Six Months – Eeek!

Holy fudge balls. I will have a husband in exactly six months!

I’m excited about this…. until I look at the to-do list. According to Easy Weddings, we are 8 to-do items behind where we should be at this point. Doesn’t sound that bad right? Wrong – we have only checked off 23 items apparently and counting quickly how many are left on the list I think we have around 85 more things to do.

Six months out and we still have big things left to do that need doing ASAP like; book a cake lady, book a florist, buy/book grooms outfit, book/buy groomsmen outfits, find and buy bridesmaids dresses, find and buy me shoes, book cars… ARGH!

Then there are all the other bits like deciding on the invitation design, making invitations, putting our ceremony together, making centrepieces, finding a cake topper, finding hair accessories… the list goes on forever.

I’m sure it will all come together but I think we need a big burst of progress soon!

PS. I apologise for my lack of blogging of late, and my lack of reading/commenting on others blogs. I’m having an ‘I don’t want to plan a stupid wedding’ few weeks. I’m sure in another week or so all of my enthusiasm will be back and I’ll be blogging like crazy again.

When Plastic Seats Might Not Be Enough

I don’t know what we should do in terms of decorating for the ceremony.

With no pictorial influence this is how I feel:  

We are getting married at Amanda’s Garden, which in my opinion is already beautiful enough. They have about ten seats that we can use for older guests. I think they are green plastic ones, but this is cool with me. I would prefer it if everyone could have a seat but hiring them isn’t that cheap & is an unnecessary expense. Anyhow, I’m sure that people can suck it up and stand for the ceremony because it should only be a short one.

Above: Amanda's Garden

But then I google and I see all these beautifully decorated ceremonies and I get ceremony envy. I worry that green plastic seats aren’t classy enough. I worry that people will get shitty if they can’t sit down. I think that maybe we should create a beautiful aisle.

If you’re having a garden ceremony, what are you doing for decorations and seating?

Top Picture: From Erin Browne Photography

Insert Picture: From The Knot

Bottom Picture: From Elizabeth Anne Designs

Handicraft Mania - Blue and Yellow Rosette Hair Clip

I am officially an Etsy whore. I am still yet to make a purchase, but every week I find loads of things I want to buy. I thought that it was about time that I start sharing some of my finds rather than being selfish and keeping them all to myself. I'll do it one at a time every week or so I don't overload the page with pictures! Maybe you can buy some of them and I can live vicariously through you.

First cab off the rank is this amazing blue and yellow hair clip. I want it so bad but it just wouldn't look too good next to my gold & diamond earrings. The yellow makes it happy and the blue could be your something blue! It's on RaynaJaye's etsy store (Sweeeet - I just clicked on her shop homepage to get the link and she has 20% off until May 26th... damn, now I want it more!).

 

A Wise Man Once Said

There is something wrong with me. Whenever I try and think of love quotes/poems that could be incorporated into our wedding I think of the most ridiculous sources... today it's Dr. Seuss:

“You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”

And because one Dr. Seuss quote just isn't enough:

“Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive that is youer than you.”

“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”

“Congratulations! Today is your day. You’re off to great places! You’re off and away! You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself Any direction you choose."

“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. It’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope, which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.”

“So the writer who breeds more words than he needs is making a chore for the reader who reads.”

Not that I'm a writer, but on that note, I shall finish here.

Give it up for Dr. Seuss!

Super Groovin’ Boys

The groomsmen attire has finally been decided upon! After some nagging a few gentle reminders from me, my dear fiancé has weighted up all the options and decided what he would like his groomsmen to wear. He asked the boys and they like it too, so it’s a winner!

It’s gonna be similar to the picture below but they probably won’t have the casual shoes (shame, I know) because if they wear casual shoes, the groom should wear casual shoes too and it's possibly not going to go with what he is wearing. Regardless, they are gonna look super groovy!

Groomsmen Getup Inspiration:

Meanwhile, the groom will be rocking it Obama style - tie free and unbuttoned:

The other great thing about the groomsmen outfit is that we can incorporate colour via the tie… and ties come in every colour. This means that we can pick the bridesmaids dresses without worrying too much about colour and then just get ties to match!

Gumboots!

I know it's sad to be blogging on a Friday night but I just had to share this quickly.

It's a bride in gumboots over at Polka Dot Bride!  Oh how I love gumboots and rain.

Right, now back to the non-sad world of not being on the internet on a Friday night.

My fiancé: The pseudo-personal trainer.

I’ve been trying to lose weight for a while now and have been reasonably successful. I’m down 7.5kgs since July last year. I’ve probably lost a bit more than that overall though because I wouldn’t go near a set of scales for the first month or two of weight loss.

From the start of November until the end of March I got stuck on a stupid weight plateau. No matter what I did, my weight would no longer budge. I seem to be off the plateau but I haven’t really seen any real results the last month because we have been super busy and haven’t been exercising all that much.

Anyhow, my lovely husband-to-be cut me a deal. The deal started on Monday and goes for the next two weeks - I have to do whatever exercise he says, but so I’m not exhausted (sometimes it seems like all I do is go to work, run errands, go to the gym, cook dinner, eat dinner and then go to bed), he’s going to do all the cooking for that time. I think this is so sweet because he does all this exercise with me so he has the same lack of free time situation as me. Luckiest girl alive!

Fingers crossed it pays off and some more of that awful fat falls off over the next few weeks!

Bubbles!

I want bubbles at our ceremony. I think they are completely awesome… but maybe that’s just my inner child talking.

"And if you were a kiss, I know I'd be a hug"

Pretty much the first thing wedding related that we did was start picking ceremony music because we love music and it was so damn fun picking it!

Here is what we came up with – I’m sure it’s not to everyone’s taste but I for one am going to have to try extremely hard not to dance/sing my way through the ceremony. I’m sure more songs will get added along the way and some of these might not end up fitting in anywhere…. But if they don’t we can make sure we put them on the reception play list.

Barry Louis Polisar – All I Want Is You
Bright Eyes – First Day of My Life
Cat Power - Sea of Love
The Moldy Peaches - Anyone Else But You
My Friend the Chocolate Cake – Television Theme #47
Old Man River - The Wedding Song

Half of the songs are actually off the Juno soundtrack. It’s such a great movie and has an epic soundtrack!

 “In my opinion, the best thing you can do is find a person who loves you for exactly what you are. Good mood, bad mood, ugly, pretty, handsome, what have you; the right person will still think the sun shines out your arse. That's the kind of person that's worth sticking with.” .

Etiquette Shmetiquette

How many people these days still follow ‘proper’ wedding etiquette? I know we’ve given it the finger in terms of inviting people. I believe how it’s meant to go is that you invite the same people to the engagement party, ceremony and reception.

Throwing etiquette out the window started when we were writing up the engagement party invite list. We made a list of everyone we wanted to invite, which was more people than we knew we’d be able to afford to have at the reception. The ‘correct’ thing to do would have been to cull the list down to those who would be invited to the reception, but that seemed a bit stupid to us. We had written those people on the list for a reason – because we wanted to celebrate with them. We decided to have a BBQ for our engagement party so that it meant that we could invite everyone we wanted.

Naturally, we also want all of these people to celebrate our wedding with us - so they will all be getting an invite to the ceremony. We are going to have to limit our reception to about 50-60 people because we can’t afford to have one of these receptions with heaps of people, so not everyone is going to get an invite.

We have been invited to the ceremony only of a wedding before. I think it was great that they were able to have as many people as they wanted celebrate with them without breaking the bank. I never expected to be invited to the wedding so I was really excited that I actually still got to witness their marriage and celebrate it with them a little.

I’m still a little worried though that someone might get offended. I just hope that people think about it for a minute and realise that, if for instance they receive an invite to the ceremony only, it’s not that we don’t like them, it’s because it was the option that we took to ensure that we could celebrate with as many of those that we love as possible!

Shoe Options: Dyeing or Adding Embellishments

I am having a very hard time finding wedding shoes. I saw at least 30 pairs of yellow heels in Kuala Lumpur that would have been perfect… if they went any bigger than a size 9.

There is a place in Perth that custom make wedding shoes. I have only talked to them briefly because when I went there the guy found it necessary to, after measuring my feet, dribble on about the fact that one of my feet is a size 9.5 and the other is a size 10.5 – something I’m rather insecure about. The problem with this place as well is that I’m going to pay over $200 for a pair of shoes (which they will apparently have to assemble on my feet due to my ‘unusual’ sizing) which are white and then go and get them dyed yellow.

Now, if I’m going to pay $200+ for a pair of shoes (even non custom made white dyeable wedding shoes I’ll have to pay around $150 for by the looks of things), I want to be damn sure that getting them dyed isn’t going to destroy them. I’m guessing it’s a ‘do it at your own risk’ deal so the person dyeing them wouldn’t take any responsibility if they stuffed it. Has anyone had shoes dyed before? Did it work? If you haven’t, would you risk dyeing a pair of expensive shoes (I’m not a shoe girl. $150 is expensive to me)?

The only other option I can really think of is to get a pair of plain white shoes and add my own bling - maybe a yellow bow or something along those lines. I’m not really sure if this would look any good though. I’ve found some pictures on the internet of shoes done similarly but I’m really not 100% sold. What do you think?

Meh, if all else fails maybe I can just be the barefoot bride.

Honeymooning on a Budget

We have just returned from a one week mini holiday in Kuala Lumpur. Such a cheap holiday - when you can get flights for two people return for $400 including all taxes and everything, it’s cheaper to go overseas than to holiday in your own country.

We are probably going to do our honeymoon on a tight budget too. With our wedding being at the end of November, it’s not really an ideal time for a honeymoon because everything will be getting more and more expensive as the holiday season draws nearer. There is also the fact that mister fiancé isn’t going to have much leave available… oh, and the fact that we really want to go to Europe for a few months, but the end of this year is not going to be a great time for us to take unpaid leave. Plus we will no doubt be broke from the wedding and broke because we will hopefully have a mortgage by then.

We also don’t want to not have a honeymoon. Given that we already live together and everything we don’t want us to just go back to our house the day after our wedding and slip back into the daily grind of life.

Solution: Cheap one week honeymoon.
Additional benefit: A short honeymoon means that we can go somewhere relaxing and not get too bored. I’m not really a sit by a pool and relax kinda girl but my fiancé thinks we should just relax on our honeymoon. One week of chilling out I think I can manage to enjoy without going crazy.

Here are some options that I can think of:

Fiji – I really want to go to Fiji. It’d be a bit of a trek from Perth – I think we’d have to take two flights. But a trek also means that we are unlikely to bump into people we know (on our flight back from KL on Sunday there were three people I knew on the plane). Apparently it’s hot and humid in December though which would suck.

Philippines – Oh Philippines how I long to visit you. I think I would be quite happy with this option but you never really see any cheap flights from Perth... I guess it’s a two plane trip destination. My other concern is that I’m not sure I’d be satisfied with only being here for a week and spending it relaxing. I want one or two months and I want to explore.

Phuket, Thailand – So many advantages - it’s cheap, December is one of the best times of year to visit, it’s not to far from Perth, and it’s in the same time zone (which I think is a huge benefit when you are only going for one week). There is a lot of potential to bump into people we know though… and that I do not want on our honeymoon.

Langkawi, Malaysia – Same deal as Phuket really I think… just a different country.

Islands off Queensland – This would be a great honeymoon destination. My issue is the whole budget bit though. I think this could actually be a really expensive option.

Broome, Esperance, Exmouth, Western Australia – There are many places in WA that are so far away (and relatively expensive to get to if you don’t drive) that we will probably never bother going otherwise. A local honeymoon would be great in terms of time constraints but maybe not so good for the budget - accommodation, food and activities in Australia will cost a bomb. The main disadvantage here is that for places like Broome and Exmouth it’s going to be damn hot in December.

 Where would you go for a cheap and relaxing honeymoon or holiday?

 

Top row: Fiji, Philippines
Middle row: Phuket, Broome
Bottom row: Langkawi, Brampton Island