (sorry girls) all other additives will be cream, shoes, necklaces, earrings etc, extras in their bouquets... You get it. :D

And to be honest I think all my bridesmaids will look really good in green including Isobel... and if you don't well then you can always do what Cecily said... just dye your hair ;D

Reception Hiring/Buying/Borrowing

You never realise how much work and information needs to go into preparing for your reception, until you actually realise.

At the moment we're in the middle of deciding whether to hire everything in or whether we should wait and see what the chapel we are using already has, because if they already have things that'll keep the costs down. I know people worry about the cost of a wedding but I really do think we have it all covered thanks to some extremely lovely people.

Of course when you think about a wedding reception you think about the usual, tables & chairs but then there are the knives, forks, spoons, glasses, chair covers, table covers and table centre pieces to think of. We were trying to organise some sort of seating plan this evening and in the end it seemed to have changed more into a renewed list of the people I want to invite, which has gone from 96 to 74, or something like that.

(Not my actual seating plan as mine will need two more seats at the top table and another 6 more tables on top)

I don't know whether it is because I am feeling more ruthless or whether it's because I've forgotten someone. We've also been thinking that it is easier to place 10 people round a table than 8, this also means less tables to hire and more space (hopefully). The colours are still burgundy and lavender but hopefully when the spring dresses come in I'll have more of an idea of what I want my girls (bridesmaids not maids of honour) to wear.

To hire:
Knives, forks, spoons, dinner plates, dessert bowls, wine glasses, tables and table cloths from Ev-ent Furniture Ltd North it will cost £402.50 (without VAT, but I think they do deliver, but pretty much don't do anything else)

To hire:
Knives, forks, spoons, dinner plates, dessert bowls, wine glasses, round tables and table cloths from Bybrook hire it will cost £372.50 (Not inc. VAT or delivery, again they don't do much else besides drop it off pick it up)

To hire:
Knives, forks, spoons, dinner plates, dessert bowls, wine glasses, tables and table cloths from Barkers Catering Equipment it will cost £345 (Not inc. VAT or Delivery) BUT they do a wash up service, which could be incredibly handy because as I have discovered most places only hire for 48 hours, 12pm drop off 12pm pick up... which we can't do because the wedding is on a Saturday and nothing can be in the chapel on the Sunday, so it'd need to be picked up on the same day of the wedding....

....which makes me think we need to change the day. BUT Barkers do say for a small additional cost they will pick anything up after 5pm, who knows what that cost is though.

I just seriously hope I don't have to change the wedding day, I'm not sure my brain could cope with that haha!